Big shakeup in the House Thursday night that could have serious ramifications for the members of what we like to call the Sportingperson Community. These are the new outdoor elites, the mighty hunter/legislators in charge of doling out the tens of millions of Legacy Tax Hike cash as constitutionally dedicated by the stoopid voters in 2008. (The 2010 voters were so much smarter!)
The Elites include Tom Hackbarth, Satveer Chaudhary, Tom Emmer, Denny McNamara, Joe Hoppe, Tony Cornish and Dean Urdahl, for starters.
On Thursday Hackbarth resigned his chairmanship of the Environment Committee, Denny McNamara cried 'Dibs!" and Mark Buesgens took the State Government Finance gavel that Denny threw aside 10 seconds after the Hackbarth news came out.
One problem: The Legacy Tax Hike Subcommittee is now stranded under the jurisdiction of the State Government Finance Committee that is now chaired by Buesgens - the principled Republican legislator who authored HF 1762 last year to repeal the Legacy Tax Hike and send the money back to the taxpayers.
What will the mighty hunters do? There's a big mean ogre between them and all of their fun money! Will Speaker Zellers move the orphaned Legacy Subcommittee safely to Environment? Or will he trust his new chairman to do the responsible thing in tough times?
UPDATE: It appears the Sportingperson Community have been successful in diverting the Legacy Tax Hike Account out from under the jurisdiction of Mark Buesgens State Government Finance Committee to the safe habbytat of Denny McNamara's Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee. Let the takings begin!
Lets be clear about something: Nature is not a government program. Ducks and mourning doves are in no danger of extinction and it is not the role of government to ensure the bag limit of wild game. The vast majority of Minnesota's 55 million acres of surface space is for all intents and purposes a wilderness where people don't go. And regardless of who owns it, ducks and deers and rabbits and doves still live there. Fund some game wardens to keep an eye on game populations and you got your hunters covered. Simple. The woodland critters will always have a home on Minnesota's range.
(Unless the Environmentalists pave paradise and put up a windfarm. Which is a distinct possibility.)
The modus operandi of the Sportingperson legislator is to introduce publicity bills that pander to "Casters and Blasters." People who love the outdoors are suckered into voting for the Elites by promises of "protecting" our "natural resources." Tom Hackbark’s HF 1881 from 2010 is a perfect example. The bill would create “The Hunters', Anglers', and Trappers' Bill of Rights” and protect your right to wear fur and display game. Our Savior!
Coauthors of the bill were Cornish, Zellers, Drazkowski (shame on you Steve - you know better!), Emmer, Seifert and Abeler in the House and Pariseau, Ingebrigtsen, Hann, Gimse and Skogen in the Senate. In keeping with the extremist anti-property rights views of the Sportingpersons, the Hackbarth bill would establish a brand spanking new government program “to allow public walk-in access on private property.” Oh – and spend $20 million to bribe the land owners to go along -- $200,000 of which could be spent on new government workers to administer the program. (The walk-on "right" is a key demand from the Sportingperson Elite - they consider it beneath them to have to ask a land owner if they can hunt on their land. Seriously. It's a major affront to them.)
And the legacy fund isn't the only pot of tax dollars the Sportingpersons tap into.
Indeed, even the Star Tribune in February raised concerns about all the cash being lavished on The Outside and its go’ment managers: “This is the new money-hustling maze at the State Capitol, where the Legacy constitutional amendment passed by [the stoopid] voters in 2008 is providing hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh revenue for some at a time of shrinking budgets for most others. A lucky few can dip not only into the pot dedicated to the outdoors, clean water, arts and parks and trails initiatives, but may also tap the state's bonding bill for a double dip.”
If it were only limited to double dipping. State statues are littered with laws that segregate money for the dubious purposes of “protecting” The Outside. Minnesota Statutes list the Game And Fish Fund, the Outdoor Heritage Fund, the Lifetime Fish And Wildlife Trust Fund, the Minnesota Conservation Fund, the Reinvest In Minnesota Resources Fund…. No doubt there are more, and, of course, you have to tack on the millions taken from the state’s battered and abused General Fund.
The whole premise behind these funds is that human activity is a kind of cancer on The Outside that can only be cured by spending millions of tax dollars on the activities of the Protectors - government regulators. It's all about "sustainable" this and "critical" that. And stewardship. Armed with five-year plans, surveys, studies, "Life Cycle Analysis," sustainable energy demonstrations, the Protectors push regulatory schemes that nearly always result in less land being available for use by the Humans.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources controls 5.6 million acres in Minnesota. That’s about ten percent of the surface of this state. The tragedy is that private citizens would love to own big parcels of that land. The highest and best use of real property in America isn’t a shabby little state park or a Reinvest in Minnesota subsidized set-aside or more damn Critical Habbytat. The best way to use land is to put it under the control of private citizens. Real hunters won’t have a problem with that.
With or without go’ment programs and sell out politicians who pander to voting blocks, you can rest assured that life will go on in the mostly wild and uninhabited 55 million acres of prime real estate that is Minnesota.