Antiquities Act to meet fierce local opposition, rep representatives from Utah warn Obama

This one looks like another good potential location for the next Bundy ranch. At least one Indian tribe in the area seems to be siding with the fed government which should facilitate mobilization of the blue side by portraying the red opposition as racist and anti-aboriginal.

Two other proposed conservation zones also look very interesting.

1. Owyhee Canyonlands is likely to be perceived as a slap in the face in Malheur where residents in general maintained their loyalty despite many admitting some truth to Bundy's claims. The locals are already up in arms against this one. It's not obvious, however, that the Obama administration will have the audacity to press forward with this one so soon after the standoff.

2. Gold Butte is the cradle of the Bundy movement and it's a message to the militias. Some may refuse to back off. Bundys, however, are mostly in jail now. It's not clear how and in the name of who the opposition to the zone can organize itself. Bundys were apparently the last ranchers in the area.

By THOMAS BURR (The Salt Lake Tribune) {

Date = Feb 12 2016

Source = Obama has ‘big ambitions’ for protecting land, White House says

"We have big, big ambitions this year, so let's see what happens," Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told The Washington Post.

That could mean action on the proposed 1.9-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, a move that Utah's six members of Congress urged Obama against Friday as the president designated three new national monuments covering 1.8 million acres of the California desert.

Several American Indian tribes have joined together to form the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which has urged Obama to use his authority to name the monument in southeastern Utah, arguing that it would protect cultural and historic sites.

"Bears Ears offers something unique that we can't find anyplace else in the world," Eric Descheenie, the group's co-chairman, said recently at a news conference. "The threat of looting, grave robbing and mineral leasing, to name a few — the list is extensive — we've already seen it in and around these lands. If this is something we lose, we lose it forever."

[...]

Utah's federal delegation, however, is lockstep opposed to a new monument designation and wrote to Obama on Friday, saying a locally driven approach called the Public Lands Initiative would be a better way to protect sensitive areas and would not exacerbate the already divisive issues over federal land management.

"Make no mistake, both the state of Utah and San Juan County value our public lands. With that said, public participation in land-use decisions is critical to their long-term acceptance and success; the most effective land-management policy is inclusive and engaging, not veiled and unilateral."

"Use of the Antiquities Act within [Utah] will be met with fierce local opposition and will further polarize federal land-use discussions for years, if not decades," the members said in the letter. }

With Bundys in jail, a wave of conservation frenzy is already coming

In previous posts I reasoned that proposed conservation areas are the next most likely flashpoint, if the rural unrest keeps spreading. This is because locals seem to be generally ambivalent about the Bundy tactic of challenging the status quo thru armed occupation of federal lands. They seem, however, to be quite ready to fight back when it comes to attempts to change the status quo initiated from the other side. This makes prospective conservation areas look like the best way to provoke a post-Bundy rural backlash.

Now here comes this article and it appears that we have truckloads of this stuff coming. With Obama's presidency drawing to an end, a major hunt after legacy opportunities is under way. And it seems to be very much focused on conservation monuments. I would like to highlight a few of things here.

First of all, it's done by decree bypassing usual democratic procedures.

Two, interviews in the article suggest a rather surprising degree of commitment to the conservation cause on the part of the president and his aids/advisers. Their determination to continue doesn't seem to be very affected by the standoff in Oregon. If anything, the standoff seems to have only stiffened the resolve to press forward with the plans

Three, with Bundys in jail, some people may be tempted for a show of force. This is like to show the militias and others who is the boss. Senate Minority Leader, no less, is pressing to declare the cradle of the Bundy rebellion a national monument.

By Juliet Eilperin (Washington Post) {

Date = February 12, 2016

Source = Obama to designate new national monuments in the California desert

Obama has unilaterally protected more than 260 million acres of America’s lands and waters under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives the president wide latitude to safeguard at-risk federal lands that have cultural, historic or scientific value.

The act is among the most powerful tools at any president’s disposal. Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the law more than any president in history; Harold L. Ickes, his interior secretary, kept a pile of potential national-monument declarations in a desk and pulled them out whenever Roosevelt was in a good mood.

Obama’s aides do not have a similar system, but they share those earlier aspirations.

“We have big, big ambitions this year, so let’s see what happens,” said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, adding that the administration is focused on “local requests for action. It’s really been driven by activities on the ground.”

On Friday, Obama will designate more than 1.8 million acres of California desert for protection with the creation of three national monuments: Castle Mountains, Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow. The new monuments will connect three existing sites — Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve — to create the second-largest desert preserve in the world.

The big question: What next?

Other possible future designations include Bears Ears, a sacred site for several Native American tribes in southeastern Utah; Stonewall, the site of a 1969 inn riot by members of New York City’s gay community; the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts...

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who convinced Obama to declare a sizeable monument in Nevada’s Basin and Range Province last year, is still pressing for getting another one at Gold Butte, which is an hour’s drive from Las Vegas but has been degraded and largely unpoliced since Bundy and his armed followers confronted Bureau of Land Management officials there in 2014.

Officials are weighing these proposals amid protests out West, such as the armed occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which aimed to wrest control of federal lands from officials in Washington. The standoff may have hurt the prospects for increased protections around the state’s Owyhee Canyonlands, though the idea is not off the table entirely.

But Jim Messina, a close Obama adviser who worked on conservation issues when he served as White House deputy chief of staff in his first term, said the president is personally committed to the issue and is convinced that most Americans back the idea.

“Protecting public access is a huge political winner across the West. A bunch of extremists in Oregon can’t change it,” he said. “There’s no thought, or no reason, to back off on our agenda.” }

The Beginner Guide to Dooming in America

To illustrate the DOOMMM Club's thinking on the Bundy rebellion and the US urban rural divide in general, I picked a few maps from the web. While some of these have unclear sources, they do confirm to trends identified by serious analytical articles on the subject.

We start with the simple fact that the rural conservative minority presides over a lion's share of the country.

Elections 2012. Red Counties voted Republican. Blue voted Democrat



Source

Geographically, the minority is an overwhelming majority. It's not so in numbers. The next map reflects better actual electoral power by expressing population density in urban elevations. Blue spots that were drowning in a sea of red in the previous map are actually densely populated electoral giants towering over thinly populated flat red planes.



Source

Next we have a map of trending counties. Those countries gravitated towards one of the parties from 2004 to 2012. The longer the arrow the faster the county's been trending. To see the arrows better, click on the map



Source

More counties are obviously trending republican than otherwise. Again, the geography is misleading and obscures the actual numbers, but it does reflect the growing urban rural divide.

Here is another view on the same thing. The average magnitude of the shift. Rural counties trending more conservative. The cities, however, are turning liberal at an even greater rate.



Source

To be sure, this is in relative terms. That is, they can perfectly be all turning more liberal, but because they are not doing it with the same speed, the gap between them is growing. The maps above measure the shift in terms of party preferences, not in absolute terms of how people actually poll on specific issues.

The maps/graphs above are what can be called geographical polarization. Cities turning more liberal, the countryside trending conservative. Political polarization along the urban rural fault line. The second component of this process, however, is even more important. It is the sheer intensity of the polarization.

Here is a good illustration from Pew Research. It's not only counties increasingly voting this or that way. People themselves are moving away from the political center. Conservatives growing more conservatives, liberals more liberal. They are not only increasingly clustering geographically. Their views are trending away from the center.



Source

Now if you are betting on polarization to work its magic, growing divides are not enough. After all, what matters about the rise of the Trump/Sanders duo is not only their views but how these two and their supporters are perceived respectively on the other side of the divide. Liberals detest Trump, conservatives can't stomach Sanders. The following graph by the same Pew should confirm your intuition. Mutual political animosity has been escalating over time.



Now two maps to illustrate the issue of the federal land. It's basically concentrated in western states and it's probably not a coincidence that Bundys hail from Nevada where 80% of land is owned by the federal government.





It's easy to imagine the subject of the federal land ownership eventually blowing into a nationwide fallout between the two camps because it's related to one more general debate around which much of the current polarization is being created. That is, whether the government can be trusted with running things.

This issue should evoke almost archetypal political imagery for both sides. For the liberal/progressive crowd, here is the government responsibly protecting people and environment against the horrors of unchecked capitalist greed, balancing the need for economic growth against more humanistic concerns. On the other side of the divide, it's a story of a big and overbearing government driving into poverty hard working people with its inept and absurd regulation. And not just people. Rural Americans. The salt of the earth.

It's important to keep in mind that, both in terms of political geography and in terms of intensity, the urban rural divide has been steadily growing. The Bundy rebellion is interesting not only because of its particular circumstances, but because it's a point in time on a steadily escalating curve of political/geographical polarization. This curve points towards a certain destination in the future... It may be a very near future.

PS

On a personal note, I've been an avid observer of urban rural conflicts all over the world for years which is very obvious from the following link I co-authored with Aymenn in 2012: Demography Is Destiny in Syria

Cliven Bundy arrested amid fears of the Bundy effect spreading

Cliven Bundy was arrested at the airport upon arrival in Oregon by a SWAT team, while the remaining militia in the refuge surrendered to the feds. In the meantime a neighboring county is reeling from the Bundy effect. It's interesting to note how emotional it is. People shouting, crying, quoting from the declaration of independence and the constitution.

To remind the readers, it's that very county the Bundy team was traveling to when the feds blocked their way. The local reporter at the time visited the gathering that was waiting for Bundy and found a crowd of hundreds of people mostly sympathetic to the militia. Here is the link.

Two highlights, and one is a fallout between the leaders of the county with the sheriff apparently siding with Bundy. Another interesting aspect is the fact that the feds are no longer taking any chances. The original tactic of trying to wear down the militia by ignoring the takeover altogether seems to be giving place to taking a calculated risk of creating martyrs and political prisoners.

In general, the panic seems to be less about a potential outside invasion, but more about an invasion from within.

By Fedor Zarkhin (The Oregonian/OregonLive) {

Date = February 10, 2016
Source = Malheur refuge occupation sparks fears of incursion

Part therapy session and part history lesson, a Grant County commission meeting drew dozens of people Wednesday – some crying and others shouting -- to weigh in on a resolution calling for an end to the armed militant occupation almost 100 miles away.

With less than a foot of space between the front row and the commissioners' tables, the small room overflowed with more than 30 residents who spent almost two hours talking about the proposal.

Two people warned that they might cry before giving their testimony. One woman read a lengthy passage from the Declaration of Independence.

[...]

Commissioner Scott Myers said he felt the need to take up the issue because the county of 7,000 had become a target for expanding the occupation movement.

Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer had met with some of the occupation leaders and was set to share the stage with some of them Jan. 26 when the FBI and state police arrested Ammon Bundy and others at a traffic stop on their way from the wildlife refuge to a community meeting John Day. Occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was killed by state police in the confrontation. He was carrying a loaded 9mm handgun, the FBI said.

"The militant occupation in Harney county was illegal, unethical, socially inappropriate and tore the community apart," said former commissioner Mark Webb, who came to testify. "The effort on the part of Sheriff Palmer to support that – professionally unacceptable, arguably illegal. None of this should come here."

"Defamation!" interjected a woman sitting a few feet away from him.

Palmer, who wasn't at the meeting, is a critic of the federal land management and has drawn some local support.

"He has been smeared by people in this county, by people who have not read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution," said county resident Judy Kerr. }

Idaho Poll: 25% support the refuge takeover in Oregon

A latest poll in Idaho suggests a rather surprising level of support for the Bundy rebellion. 25% of the participants expressed some kind of support for the militia. Otherwise, 40% would like federal lands returned to state control. Plurality of respondents, almost a half, however, are opposed to the idea of land transfer.

By Bob Bernick (Idaho Politics Weekly) {

Date = 07 February 2016

Poll: Most Idaho Residents Don't Support Militia Takeover of Oregon Wildlife Refuge

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates finds that 25 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support the actions of the protesters, who say they want federal lands returned to local control.

Fourteen percent said they have no opinion concerning the standoff.

Asked if federal lands in Idaho should be turned over to state control, Idahoans are split:

48 percent oppose the idea, keep the lands under federal control.

42 percent favor the state taking control of federal lands.

Republicans in Idaho favor taking the federal lands, 51-39 percent.

Democrats are against it, 72-19 percent. }

It's unfortunate that the poll couldn't identify exactly how many strongly support the militia actions and how many only somewhat support. Nevertheless, 25% came as a surprise.

More crucially, the poll reveals nothing on how the issue of federal land plays out along the urban rural divide. The same goes about the support for the refuge takeover. This is a critical omission. If majority of Bundy supporters in the state are concentrated in the countryside, which is quite likely, then this would indicate shocking levels of support for the militia tactics in rural counties.

It's a safe bet that for supporters of the federal government the generalized plurality for the status quo will serve as a reason for complacency. Reality, however, may prove dramatically different.