Local land politics are the most easily and deeply corrupted cesspool there is, which is the reason I have no interest in your state's rights reasoning. It's admirable that you believe in small government deciding the destiny of the area around us, but take a look around and see how that's turned out. Brigham Young had a city plan that didn't allow building above 4000 feet in elevation, or something. Now we've built to the top of every foothill in sight.
When I was a teenager, we used to four wheel and shoot guns in the foothills of Utah County. We were always being herded off the land for fears of environmental destruction. Honest to Gordon, they used to land black helicopters up Hogs Hollow (above Alpine/Highland) and ticket the trucks not staying on established dirt roads. Now, look at that area that couldn't handle a little four wheeling. They paved a highway over it and sold off the land to developers who built McMansions on it. So much for the environment eh?
That's just one small story of thousands. Look at how the ranchers land grab of the ground underneath our rivers. That kind of b.s. is only the beginning if the state had control of this land. I want nothing to do with the local scoundrels controlling federal lands. In fact, I'd give them more back if it were up for vote.
you seem to be assuming something here. I had a boss once who said "Never assume anything, because. .. . . at that point he went to blackboard. . . . and wrote the word in a particular way our filter won't permit, and stated emphatically that I was embarrassing him.
I understand all about your concerns for local government being corrupt. Perhaps you haven't realized how corrupt national or global governance is, as well.
That's why I argue for LIMITED government power at all levels, and more respect for personal and human rights, of which the right to hold and use property is but one.
I understand some object to anyone who misuses any property as they may judge that. That's why we have zoning ordinances everywhere where there are neighbors looking over their fences, or insomniacs hearing barking dogs next door.
If you stink much, you are in effect punching others in the nose downwind. Clean air is a defensible personal right.. . . equivalent to the "right to life" in fact. I know folks who I think carry that kind of law too far, too.
Tort law is a good area of legal practice, if you can demonstrate harm caused by another to yourself. Things we accept generally as injurious to people deserve codification. At a local level, which is sometimes best because people half a continent away really don't know what damages western range land, and what does not.
If BY had set the line at 4000 ft, nobody would be living anywhere in Utah except along the Colorado river from Moab on down, or the Virgin River below Zions' canyon. Sometimes exaggeration is fun, sometimes it's just stupid. I think BY was a lot like others I decry as "elitist", handing down ignorant (sometimes) decrees. It would have been better to build on the sides of Great Basin valleys in certain respects. That's where you have the gravels that make a building less subject to amplified earthquake damage. The clays in the center of the valleys will act like jello in any earthquake, and keep on rocking long after the original shock ends. . . .
In very broad terms, leaving more decisions to property owners or more local governments is a way of applying nature's general strategy of diversifying life and spreading risks. One central authority dictating that everyone does the same thing means we'll all go down together if anything ever happens that just isn't anticipated by that one plan.
But even more importantly, the right of an individual to own and use property is, as Blackstone observed in medieval England, equivalent to the "Right to Life". If you can't be secure in your property rights, nothing else can be secure.
Ranchers don't "grab" land beneath rivers. Everybody had a common convention on property lines: the property line is the middle of the river. It's the national government that has grabbed the land under the rivers, and in fact the wetlands adjacent to rivers, and in fact in every draw that is tributary to rivers.
You suppose "local land politics" is "the most easily and deeply corrupted cesspool there is" principally because you're as ignorant of the facts as humanly possible. You don't know anything beyond your personal experience or observation, which in fact you did not bother to research and understand. It's just like in the old song about somebody turning a nice little play spot in the woods and turning it into a parking lot. Sorta says to me somebody grew up trespassing on other people's property and complain about how the owner decided to make it a convenience for the general public needing a good place to shop.
What I do realize is, that mega-planners wanting centralized power under government force today do have ideas about taking away, or reducing, the "property rights" of everyone who owns any property, anywhere. Ever see a bumper sticker that reads "Think Globally. Act Locally" ? That's code for implementing the same plan in every community, a call to arms so to speak for footsoldiers for global management. You were right. The local politics has been corrupted. . .
I'd tell you who these people are, and what philosophy they adhere to, but too many people are complaining about my use of precise terms with accurate meanings that could describe it.
