Stan Kroenke doesn’t need federal help to make a business flourish. He is worth an estimated $20 billion, a fortune that has allowed him to become one of America’s largest property owners and afforded him stakes in storied sports franchises, including the Denver Nuggets and England’s Arsenal soccer club.
Yet Kroenke, whose wife is an heiress to the Walmart fortune, benefits from one of the federal government’s bedrock subsidy programs.
As owner of the Winecup Gamble Ranch, which sprawls across grasslands, streams and a mountain range east of Elko, Nevada, Kroenke is entitled to graze his cattle on public lands for less than 15 percent of the fees he would pay on private land. The public lands grazing program, formalized in the 1930s to contain the rampant overgrazing that contributed to the Dust Bowl, has grown to serve operations including billionaire hobby ranchers, mining companies, utilities, and large corporate outfits, providing benefits unimagined by its founding law.
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