Land Rights – Freedom and Constitutional Rights in USA

Executive Summary:

USA Citizen’s rights to Real Property – Mineral, Gas, and Oil

• If you live in a city or even one of the major metropolitan suburbs you probably never thought about your real property rights. Okay, so you own your home, or the bank does until you pay it off or sell it.
• If you hold (own) mineral rights, you own an estate in real property. That property is referred to as a mineral estate, commonly referred to as mineral rights. Executive Summary:
• The citizens of the United States of America are having their cherished property rights stripped covertly by their own government.

US Government (BLM) Land Holdings:

(percentage of all state lands owned by the US heavily weighted in the west)

• Nevada - 84.5 %
• Alaska - 69.1 %
• Utah - 57.4 %
• Oregon - 53.1 %
• Idaho - 50.2 %
• Arizona - 48.1 %
• California - 45.3 %
• Wyoming - 42.4 %
• New Mexico - 41.8 %
• Colorado - 36.6 %
• Washington - 30.3 %
• Montana - 29.9 %

Federal numbers report that the BLM has over 700 million acres of sub-surface rights (define mineral rights) of both Federal and non-Federal lands across the entire nation. Let us put that into perspective. The total number of acres in the US and Washington DC is 1,875.714 million acres. The US BLM holds mineral rights to over 700 million acres. (See the actual numbers.)

The latest incursion by the government into private land ownership is that every time a property is sold in foreclosure the government slices the real property mineral rights off the surface land deed. The state or federal government takes ownership of the mineral rights. According to two of my sources in the oil and gas industry, the State of Pennsylvania is the single largest recipient of mineral rights royalties in the state. The numbers have been growing every year. It is similar to other nations where the government “seized” the mineral rights of their entire nations for the government.

Supporting Material:

Judge Andrew Napolitano warns, “"I'm going to make a statement that the government will consider outrageous. The Constitution simply does not authorize the federal government to own any of this land. All of it is being held unconstitutionally and all of it should be returned to the private property owners from which it was taken or to the states in which it exists, period." The fact is, the judge as much as I like him, is unfortunately incorrect.  

 His comments are based upon the “originalist” view of the Constitution. While many of us would celebrate the day that such views prevailed. Sadly, that is currently not the case. Supreme Court rulings have undermined those original rules. There is a hot debate on that “fact”. The Property Clause in the US Constitution give the government broad rights over the ownership, holding, sale, use, etc. of land that it owns.

This ownership, on its face, is sold as benign and altruistic. History shows what happens with the property after the government takes ownership via fiat, seizure, or imminent domain. Shielded in claims of preservation and environmental issues that actual outcome is a political patronage driven contradiction. In Nevada a lot of the land that was “taken” into the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) was taken to save it from unbridled grazing. Shortly after it surfaced that Harry Reid (Senator NV) had championed a deal with a Chinese company to lease the land in order to build a giant solar electric power farm on the land. Also, Uranium One was granted a lease for mineral rights to mine uranium on the same land. The list goes on and on.

The United States of America is unique, thanks to our Founding Fathers, they crafted a nation whose laws and constitution recognized, not granted, “God given” rights to own property and much more. Over two hundred fifty years later, there are still few nations in the world that even allow private ownership of real property, period. The United States of America is still one of the only nations in the world where private citizens own mineral rights, let alone the real property (land). People have no idea of the concept, or the ramifications of the undermining of this priceless right. Well, except for people who live west of the Rocky Mountains.

There is a quite incursion against one of the most sacred rights of United States of America’s citizens. The federal and state governments with the help of “sweet hearted” private companies, many international, have been pulling the proverbial rug, of mineral and land owner rights, out from under us.

There are so many people, highly professional, very intelligent, who trade disparate pieces of information with me every day. It is exhilarating. I am an analyst. I gather data, verify it, cull it, run it up the flagpole and see if it flies, throw it against the wall and see what sticks. It may lay in mess in my mind, on the floor in my office, or even in disparate files on my offline computer. Then, THEN, one day, one moment, and CLICK! It fits! It means something! This day, this moment was one of them.

My contacts and I have chewed over disparate points about the BLM, the Bundy situation, and thousands of other

One of the rights so sacred to USA citizens is the right to own property, unmolested.

Since the 1990’s the federal and state governments have systematically and covertly been stealing the property rights from us. The theft is very discrete. Few even realize what is happening.

Unless you lived under a rock for the last 10 years, maybe you lived in a cave because you lost your home, you know that millions of properties went into foreclosure. The banks taking the properties from people when the market went upside down. The other day I overhead someone saying, matter-of-factly, “my husband works for the banks, they don’t want to sell the houses, they want to foreclose.” I sat, annoyed by her ignorant attitude about it, thinking to myself why? Amassing these properties, a glut of homes, deteriorating and sapping funds to upkeep them, why? It really annoyed me. So, Will, the investigator / analyst, started cogitating on the point. Why? Why? It is bad business. Do everything that you can to minimize long term losses, minimize overhead, that’s what you do.

The US citizens are being raped of their rights and property. Thanks to ignorance, they don’t even know it is happening. As usual ignorance is no defense, and if you think that claiming ignorance will get you back what you lost, you are sadly mistaken.

Supreme Court ruling in Brandt v. United States

The case involved the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875, under which thousands of miles of rights-of-way were established across the United States. The act allowed railroads to acquire easements all over the country in order to lay tracks. These easements were written so that they would revert to the property owner in the event the railroads ever abandoned the easements. But in 1988, Congress passed a “railbanking” statute which holds that upon abandonment, these easements could be morphed into a public recreational trail, with the landowner receiving no compensation.

In this case Marvin Brandt acquired land in Wyoming that came with a pre-existing railroad easement. In 2001, the railroad, which had long owned the easement, abandoned all claims to the easement. The Brandt family therein obtained complete ownership of the land in question. However, in 2006 the United States government sued for title to the land on the theory that the federal government retained a residual claim to it after the railroad abandoned the easement. Brandt argued that the federal government had no legitimate claim to the abandoned easement and could not take that land without conflicting with the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. The Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of the federal government, holding that the upon abandonment the land reverted to the United States. Today, the Supreme Court reversed that decision—making clear that the Brandt’s acquired all rights in the subject land once the railroad abandoned its easement, and affirming the principle that government cannot redefine previously recognized property rights out of existence.