It is hard to decide where to begin writing about the past two weeks or so. In February, I learned about a thing called the National Heritage Area(NHA) that was proposed for North Central Kansas and South-Central Nebraska. This proposed National Heritage Area encompasses 26 counties in Kansas and 23 counties in South Central Nebraska. My head has been spinning with all the information that I have been getting and talk about information overload, I have it right now.
I will provide some links for you to do your own investigations and hopefully you will conclude that this is a case of government overreach. I will also share the National Heritage Area information so that you can see that side as well. On the surface it is great for tourism and economic development but when you start digging in deeper and they start making requirements through planning and zoning that you can only paint your house a certain color or that you must remove barbed wire fencing and electric fencing from your property then you may find this a little bit disturbing.
The National Heritage Area is not to be confused with the 30 by 30 plan that Joe Biden signed in to motion with Executive Order #14,008 on January 27th of this year. Both ideas are problematic for those who value their private property rights. The 30 by 30 plan wants to have 30% of the land and water in permanent control by 2030, that’s nine years away! I feel that both ideas are nothing more than a way to get control of land to tell people what they can and cannot do on their own private property. I also believe that the National Heritage Area proposal is like other proposals that have happened in the past, they have nefarious means of getting completed. Once a feasibility study is done with the National Heritage Area proposal, it takes an act of Congress to be removed from the area. It has been done it is a lengthy process, but the attempts were successful. This is good news for people of Kansas and Missouri who are already in the Freedoms Frontier National Heritage Area. There is some overlap as there are four counties in the new proposed area that are already in the Freedoms Frontier National Heritage Area.
The rest of this blog will contain links to the information that is pertinent to this issue. I will also include HR1049 which was in the 116th Congress and passed the house and was moved onto the Senate and is now in the Energy and Natural Resources committee. It does not have a Senate bill number, that I am aware of currently. HR 1049 is a very vague bill it is a short bill, but it can be interpreted in many ways and therein lies the danger, because these areas are managed by regional councils that can interpret these bills in any way that they feel lead. These councils can use federal funding as extortion money to get things done in these NHA’s. Many members of the regional councils are anti agricultural proponents which makes this even more dangerous to farming and ranching. In my opinion just another attack on agriculture, nothing more, nothing less. Also, I must note that the HR 1049 was Co-sponsored by Kansas District 2 Representative Steve Watkins, Representative Roger Marshall Kansas District 1 and Sharice Davids District 3 Representative. I was astounded to see that representative Watkins and Marshall Co-sponsored these bills shortly after they were introduced in 2019 while representative Davids didn’t cosponsor the bill until 2020. Makes me wonder if the District 1 and District 2 representatives haven’t gotten some type of kick back from this or something else. What I do know is, that they are aware of what this bill is which makes me wonder if they truly are supportive of agriculture.
These are links to do your own research.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1049
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3939871/posts
This last link is of Mr. Norman Kincaide presenting at the Mankato KS meeting I was part of on March 27, 2021. It is lengthy but very damning against the NHA proposed area.
Educated Cowpuncher 