DMorgan
You niggas is EXCOMMUNICADO!!!
The big Alaskan land giveaway tucked into a sweeping conservation bill
TWISP, Wash. — On Tuesday, the Senate passed the biggest conservation bill in years. The Natural Resources Management Act of 2019 swells with more than 100 combined pieces of legislation related to public lands, water and natural resources. Many environmentalists are happy: Wins for public lands and wildlife have been scarce in recent years under an alternately hostile and sclerotic GOP-controlled Congress. The bill is expected to sail through the House.
Slice open this giant haggis and peer inside, though: Something reeks. The act contains language that would hand over nearly a half-million acres of federal lands in Alaska — your land and mine — to private hands. That is an area roughly equal to half the size of Long Island, or 31 Manhattans.
Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, say their proposal would correct a lingering injustice by granting up to 160 acres each to Native Alaskans who are Vietnam War veterans and who missed out on an earlier chance to stake a land claim because of military service during that war. They estimate about 2,800 veterans and heirs could take advantage of the program, which means 448,000 acres of land could be handed out. It presents a thorny issue for conservationists: Justice for Native veterans! What anthracite heart could object?
The Alaska Native Veterans Association did not return my calls and messages. But when a similar bill was previously introduced in the House, Nelson Angapak, an Alaska Native, Vietnam vet and former senior vice president for the Alaska Federation of Natives, testified in 2015 that impediments — from confusion about veteran land programs to poor communication up in the Last Frontier or outright rejection of applications by the government — had frequently blocked Native veterans from getting land. He urged passage: “The Vietnam War era veterans are an aging group and many of them are dying, this includes the American Indians and the Alaska Native veterans of that war.”
There is one problem with this tale of Uncle Sam-finally-does-vets-a-solid, however: It is not accurate. This wrong already has been righted. In 1971, to settle Native land claims, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which gave newly formed Native “corporations” that represented Native peoples nearly $1 billion and the ability to select 44 million acres of the state. The act ended an earlier homesteading law that also had allowed Native peoples to claim land. Even so, Congress later worried some Native Alaskans missed out on these programs during their Vietnam War service. So in 1998, it amended the law to explicitly make provisions for those veterans to claim land.
And yet, now Republicans are back for another bite at the apple. Proponents say past efforts only targeted veterans who were in the military through 1971, and the new language helps people who served later, up until the war’s end in 1975. But that is a red herring: The whole point of the 1998 amendment was to help compensate vets who missed out on that 1971 deadline because they were gone fighting our war. A vet who was in Saigon in 1975 did not miss an opportunity.
Alaska’s delegation has tried this before. Nearly 20 years ago, they floated another land-to-vets program. George W. Bush’s Interior Department — hardly the acme of conservation values — did not bite. Reopening the allotment program “no longer has any basis in missed opportunity,” Interior officials wrote in 2002. (The bill died.)
The latest plan would go even further than the 1998 one. That program required veterans to have a historical connection to the land they selected. In the new bill, vets could choose land regardless of connection. Heirs would also be eligible for a claim. They can turn around and sell it to others for development. “This dramatically changes the program from redressing a historical injustice to creating a novel land program,” three dozen environmental groups wrote to Congress in January, opposing the idea and asking to keep the program out of the larger conservation bill, which they supported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...ing-conservation-bill/?utm_term=.d16e6e138514
TWISP, Wash. — On Tuesday, the Senate passed the biggest conservation bill in years. The Natural Resources Management Act of 2019 swells with more than 100 combined pieces of legislation related to public lands, water and natural resources. Many environmentalists are happy: Wins for public lands and wildlife have been scarce in recent years under an alternately hostile and sclerotic GOP-controlled Congress. The bill is expected to sail through the House.
Slice open this giant haggis and peer inside, though: Something reeks. The act contains language that would hand over nearly a half-million acres of federal lands in Alaska — your land and mine — to private hands. That is an area roughly equal to half the size of Long Island, or 31 Manhattans.
Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, say their proposal would correct a lingering injustice by granting up to 160 acres each to Native Alaskans who are Vietnam War veterans and who missed out on an earlier chance to stake a land claim because of military service during that war. They estimate about 2,800 veterans and heirs could take advantage of the program, which means 448,000 acres of land could be handed out. It presents a thorny issue for conservationists: Justice for Native veterans! What anthracite heart could object?
The Alaska Native Veterans Association did not return my calls and messages. But when a similar bill was previously introduced in the House, Nelson Angapak, an Alaska Native, Vietnam vet and former senior vice president for the Alaska Federation of Natives, testified in 2015 that impediments — from confusion about veteran land programs to poor communication up in the Last Frontier or outright rejection of applications by the government — had frequently blocked Native veterans from getting land. He urged passage: “The Vietnam War era veterans are an aging group and many of them are dying, this includes the American Indians and the Alaska Native veterans of that war.”
There is one problem with this tale of Uncle Sam-finally-does-vets-a-solid, however: It is not accurate. This wrong already has been righted. In 1971, to settle Native land claims, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which gave newly formed Native “corporations” that represented Native peoples nearly $1 billion and the ability to select 44 million acres of the state. The act ended an earlier homesteading law that also had allowed Native peoples to claim land. Even so, Congress later worried some Native Alaskans missed out on these programs during their Vietnam War service. So in 1998, it amended the law to explicitly make provisions for those veterans to claim land.
And yet, now Republicans are back for another bite at the apple. Proponents say past efforts only targeted veterans who were in the military through 1971, and the new language helps people who served later, up until the war’s end in 1975. But that is a red herring: The whole point of the 1998 amendment was to help compensate vets who missed out on that 1971 deadline because they were gone fighting our war. A vet who was in Saigon in 1975 did not miss an opportunity.
Alaska’s delegation has tried this before. Nearly 20 years ago, they floated another land-to-vets program. George W. Bush’s Interior Department — hardly the acme of conservation values — did not bite. Reopening the allotment program “no longer has any basis in missed opportunity,” Interior officials wrote in 2002. (The bill died.)
The latest plan would go even further than the 1998 one. That program required veterans to have a historical connection to the land they selected. In the new bill, vets could choose land regardless of connection. Heirs would also be eligible for a claim. They can turn around and sell it to others for development. “This dramatically changes the program from redressing a historical injustice to creating a novel land program,” three dozen environmental groups wrote to Congress in January, opposing the idea and asking to keep the program out of the larger conservation bill, which they supported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...ing-conservation-bill/?utm_term=.d16e6e138514
