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This Land is... the Government's

Jerome49 Wrote: Apr 03, 2012 11:41 AM

Woody Gutherie would be appalled. It seems the government, be it federal, state or local, would take issue with the lyrics of his famous song. "This land is your land, this land is my land, this land was made for you and me." is no longer an 'operative statement'. I recently encountered an example of this in the Peoples Republic of Illinois. Last summer I took my eight year old grandson to a park district with three baseball fields to practice his hitting. The park is typically used for baseball games in the evenings by park district teams for kids and adults. The baselines and batters boxes were chalked for the evening games. Since there were only two of us we wanted to use the backstop so we wouldn't have to shag missed...

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Jerome49 Wrote: Apr 03, 2012 11:47 AM

continued) pitches. We were told by park district workers we couldn't use the fields and that they were for sanctioned league games only. I live in the district and pay property taxes, part of which paid to have these fields built and maintained. Now I'm being told I can't use them unless I pay to join a league and then pay to use the fields at only approved league games. This land isn't for your use, it's for the public's use.

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This Land is... the Government's

Most people understand that the federal government controls a lot of land, but few know just how vast the holdings really are. The map above is courtesy of Investor's Business Daily. It indicates the vast amounts of land, particularly in the natural resources rich western states, held by the federal government.

According to the USDA, Economic Research Service, of the 2,264,000,000 acres that comprise the United States of America, the federal government owns 635,000,000 of them, or more than 28%. In addition, state and local governments own 195,000,000 acres and another 56,000,000 acres is the sovereign territory of...