An article BBC Science Focus highlights the difficulties of “multi-tasking,” handling several things at a time, which apparently most of us don’t do very well. “In an ideal world, we’d focus on one task at a time, get it finished and only then move onto something else.” But in real life, “It’s all too common for you to be making great progress on one thing, when… BAM! You suddenly need to deal with something else.”
That is common, not only in our personal lives, but also in government. In the decade I worked on Capitol Hill, no crisis happened on any Monday morning. Instead, whenever we were winding down some big project, a new crisis would appear, usually at 4:00 pm on Friday. Multi-tasking wasn’t a popular term back then, but it aptly describes many situations in government.
Multi-tasking became a hot topic when TV host Maria Bartiromo interviewed new Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. She had just completed a segment about Chinese ownership of farmland in the U.S. and asked him to comment. He replied that federal land ownership was a much bigger issue.
“The real issue that is slowing us down is not that China owns what is really a small, small percentage of land in U.S. I mean, they should not own any, but they own a small percentage. It’s the fact we’ve got 700 million acres of federal land…” In other words, he pivoted to a much larger issue he wanted to talk about, one that is the core of his responsibilities.
To be clear, he is absolutely right about the magnitude of that issue. His Department is by far America’s largest land owner, managing over 500 million acres of land including national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, and recreation areas, along with 700 million acres of subsurface minerals and 2.5 billion acres offshore. Federal management is controversial because decisions can make or break communities, industries, even entire states.
Clearly, Secretary Burgum must primarily focus on federal land issues, as he articulated. But he must chew gum and walk at the same time, too. We need to fix both problems, as he acknowledged. Multi-tasking is part of the deal, which is why President Trump also issued an executive order highlighting China-affiliated investors “targeting the crown jewels of United States technology, food supplies, farmland, minerals, natural resources, ports, and shipping terminals.” Indeed, China-affiliated investors have bought enormous tracts of farmland in 29 states. Chinese ownership in Texas alone is over 160,000 acres, and in Oregon nearly 200,000. The China Merchants Holding International Company says China owns 700,000 acres of U.S. farmland, much of it near military bases, so the potential for foreign control of the food supply is only part of the issue. China has invested over $150 billion in the US in the last 20 years.
By the way, China is not the largest foreign investor in American farmland – that would be Canada, though our northern neighbor is less of a security threat. In total, Maine has the highest percentage of foreign-owned land (3.5 million acres) and over 5.4 million acres in Texas are foreign owned.
State legislatures are concerned enough that 26 states now restrict foreign ownership in various ways, including Burgum’s home state of North Dakota. But another 19 states expressly allow it, guaranteeing the same rights to foreign persons as their own citizens. “Foreign aliens” are explicitly guaranteed the right of property ownership by the Colorado Constitution, for example.
Several states prohibit foreign ownership specifically of agricultural land; some restrict ownership of other property; still others impose reporting requirements. There is no uniform approach to the issue, absent any federal law prohibiting China from buying American land and other resources. That ought to be addressed before it becomes a more serious security threat.
In 1964, freshman Colorado State Senator Bill Armstrong told a remarkable prophetic story, comparing the country’s potential future against that of an old tree: “On the slope of Long’s Peak stand the ruins of a gigantic dead tree, which arborists say lived for 400 years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, half-grown when the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. It was stuck by lightning fourteen times and survived countless avalanches, fires, and storms for four centuries. But in one decade, an army of pine beetles boring tiny holes in the bark levelled it to the ground, gradually destroying the inner strength of the tree by tiny yet unrelenting attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightening blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last to relentless attack from within.”
The idea is reminiscent of Lincoln’s famous 1838 warning that “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.” He concluded that America could only be destroyed from within, which would be dangerously easy unless the people remained vigilant.
Americans should never allow any foreign invader to get enough of a foothold to attack from within.
{ 0 comments… add one now }