by Kathleen Marquardt, American Policy Center, ©2026
(May 6, 2026) — We’ve written about many in our Workbook, in Tom DeWeese’s Sustainable, and in scores of articles. And in more ways than most of us could ever conceive of an act being pulled-off, for instance killing hundreds of ostriches because a couple of years earlier two had been ill but recovered. In fact, the government of Canada had them shot! Another example is capturing” CO2 from atmosphere and compressing and storing it in geological formations. I won’t even get into what could go wrong or, even more, how absurd it is to take CO2 from the atmosphere where we and plants thrive on it.
Many people do not realize that “property” is more than land or a house. Your clothes, your written words, the food in your house and the gas in your car are your property. And your children. Don’t think those taking other forms of your property won’t touch your children.
The U.S. Supreme Court defines property:
“As protected from being taken for public uses, is such property as belongs absolutely to an individual, and of which he has the exclusive right of disposition. Property of a specific, fixed and tangible nature, capable of being in possession and transmitted to another, such as houses, lands, and chattels. Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S. 141, 21 S.Ct. 48, 45 L.Ed. 126.
Note: Chattel represents physical, transferable items like furniture, jewelry, cars, or livestock. It is used to distinguish personal belongings from real property.
Keep in mind that if you have nothing, you are chattel – you are property.
So, let’s look at the Columbia River Basin and the “New Compact”. I am using Catherine Vandemoer, Ph.D.’s report “Meet the New Compact, Same as the Old” to give you the background of the Columbia River Basin project introduced to Montana in 1993.
At that time we were told that the project was to take the area back to pre-Columbian times. Note:Dr. Vandemoer’s words will be in Times New Roman.
Dr. Vandemoer has been following this issue for years, and her writings on it are invaluable. She points out that Senator Daines “put forth the same bill that Senator Tester had done earlier – the CSKT Compact in full, ‘wrapped” it into the “new” Daines Compact and then added ‘new’ and more ‘goodies’ than even the Democrat did,” in addressing the Western Montana portion of the Columbia River Basin Project.
“As with the Tester bill, the intent of the Dains Compact is to have us all now be distracted by the “goodies” and forget about the documented problems with and substance of the provision of The original CSKT Compact whose true economic, environmental, and nation-wide legal precedent-setting impacts have never been examined.
“Sprinkled into the public relations campaign are the statements that the bill “removes 97 percent of the off-reservation water rights” but fails to mention that this “97%percent” only refers to Flathead Lake claim and two associated tributaries. Thus, while the Dains bill only removes 97 percent of the Flathead Lake claim, the Tribes retained millions of acre feet of off reservation water from Hungry Horse Reservoir, the Swan, the Kootenai, the Clark Fork, and co-ownership in the Bitterroot River, as instream flow, with mostly time immemorial priority dates; and also retain the 10,000 claims filed by the tribes/U.S. after the compact passed. None of the off-reservation claims are federal reserve water rights under the Winters doctrine. If the senator was following the Winter’s doctrine, he would have removed 100 percent of the off-reservation water claims and compelled the United States to formally withdraw the 10,000 claims.”
When the CSKT issue was initially brought to us, it was through a consensus meeting[1] televised from Washington D.C. to sites in western Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. I doubt if many there, if any, knew what was being planned – participants being brainwashed to swallow any and all of the ideas directed toward us re changing to make-up and governance of the entire Columbia River Basin.
As the EPA states it:
Since 2020, the EPA Columbia River Basin Restoration Program has competed and awarded 64 grants totaling almost $94 million (including incremental funding yet to be awarded), to state, Tribal, and local governments, universities, and nonprofits. This does not include over $119 million in leveraged funds from partners within the Basin.
Eighteen Toxics Reduction Lead and Tribal Lead cooperative agreements are underway, with $10 million in new science and monitoring awards just getting started. Many focus on developing toxics reduction strategies for portions of the Basin, as well as subawards creating new jobs for on-the- ground toxics reduction work.
Keep in mind, this is just the Columbia River Basin watershed plan. Attached below shows the rest of the area which make up the regionalization of North America drawn in 2009.
Read the rest here.