Virginia farmer Martha Boneta has reached a settlement in her $2 million lawsuit against a husband-and-wife team of realtors whom she accused of colluding with an environmental group to drive her off her land.
When we stand in our own way, we fall behind, to the delight of global rivals eager to take advantage of our self-inflicted wounds.
A radical group is boasting on the Internet that it will go beyond “legal means” to halt construction of two natural-gas pipelines.
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen, a Virginia resident, laments the direction that newly elected Governor Ralph Northam is taking the people of the state — into restrictions on carbon dioxide that include cap-and-trade emissions buying and selling — and other foolish schemes that will harm the poor and lower middle classes the most and do little or nothing to change the Earth’s climate.
Martha rose to national prominence in 2014 when legislation strengthening farmers’ rights and named after her – the “Boneta Bill” – was adopted by the Virginia General Assembly and signed into law by the governor.
Martha Boneta: “It is my hope and prayer that no American citizen ever has to suffer the way we have on our family farm.”
They didn’t expect Virginia property owners directly affected by the pipeline to show up, advocating for their rights. The property owners’ message was simple: “Pipeline yes, eminent domain no.”
Some 500 families were relocated 80 years ago when the federal government used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create Shenandoah National Park. Today, a private company is seeking to use eminent domain (despite having an alternate route) to destroy farmland and displace or negatively impact about 2,700 families. There is a better way.
South Carolina and Georgia blocked pipelines when companies sought to intrude on private land via eminent domain. Will Virginians revolt over the Dominion pipeline?
In a landmark decision that is as uplifting for property rights advocates as it is devastating for land trusts throughout the United States, the Virginia Supreme Court on February 12 overwhelmingly ruled in favor of a small Loudoun County winery in its multi-year battle with one of the nation’s most powerful environmental groups. By a […]
Saying their multi-year, well-documented harassment of a local farmer does not mean they “should have to be dragged through protracted, expensive litigation to battle a neighbor,” a powerful Virginia husband-and-wife real estate team has put forward a novel argument in their defense: We should not be held liable for the pain and financial loss we inflicted on our neighbor; she should suck it up because our acts were a mere “irritation and distraction.”
Martha Boneta dreamt of a farm in Virginia’s lush countryside. Big Green bureaucrats and busybodies turned that dream into a nightmare of obstruction and red tape — until Martha fought back and won. This is her story.
“Farming in Fear” pieces together Martha’s story from interviews and documentation, tracking the nearly 10-year ordeal she’s gone through just to earn a living in spite of corrupt local ordinances, abusive management of her conservation easement, and personal attacks through the introduction of an amendment to Virginia’s Right to Farm Act called the ‘Boneta Bill’, designed to protect small farmers so that what happened to Martha never happens again.
Martha wins! In a stinging repudiation of the conduct of a Virginia environmental group once viewed as politically invincible, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) March 10 signed into law bipartisan legislation that — for the first time — provides rural landowners the means with which to defend themselves against bullying by land trusts.
Did the PEC fabricate claims that Stonewall Jackson slept in an oak grove on Liberty Farm?
Sign the petition. Stand up for property rights for Virginians and everyone!
Thursday was a good day for Liberty in Richmond — both the farm and the ideal.
Thursday, November 6, 2014 — 9:00 AM Bell tower rally — 9:30 AM Legislative hearing
Thanks to a grassroots outcry against injustice, Virginia lawmakers passed a new law, signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, that protects family farmers from encroachment by local governments. Martha Boneta had been barred by her county government from selling produce, fined for hosting a birthday party, and threatened with the loss of her entire farm. Environmental groups and county governments provided the major opposition to the bill.
Virginia schools are now giving out awards for composting the very food that Michelle Obama has mandated be served at school to children who prefer just about anything else to eat. The cost of operating this awards program likely far exceeds any social or environmental benefits, but that is likely of little concern to educrats whose real mission is to turn children into subservient followers. One would hope these children would look to the heroes of “The Hunger Games” movies as role models — young people who challenge a corrupt, oppressive state despite very long odds.