Bill Lee: “if there is one thing we know about American politics--if there is one thing we have learned from the 2016 Presidential…”

“if there is one thing we know about American politics--if there is one thing we have learned from the 2016 Presidential race thus far--it is that there is a deep and growing mistrust between the American people and the Federal Government. This institution, Congress, is held in shamefully low regard by the people we were elected to represent, but so, too, are the scores of bureaucratic agencies that are based in Washington, DC, but extend their reach into the most remote corners of American life. In my home State of Utah, the public's distrust of Washington is rooted not in ideology, but experience. In particular, the experience of living in a State where a whopping two-thirds of the land is owned by the Federal Government and managed by distant, unaccountable agencies that are either indifferent or downright hostile to the interests of the local communities that they are supposed to serve. I have lost track of the number of stories I have heard from the people of Utah about their run-ins with Federal land management agencies, but there is one story that every Utahan knows: President Bill Clinton's infamous use of the Antiquities Act in 1996 to designate as a national monument more than 1.5 million acres of land in southern Utah--what would become known as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. What Utahans remember about this episode is not just what President Clinton did, but how he did it.…”