By
Ron Ewart
May 7, 2013
NewsWithViews.com
"There is no week, day, or hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance." —Walt Whitman
Back
in 2004, we were involved, with several other rural landowners, in opposing
a particularly onerous proposed environmental ordinance in our county.
We gave testimony at several public hearings and we organized quite a
few public protests at which several dozen landowners turned out. We even
got some of the local media to attend our protests. We also wrote many
guest editorials and letters to the editors outlining our objections.
In spite of a fairly significant turnout by the effected rural landowners,
the Democrats on the county council, that held the majority, passed the
ordinance into law literally in the dead of night, in spite of vociferous
opposition and over 100 amendments put forth by the Republicans.
The county council at the time consisted of thirteen members, 7 Democrats
and 6 Republicans. Two of those Republicans represented the rural areas
of the county ..... only two. The rest of the council members were elected
by the urban population and held an urban mindset when it came to zoning,
the environment and land use issues. In effect, the rural landowners of
the county were disenfranchised from any political outcome. They had to
"eat" whatever the urban representatives dished out to them.
The upshot was that rural landowners were being forced to bear almost
the entire burden of environmental protection, while their city brethren
got off virtually scot-free.
We debated an environmentalist on a radio show at one time during the
debate over the ordinance and he kept saying that: "we have to
protect OUR rural lands." On three occasions during the show
we had to remind him that the rural lands did not belong to him or anyone
else in the big city. Rural lands belong to real people who paid for their
land and worked their land and those landowners have constitutional rights.
Upon
further investigation we found that these kinds of ordinances were being
inflicted on rural landowners all over America, mostly driven by the United
Nations Agenda 21 policies of so-called sustainable
development, livable communities, public transportation and smart
growth. It was at that moment in late 2005, having over 30 years experience
in land use issues, we decided to form the National Association of Rural
Landowners (NARLO)
to act as an advocate for the rights and interests of rural landowners
everywhere. To that end we established
a website that provides relevant information to all American rural
landowners, along with some tools that rural landowners can use to protect
their rights and interests.
As the organization became more widely known, we started receiving calls
and e-mails from rural landowners from all over America about how they
were being affected by zoning, land use, eminent domain abuse, environmental
protection and endangered species laws. Some of their stories were horrific.
Many lost their life's saving fighting either the local, state, or the
federal government. Some lost their property and ended up penniless and
on the street. Still others ended up in jail. Many, still in the throws
of the fight with government, asked for our help. Some we could help.
Others we could not because their fight had gone past the point of a reasonable
resolution.
What most people don't understand, especially urban folk, that these kinds
of environmentally driven injustices are going on all over America, every
day, mostly imposed on rural landowners. Most Americans never hear of
these stories because one injustice is not newsworthy. If there was someway
we could lump them all together and weave a common thread, perhaps then
other Americans would care. A few of our articles have chronicled some
of these stories and we will continue to tell more stories in future articles.
Although many valiant and courageous writers have addressed this assault
on rural landowners, including writers for Newswithviews, for now, rural
Americans must endure these assaults on their property rights and their
freedom all alone, even though we constantly advise them that they have
little if any chance to win alone. Rural landowners must organize.
In order to drive radical environmental land use laws down the rural landowner's
throat, many jurisdictions have resorted to turning what used to be civil
violations into criminal charges, thereby allowing the authorities to
obtain criminal search warrants. Los Angeles County even set up a "Nuisance
Abatement Team" that is nothing more than a fully armed SWAT team
with black SUV's to terrorize rural landowners into compliance and haul
them off to jail or court at gunpoint if they don't comply. Local and
state land use code enforcement officers run rough shod over the rights
of landowners, including trespassing to collect evidence without authority
and outright arrogance and verbal abuse. These Gestapo-like land use and
environmental ordinance enforcers cite laws that don't exist to get people
to comply with "cease and desist" "red tags", or "compliance"
orders. If the landowner is ignorant of the law, he is helpless against
these enforcers.
Ever
since designating the Northwest Spotted Owl as endangered and destroying
the livelihood of over 40,000 loggers and wood product employees, federal
agencies, including the Executive Branch under Obama, have shoved their
whole arm into the lives of rural landowners. Here are some examples of
laws that mostly affect rural landowners: "The Endangered Species
Act, The Salmon Recovery Act, The Clean Water Restoration Act, the National
Environmental Policy Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, The Fisheries
Management and Conservation Act, the Winters Doctrine, the Public Trust
Doctrine, UN Biospheres and the Wildlands Project, the Boldt Decision,
Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Marine Fisheries Division
and on and on. President Obama went even farther when he signed Executive
Order No. 13575 in June of 2009 and created the White House Rural
Council that takes 25 federal agencies and allows them to meddle even
more in the lives and livelihoods of rural landowners .... with federal
power.
Federal laws don't even begin to cover the local and state land use and
environmental laws. You can't move sideways without breaking one and it
will cost you thousands of dollars to comply with any of them, or huge
fines and penalties if you get caught violating one or more of them. Government
has wrapped rural landowners up in a regulation spider web and won't let
them go.
If a rural landowner hasn't come up against government abuses of property
rights and eminent domain, they soon will. As we mentioned earlier in
this article, every week we hear one or more stories from rural landowners
from all over America who are up against draconian land use, zoning and
environmental intransigence on their lands. Introduction of alleged endangered
predators is a common thread that threaten livestock and children. The
unspoken code to handle these threats from dangerous predators by landowners
is: "SSS" (shoot, shovel and shut up). Unfortunately,
one landowner in Idaho didn't head the code and when a grizzly bear started
menacing his children and his livestock he shot it. Thinking he was being
a good citizen, he notified the authorities of what he had done. They
immediately arrested him for killing an endangered species.
Filling in a wetland, that can bring federal charges and jail time, occurs
frequently. Even collecting rainwater can bring fines and incarceration.
Government is removing dams on rivers all over America, for so-called
endangered fish, thereby destroying irrigation, electrical generation
and flood control, not to mention potable drinking water. Livelihoods
of thousands of ranchers and farmers are being eliminated by dam removal,
thus driving the price of what we eat higher, due to reduced supply of
crops, animal feed and animals.
Urban rural landowners near large cities get the worst of it, as state
legislatures and county and city councils pass laws to clean up the rural
areas to strict city standards, or implement zoning laws and set backs
that severely restrict the right of use of the landowner's property, in
direct violation of the 5th Amendment wherein it states in part:
"No person …………… shall
be deprived of life, liberty, or property without DUE PROCESS of law;
nor shall private property be taken for PUBLIC USE without COMPENSATION."
God help you if you have an in-operable car or farm vehicle on your property.
That's a real NO-NO!
Farming co-ops, where farmers exchange their products, are being raided
and forced out of business by federal authorities for violating some law.
The U. S. Department of Agriculture is once again trying to force radio
tags (RFID chips) on all farm and domestic animals down the landowner's
throat, at a huge cost of time and paperwork. Land use, zoning and environmental
regulations are so all encompassing that virtually every rancher and farmer
has become an involuntary, unknowing lawbreaker.
The assault on rural landowners by government and environmental non-governmental
organizations (NGO's) is relentless. However, what the government and
the environmental groups don't get is that rural landowners are an independent
lot and they are only going to take it for so long before incidental violent
acts start taking place. Some
already have. The Associated Press reported in June of 2004 that:
"..... a muffler shop owner in Granby, CO plowed a makeshift
armored bulldozer into several buildings after a dispute with city officials,
was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after a SWAT
team cut their way into the machine with a blowtorch early today, authorities
said. Grand County Emergency Management Director Jim Holahan confirmed
that the driver, identified by the town manager as Marvin Heemeyer, appeared
to have shot himself. Heemeyer plowed the armor-plated bulldozer into
the town hall, a former mayor's home and at least five other buildings
Friday before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse.
City officials said he was angry over a zoning dispute and fines from
city code violations at his business."
Landowners along the Jarbidge River near Elko, Nevada drove the federal government agents out of town, fearing for their lives, for actions by the government and environmental groups against the locals’ livelihood, rural roads, recreation, forests and rivers. The rural landowners near Elko formed what they called the "Jarbidge Shovel Brigade" to take on the federal and local authorities. In northern California and southern Oregon along the Klamath River, the local landowners formed the Klamath Bucket Brigade to fight against removal of four dams. We don't condone violent acts whatsoever, although we can see how frustration and outrage can lead to such acts.
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The American rural landowner has a virtual bull's-eye on his back and government and the radical environmentalists have set their sights on that bull's-eye, because a landowner is an easy target. They have essentially no voice in the political arena. Although rural America may be in the proverbial crosshairs, all across America there is growing resistance against government and environmental injustices that could lead to serious unintended consequences. Well-armed, independent rural landowners may be the last great hope for a free America because they aren't about to lay down and play dead for a bunch of free-loading, urban, radical environmentally-educated, Cool-aid drinking, college idiots and the ignorant and arrogant big-city politicians that aid and abet them. Because you see, the rural landowner has not lost "his or her roughness and spirit of defiance" and the government would be well advised not to push them too far. Rural landowners control America's food supply, both protein and grain and if they acted in concert, they could bring America to its knees.
� 2013 Ron Ewart - All Rights Reserved
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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart can be reached by e-mail for comment at ron@narlo.org, or by 'phone at 1 800 682-7848.
Website: www.narlo.org
E-Mail: ron@narlo.org
