Proposed Move of BLM Staffers from DC to Grand Junction (Canon City: transfer, live)

[COcheesehead]

Wow they just announced the Bureau of Land Management BLM is moving from Washington DC to Grand Junction. That's a game changer.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

Wow they just announced the Bureau of Land Management BLM is moving from Washington DC to Grand Junction. That's a game changer.

Article says about 20% of BLM will move to Grand Junction, about 80 people. That may be enough to tweak the housing market out there.

"The bureau has some 9,260 employees, of which roughly 350 work in Washington, D.C."

[COcheesehead]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Article says about 20% of BLM will move to Grand Junction, about 80 people. That may be enough to tweak the housing market out there.

"The bureau has some 9,260 employees, of which roughly 350 work in Washington, D.C."

The GJ Sentinel said "hundreds" of jobs. Who knows. We shall see.

[bluescreen73]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

Wow they just announced the Bureau of Land Management BLM is moving from Washington DC to Grand Junction. That's a game changer.

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Article says about 20% of BLM will move to Grand Junction, about 80 people. That may be enough to tweak the housing market out there.

"The bureau has some 9,260 employees, of which roughly 350 work in Washington, D.C."

Call me a cynic, but the long game here is to make the BLM bureaucracy dysfunctional to the point where the anti-government types can come back and say "look at how messed up this agency is. It's time to abolish it." Then, when the agency that manages the land is gone they'll use that as justification to start selling off the lands it once controlled.

[COcheesehead]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Call me a cynic, but the long game here is to make the BLM bureaucracy dysfunctional to the point where the anti-government types can come back and say "look at how messed up this agency is. It's time to abolish it." Then, when the agency that manages the land is gone they'll use that as justification to start selling off the lands it once controlled.

That is cynical, but I have lived long enough to see things I never thought were possible.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Call me a cynic, but the long game here is to make the BLM bureaucracy dysfunctional to the point where the anti-government types can come back and say "look at how messed up this agency is. It's time to abolish it." Then, when the agency that manages the land is gone they'll use that as justification to start selling off the lands it once controlled.

There are wealthy interests who want all this federal land out west to be given back to the states; if that happens it will be a disaster. Our common lands belong to us all, not vested interests who want to clear cut the forests and let the taxpayers deal with the aftermath; same for mining. One only needs to look at the nuclear mess in Canon City or the poisonous lagoon near Leadville to see there it will lead to.

[Mike from back east]

I've given this topic it's own thread. Let's keep all comments in this one.

[townshend]

A new book is being released tomorrow -- Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the America West: https://www.amazon.com/This-Land-Cap...s=books&sr=1-1

Here is a summary of the book from Amazon:

"The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations.

This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation."

I want these public lands preserved for their wildness and as natural habitats for the remnants of flora and fauna which have survived the assault of man's boot print. The current administration and its cronies have targeted public lands for private purposes -- grazing, mining, oil and gas development, harvesting the trees for lumber, and slaughtering some of the West's last predators (bear, wolf, mountain lion). We should resist the efforts to commodify these lands and their precious assets.

[Mike from back east]

Notice how first they gutted a lot of EPA rulings...they intend to steal our public lands and pillage them.

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

Call me a cynic, but the long game here is to make the BLM bureaucracy dysfunctional to the point where the anti-government types can come back and say "look at how messed up this agency is. It's time to abolish it." Then, when the agency that manages the land is gone they'll use that as justification to start selling off the lands it once controlled.

I agree 100%.

The county officials where I live are always badmouthing the feds, claiming they can manage lands better. Not from what I’ve seen. They claim to want to transfer powers from fed to state level...which they think they can armtwist better.

All levels of governtment have corruption, but there are a heckuva lot more eyes watching the feds and keeping them kindasorta in line. At the local level, it is very much a good ol’ boy system.