America’s federal lands were set to be listed on the stock exchange before the proposed rule was yanked
Your government was fixing to auction off your real estate—including national parks, farmlands, precious ecosystems, and natural resources—to the highest bidder.
According to a recent report by Elizabeth Nickson, the highly-credentialed journalist behind the Welcome to Absurdistan blog, there was a new federal rule set forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this past October is set to be implemented in November of this year—this rule would have seen public federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges, traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Here are the details, from Nickson:
If not stopped, on November 17th, the U.S. government will pass a rule that allows for America’s protected lands, including parks and wildlife refuges, to be listed on the N.Y. Stock Exchange. Natural Asset Companies (NACs) will be owned, managed, and traded by companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, and even China.
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On October 4th, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a proposed rule to create Natural Asset Companies (NACs). A twenty-one day comment period was allowed, which is half the minimum number of days generally required. NACs will allow BlackRock, Bill Gates, and possibly even China to hold the ecosystem rights to the land, water, air, and natural processes of the properties enrolled in NACs. Each NAC will hold ‘management authority’ over the land. When we are issued carbon allowances, owners of said lands will be able to claim tax deductions and will be able to sell carbon allowances to businesses, families and townships. In the simplest of terms, that’s where the money will be made. WE peons will be renting air from the richest people on earth.
So what does this all mean? Well, for one, it means that management agencies, like the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management would no longer be the custodians and decision-makers but the NAC, and whichever stockholder has the most control. (Bill Gates’s farmland-buying scheme just got a whole lot more macroscopic.)
First of all, why does the federal government have any land? Shouldn’t this land be held by the respective states in which it sits? (That was a rhetorical question.)
As Nickson reports, the types of property that would qualify to be placed into an NAC, and therefore traded on the stock market, are:
National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness Areas, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, Conservation Areas on Private and Federal Lands, Endangered Species Critical Habitat, and the Conservation Reserve Program.
So how much land does the federal government own exactly? Per the Congressional Research Service using 2020 figures, around 640,000,000 acres, or 28%.
To be clear, Reuters reported in January that the NYSE withdrew its request to establish the NAC designation…for now. Yet tyrannical and unconstitutional rules, once proposed, are like bed pennies—they’ll crop up somewhere, so let this serve as a warning that this criminal land grab isn’t a dead idea, but simply on ice while “they” wait for a more opportune time.
Is there a solution? Yes, and it’s called nullification—get your state legislators and governor to stand up to the federal government (there’s a battle in and of itself), by nullifying any bureaucratic federal rule that would see those lands handed off to private third parties.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.