Chris, so glad you are pointing out the egregious disconnect between the Department of Agriculture’s cessation of lawfare on land use policy matters and the silence on the exact same subject at Interior. I’m surprised that Doug Burgum isn’t moving quickly in a similar and aligned policy direction. Let’s hope this is a temporary aberration and is solved very quickly. These policies need to align.
Bergrum doesn’t sound as if he has any interest in advocating for ranchers and farmers, with longstanding “use permits” for grazing and farming on public lands.
Sometimes Trump does that…. puts problematic people front and center to let them publicly hang themselves. The media reports it as bad leadership, but what it is, is Great Awakening. Foibles make headlines, make awareness.
That's crazy. I asked Grok to find ways to mitigate carbon globally. My only conditions were that it shouldn't pose more than a minor inconvenience, shouldn't impede economic development, and couldn't cost over $35 a tonne (and preferably less). There was tonnes of stuff worth doing.
One of the best per cost proposals was the reintroduction of mangroves and sea grasses- great carbon sinks- with the added benefit of boosting local economies through opportunity.
I'm in the lukewarm category myself, with the likes of Bjorn Lomborg or Michael Shellenberger. I think it's real, but massively overblown and exaggerated- a long term serious issue which might begin to cause somewhat serious problems by 2100. It only gets solved by technological innovation. I'm a techno-optimist.
The new BYD Qin hybrid can drive 2,100km on a single tank of gas (65 litre capacity). 94% of the energy used to power the car is derived from the fuel. I think one of the major reasons for the tariffs is because otherwise China is going to swallow the car manufacturing industry. It's going to kill European car manufacturing, and had already begun to have a significant impact on German-made auto sales (down 20%). For the UK, the car industry amounts to 150,000 direct jobs in manufacturing, 800,000 for indirect.
5x that for America and one can begin to see some of the motives behind the tariffs, beyond strategic reshoring and attracting investment into the more high value manufacturing.
I've heard the argument before. It's certainly true that current rates of CO2 aren't really a problem. In fact they're probably a net positive, given the impacts on yields globally. The same doesn't hold true at about 600-650 ppm, or 3°C, which is the most likely course given some fairly basic assumptions governing economic development and energy use, barring major ground-breaking technological innovation, by 2100.
Don't get me wrong. The impacts aren't really anywhere as large as commonly suggested by the IPCC. But at that level they do tend to get a little bit dicey if for no other reason that human cognition begins to become impaired at around 650 ppm.
Besides, it's a moot point anyway. Below the $25 per tonne level, investments tend to be a net positive from an economic perspective. A good example would be planting mangroves and sea grasses. It tends to have positive impacts in terms of fisheries, tourism and added coastal protection value to private property, which outweighs the initial investments over a number of years in added economic prosperity. The reason why such approaches aren't pursued is because they don't benefit crony capitalist globalist interests at all, and are only really of economic benefit to the communities where the investments are made.
Some countries have invested directly, seeing the economic gains to be had, but they tend to be outside the West. In Indonesia, for example, restoration costs of $1,640–$3,900 per hectare are dwarfed by annual ecosystem service values of up to $50,000 per hectare.
They don’t have a choice. It’s coming down. It’s moving slowly because the people’s buy-in is essential. It’s already not the same, but people are slow to notice.
I think it started in Civil War/Reconstruction and the growth in the West post Civil War is where they continued their newfound authoritarianism. Of course, it was a lot harder to enforce back then due to communication times and distance. Now it's settled into a global tyranny.
Here is something else that makes no sense. Biden, again, imposed the "gainful employment" rule on for-profit colleges. This totally arbitrary rule requires these colleges to show that their graduates earn more than mere high school graduates, aged 25 to 34, earn. Those "mere high school graduates have had years to develop and get raises. Yet, in a recent filing in court, the Trump administration SUPPORTS this Biden-era regulation. What the hell is going on?
I hope you will. The law just says education at for-profit colleges must lead to gainful employment. It doesn't say how gainful it must be. It doesn't say a graduate must earn X amount, for the employment to be considered "gainful." None of that. Earlier, the Obama administration wrote a rule of hundreds of pages, defining "gainful employment." It was thrown out by the courts, and then was abandoned by the first Trump administration. The rule was issued again by the Biden administration -- an even worse version. The American Association of Cosmetology Schools and an individual plaintiff filed suit. And the Trump/McMahon regime at the U.S. Department of Education is SUPPORTING the Biden administration's position. Why????
yeah, they were very concerned about the for-profit education companies competing with their clients in academia. Gainful employment rule was designed to shut competitors out.
There is a movement to use public lands to pay off federal debt. The budget bill that just passed in the House, dropped last minute, had an amendment to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Utah and in Nevada. The Nevada sales would go to Wahington and be used to pay debt rather than have the money remain in the state.
This reminds me of a failed effort to use a new finance tool of public lands in the US called National Asset Companies which big investment firms were trying to push last year but failed after public comment (including a strong comment from me) pushback.
I wonder if The Sec of the Interior is considering, along with others, this sort of idea and the Sec of Ag is maybe jumping ahead in disagreement with the selling of public lands.
Basically, the intent is to privatize public lands.
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street will own the country, and we will be happy.
from google:
AI Overview
A National Asset Company (NAC), sometimes called a "Natural Asset Company," is a proposed type of company that would hold the rights to the ecological performance (or ecosystem services) produced by natural or working areas, such as national parks, farms, or forests. The goal is to monetize and invest in the value of these ecosystem services, rather than traditional extraction or development. NACs could be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
I suspect that the multifarious conservancy groups that have sprouted over decades, formed by the ultra-rich and powerful elite, have aimed to minimize use of public land so that when time was opportune, it could more easily be transferred into private ownership.
I think the Governors of these states are part of the problem. How they are dealing with this issues of “imminent domain” pushed by The Feds, to grab land in their states. “In This Dimension” shared this Substack in the comments:
public lands have been appropriated by the world bank and IMF throughout the 3rd world since those institutions were unleashed on them. can't happen here of course
There’s simply too many damn agencies, and many appear to be doing the same exact things. I feel like we’re living in a live-action version of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Can you say Department of Redundancy Department?
“We are ending regulation by prosecution in America,” Rollins said, in a pitch perfect statement of a wise new policy course.” Fingers crossed. I hope Doug B gets his sh*t together and comes on board.
Chris - having been in and around government my whole career, often have I seen that Occam’s Razor cuts closest to the nub. What I mean is, it is likely that Ag and Interior simply aren’t talking to or coordinating at a level above action officers. Bureaucracy is hierarchical, and senior decision makers only have so much time in the day. There’s also a probably a certain amount of rice bowl guarding going on, e.g., “What? Talk those (insert pejorative term here) over at (insert agency name here)? Ah, what do they know about how we’re saving Western civilization over here? Get back to work!”
Yes likely there is little to no communication between the two “Departments”. They are both operating in their “parallel universes” and fighting over the same “rice bowl”.
I don’t remember exactly why, but I was always suspicious of Doug Burgum. Trump selects amazing people, but also has a tendency to choose some very odd ones. Not sure why???
Regulation by lawsuit seems eerily familiar, but from where?
Oh right - Feudal times in European history. Nobles and well-off Burghers would call upon the Crown's official in charge of boundaries to have him re-draw plots and such.
Everybody got the same-sized area that they had had before, but for some mysterious reason, only the rich and the people connected to the Crown or nobility got the good land.
Which led to several uprisings and officials being found mysteriously dead. In some areas, it got to be that officials had to have armed escorts, and eventually said escorts too started disappearing without trace.
And then we had another war, and then a new King who stepped hard on the Nobles to get them to toe the line.
Mayhaps some insurrection or such is the requisite for the return of the king who at least in part attempts to settle matters so that the law doesnt act as aninstigator for uprisings and rebellion?
Chris, so glad you are pointing out the egregious disconnect between the Department of Agriculture’s cessation of lawfare on land use policy matters and the silence on the exact same subject at Interior. I’m surprised that Doug Burgum isn’t moving quickly in a similar and aligned policy direction. Let’s hope this is a temporary aberration and is solved very quickly. These policies need to align.
Having mixed feelings about Burgum. We'll see.
Is Point Reyes National land use a testing ground of sorts for rolling back the abusive treatment of the handful of ranchers still there?
tbd
Bergrum doesn’t sound as if he has any interest in advocating for ranchers and farmers, with longstanding “use permits” for grazing and farming on public lands.
I keep saying, Burgam is emulating Rex Tillerson.
Good point. I recall something negative about him, but can’t remember exactly why. Didn’t he diss Trump in some way prior to the election?
Sometimes Trump does that…. puts problematic people front and center to let them publicly hang themselves. The media reports it as bad leadership, but what it is, is Great Awakening. Foibles make headlines, make awareness.
burgum is in bed with the carbon capture lunatics https://northdakotamonitor.com/2024/12/12/north-dakota-approves-co2-storage-for-summit-pipeline/
That's crazy. I asked Grok to find ways to mitigate carbon globally. My only conditions were that it shouldn't pose more than a minor inconvenience, shouldn't impede economic development, and couldn't cost over $35 a tonne (and preferably less). There was tonnes of stuff worth doing.
One of the best per cost proposals was the reintroduction of mangroves and sea grasses- great carbon sinks- with the added benefit of boosting local economies through opportunity.
I'm in the lukewarm category myself, with the likes of Bjorn Lomborg or Michael Shellenberger. I think it's real, but massively overblown and exaggerated- a long term serious issue which might begin to cause somewhat serious problems by 2100. It only gets solved by technological innovation. I'm a techno-optimist.
The new BYD Qin hybrid can drive 2,100km on a single tank of gas (65 litre capacity). 94% of the energy used to power the car is derived from the fuel. I think one of the major reasons for the tariffs is because otherwise China is going to swallow the car manufacturing industry. It's going to kill European car manufacturing, and had already begun to have a significant impact on German-made auto sales (down 20%). For the UK, the car industry amounts to 150,000 direct jobs in manufacturing, 800,000 for indirect.
5x that for America and one can begin to see some of the motives behind the tariffs, beyond strategic reshoring and attracting investment into the more high value manufacturing.
We don’t need to capture carbon. At all.
Nor would reducing CO2 be desirable.
All your premises are lies that you’ve been told to restrict and tax you for globalist control. Sorry to be the first one to let you know.
I've heard the argument before. It's certainly true that current rates of CO2 aren't really a problem. In fact they're probably a net positive, given the impacts on yields globally. The same doesn't hold true at about 600-650 ppm, or 3°C, which is the most likely course given some fairly basic assumptions governing economic development and energy use, barring major ground-breaking technological innovation, by 2100.
Don't get me wrong. The impacts aren't really anywhere as large as commonly suggested by the IPCC. But at that level they do tend to get a little bit dicey if for no other reason that human cognition begins to become impaired at around 650 ppm.
Besides, it's a moot point anyway. Below the $25 per tonne level, investments tend to be a net positive from an economic perspective. A good example would be planting mangroves and sea grasses. It tends to have positive impacts in terms of fisheries, tourism and added coastal protection value to private property, which outweighs the initial investments over a number of years in added economic prosperity. The reason why such approaches aren't pursued is because they don't benefit crony capitalist globalist interests at all, and are only really of economic benefit to the communities where the investments are made.
Some countries have invested directly, seeing the economic gains to be had, but they tend to be outside the West. In Indonesia, for example, restoration costs of $1,640–$3,900 per hectare are dwarfed by annual ecosystem service values of up to $50,000 per hectare.
The West is how and where the federal government learned how to be THE federal government - I don't think it's possible for them to stop now.
As in, "We been railroaded!"🤠
They don’t have a choice. It’s coming down. It’s moving slowly because the people’s buy-in is essential. It’s already not the same, but people are slow to notice.
I think it started in Civil War/Reconstruction and the growth in the West post Civil War is where they continued their newfound authoritarianism. Of course, it was a lot harder to enforce back then due to communication times and distance. Now it's settled into a global tyranny.
Here is something else that makes no sense. Biden, again, imposed the "gainful employment" rule on for-profit colleges. This totally arbitrary rule requires these colleges to show that their graduates earn more than mere high school graduates, aged 25 to 34, earn. Those "mere high school graduates have had years to develop and get raises. Yet, in a recent filing in court, the Trump administration SUPPORTS this Biden-era regulation. What the hell is going on?
Will look into that
I hope you will. The law just says education at for-profit colleges must lead to gainful employment. It doesn't say how gainful it must be. It doesn't say a graduate must earn X amount, for the employment to be considered "gainful." None of that. Earlier, the Obama administration wrote a rule of hundreds of pages, defining "gainful employment." It was thrown out by the courts, and then was abandoned by the first Trump administration. The rule was issued again by the Biden administration -- an even worse version. The American Association of Cosmetology Schools and an individual plaintiff filed suit. And the Trump/McMahon regime at the U.S. Department of Education is SUPPORTING the Biden administration's position. Why????
yeah, they were very concerned about the for-profit education companies competing with their clients in academia. Gainful employment rule was designed to shut competitors out.
Land is everything. Access to land is the difference between freedom and fuedalism.
gameofrent.com
“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts."
My man. <3
Dude, isn't that from Gone With the Wind? I hear Mr. O'Hara prefacing that with "Katie Scarlett O'Hara..." No matter, it's a great quote.
"You ain't no kinda' man if you ain't got land.". - Delmar O'Donnell
The Swamp is deep. Way too many entrenched bureaucrats unwilling to give up power and more than willing to wait Trump out.
I’m glad you’re staying on this. It’s way too easy for Interior to do nothing and in a couple of years say “oops”.
There is a movement to use public lands to pay off federal debt. The budget bill that just passed in the House, dropped last minute, had an amendment to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land in Utah and in Nevada. The Nevada sales would go to Wahington and be used to pay debt rather than have the money remain in the state.
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2025/05/23/proposed-sale-of-utah-public-land-pulled-from-congress-budget-bill/
https://nevadacurrent.com/2025/05/08/amodei-outrages-nv-congressional-colleagues-with-dead-of-night-federal-lands-sale-amendment/
This reminds me of a failed effort to use a new finance tool of public lands in the US called National Asset Companies which big investment firms were trying to push last year but failed after public comment (including a strong comment from me) pushback.
https://treasurer.utah.gov/natural-asset-companies/
I wonder if The Sec of the Interior is considering, along with others, this sort of idea and the Sec of Ag is maybe jumping ahead in disagreement with the selling of public lands.
Basically, the intent is to privatize public lands.
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street will own the country, and we will be happy.
from google:
AI Overview
A National Asset Company (NAC), sometimes called a "Natural Asset Company," is a proposed type of company that would hold the rights to the ecological performance (or ecosystem services) produced by natural or working areas, such as national parks, farms, or forests. The goal is to monetize and invest in the value of these ecosystem services, rather than traditional extraction or development. NACs could be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
I'd think the states would be demanding first right of refusal for federal land listed for sale.
This issue will not go away.
I suspect that the multifarious conservancy groups that have sprouted over decades, formed by the ultra-rich and powerful elite, have aimed to minimize use of public land so that when time was opportune, it could more easily be transferred into private ownership.
I think the Governors of these states are part of the problem. How they are dealing with this issues of “imminent domain” pushed by The Feds, to grab land in their states. “In This Dimension” shared this Substack in the comments:
https://alexanderscipio.substack.com/p/lawfare-against-those-who-feed-us
public lands have been appropriated by the world bank and IMF throughout the 3rd world since those institutions were unleashed on them. can't happen here of course
Heh, not unless we too became a 3rd world nation, which seems highly un... [looks around]
Uh oh...
There’s simply too many damn agencies, and many appear to be doing the same exact things. I feel like we’re living in a live-action version of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Can you say Department of Redundancy Department?
Thank you so much for keeping on top of this (and so much else).
“We are ending regulation by prosecution in America,” Rollins said, in a pitch perfect statement of a wise new policy course.” Fingers crossed. I hope Doug B gets his sh*t together and comes on board.
Chris - Great piece on Point Reyes in County Highway!
It could be that Doug is more enthusiastic about being an important DC insider being wined and dined. Let's check his scbedule!
Yep. I bet that is the reason.
Chris - having been in and around government my whole career, often have I seen that Occam’s Razor cuts closest to the nub. What I mean is, it is likely that Ag and Interior simply aren’t talking to or coordinating at a level above action officers. Bureaucracy is hierarchical, and senior decision makers only have so much time in the day. There’s also a probably a certain amount of rice bowl guarding going on, e.g., “What? Talk those (insert pejorative term here) over at (insert agency name here)? Ah, what do they know about how we’re saving Western civilization over here? Get back to work!”
Yes likely there is little to no communication between the two “Departments”. They are both operating in their “parallel universes” and fighting over the same “rice bowl”.
Perhaps it’s time for a come to Jesus meeting in the oval office. Televised.
I don’t remember exactly why, but I was always suspicious of Doug Burgum. Trump selects amazing people, but also has a tendency to choose some very odd ones. Not sure why???
Regulation by lawsuit seems eerily familiar, but from where?
Oh right - Feudal times in European history. Nobles and well-off Burghers would call upon the Crown's official in charge of boundaries to have him re-draw plots and such.
Everybody got the same-sized area that they had had before, but for some mysterious reason, only the rich and the people connected to the Crown or nobility got the good land.
Which led to several uprisings and officials being found mysteriously dead. In some areas, it got to be that officials had to have armed escorts, and eventually said escorts too started disappearing without trace.
And then we had another war, and then a new King who stepped hard on the Nobles to get them to toe the line.
Mayhaps some insurrection or such is the requisite for the return of the king who at least in part attempts to settle matters so that the law doesnt act as aninstigator for uprisings and rebellion?