Continuing its war on the US Constitution, domestic energy suppliers, Native American Tribes, and American consumers, on August 28 the Biden Administration reversed a Trump Administration promise to allow energy exploration and recovery on 28 million acres of land in Alaska.
Land in Alaska that, in 1971, the feds promised to give back, for control by more than 200 native tribal corporations specifically created to rectify an earlier federal property theft.
It’s a stunning controversy, one that touches on fishy carve-outs in the 1971 statute, on what are supposed to be state and/or tribal lands, and on the fact that the federal government has no constitutional jurisdiction to write laws about those state or tribal lands in the first place.
It also sees the unreliable Interior Department Head, Deb Haaland, attempting to whitewash her move with the wondrous rhetorical patina of “environmentalism.”
As Scott Streater reports for Politico’s E&ENews:
“The issue is rooted in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which included a mineral withdrawal protecting 28 million acres from new mining claims and oil and gas development. The five Trump-era public land orders removed the decades-old mineral withdrawal, opening up to development a vast area of the state that includes portions of the Bay, Bering Sea-Western Interior, East Alaska, Kobuk-Seward Peninsula, and Ring of Fire planning areas.”
Thus, at first blush, this appears to be an Interior Department attempt to reverse an underhanded Trump move catering to unscrupulous “energy interests.”
And Haaland reinforces this canard.
“Haaland wrote in the record of decision, signed Aug. 23, that removing the protections ‘would result in a range of resource and infrastructure development (e.g., mining activities) with associated environmental impacts.’”
And Haaland wrote:
“I find that there is a public interest in protecting these important resource values, and that retention of the withdrawals is therefore necessary to protect the public interest. I find that the public interest in protecting these resource values outweighs other interests in opening the lands to conveyance and development.”
She finds. She determines what is in the “public interest.”
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There is no such thing as “the public interest,” because the term “public” is a politically-processed term that supersedes individuality and private property interests. Like the term “public health,” it claims to protect the “group.” But the word “group” is just an application. Political grouping does not negate the individuals within them.
Politicians do not protect anyone. They shift resources and threaten people, usurp rights and undermine voluntary interaction, and this controversy in Alaska is a perfect example.
Streater writes that Haaland’s federal turnabout:
“…(H)ad been expected ever since the Interior Department in April 2021 deferred opening the areas covered in the public land orders until at least this month while it evaluated deficiencies in them — including the fact that only one of the orders was published, as required, in the Federal Register.
Interior said Haaland’s decision is a ‘response to the previous administration’s unlawful decision’ to remove the protections ‘without sufficient analysis of the potential impacts of such a decision on subsistence and other important resources,’ including the lack of ‘appropriate Tribal consultation.’”
And Streater adds more that seems to support Haaland’s position:
“The Biden BLM reached out to all 227 Alaska Native tribes in the planning area, as well as Alaska Native corporations and the Alaska State Historic Preservation Office.
“’Tribal consultation must be treated as a requirement — not an option — when the federal government is making decisions that could irrevocably affect Tribal communities,’ Haaland said in a statement Tuesday.”
But many clear-minded people might ask, “Why is the federal government ‘making decisions that could irrevocably affect Tribal communities?”
Why shouldn’t “Tribal communities” be handling the tribal lands as they want, allowing for decentralization, differentiation, and local control over their OWN land?
And, more specific to the oath that Biden and his acolytes took when entering federal office, why is the federal government claiming control over this or any other land?
As I have noted for MRCTV, the US Constitution only allows the federal government to control three forms of land.
The first is a ten-square-mile area for the national capitol, which the Congress long ago selected to be Washington, D.C. The second type of land is that which the feds use for “military garrisons.” And the third is the “territory” – a landmass that the Constitution promises can enter the union with “all the rights and privileges” of any other state, and no state has to cede land to the feds, and, even if they could or had to, the feds have no constitutional provision to run said ceded land.
Streater reports that Haaland’s Constitution-insulting bureaucracy also cites the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to shut down the exploration and energy recovery.
But, of course, though it is dressed in the garb of helping animals, the act is not supported by any strict reading of the Constitution, and actually requires an amendment to the Constitution in order to be valid on the purported “legal level.”
Simply put, the 1971 “Settlement Act” and its carve-outs to prohibit energy exploration are fundamentally and constitutionally unsound. Constitutionally, the lands are supposed to be under the jurisdiction of the tribes or the state of Alaska. And this is a fact that is not lost on Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) who issued a strong rebuke of Haaland and the DC move, stating:
“Today’s announcement by the U.S. Department of the Interior locking up another 28 million acres of land is the latest sanction against Alaska by the Biden-Harris administration and the radical environmental organizations it relies on. They are attempting to turn Alaska into one big national park. Alaska is still owed five million acres of land under the Statehood Act. Every one of these sanctions harms Alaska’s ability to prosper.”
Thus, we can see the immediate conflict, which has a bearing on the price and availability of petrochemical fuel throughout the US and the world, and we can see the longer-term, deeper problem of federal claims of power.
This Interior Department move follows on the heels of its already offensive September, 2023 reversal of Trump-era agreements to exploration and recovery leases on portions of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), an area, of course, that should not be under federal control in the first place.
From the first week of his Administration, Biden has attacked energy exploration and provision, but the simultaneous attack on the US Constitution and the federal claims to control these lands are just as crucial to understand.
They will continue unless more Americans acknowledge the rules of the founding document, the principles of individual liberty, and the immorality of government force.
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