You don't even have to go to Montana. Some of my neighbors in Oakland have been beefing with a local restaurant/nightclub that keeps blocking off access to public waterfront and sends beefy rent-a-cops to intimidate people in the public space.
Eve's Waterfront. Neighbors have complained that they've gone as far as blocking off the San Francisco Bay Trail during bigger events at night.
Edit: Interesting, I dug up some zoning documents from the restaurant, and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission specifically called out the actions they are doing now (blocking the trail, blocking public access decks) as violations on page 4.
Man it would be a real shame if the Oakland Department of Public Health received a spate of complaints and found unsanitary conditions in the kitchen...
It was not a serious suggestion. Sorry HN. I suppose you could get in trouble for misusing city resources? Assuming that didn't actually have any violations.
Thank you. While I believe their actions are disgraceful, it only adds fuel to their fire. My belief is we need to find a way to understand their concerns as best we can to show them their fears are un-grounded. Even if it was in jest which I fully appreciate, to the 'other side' it looks like what it was.
Or filing of civil/criminal charges if they've been warned before. If a private entity uses public space as a private space and prevents people from using it, that's illegal. You can do a lot more than name and shame.
Wow, so, when you're wealthy in America, you can literally murder someone in cold blood and only get probation for it?
"He shot and killed his neighbor, Timothy Newman, a man who had repeatedly challenged Campbell over his access-blocking proclivities. Campbell first claimed it was self-defense because Newman threatened him, but last year he finally pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. He’s now on probation, under a 20 years suspended prison sentence."
Probation and the felony conviction also have little effect on someone that's independently wealthy. Where the same sentence on a middle class person would amount to financial ruin and unemployment.
It's very close to "completely getting away with it" for a rich person.
The story here is not as simple as the article sounds.
The short version is Timothy Newman, the man who ended up dead, had armed himself with a gun, gone to Campbell's property with the intent of "adversely possessing" it, and draw his own gun on Campbell before Campbell fired at him.
Now this probably would not have made it to a trial, had not Campbell said to multiple people in the weeks before that he was going to “put Newman down” the next time they met.
There was a murder trial. The jury at this trial were instructed to decided between preplanned murder or innocent, did not believe either was correct, and returned no decision, resulting in a mistrial.
In lieu of a second trial, the 20-year suspended sentence was worked out between the prosecutors and the defendant's lawyers. As part of that Campbell paid Newman's wife one million dollars, and Campbell was never to go on the disputed property again (effectively giving up control of it).
The wild west is a crazy place, and justice is not always obvious.
That's a thing that bothers me generally in the West. In theory there is a lot of open country but in reality there are huge areas of grazing land fenced in with no way to get through which makes hiking very difficult. In Britain and Germany they usually don't completely block off their land but there are trails going through.
I remember reading an article regarding this some time ago as well. It's mostly due to some new rule that when the public has been able to access private land for an amount of time unhindered the state can claim it their own. This has caused most to fence up in order to keep their land.
It's completely understandable, and this is mostly just Government trolling to land owners and causing inconvenient situations to the public wanting to access public grounds.
Because there's no perfect solution. If a piece of land has that much utility the government could take ownership (possible compensate the owner) and be responsible for maintaining and upkeep.
I mean your example in the UK, I can't believe every landowner that has a public right of way on their property is thrilled about it, especially in cases when they went to do something with their property and the government told them no because of the right of way. What good is owning that property one might wonder? If it's that important to everyone why not have the government purchase it and maintain it?
Every landowner might have a different opinion of what the best solution is. Good luck writing a law that appeases them all.
Here the local authority is responsible for upkeep (though in practice they may not have the budget). Landowner responsibility is pretty much just don't block it or put anything dangerous there.
This sort of abuse of wealth is absolutely revolting, but how do you deal with parties that have amassed enough power to basically thumb their noses at the rest of the populace?
The casualness with which such a rich asshole deprives thousands of people of their rights without any fear for consequences is absolutely disgusting.
> The casualness with which such a rich asshole deprives thousands of people of their rights without any fear for consequences is absolutely disgusting.
>> "He shot and killed his neighbor, Timothy Newman, a man who had repeatedly challenged Campbell over his access-blocking proclivities. Campbell first claimed it was self-defense because Newman threatened him, but last year he finally pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. He’s now on probation, under a 20 years suspended prison sentence."
Just WTF? This is absolutely insane. Other people end up in the chamber for such things (not that I like the death penalty or other excessive punishment, quite the opposite). The sign that if you're rich enough you can get off with murder is a threat to the core stability of society.
The average HN reader won't.. potentially needs the VC money. :) And less cynically, the surfrider foundation, the coastal commission and all of the environmental groups you can think of supported the lawsuits against him. So protesting off of Page Mill next to Stanford? Maybe worth it if the guy is there. It's not like there wasn't action nor visibility.
When I first heard of the attempt to close Martin's Beach
to the public, I was amazed, but it turns out there was
a somewhat similar situation in 1891, about 20 miles south,
at what is now Bean Hollow State Park:
http://www.pescaderomemories.com/?p=335
Didn't that lawsuit end up being entirely misconstrued [1, 2]? IANAL, so I can't verify the legitimacy of the sources there but it made sense to me. I'm interested if someone more aware of the situation and laws has insight.
I'm not so sure that random comments on reddit are a good source of credible information. I suppose the same could be said about random comments on HN without credible sources.
I gather that he dropped the lawsuits, after public outcry. But notwithstanding his change of heart, he did file them. And arguably, he only dropped them because of the bad PR.
Outgoing Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who left the House to become Trump's Secretary of the Interior. Probably, an edit to the article removed an earlier reference to Zinke and didn't clean up the remaining reference to the style for a first rather than subsequent reference.
Still, Gianforte was elected months later in a special election to replace Zinke as Montana’s congressman.
Yes I know I could have just Googled it. I don't actually care who Zinke is, or what her or his first (last?) name might be. My comment was about journalistic standards. Sorry to confuse you.
Preserving public lands is immeasurably more important than 99.9999% of the framework drivel posted on HN, so I'd recommend you spend 5 minutes reading up on current affairs.
Part of the problem is that the federal government is the largest landholder is most of the Western states (https://goo.gl/images/vsw7rK), so conceivably there are a lot of adjacent private lands. How do you determine access? If I have a property that borders federal (public) land, must I grant access?
The other problem then, is that all this land is managed by bureaucrats in Washington DC. A better solution would be to give the bulk of this land to the states who are closer to the local residents and can more effectively manage the property. Limited easements should then be purchased from willing sellers.
> If I have a property that borders federal (public) land, must I grant access?
Depending on if there's an easement on your property, yes. These kinds of things are usually spelled out clearly in real-estate deals. A lot of homeowners on the beach think they own the land up to the water but that's not always the case despite them trying to block access. No one has to necessarily cross their property to get there either.
In Ventura there was some people trying to fight that near the marina. If I remember correctly one of the homeowners tried to build a fence/wall to the water.
Also remember something similar happening in Malibu.
