From the President...

PATRIOTISM

Heard this word frequently during the last couple of months as it relates to the celebration of Memorial Day and Independence Day. Gratitude for those who died to help us continue our Republic is not adequate recognition. These two allocated days partially memorialize the honor bequeathed by past patriots, but the real acknowledgement of their sacrifices can only be through our continued vigilance of the rights conferred by our Constitution they wrote and protected.

Though our organization and members primarily address property rights -- it is only because we have such a high esteem, as true patriots, for the sacredness of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that we pool our resources, strengths and honor to keep them alive.

Today, I compliment all our League Members, who have made the financial and time sacrifices to become members and serve our organization in every capacity. All of you I have met recognize the challenge of freedom and have fulfilled the requirements to look into a mirror and see ---- an American Patriot.
william h. adkisson
president

Independence Day Remembering Freedom

Reprinted from:
Investor's Business Daily, July 3, 2000

"The natural progress of this is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

When Thomas Jefferson offered that warning, he could not have known how much ground government would gain over the next two centuries.

As America celebrates 224 years of independence, the lessons of the Founding Fathers bear remembering - lessons of limited government and individual liberty.

We won't sour the holiday mood by pointing out how long the average American has to work to pay his taxes. Nor will we cite the number of pages in the Federal Register. We won't even discuss the nearly $2 trillion federal budget.

But we will remember the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were men of conviction who understood freedom and its costs. By signing that document, they subjected themselves to the revenge of the British government.

Some of the 56 signers were captured by the British. They were tortured before they died. The British destroyed the homes of many others. Some fought and died in the war; a few lost sons to the cause.

They took risks so they could enjoy their freedom and leave ours to us. We argue today about "risky" tax cuts and presidential legacies. We should remember that the founders made those arguments possible.

Independence Day should be a solemn occasion to remember the risks and rewards inherent to freedom. Such reflection might slow that natural progress of which Jefferson so eloquently spoke.

Submitted by:
Rick Brueggemann
Past President

The John H. Chafee Environmental Act

Congressman Michael Castle has referred a terrible piece of legislation titled "The John H. Chafee Environmental Education Act" (H.R. 4745). This legislation authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to spend money and resources cultivating "the proper environmental attitudes" in public school children. This has nothing to do with biology, chemistry or even natural science. Instead, the EPA, in conjunction with radical environmental groups, aim to turn public school children into little green lobbyists for endangered species, animal rights, world population control and the fraud promoting the global warming theory. The information disseminated is completely one sided, coming directly from extreme organizations such as the Sierra Club. Consequently, schools become highly politicized and children are deprived of real learning and independent thought. In fact, funding from this bill will actually subsidize the already overflowing coffers of environmental groups. Representative Castle has referred H.R. 4745 to the Committee on Education and Workforce, in hopes of reauthorizing the EPA to invade our classrooms. If he succeeds, your innocent children may be forced to embrace the mantra of radical environmental politics.

Contact Representative Michael Castle (Republican - Delaware) as well as your own Congressman. Tell them to defeat The Environmental Education Act (H.R. 4745).

The Honorable Michael Castle
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

All of Kentucky's Congressmen can be contacted at the same address:

The Honorable Ken Lucas
The Honorable Anne Northup
The Honorable Harold Rogers
The Honorable Ron Lewis
The Honorable Ernest Fletcher
The Honorable Ed Whitfield

Or call Capitol Hill House Switchboard:
202-225-3121

Conservation and Reinvestment Act

There is a tremendous threat to private property in the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA). This onerous piece of legislation has already passed the House of Representatives with all six of Kentucky's Representatives voting yes. CARA is now before the U.S. Senate and is scheduled for a vote in late July. Now is the time to contact our Senators and voice our protest.

This $3 billion per year land acquisition bill will give the Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management billions of dollars more to force landowners off their land.

CARA will change the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) into a land acquisition trust fund allowing condemnation--eminent domain. If our Senators vote yes, they will be supporting a new entitlement giving billions of dollars to Federal land agents. That means money will NOT go through the congressional appropriations process each year. It will not have to compete with healthcare, education, the military and other priorities. It will be a new entitlement for the Federal government to acquire and control more land.

Already, the federal government owns more that 30% of all land in the United States. CARA would enhance the federal government's appetite for--and ability to own even more of our nation's land while reducing the amount of private property individual Americans could own. This proposal clearly runs counter to America's constitutional legacy.

CARA not only necessitates the creation of a trust fund to engage in activities which are not authorized by the Constitution, it also promises to have a negative impact on property rights in general and on the environment Congress is claiming to protect. If we are truly interested in providing better land management and environmental stewardship, we should get the federal government out of the land management business. As the recent uncontrolled burns of Los Alamos show, there is literally no end to the possible ways the federal government can mismanage environmentally sensitive lands.
Please do your part to protect private property. Contact your U.S. Senators today at the following addresses:

The Honorable Jim Bunning
U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510
Local office: 859-341-2602
Washington office: 202-224-4343
Fax: 202-228-1373

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510
Local office: 859-578-0188
Washington office: 202-224-2541
Fax: 202-224-2499

Submitted by:
Bernard J. Kunkel

Federal Takeover, the Real Crisis

The real crisis in this country is the federal takeover of our private land. According to a new report by Holly Lippke Fretwell at PERC, since 1960 the four federal land agencies - Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service - have added 33.6 million acres to their domain, an area nearly the size of Florida. Today, these agencies control more that 612 million acres, over one-fourth of the land mass of the United States. That averages 840,000 acres acquired each year for the past 40 years. And that's without CARA! Imagine what the government will do with billions of dollars to spend for acquisition. Conservation is not accomplished by casting the net of federal ownership even wider. We need to reform federal agencies, not provide more money for acquisition.

Gore and Bush on the Environment

Al Gore promises an "environmental decade" if he is elected president, and Governor Bush acknowledges private land management is a positive conservation measure. In a recent campaign speech, Gore announced he would keep ordinary citizens from enjoying the national forests by expanding the road ban to include the Tongass National Forest and prohibit logging. He would also push for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

In contrast, George W. Bush promised to enlist the help of landowners to pursue conservation measures, citing the Private Lands Enhancement Program and the Texas Landowner Incentive Program as examples of successful state and private partnership to preserve land and wildlife.

Rainforest Sting

Last month, pop stars Sting, Elton John, Billy Joel, Tom Jones, and Ricky Martin turned out for the 10th annual Save the Rainforest concert at Carnegie Hall. Sting insists the Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed at a horrifying rate. William Shatner recently narrated a National Geographic video saying the "rainforest is being cleared at the rate of 20 football fields per minute."

"If the rainforest in Amazonia was being destroyed at the rate critics say, it would have all vanished ages ago," said Philip Stott, a top ecoscientist who has studied the rainforest for 30 years. Patrick Moore, another scientist and co-founder of Greenpeace said: "They are quite simply wrong. We found that the Amazon rainforest is more than 90 percent intact."