Senator Dan Lederman (R-16/Dakota Dunes) continues to peddle his malarkey about the pretty cool and totally voluntary Niobrara/Ponca conservation plan being a "federal land grab." In his latest propaganda, Senator Lederman posts a resolution from the clearly misguided Boyd County (Nebraska) Board of Supervisors expressing official county disapproval of the federal plan to acquire conservation easements and land along the Missouri and Niobrara rivers.
But pay attention to the crux of Boyd County's and, I must assume, Lederman's opposition. They don't care about conservation, wildlife habitat, hunting, or tourism. Their big issue seems to be that keeping some land (some land: remember that the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are looking for choice parcels that would make up just a tenth of the 1.4-million-acre area under consideration) out of production will reduce the tax dollars available to state and local government.
Read that again: Republicans (Lederman, at least; I don't have a partisan breakdown of the Boyd County officials... though this smells like a kind of dumb unique to Republicans) want government to have more tax dollars. They want property owners to pay more taxes. They want to stop private landowners and the federal government from making deals that could keep their taxes down.
Tell me again, how does Dan Lederman call himself a Republican?
Curious how this proposal affects real estate prices or whether Lederman and the other earth haters would otherwise develop this ground.
If KXL is approved (Allah forbid) it would cross the Niobrara upstream of Ponca Hills: the Corps of Engineers announced projects, too.
http://journalstar.com/news/local/niobrara-river-makes-most-endangered-list-for-sediment-problems/article_23113de1-00c2-52b3-8646-584a5172e16f.html
What are Lederman's links to the insurance industry?
Surplus water and global warming:
http://missoulian.com/news/local/scholar-longstanding-doctrine-could-influence-water-rights-as-climate-changes/article_75111674-2706-11e3-8861-0019bb2963f4.html
It's interesting to note that Lederman supports taking the property rights of individuals without compensation. If a landowner wants to sell a conservation easement to the federal government that should be a decision made by the willing seller and the willing buyer. Any effort to prevent such a sale takes away the sellers property rights without compensation.
Israel does it all the time.
Real estate values—coming up!
Your post on this topic at Bernie's place is still getting traffic, Cory.
http://southdakotamagazine.com/niobrara-confluence-lederman
[Yeah, it's also getting "Robert J," who I suspect is Andrew Shiers, still pursuing his strange obsession with publicly denigrating me and trying to press my voice out of the public square.]