CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 04, 2012 12:54 AM UTC
20 Comments
Moving in for the kill. Come on, ‘fess up. You tricked Romney into talking about this, didn’t you? You dastardly bastards.
Even without any knowledge of American history, you’d think the first response might simply be, “you know, my administration will have the BLM review these vast holdings and look for areas that could better be used in the private sector”.
Good thing he’s not very good at thinking on his feet. All he could come up with was the usual GOP conspiracy tripe: some librul must be to blame.
Rest assured, Mitt, with responses like that, you will remain “unemployed”.
This was the rallying cry of the “sagebrush rebellion” back in the 70s, and certainly predates that. The federal govt owns something like 83% of the land in NV. Among Republicans in NV, this is the issue they carp about the most. They feel it keeps them from prospering and getting rich.
I’m not saying they’re right. Most of them are a bunch of hypocritical “welfare cowboys” as Edward Abbey called them (in a speech delivered in Elko IIRC).
Anyway, Romney is campaigning in NV, and this is what Republican presidential candidates say when they go to NV. Democrats push back in predictable ways, promoting “responsible development” and citing preservation of the land and water, mostly in terms of hunting and fishing. I doubt that you’d have to dig very far into Harry Reid’s stump speeches to find this.
Bottom line – I think this is an ineffective way to attack Romney.
at Cape Kennedy in Florida had the same quality.
All it really shows is that Romney would be eager to sell off our national assets to the highest bidder if he was on control of the BLM. Nothing new about Republicans wanting to exploit the land to profit a few.
Whatever he chooses to pander to NV “sagebrush rebellion” conservatives with, this will meet a different reaction in Colorado. Like McCain and the water. He’d better not say this shit inside our borders…
ajb is right! This is a hangover from the “sagebrush rebellion.” The scary part is that the Tea Party folks out here near the Utah border want Colorado to lobby for the sale of all of those federal lands too. But its assets and put the money in a rainy day fund for counties and local governments. At least that was the campaign stump speech delivered by Ray Scott.
Okay that garbled sentence above was supposed to read, “They also want Colorado to sell its assets and put the money in a rainy day fund…”
The US Gov. (we the people) used to own it all with the exception of a few grants by the Spanish crown and later the Mexican gov. which the US has honored — or sometimes not. After the Spanish stole it from the Native Americans and then the Mexicans won it from Spain and France, we robbed it from them. That the US Gov. now owns 83% is due to selling, granting and opening for settlment the other 17%, more or less
What pisses the sagebrushers off is, the Feds (again, we the people) have set aside large tracts in perpetuity for the enjoyment/use of us all, and instead of selling it outright to interested private parties–ranchers, oil companies, ski resorts, the Koch kids, etc.– leases parts of it to them for limited use at ridiculously low prices, or trades certain tracts for private lands of similar value or sometimes still, sells it. But we usually don’t give it away. Which is why they whine. They want something for nothing.
But we (The US Gov.) are not going around in modern times “taking” huge tracts of land from hapless citizens. When we do
, we pay fair market for it. Sometimes we (the US Gov.) are stopped from such transactions of eminent domain by other citizens who oppose them. See Pinyon Canyon.
Mittless is clueless about both history and land use, especially in the West–the point of the Pols post. Which, considering the people he circulates with, is why he’s so fucking ignorant. And, jeebus, is he ignorant.
Color me ambivalent about whether it is good policy or not.
Homestead Acts did give away land in a mass privatization of much of the Great Plains for many decades, but this worked less well in the region from the foothills of the Rockies to the Cascades, because little of that land was suitable for horticulture, and because the provisions of the Homestead Acts, drafted with East of the Mississippi farming conditions in mind, failed to recognize the distinction between how many acres it took to run a Western farm with water access and how many acres it took to run a farm without it. Also, herders need wide open spaces, so grazing permits worked better than homesteads for them.
On the whole, it probably would have been wise to reserve public ownership of all water rights and mineral rights, but the argument that the federal government, rather than state government, or local government (like the land grants of the Northwest Ordinance for education), or private individuals, should be the predominant land owner in Western states isn’t at all obvious. States with very little public land in the Appalachians aren’t obviously worse off as a result.
My point is that it won’t.
Republican candidates for president always say this when they’re in Nevada. I can’t recall that it’s ever become a campaign issue in Colorado.
The Colorado Compact issue pits state against state. This issue pits ranchers and miners against the federal government. Private versus public ownership of land. It’s a strictly western issue – back east, folks don’t care because there’s little federal land outside of parks.
it’s the fact that he sounds truly ignorant.
Now, I sincerely doubt any president in the last 50 years or so (with the possible exception of Nixon, since he was from the west) has really understood BLM policies and the history behind all this federal land ownership, so Romney’s not in bad company. But most of them know how to phrase things better than “I don’t know the reason” and “I haven’t studied it” when discussing things outside their area of expertise. You don’t just hand the opposition sound bites like that.
Anyway, I think that that was the point.
Or if they even notice.
I see commercials with Romney saying things like “I haven’t studied it,” among other ill-conceived, off the cuff gaffes.
I don’t see anyone talking about the BLM.
Don’t you think that will hurt?
From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy by Dombeck, Wood and Williams does a nice job of detailing that one of the reasons there are public lands is that states had to give up any territorial claims in order to enter the union: this included territory outside of the original colonies that these colonies had claimed. Oh, the founding fathers. It meant that other states could exist.
to see how it plays out now.
and, typically, the right says it is a liberal rag. I think HCN looks for places where communities have collaborated successfully, sometimes with govt, sometimes with industry
How many acres of Utah does his family own? His answer, if he comes up with one that is real, would be interesting for meany reasons. The primary one is Utah like Colorado is either federal or railroad and a little bit private. The percentage his family owns of the state could be nice to know.
the land is probably in his wife’s name.
He probably doesn’t know how many houses he owns either, just like John McCain.
Must be nice, huh?
Seriously. Thanks, smart posters. Just wonder how much we should chalk up to Mittens actually knowing as much about all this as our intrepid posters do and how much should be chalked up to his oft demonstrated general cluelessness.