The truest insanity and greatest existential threat to the United States of America, is President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal for threatening the entire body of Private Property Rights by any notion of “going off of fossil fuel.”
Let’s start with this written explanation of Fee Simple Land Ownership in the United States:
“Fee Simple – Complete Ownership
In most countries of the world, all mineral resources belong to the government. This includes all valuable rocks, minerals, oil and gas found on or within the Earth. Organizations or individuals in those countries cannot legally extract and sell any mineral commodity without first obtaining an authorization from the government.
“In the United States and a few other countries, ownership of mineral resources was originally granted to the individuals or organizations that owned the surface. These property owners had both ‘surface rights’ and ‘mineral rights.’ This complete private ownership is known as a ‘fee simple estate.‘
“Fee simple is the most basic type of ownership. The owner controls the surface, the subsurface and the air above a property. The owner also has the freedom to sell, lease, gift or bequest these rights individually or entirely to others.” — Emphasis mine, https://geology.com/articles/mineral-rights.shtml
While many look to the Internal Revenue Service as government’s sole proprietor of revenues, “government revenues” themselves have a different reality, one based on other sources including fossil fuels.
Meet the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), a series of federal bureaucratic interpretations of the law as determined by the agencies themselves. The CFR is, according to these bureaucracies, treated as law. The bureaucracies are treated as autonomous from the Congress of the United States of America as “Executive Agencies” generally. Here is an index of them from Cornell University, https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text.
The 50 listings of the CFR correspond to the 50 Titles of the United States Code.
We’re going to look at “43 CFR § 3103.3-1 – Royalty on production.”
“(a) Royalty on production will be payable only on the mineral interest owned by the United States. Royalty must be paid in amount or value of the production removed or sold as follows:
“(1) For leases issued on or before January 17, 2017, the rate prescribed in the lease or in applicable regulations at the time of lease issuance;
“(2) For leases issued after January 17, 2017:
“(i) 12 1/2 percent on all noncompetitive leases;
“(ii) A rate of not less than 12 1/2 percent on all competitive leases, exchange and renewal leases, and leases issued in lieu of unpatented oil placer mining claims under § 3108.2-4 of this title;
“(3) 16 2/3 percent on noncompetitive leases reinstated under § 3108.2-3 of this title plus an additional 2 percentage-point increase added for each succeeding reinstatement;
“(4) The rate used for royalty determination that appears in a lease that is reinstated or that is in force for competitive leases at the time of issuance of the lease that is reinstated, plus 4 percentage points, plus an additional 2 percentage points for each succeeding reinstatement.” — Emphasis mine, https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/43/3103.3-1.
Even Native Americans have taken part and profited from America’s booming oil production on federal lands:
“WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior announced today that over one billion barrels of oil were produced in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 from leases on federal and American Indian-owned lands and offshore areas – a historic milestone. This is greater than a 29 percent increase in production compared to the end of the previous Administration, which totaled 808.7 million barrels in FY 2016, and represents a 122.5-million-barrel increase in production compared to FY 2018.
“On American Indian-owned lands, oil production increased to 92.26 million barrels and is over 52 percent more production than in FY 2016.
For a minute there you’d think the United States government was raking in a lot of money from Oil Revenues… Well, honestly it is, even at around the $70 per barrel price of 2018:
“Royalty revenues collected in FY 2019 from oil production on Interior-managed lands increased by 21 percent over FY 2018 to $7.5 billion, continuing a successful upward trend for the Trump Administration. These revenues from producing oil leases increased by $1.3 billion in comparison to FY 2018 and are 122 percent higher than at the end of the previous Administration in FY 2016.
“Often the second-highest generator of federal income following taxes, energy revenue disbursements are a critical source of funding to states, American Indian Tribes and individual Indian mineral owners, as well as to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Reclamation Fund, Historic Preservation Fund and the U.S. Treasury. Accounting for all energy production on federal and American Indian-owned lands and offshore areas, total revenues collected last year increased by 31 percent to approximately $12 billion, nearly double that of FY 2016 revenues.”
The above authored by the US Department of the Interior, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/oil-production-department-interior-managed-leases-surpasses-1-billion-barrels-first.
Focus: Private property rights in land include Oil and Mineral lease rights.
There are no “Sun or Wind” lease rights, because “Solar and Wind are renewable sources of energy.” No they aren’t. The energy created by solar and wind is depleted by use no different than energy created by crude oil, coal or any other means of creating energy. It is a fact the chemistry of devices to capture solar and wind and convert them into energy, as well as the chemical reaction in batteries actually does wear out.
A game of destroying our private property rights is afoot. See, America’s economy has been using crude oil in some form since the 1860’s, a use that has only grown since then. Our crude oil use has created a significant and large government revenue by the demand for and production of crude oil. This demand has been seized by the United States government, realizing it has oil and mineral bearing lands and that these can and do generate a royalty and income tax revenue to the federal government. But this only happens if individual Americans and businesses pursue the oil and minerals through asserting their rights to produce, sell, and even use these oil and mineral products.
If we follow Joe Biden’s lead to “end our dependence on crude oil” by banning gasoline cars, and eventually banning the production of crude oil, we are agreeing to canceling our use and assertion of our private property rights and the income that derives from it, rights that belong to us, and to which revenues are generated for the government too. Royalties are collected on government land and income tax is due whether production is from government land or a private well.
The entire Green New Deal, be it known by any other name Biden may attach to it, is an effort to undermine our private property rights in everything we own.
This body of rights in property, and all the legalities I’ve suggested or referred to, all originally derive from European law that often predates the existence of the United States of America.
Letters Patent is a Crown originated system that is the basis of the US Patent Office and was part and parcel to the Bureau of Land Management’s originally issuing land patents until around 1959. Much of that activity was in recognition of treaties such as Guadalupe Hidalgo for land west of the Mississippi River that compels recognition of Spanish land grants, and is the basis of the right to carry the legal rights in these Spanish land grants forward to today for assertion of these rights. Fee Simple is the American method that uses the fact of the person who holds title to land as the owner and thereafter seeks to use all rights in their land.
This is the point of Fee Simple in America because Americans, from the institution of America’s Constitution and national government, has recognized that every American has a right to own property free and clear of all other claims. Americans since before the Declaration of Independence were not ever to be assumed a peasant who was forced to pay use interest on property they purchased. This is where America deviated from the Crown’s original system. We are free because we can, by our own property, provide for ourselves without dependence on a Crown and their rules of use.
Another question here is that if we went off of fossil fuels, and left our property rights abandoned, would not the government pick them up and use them, claiming some government immunity?
Where is the past precedent of government action of seizing property, and especially rights inherent in the People by Natural Law, where the government didn’t seize them for themselves and claim immunity for using them in even worse ways than did We the People?
There is no such precedent, and abandoning these rights that generate revenues for us and livelihoods around America is to bankrupt our ability to assert other rights that the government would thereafter encroach upon knowing full well we can’t afford to protect them, to defend them. However, the government, armed with what they’ve taxed us already is exploiting our land for the entirety of all oil and mineral rights proceeds, many of which would be a means of self-funding these agencies. Thus, the government would be well capable of defeating the American People in any judicial and/or political activity to retain what rights remain.
And this would not be in absence of the government assessing us for the lost oil revenues that were generated by the current system of taxing our oil and mineral based private property rights.
I’ll close with a couple of links to aid in appreciation of my lack of trust in bureaucracies expected to protect our rights and any sort of accurate, honest, and timely accountability:
— https://www.aol.com/2012/07/09/the-800-trillion-scandal-how-banks-libor-lies-affected-you/
— https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1062.pdf
— The death of Lavoy Finicum at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about 9 minutes in, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAGxDWKrjPQ
— https://ktla.com/news/local-news/3-arrested-after-creating-fake-international-police-force-lasd/
Stand tall. Stand Strong. We know who the Majority is in America. Be Free.
Thank you for reading,
Toddy Littman
