Property Rights


Defense of property rights is a huge issue in rural Maine. Well-heeled environmentalist activists and government agencies have since 1988 been openly campaigning and lobbying for a government takeover of private property throughout most of rural northern New England. They want the kind of government ownership and control they have in Alaska, which they treat as more of a Federal colony than a state, and in greenline areas such as the Columbia Gorge (OR & WA) and the Adirondacks (NY) where the people have been stripped of their property rights. They have focused on the downeast coast as one of their high priority targets in northern New England to do this again.

It began for us in 1988 when I read an article in the Boston Sunday Globe announcing plans to take over most of our county in eastern Maine for a new National Park, which if not stopped in time would have resulted in massive eminent domain takings of private property. Part of the plan, already moving ahead in Washington, DC, was to “Greenline” the remaining private property with strict land use prohibitions, leaving the owners with little more than the deed and the tax bill.

This web page links to articles on some of the property rights issues continuing since then. Many of these articles also pertain to environmentalism and property rights issues nationwide because they deal with the national environmentalist lobby and Federal agencies, and because the tactics used by state agencies and pressure groups to take private property around the country are the same (and some of the articles are directly about problems in other states). As we quickly learned, we are not alone – the viro political pressure groups have similar designs on most rural areas in the nation.

Recent Highlights
Scroll down for the full table of contents

New – May 17, 2008: Downeast Coastal Press – Down–Easters Fault LURC's Proposed Land–Use Plan Revision Concerns Raised over Vague Terminology, Lack of Focus on Development — County Commissioners Opposed, Citing Anti–Democratic Process.
New – May 17, 2008: Downeast Coastal Press – Washington County Commissioners' testimony on LURC Land Use Plan
New – May 11, 2008: Quoddy Tides – MCHT Land Grab is not “Protection”
New – April 28, 2008: Downeast Coastal Press – Land Trust Acquires 1,500 Acres along Bold Coast – Preservation, Anti–development Effort of Cutler–Trescott–Lubec Coast Dates to 1980s
New – April 18, 2007: – Norman Hunt Finds Himself Fighting for Much More than Lubec Retirement Home – April 17, 2007.
New – April 18, 2007: – Down-Easters Testify in Augusta Against Restrictive “Shorebird Habitat”Law – April 17, 2007.
New – April 16, 2007: – Hearing Scheduled on Revisions to “Habitat” Land–Use Prohibitions &ndash summary of bills and statement by Sen. Kevin Raye, reported April 3, 2007.
New – April 15, 2007: – Landowners Slam New Coastal Building Curbs in Addison, Machias Meetings on bird habitat land takings reported October 3, 2006.
New – April 15, 2007: – Audio for first public meeting on bird habitat land takings in Lubec, August 31, 2007.
New – April 12, 2007: – State Legislature Natural Resources Committee Hearings on Proposed revisions to bird habitat land use prohibitions.
New – March 25, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: "Anti–Sprawl" and the assault on private property in Maine's Unorganized Territories: One Neck for One Leash
New – March 22, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: Blaming the Victims to Cash in for Votes.
New – March 23, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: The Human cost of ‘bird habitat’ – A personal account from an owner whose land has been taken over by the State.
New – March 21, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: DEP extends ‘bird habitat’ to control homeowners.
New – March 21, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: Maine Governor Baldacci promise to listen carefully – before the election.
New – Mar. 11, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: The “Fix Is In” – Maine DEP Commissioner Op-Ed and response on new DEP bird “habitat” land use prohibitions for private property.
New – Feb. 13, 2007: – Downeast Coastal Press: Anatomy of A Con: More Sophistry for “Habitat” Takings.
New – Sept 19, 2006: – Downeast Coastal Press: DEP and viros move to seize control of residential shoreland.
New – June 20, 2006: Its feeding time in Washington, and the park lobby is quietly slipping through legislation for more power and money to buy out all inholders at Acadia under eminent domain while refusing to correct past injustices – Downeast Coastal Press: Assault at Round Pond.
New – June 15, 2005: The complete Land Rights Letter series on the Environmental Grantmakers Association national strategy to attack grass roots defenders of property rights from the viro agenda of social control – Fly on the Wall in the War Room.
New – January 25 2005: Downeast Coastal Press: Putting Envy into the Constitution.
New – January 7, 2005: Downeast Coastal Press: How the state legislature plans to subvert public demand for property tax reform with discriminatory “rebate” shell games.

Contents


Target: Maine – “Take it All”

In 1990 I attended the New England Environmental Network conference at Tufts University and found that the national environmentalist lobby was actively planning for a Federal takeover of 26 million acres of private property in northern New England. This is a transcript of Audubon Society Vice President Brock Evans' [now head of the National Endangered Species Coalition] portion of the panel discussion in which environmentalist leaders outlined their goals and strategy in the campaign to take over private property in northern New England.

Evans' remarks were intended for fellow viro political leaders, not the public. When they made the newspapers following release of the transcript of his speech he tried to deny it. Here is a typical example.

The national environmentalist lobby subsequently organized the “Northern Forest Alliance” to control and fund activist organizations under a central strategy. Here we see summaries of the big plans, plus a strategist in the Environmental Grantmakers Association – the umbrella organization coordinating activist funding – discussing the scope of a long term campaign to gain political control of private property in northern New England and undermine local opposition. And we see a radical group consisting of those who just can't contrain themselves to a few tens of millions of acres for the “primeval”, serving to make the “mainstream” radical groups appear “reasonable” in comparison.

Targeting Maine played a prominent role in this series on national strategic funding aimed at government takeovers of private property.



Anatomy of a Land Trust May 9, 2008

The idea of a private land trust owning specific scenic or wildlife areas sounds appealing on the surface, but almost all land trusts today are highly political organizations run by ideological, anti-development environmentalist activists seeking to impose social controls in order to undermine the private economy and the civil rights of property owners. The land trusts are financially backed by a subclass of wealthy owners pursuing preservation in order to keep other people out of their sight. The trusts use their politically privileged tax–exempt status and government subsidies to promote and lobby for government ownership or control of vast areas of land, and collaborate with government agencies behind the backs of property owners targeted for acquisition and land use prohibitions. The trusts act as real estate purchasing agents for government agencies, exploiting the mechanisms of the private free–market by buying up land and flipping it into government ownership.

When direct political and government action become too controversial the trusts use their vast wealth to gradually eliminate private property owners from a targeted area over time in a strategy of attrition, while land use controls over private property are relentlessly increased to drive out the remaining owners. Exempt from property taxes themselves, the trusts manipulate the tax code for their own political ends by inducing tax-strapped property owners to sell or donate land in exchange for discriminatory tax breaks available only to those giving up land rights to the ‘non–profit’ trusts. ‘Conservation easements’ ostensively intended to hold development rights typically also grant the trusts enormous privileges to interfere in the private management of the land.

The Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT) is one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful land trusts in Maine, and funds and directs several satellite trusts claiming to represent local people. Founded in the early 1970s by Peggy Rockefeller and Tom Cabot – who said they wanted to stop other people from building their own homes on the shore after Rockefeller and her husband David Rockefeller noticed that new homes were becoming visible from their yacht – MCHT boasts it has a war chest of $100 million to buy up land its backers do not want other people to use, and maintains close connections with government agencies where it influences government land acquisition priorities and regulatory controls. MCHT, in collaboration with the Maine State Planning Office, was cited as the source, in the 1988 National Park System Plan, of the nationally promoted agenda for the National Park Service to take over most of the private property in Maine's Washington County, which would have resulted in mass condemnations to remove the people. At the same time, it was caught collaborating with the National Park Service to designate, behind the backs of the property owners, the 20 mile coast through Cutler, Trescott, and Lubec as a “nationally significant” National Landmark as an excuse to seize control of other people's private property there.


Greenlining, “Heritage Areas” & LURC May 19, 2008

Greenlining means that preservationists draw a line around an area and impose government social controls so that the people inside don't have the same rights as those outside. Greenline parks contain a mixture of government land, quasi-government land trusts, and private property subject to strict land use prohibitions enforced by an autocratic government agency. The restrictions range from scenery police mandating to homeowners what color they can paint their home – to heavy restrictions on cutting vegetation – to prohibitions on roads, motorized vehicles, or building a home or business at all – to eliminating most private economic activity.

In the late 1980s the viro pressure groups began an active campaign to Greenline 26 million acres of private property across rural Maine (2/3 the state), northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and New York state to the Adirondacks. The viros explicitly modeled the scheme after previous Greenline parks such as the Columbia Gorge (OR & WA) and the Adirondacks (NY) where the people have been stripped of their property rights under a system of social controls severly restricting land use and economic activity. This Greenlining is part of their agenda to designate several huge new National Parks that would outright eliminate all private property inside them, with Greenline controls over the remaining private property in between. The Greenline portion, especially, was promoted in the U.S. Forest Service's 1989 Northern Forests Land Study under Federal legislation on behalf of the viros. There have been several subsequent attempts at Federal legislation to further the Greenlining process, including Sen. Leahy's (D-VT) Northern Forest Stewardship Act, which were defeated only after major battles. More attempts to impose a Federally sponsored Greenline on Maine can be expected.

There have been several attempts by viro pressure groups and activists inside state government to redefine Maine's Land Use Regulatory Commission – LURC – as a Greenline agency to take over private property in Maine. Every periodic update of the LURC Comprehensive Plan since the 1980s has incrementally imposed increasing controls intended to further this agenda.

Here are some articles on the 2008 LURC Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) calling for bureacratic control imposing more limitations on development and more restrictions of land use to “primitive recreation”, both intended to strangle the economy in anticipation of full Greenlining:

The National Park Service has since the 1970's sought to expand its domain beyond National Parks by, among other means, establishing itself as the lead Federal agency imposing Greenline Parks to control private property across the country. Several bills that would have established a framework for a national system of Greenline “Heritage Areas” through Federally sponsored and subsidized regional land use controls have failed in Congress but continue to be introduced. (Preservationists promoting Greenlining now use the term “Heritage Areas” since the term “Greenline” became controversial following the growing reputation of what Greenlines have actually done to people in practice – despite their misleading utopian promotion as “public–private partnerships”.) Governor Baldacci has already sponsored a “study” promoting the designation of much of Maine as a National Heritage Area. These two articles from Land Rights Letter describe the basic issues in the Greenline agenda. National legislation S.2543/H.R.1427 before Congress in 2004 serves as an example of the intent to combine Federal power and money with state land use controls to further the national Greenline agenda by first establishing a broad framework. Its sponsors claim they would bring order to haphazard “Heritage Area” designations, but the open-ended provisions sanction virtually any kind of Greenline legislation imposing specific new Greenlines under the system while doing nothing to protect property rights. Documents specifically concerned with S.2543 are:
“Habitat” April 18, 2007

As the national environmentalist lobby pushes to expand the Endangered Species Act to cover entire “ecosystem” “habitats”, grant–driven pressure groups such as Maine Audubon are collaborating with activist agencies such as the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the Maine State Planning Office and other government agencies to impose “habitat” designations for sweeping state restrictions and prohibitions on use of private property. A series of articles and columns mostly from the Downeast Coastal Press, in order of their occurence:
Trashing the Economy – A National Environmentalist Agenda

Is the prolonged environmentalist war on private property and civilization in Maine a coincidence in a natural course of political events or is it a well-funded and organized campaign? Trashing the Economy, a book on organized environmentalism and its funding shows the national pattern being repeated in Maine... ... and these articles give a behind the scenes look into an Environtmental Grantmakers Association strategy conference revealing a coordinated strategy to destroy both the economy and those who dare to fight back.
Why Would Anyone Want to Do This?

Will the Atlantic Salmon – now being officially promoted by environmentalists and the Federal Government as an “endangered species” – be to Downeast Maine what the Spotted Owl has been to the Pacific Northwest? This is a review of Alston Chase's book, In A Dark Wood, which describes the environmentalist attack on the rural population of the Pacific Northwest using the Endangered Species Act to shut down the natural resource economy. A major theme is the environmentalist philosophical vision and guiding principles that motivated the attack – and the question of where these motivating ideas came from.
With environmentalists seeking a government takeover of enormous amounts of private property, a Maine grassroots organization called “Keep Maine Free” held a rally to protest the socialism inherent in environmentalist politics and its demand for massive government ownership of the land. This is an op-ed I wrote in the Downeast Coastal Press supporting the protest rally.
This is an op-ed I wrote in the Downeast Coastal Press on the role of the viro's “anti-industrial revolution” ideology in the northeast electrical power outage of 2003.
Battles

In 1988 we discovered that the National Park Service, the Maine State Planning Office and the Maine Coast Heritage Trust had been secretely planning to turn the downeast coast of Maine from Cutler to Lubec, including our property, into a Fedeally designated National Natural Landmark. We subsequently learned that the National Natural Landmarks Program is used nationwide by the Federal government in collaboration with environmentalists as a “feeder program” for new Federal parks and other means to take over private property.
Every year the environmentalist lobby backs a national media campaign, coordinated by the Wilderness Society, to go after what they call the 10 or 15 most “endangered” sites in the country. There is no objective basis for the designation – the “endangered” sites list is a media ploy to manipulate puplic opinion in support of a government takeover of whatever the environmentalist lobby has targeted.
In 1988 hardly anyone could imagine a Federal takeover of private property in Maine for the purpose of destroying civilization and the economy in the name of preservation. These notes summarize the barage of environmentalist abuses that show they are serious – and relentless.
One of the earliest national parks in the country, Maine's Acadia National Park has a history of abuse as the environmentalist movement has risen in power.

The Myth of the “Willing Seller” November 27, 2003:

Preservationist pressure groups, politicians and government agencies seeking to take over other people's property frequently attempt to squash controversy over their agenda by propagating the myth that they will only buy from “willing sellers”. Like the old Peanuts comic strip in which Lucy annually fooled Charlie Brown into thinking she would let him kick the football, they make this false claim over and over despite their long record to the contrary. Once they get the legal authority to acquire property and to prohibit owners' use of and access to their private property, the preservationist political elite does what it wants with its power.
CARA Condemnation and Relocation Act: Taxpayers' money to take the taxpayers' property

A major ingredient in the orchestration of a government takeover of vast regions of private property through acquistion is money – lot's of it. Since 1965 the annual congressional appropriations of hundreds of millions per year through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) have been the primary source of money used to take over private property for government parks and preserves.

Environmentalists are promoting legislation to establish a $3 billion/year off-budget entitlement called the “Conservation and Reinvestment Act” (CARA) – also called the “Condemnation and Relocation Act” – which is mostly dedicated to or available for acquisition, but also for subsidizing viro groups for promotion and lobbying. The off-budget guarantee of a large increase in perpetual funding is intended to accelerate the conversion of private property to government ownership, trampling and eliminating the rights of private owners on a massive scale. A large portion of the funding is intended to target Maine.

The following articles covered CARA when it was previously before Congress a few years ago. This monster came close to passing in 2001 and has recently been re-introduced as H.R. 4100 as the “Get Outdoors Act of 2004” (the bill text is at the Thomas web site (search on bill number HR4100).


Property Taxes

Average property taxes in Maine are among the highest in the country and property taxes are far worse where market values of land along the coast increase out of proportion with other property. The state policy of arbitrarily imposing escalating costs of government through an inequitable, annually recurring asset tax based (only) on real estate value is punishing more and more land and home owners, sometimes forcing them off their own property. This phenomenon is progressing up the coast and increasingly threatens downeast property owners.

As one viro activist put it in the late 1980's, if landowners won't sell then “tax the hell out of them”. Property tax policy has in principle much in common with taking private property by eminent domain in the name of the so–called “public good” (note that the rights of the victim are not considered to be part of the “public good”).



Last Update: 5/17/08