The plastic surgery, plastic smiles, plastic backdrops, and plastic “for the little guy” posing of Hollywood’s rich and famous were on full display Sunday night as the Television Academy, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gathered for their umpteenth circle of self-congratulations called “The Emmys™.”
Conspicuous in his absence, however, was the cherished man to whom they gave the award for “Best Narrator” of a Documentary Series: former President™, Noble Peace Prize Winner™, and Grammy™ Winner™, Barack™ Obama ™.
Also conspicuously absent – from both the cultish ceremony and from the Obama-narrated Netflix series “Our Great National Parks” -- was any hint of the most important and basic historical facts.
Like, say, the fact that the U.S. Constitution Mr. Obama swore an oath to uphold does not allow the federal government to own or run “national parks.”
Whoops.
Yes. Mr. Obama wasn’t on hand to receive the perverse TV award, which was presented in appropriately perverse TV style by drag maestro Ru Paul. But the former President’s absence (perhaps he was cozy at his beachfront Martha’s Vineyard home, despite his repeated claim that Climate Apocalypse “Accelerated Ocean Rise” would wipe out such places) didn’t put a damper on the Jack-in-the-box audience, who leapt to their feet to applaud him and the show.
But their blind enthusiasm for both a mass murderer and a television series celebrating land theft and central-government colonialism offers us an opportunity to gather facts and spread them far and wide.
For example, fans of Obama might want to look at this list of the innocent kids he and his inhuman Drone Advisor, John Brennan, killed (along with help from whichever military members complied, all along the “chain of command”, contrary to morals, ethics, and their own oaths to follow only constitutional orders).
They might want to recall the armed Obama Bureau of Land Management attempt to steal the ranch of the Bundy family, in Nevada, a grazing area the rights to which the Nevada Territory had granted the Bundy family BEFORE the territory became a state.
And they might want to educate themselves about both the constitutional side of the lands/parks story and the economics of it – economics that reveal the honest reality of human preferences.
As ranch owner Cliven Bundy and his family knew and told people at the time of the Obama-government siege, the U.S. Constitution claims for the feds only three forms of land to control
The first is a 10-square-mile zone for the home of the federal government itself – that being the beautifully managed monument to dross and extravagance: Washington, D.C.
The second form is land for federal military garrisons.
The third is federal territories prior to their becoming states.
And when those territories become states, the Constitution mandates that they enter with all the “rights and privileges” of other states, meaning, of course, that they don’t have to cede land to the feds, just as no other states have to cede land to the feds, unless for the aforementioned military garrisons. In other words, the ballyhooed 1906 Antiquities Act has no connection in any way to the U.S. Constitution.
Curiously, Mr. Obama didn’t discuss this in his TV paeon to federal occupation of vast swaths of the U.S., particularly much of the land west of the Mississippi.
As Vince Gilroy in 2010 reported for Reason:
“The federal government owns nearly 30 percent of all the land in the country. In the West, those numbers soar even higher. The federal government controls more than 84 percent of the land in Nevada, more than 50 percent of the land in Alaska, Utah, Oregon and Idaho, and more than 40 percent of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.”
And, as I wrote for MRCTV in 2016, by smothering the ability of real people to lay claim to the land, this political siege not only presents constitutional problems that the Glitterati of Hollywood completely overlook, it injects the Tragedy of the Commons into every inch of that “government land.”
Related: Chevron CEO: ‘There Will Never Be Another Refinery Built In The U.S.’ | MRCTV
Americans who are struggling to pay their gasoline and home heating oil bills due to Joe Biden’s blockade of Russian energy exports and Biden’s evident hatred of oil and gas exploration might have seen the latest news revealing the fact that Amtrak Joe in his first nineteen months has, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
“…leased fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration in its early stages dating back to the end of World War II, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.”
And those Americans might be justifiably upset by the fact that, in our daily lives, what should be market decisions are being manipulated by Biden and his cronies to hike oil and gas prices higher, all to push onto us the inefficient solar and wind boondoggles they keep subsidizing and promoting.
But when the feds take over the land, it’s not just our interests that battle for control of said property. Those Hollywood cats like green spaces, and many of them don’t worry about energy prices as much as we do. They don’t run businesses that are teetering because of higher heating and air-conditioning costs. They don’t drive trucks that are seeing massive hikes in fuel expenses.
We can disagree with them, and believe our arguments to be valid, our cause to be more important, but the presence of the government on those lands means that we all fight over how they will be used. The Tragedy of the Commons means that no private property interests allow people to reveal their true interests. We don’t know whether people value those lands more as green-space or if the balance would fall more towards energy exploration – because the politicians force us all to pay for the political control of the land.
And then they trot out guys like Obama to tell us how wonderful it is to be occupied by feudal land overseers.
A few years ago, two friends of mine, Rocky Wood, and Lisa Morton, released a non-fiction graphic-illustrated book on the history of the 17th Century witch hunts and witch trials.
And in their research, they discovered that the “witch trial” phenomenon was not isolated to Salem, MA (which my Gardner family ancestors helped found, along with four other families). It was a worldwide problem – not because witches were cropping up all over the place, and not because religious blindness saw people entering into some kind of mass hysteria.
Rocky and Lisa discovered that government officials in various locales around the world persecuted people under the guise of “purging witches and warlocks” as an easy way to…take land.
The religion was used as a pretext, to accuse and convict of apostacy those whom special interests wanted to see stripped of their private property, and to see the local politicians take control, often to the benefit of special friends who would, in turn, help them stay in power.
And today, politicians and celebrities still pump the religious fuel behind land grabs.
But now, it’s Mother Earth. Gaia. And if you disagree, if you own a ranch, like the Bundys, you’re the heretic.
Sunday night’s cult ceremony is another indication of that collectivist stance against you, your rights, market-based preference-revelation and valuation, and federalism as understood by the Founders. Don’t let this opportunity pass by without spreading the word. When they engage in empty rituals, we can reveal the truth.
This is a great time to do so.
Related: Utah Residents Warn President Over Proposed Federal Land Grab | MRCTV