Business Plan - Bureau Of Land Management: Fill & Download for Free

Hello!Absolutely not!It’s the latest egregious example of gross negligence towards the environment and our health what happened yesterday, Friday, when the Trump administration moved to open more than 725,000 acres of California's central coast to potential oil and gas drilling, a decision environmentalists condemned as a disastrous handout to big polluters at a time when urgent action is needed to slash greenhouse gas emissions.So he basically killed two birds with one stone. Meaning pandering to the oil corporations while simultaneously destroying my great state of California.The move, announced by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM), ends a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to fossil fuel companies.As Reuters reported, the BLM "has not held a lease sale in California since 2013, when a judge ruled that the agency illegally issued leases without analyzing the environmental impact of drilling called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking."Clare Lakewood, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued BLM to stop the lease sales, said the agency's "reckless move" on Friday represents "the toxic convergence of Trump's climate denial, loyalty to the oil industry, and grudge against California.""Turning over these spectacular wild places to dirty drilling and fracking will sicken Californians, harm endangered species, and fuel climate chaos," said Lakewood. "We'll fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn't happen."The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that BLM's decision "gives an immediate go-ahead to 14 drilling leases in San Benito, Monterey, and Fresno counties, mostly projects near existing drill sites, projects that have been pursued for years by fossil fuel companies looking to expand.""But the action also opens the door for new leases in eight other counties, raising the prospect of additional drilling in such spots as the Santa Cruz Mountains, the East Bay hills and eastern Santa Clara County," according to the Chronicle.Jenny Binstock, campaign representative with Sierra Club, said in a statement that the Trump administration "is putting California's communities and our climate at risk as they prioritize fossil fuel industry profits over our public lands and the health and safety of our families.""We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to push back against this irresponsible decision and to protect our public lands from fracking," Binstock added.Part of this answer is attributed to: Business & Financial News, U.S & International Breaking News | Reuters Merging 'Loyalty to the Oil Industry' and 'Grudge Against California, Home Sierra Club Home Page: Explore, Enjoy and Protect the Planet

A 24 Year Plan to Engineer an Absurd Tribal Media Event and Destroy a Few Livelihoods (And Tortoises)After about two hours of reading and discussing yesterday, I feel like I have a possibly realistic narrative for the Cliven Bundy story. It doesn't involve conspiracy theories over solar energy development, but I suppose it doesn't exclude potential corporate conspiracy either.Note that this story is nothing but my current best guess after wading through dozens of articles that were so grotesquely slanted to suit tribal political rhetoric that I had to ignore everything but the facts and start over building a narrative. I feel that it's important to reach past partisan narratives that obscure the complexities of our national issues. To do this, I start back about three decades.The 80s were a time of heightened awareness over environmental degradation. A hole appeared in the ozone layer, acid rain was a big deal, people still remembered polluted rivers catching on fire, and people started clambering over the protection of endangered species, including our national symbol, the bad eagle.What is the government's responsibility for all of that? Well, that's a constant debate, of course. Government is easier to defend in cases of collective action solutions to problems with truly catastrophic consequences. The topic of biodiversity becomes murkier for numerous reasons which include cost benefit, the asymmetrical handling of responsibility, and sometimes the asymmetric burden of the costs. We also shouldn't forget the law of unintended consequences which constantly twists intentions good, bad, and in between with worse results than expected. And that's probably a good place to begin the story.In addition to the bald eagle, the California condor, and other well known projects, the federal government saw fit to negotiate protection for the desert tortoise. A conservation center was planned for Nevada. The federal budget wasn't then what it is now, and apparently the desert tortoise project didn't have the clout to win direct federal grants, but there was enough push for action that another plan developed---the conservation center would be funded by user fees collected from developers in the region in which they lived, including Clark County, Nevada.Now it's important to take a second longer step back so that we can understand the politics of land management and passing the buck. In 1864, Nevada became the 36th state of the union, timed 8 days before the reelection of Abraham Lincoln (turned out he didn't need the support). At the time, Nevada was a sparsely populated region dotted with mining towns separated by miles and miles of crappy desert land, acquired through the Mexican Cession. This explains several cultural features specific to Nevada, including both the fact that the federal government kept most of the land (about 85% of it), the state's generally sovereign cowboy-libertarian style (who else would want that land?), and also the reason why the federal government generally stayed away until it needed land to drop nuclear bombs on and house top secret military projects [and aliens, lots of desert-loving aliens who apparently left just before the age of smartphones].Nevada eventually made a name for itself by legalizing gambling, prostitution, and hosting boxing matches which resulted in a boom to one of the nation's smallest state populations that climbed from something like 184 to several thousand. Still, as the decades went on, the federal government didn't feel the need to acknowledge its existence until the discovery that there were only a few thousand desert tortoises in existence. This fact was probably due to a strange definition of endangered that has nothing to do with the stable population level of an exclusively desert reptile along with the fact that the marines shelled the crap out of the land it lived on. But enough support welled up that a mission began to save the desert tortoise.Now, for those unfamiliar with the desert tortoise, they're a species that manages itself in low water conditions, hanging out and even hibernating between rainy periods when they can hydrate. They don't make great pets because they have a defense mechanism that causes them to release a great deal of their stored water when panicked, which happens easily. Dehydrated tortoises can die or become susceptible to disease quite easily. Apparently, this also makes conservation efforts counterproductive, but we'll get to that.In 1990, the federal government finally acknowledged the existence of Nevada between elections when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) enacted the policy of collecting user fees from developers who use lands in the desert tortoise habitats. This money came primarily from two sources: developers capitalizing on the housing boom of the period and also cattle ranchers.Where did these cattle ranchers come from? Oral tradition has it that cattle ranching began prior to U.S. control of the western regions. What is known is that some ranches operated for decades. In particular, Cliven Bundy (real name) descends from a family of sand people that helped build up towns and the land of Clark County as far back or farther than the 1870s. Still, in 1990, around two dozen ranches existed in the area. Ranchers generally housed their herds on privately owned land, but let their herds roam through federal lands in search of a few blades of grass. These grazing grounds were managed through agreements with the state of Nevada, which still wasn't itself sure that the federal government really existed (apparently this confusion was quite mutual). Without fear of a tragedy of the commons (mommas don't want their babies to grow up to be cowboys), this relationship worked out pretty well until the new federal landlord arrived with its hand out. Most of the ranchers quickly shut down operations, and word has it that most of them ate their children and then each other.Meanwhile, urbanites whose habitats were entirely unfit for raising tortoises or children cheered the cause, and those who weren't vegetarians ordered steak from Argentina.After the desert dust settled, one defiant rancher remained and steadfastly refused to pay the newly levied grazing fees. In the meantime, the desert tortoise population suffered as it was found that cow dung was its best source of nutrition (I'm not joking this time) and packing hundreds of tortoises together in an artificial conservatory habitat resulted in iatrogenic disease, demonstrating that there may be just one horseman of the apocalypse who carries the banner of unintended consequences. The remaining rancher, the aforementioned Bundy, sued the federal government twice while continuing to produce cow dung to help the desert tortoise survive (both wings of the partisan media have done their best to help in that regard). Bundy represented himself in court and lost twice, unable to convince federal judges that it kind of made no sense that his family's business of 100-something years was put in jeopardy by a change of administrative practice that ultimately cannibalized the revenues it sought to collect while destroying the species it attempted to protect. The argument had something to do with recognition of federal ownership of the land, which probably makes sense from a common law and common sense perspective, but fails to take into account recent shift in power into the hands of Sith Lords (okay, I'm sort of making that up) who have stacked a once ordinary land management agency with a force of well armed mercenaries, including some who have spent time working for corporate military forces (I'm not making that up) and some with special forces experience who have impressive kill lists (I'm not making that up either).In the meantime, while the federal government has been pushing cattle ranchers out of Clark County, other residents have arrived in the desert tortoise habitat. The BLM has granted permits to solar and wind projects covering 1.8 million acres in the region. These new projects must be great for the endangered desert tortoise because it was concluded that the owners of these wind and solar farms would be exempt from contributing to the land fees levied that fund the desert tortoise conservatory. Money for the conservation effort is running out this year and diseased tortoises housed there are to be euthanized (really, I wish I were kidding).Perhaps the BLM chose this year to make their move since it would just seem really really weird to do so after the closing of the failed tortoise conservatory? It's hard to say, but sometime after the BLM arrived, a regiment of brown coats arrived in the recently redubbed Serenity Valley of Clark County. Somebody got their feelings hurt and the BLM director got replaced with a 35-year-old [former aide to Senate Majority Leader (NV) Harry Reid] in the middle of the closest thing to an armed revolt since...since only old people know when. The brown coats seized the moment and moved, unarmed except with flags and horses, on the position held by 200 well armed BLM "land managers," who first threatened to shoot and then retreated.That's where we stand, and I can hardly believe that I wrote all that without a single alcoholic beverage. It's all so absurd, and yet the absurdities of 24 years ago are simply too hard for most people to conceptually revisit, so a tribal villain story must be crafted.In conclusion, ask yourself how you'd feel about the situation if the federal government suddenly asked every family using roads in Washington D.C. belonging to the federal government to pony up $50,000 annually? Many would move away leaving businesses bare of clients and a large part of the community would be destroyed. What if a few residents of the inner city just didn't pay the user fees and went on working, then federal agents showed up to impound their cars and shutter their work places? What if city residents from around the nation showed up in support?Of course, we could pick on those city critters all day long, but isn't the fault with the government that changed the deal?Not for reproduction. I reserve the right to edit, and will probably change it to a point that is as unrecognizable as truth in a world of partisan media.

In one way, the Navajo and in another way the Southern Ute are examples of tribes who have done well.After the Long Walk the Navajo succeeded again and again in getting their land base expanded. Most tribes lost much or all of their treaty lands between 1868 and 1960. This did not happen for the Navajo. Time and again their culture, strategies and leaders found allies in the US government and out of it who applied pressure. The first reservation boundaries were in 1868. The US government had wanted to force all the Navajo to move to Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory. The Navajo leaders said they would rather die. The large number of deaths and corruption at the interment camps that had held the 9,000 Navajo for 4 years had become a scandal. A number of Anglos were very taken with Navajo culture and argued their case. The first reservation in 1868 was a small part of their original land centered on Canyon de Chelly.The first expansion was in 1878. It was expanded about 13 or 14 times. The last major expansion was in 1930s. In recent years they have been buying land as well. Here is the map of land additions.In 1887 the Navajo lost some land in the eastern New Mexico area. Powerful New Mexico political interested opposed the land given to them in the area. Some areas were rescinded. The Dawes Act passed and land was allotted to some families there. The government said that land "left over" after all members had received allotments was to be considered "surplus". This was sold to non Navajo or given to state or BLM or other uses. Some places the subsurface and surface rights are owned by different entities. The allotment program continued until 1934. The eastern part is today called the “Checkerboard Rez”.Here is the map of today’s reservation. The area that is tan in the lower left is not Navajo land but the Hopi reservation. The Navajo Nations today is the size of Holland and Belgium combined or the states of Mass, Conn, VT, NH, and RI combined.With that expansion of land base into a portion of their original territory came some natural resources. For the time from 1868 to about 1970 they could not negotiate royalties on their own. Many disgraceful deals were made by the US Secretary of the Interior and the BIA. What money that was collected as royalties was often mismanaged or lost. The courts finally recognized this and a portion of those funds that should have been in trust have been returned under the Cobell settlement in 2009. The tribe is using some of that money to buy back land. The tribe has over time been able to strike better deals for its coal, oil and natural gas. It now has the largest contiguous irrigated farm in the US. Navajo Agricultural Products IndustryThe Navajo have also grown in population. After the Long Walk the population was about 11,000 people. Around 1908 they had grown to 29,000. Today there are 332,129 enrolled members in 2010. About 160,000 to 200,000 live on the reservation or right near it. The Navajo language is still spoken by about 60% of the population and one can hear it everywhere. Traditional religion is still practiced by at least 1/3 of the population. They now have full control of their government. The new religion (for the Navajo since the 30s) of Native American Church (NAC) is practiced by many as well. Navajo art and culture are alive and thriving. There is modern Navajo bands and music and art as well. They have a regular justice department but have also developed an alternative court system based on traditional values. They have radio and a newspaper. They run schools and have a tribal college, Dine College, which was the first tribal college in the country in 1968. They also have Navajo Technical University in 3 locations.The other tribe that has done very well are the Southern Ute. https://www.southernute-nsn.gov/ They gained control over their gas resources in the 1970s. They built their own companies in the 1990s. They created a sovereign wealth Permanent Fund and other investments. Southern Ute Indian Tribe As late as the 1950s, many Southern Ute had no running water or income. Today tribal businesses are in 14 states and range from Gulf crude to upscale San Diego real estate. The 1,400 or so tribal members are, collectively, worth billions. Up into the 1960s because of bad federal policy and poor oversight, many Southwestern tribes, got bad deals. When a company wanted to gouge a reservation's land for coal, or drill for oil and gas, it would negotiate not with the tribe, but with the Department of Interior, which leased the land to the highest bidder. The tribes had to approve the leases but were otherwise powerless, and they generally lacked the expertise and data to make good energy decisions. The federal government managed, audited and collected royalties on the leases. Much of that was not collected as it should have been and what was collected was mismanaged. This was later the subject of the Cobell suit and other cases against the US.In the 1960s the tribe received less than $500,000 per year in royalties. This was a small fraction of what the oil companies were making and far less than it was owed. In the late 1960 through the 70s laws changed. The Southern Utes joined 24 other tribal leaders to form the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, or CERT, modeled after the international OPEC cartel, to consolidate their political power. In 1982, in an effort to improve oversight, Congress created the Minerals Management Service and passed the Indian Mineral Development Act, which gave tribes the power to negotiate mineral leases. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court made a favorable ruling in a case involving the Apaches, saying that tribes could levy a severance tax on oil and gas produced on their lands. The Southern Ute started auditing their own gas. Even today the oil companies try to cheat. In 2010,based on information from Southern Ute auditors, the feds fined BP America $5.2 million for underreporting the amount of gas it had been producing on Southern Ute lands.“The Tribe’s business portfolio originated with the formation of Red Willow Production Company in 1992 and the purchase of Red Cedar Gathering Company in 1994. Red Willow was originally formed to buy back natural gas leases and to upgrade the performance of gas wells on the Reservation. However, Red Willow could not convince local gathering companies to increase their capacity to transport the Tribe’s new volumes of gas to the interstate pipelines. To solve this problem, the Tribe partnered with the Stephens Group in 1994, and purchased Red Cedar to gather, process and transport natural gas from the Reservation”When Red Willow took over 54 gas wells in 1995, it quadrupled their production within nine months.….The Growth Fund’s business portfolio initially contained only Red Willow, Red Cedar and a few small Tribal Organizations: Department of Energy, Utilities Division and the Sky Ute Fairgrounds….Tribal Council instructed the Growth Fund to diversify operations off of the Reservation and into other ventures and investments. Since 2001, Red Willow has expanded its operations into nine states and the Gulf of Mexico, and Aka Energy was created to gather and treat natural gas off of the Reservation…..the Tribe established the Tierra Group to manage the Tribe’s real estate portfolio. Later, GF Properties Group was formed and Tierra folded under GF Properties which now manages the Tribe’s commercial/office, apartment, industrial, hotel, mixed-use and master planned communities. GF Private Equity Group was formed to invest in private equity funds and businesses.The Permanent Fund and the Growth Fund: The Permanent Fund invests energy royalties and casino profits in securities, which generate a steady revenue to pay for government and social services.Other revenue goes into the Growth Fund, which in turn invests in what is now a myriad of companies in energy, real estate and private equity. That fund then distributes dividends to tribal members between the ages of 26 and 59 and retirement benefits to those over 60. The numbers vary year by year. Most yeas is is about $70,000. The tribe's net worth now stands at somewhere between $3.5 billion and $14 billion.How Colorado’s Southern Utes Took Control of Their Economic Destiny - IndianCountryToday.comBusiness Empire Transforms Life for Colorado Ute TribeNB: It has been noted by L. Dale Richesin that there should be a mention of the 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations. I agree. They are enormous economic players in Alaska and the NW and are diversifying in investments across the country. Here is his list of the top three. Which Native American tribe ended up the best off?The ANCSA Corps were created in the Alaska Settlement Act in 1971. The regional Native corporations and several village corporations employ 58,000 people worldwide, with about 16,000 of those jobs in Alaska. Native corporations are the largest private landowners in Alaska, with title to a total of 44 million acres. The Act gave even more land to the state of Alaska. Most of the land had been considered federal before that. In Alaska, tribal members are shareholders in the Regional Corps. There are also about 198 or so Alaska Village corporations that people are shareholders in as well. Alaska Native Village Corporation Association There is only one small reservation in SE Alaska. The political structure of tribal life for the 229 tribes in Alaska is therefore slightly different. List of Alaska Native tribal entities - WikipediaAlaskan Tribes: By Regional OrganizationsAny tribe that is dong well now however, should be very careful and beware. Two of the most wealthy tribes in the past 100 years lost most of what they had when Anglo Americans decided to change the game and take it from them. In the 1950s the Klamath Tribes of Oregon was the most wealthy in the US. In 1870 they had started n to the lumber business with a sawmill. By 1896 the sale to parties outside of the reservation was estimated at a quarter of a million board feet. In 1911 the rail came and they increased more. They were the only tribe in the United States that paid for all the federal, state and private services used by our members.In 1954, the Klamath Tribes were terminated from federal recognition as a tribe by an act of congress. A report from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) which concluded that the Klamath Tribes were NOT ready for termination and recommended against it. Despite this consistent official opposition from the Tribes and the BIA, congress adopted the Klamath Termination Act. Powerful politicians did not like Native people doing well. Oregon Senator Richard L. Neuberger, (Democrat) and Oregon Representative Albert Ullman, (Democrat) worked together to try to delay implementation of the Klamath termination law. They failed because of Senator Arthur V. Watkins, a Republican from Utah. He had the belief that Native people should be assimilated and all special status lifted. He worked with William H. Harrison (Wyoming), Orme Lewis of Arizona, EY Berry of SD, Patrick McCarran of Nevada, Karl Mundt of SD, William Langer of ND, and Henry Jackson of Washington. They lost their land base of approximately 1.8 million acres was taken by condemnation and the Klamaths were terminated as a Tribe. They became impoverished. It was not until 1986 that they were successful in restoring of Federal Recognition for the Klamath Tribes.The other large example is the Osage who gained wealth by controlling their oil mineral rights. This was because they owned the land. Oil was discovered in 1897. In 1923 alone the tribe took in more than thirty million dollars, the equivalent today of more than four hundred million dollars. 1921 the United States Congress passed a law requiring that courts appoint guardians for each Osage. Supposedly to “prevent swindles” on the Osage people, the government appointed guardians to the Osage who were deemed “incompetent” to handle their finances. Stories in papers claimed outrage the Native people had wealth and were “wasting it” on fancy cars and nice clothes and trips to Europe. 93 percent of tribal funds held in government trust went toward the costs of administering the guardianship system. A government study estimated that by 1924 nearly 600 guardians had swindled some $8 million in Osage oil funds.If they had been able to invest $8 million even after the Depression they would be very wealthy today. During this time tens of people were murdered for their money. The FBI came in but they did little. The tribe was even charged by the FBI $21,509.19 for the bureau’s investigation (about 300,000 today). In 2000 the Osage Nation filed a suit against the Department of the Interior, alleging that it had not adequately managed the assets and paid people the royalties they were due. The suit was settled in 2011 for $380 million and commitments to improve program management. This was pennies on the dollar. Did You Know?The Osage Murders: Oil Wealth, Betrayal and the FBI’s First Big Case