WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

            POLITICS IS THE ART OF LOOKING FOR TROUBLE,
                    FINDING IT EVERYWHERE, DIAGNOSING IT
                           INCORRECTLY, AND APPLYING THE WRONG
                                    REMEDIES.
                                                                  Groucho Marx

     In the Clinton presidential lame duck days there was a push to take as much land from the states and create new National Monuments.  Around 80 to 90 percent of Utah is now owned by the Federal Government.  This included taking some state owned lands.  You will find that huge amounts of western states are owned by the Federal Government.
      Other than local outrage the rest of the country seems to have taken the drastic moves of the government with very little concern.  There has been very little said about the taking of lands because the excuse is always that it is in the "public trust".  "It is your lands and safe from exploitation".
     OK, TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD DO if you woke up in the morning and you are no longer the legal owner of your house or properties?  You were not any longer a resident of your state?  You have no right to the civil protection that your city, county, state, or even the federal government provided?
      You are now squatting on tribal land and were subject to the rules of the tribal council?  Your legal title to any real estate whether paid for or not was no longer yours?  Even though your family may have homesteaded the area and title has been handed down through the generations?
     And all of this is done not by legislation or invasion, but by the ruling of the EPA, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Justice?  How would you react?
     If this seems like a bad novel or an Internet rumor I direct your attention to Riverton Wyoming (pop. 11,000).  I have to since I have not seen this mentioned on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, nor my regional newspaper.
     Let me quote the Washington Times, (seems nobody picked this one up).  "Residents of Riverton Wyoming, a quiet town of 11,000 were shocked to wake up one recent morning to learn they were now Indians.  Sort of.  Their town had been taken over by an Indian tribe without a bullet or arrow being fired.  This hasn't happened since Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, having put the torch to the south, arrived to take on the Nez Pierce  Yet no battles were fought last month.  The Environmental Protection Agency simply approved an application by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes to declare the newly expanded tribal region henceforth to be treated "as a state".
     The boundary questions had been settled in 1905 by Congress.  Yet this moved to thwart the law by unelected bureaucrats.  And it was all justified by an obscure part of the clean air act.  It is noted that the actions had been in negotiation with the tribes for several months.
      This area comprises over one million acres of land.  Of course the Wyoming Governor is outraged.  Governor Matt Mead is vowing not to honor the bureaucratic moves.*
     It took me a long time to try and verify whether this was one of those Internet hoaxes.   Since there was no national mention anywhere that I ever heard I started checking newspapers in the area.  Not everyone had run the story.  I checked with Snope's and got nothing, (I don't fully trust Snope's anyway due to its ownerships political leanings).
      I started collecting stories from the Billings Montana, Riverton Wyo., the Daily Caller newspapers.  Now I am getting theories that may sound bazaar but fit into published plans and proposals.
     I am sure that this is a test run to see how much the American Public will take without extreme reaction.  And if you believe everything that has been happening in this country it makes you very unsettled.
      If you heed the lessons that history has taught us, this is very strange times to be alive.  Is it any comfort that the news and peoples attention is diverted from international crisis, restricting our own energy policies? And focus on a speeding ticket by a spoiled 19 year old singer, seeing how much breast can be exposed on television, and that the president will rule with a pen and telephone if Congress does not do his bidding?
     *Star Tribune, Washington Times, Daily Caller, Snopes