What is this an example of to you?

[Hermit]

The BLM changed something regarding the grazing fee in 1993 and Bundy got pissed off and stopped paying it but kept grazing his cattle there. There was also a change in the status of the land to accommodate the desert tortoise that was declared endangered so some of the parcels he was grazing became off limits. He also allows them to move outside the permitted parcels. There was a court case last July, he lost the case and was ordered to remove his livestock. At that time he was told they'd be seized if he did not remove them. And an earlier case in 1998.

This is public land, he owes the fees to us. He has essentially been allowed to poach the land. It is no lesser a theft than poaching game animals.

The man is cracked.

“This is what we the people are going to demand this morning,” Cliven said during his turn at the microphone after Gillespie’s announcement. “You disarm those park service people. And take a pick-up and I want those arms. We want those arms hauled to Virgin Valley disposal. We want those arms delivered right here under these flags in one hour."

He has no standing to demand anyone turn over their arms to him.
He's lucky they didn't give them to him muzzle first and empty the magazines.

Thanks for your research and resultant post. It sheds an entirely different light on the issue in comparison to the way it was described in the opening post. I now think Niven is a thief who temporarily prevailed because he got the support of an armed rabble and because the BLM did not want to risk bloodshed.

[FBM]

Yeah, that also changed my opinion a bit. I also thought about the Dust Bowl and how it could happen again if the land weren't overseen somehow.

[pErvinalia]

Yer getting too libertarian for yer own good, Eff!

[FBM]

Yer getting too libertarian for yer own good, Eff!

Anarchist*, not libertarian.






*No, not really. So don't start with me.

[Svartalf]

This doesn't belong in the gun club. It's not about guns. It's Politics and Current Affairs. What's with the desire to stuff everything out of sight here???

It was done by request. And I did intend to leave open the option of discussing guns. I just accidentally put it in the Gnu Club instead of the Gun Club.

I thought the Gnu club was just a new name for the gun club?

[FBM]

It's more of a parody sub-forum.

[Gallstones]

I suspect they were not motivated by equal opportunity when they fabricated this plan.

Interview with one of Bundy's supporters.

[FBM]

Judging from the other videos, the women were pretty eager to be at the front. I wouldn't think that an issue unless they were forced to be there.

[pErvinalia]

When's the next instalment of this going to happen? Surely the feds will be back at some point?

[FBM]

I'm guessing that their next step won't involve gestapo tactics, seeing how that first attempt fared with the public.

[FBM]

This doesn't really get to the point until around the 5-minute point. Until then, he's debunking conspiracy theories:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFiosLqjoQQ#t=377[/youtube]

[Hermit]

Interesting exposition, FBM. Thank you. Someone apart from Gallstones has done their homework. Seymour Hersh is not on his own, and that is all good.

"...the standard way to bribe politicians." The action of "a thuggish, corporate owned government."

That is exactly what I said on the first page of this thread: "Yet another example of private enterprise corrupting a branch of government. Yet another example of why private enterprise should be abolished. Greedy fuckers stop at nothing for private gain."

[Gallstones]

Statement by the Bureau of Land Management Neil Kornze, Director

Today we announced the decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our grave concern about the safety of employees and members of the public.
...
Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public.
...
This is a matter of fairness and equity, and we remain disappointed that Cliven Bundy continues to not comply with the same laws that 16,000 public lands ranchers do every year. After 20 years and multiple court orders to remove the trespass cattle, Mr. Bundy owes the American taxpayers in excess of $1 million. The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially.

[Seth]

I don't understand. If it's their land, why can't they graze their cows on it?

It's not his land, he just claims preemptive forage and water rights on it because his family has been continuously ranching it since the 1800s. Back before the BLM even existed, the federal government bought the land from Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. His family homesteaded the ranch itself under the homestead laws in place at the time, after the state of Nevada was admitted to the Union, and because there were no federal rules limiting grazing on adjacent lands at the time his family began grazing and improving the land (ditches, roads, etc.) his family perfected those grazing and water rights (easements) on the land with the consent of both the state and federal government, and in doing so established a protected property right that the government cannot extinguish by regulation without justly compensating him for the value of the property right under the 4th Amendment.

Beginning in the 1990s, the BLM and federal government began a campaign to drive all of the ranchers in Nevada, which is 83% federal land, out of business. This guy is the last rancher in the county.

He has been paying his grazing fees to the county all along because he (probably correctly) believes that the federal government does not in fact own the land, the State of Nevada and Clark County do. This is based on a recent movement to force the federal government to divest itself of most of the lands it claims west of the Mississippi under the Equal Footing doctrine, which states that all new states are to be admitted to the Union on an "equal footing" with the original 13 states. What that means in the original 13 states is that there is almost no federally owned land, and virtually all that does exist was purchased from the original states with the state's permission, by the federal government.

As the west was opened however, the Congress got greedy and decided that it wanted to keep the unappropriated lands and dispose of them itself by land grant in the territories, which it was certainly empowered to do...when they were territories. However, when a new state was formed, the Equal Footing Clause was supposed to result in the instant transfer of ALL unappropriated lands (lands not already granted by congressional land grant to individuals) to the newly-formed state, as was the case with the original states.

But the greedy bastards in Congress forced the new states in the west to sign away all their right, title and claim to those unappropriated federal lands as a condition of statehood, and the states had little choice because if they refused, Congress would not assent to forming the state.

It is the opinion of many legal scholars that these coercive provisions in the enabling acts of the various western states are null and void because they violated the rights of the citizens of those states to be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the original states.

And that is what this guy is claiming. He says the land does not belong to the federal government, much less the BLM, but rather it belongs to Nevada and specifically to Clark County, and it is to Clark County that he owes any fees for his use of public lands for grazing under the "homestead" grazing and water rights established long before the BLM was formed.

This claim has been dismissed by a federal court in Nevada, but he claims, and legal scholars agree, that the proper venue was the state court, not the federal court. I believe he has plans to appeal.

The other aspect of this egregious violation of the law by the government is that the proper legal recourse for federal non-payment claims is to file a lien on the rancher's property, which the government can collect when the property is sold, rather than sending heavily armed federal agents and snipers to provoke a Waco-like incident using force and intimidation...which didn't work.

Fortunately, this time armed militia groups and individuals from all over the country responded, went to Nevada and stood against the feds, daring them to initiate violence. Wisely (now that Janet Reno isn't in charge, and that fucking pussy Eric Holder is) the Department of Justice called off it's dogs out of fear of both the bad publicity and the impact of another federal slaughter of innocent people right before the mid-term elections.

Harry Reid, Democrat and Senate Majority Leader, is the Senator from Nevada, and he said "This isn't over," and alluded to future actions to deal with this lawbreaking...probably after the mid terms. The good news is that he has likely pissed off Nevadans to the point that they will unelect him...finally.

Whats at work here is a long-term agenda on the part of the Department of the Interior to get rid of "inholdings," which are private property within larger tracts of federal lands, which often hold preemptive grazing and water rights established centuries ago. By reserving the land (supposedly) for endangered species conservation, the BLM has violated the rights of ranchers by placing more and more restrictions on their grazing and making their allotments smaller and smaller until it's no longer economically feasible to continue ranching, and the rancher sells out to the government. In this case, the BLM wanted him to reduce his herd from about a thousand cows to only 130, which would have accomplished their goal.

This is not an isolated incident, it's happening every day all over the west and ranchers and farmers are being driven from their lands by abusive government agents who act in a lawless manner, and people are fed up with it, which explains the response of people from thousands of miles away to this travesty.

I hope this happens every time the feds try to squeeze someone out.

[Seth]

Interesting exposition, FBM. Thank you. Someone apart from Gallstones has done their homework. Seymour Hersh is not on his own, and that is all good.

"...the standard way to bribe politicians." The action of "a thuggish, corporate owned government."

That is exactly what I said on the first page of this thread: "Yet another example of private enterprise corrupting a branch of government. Yet another example of why private enterprise should be abolished. Greedy fuckers stop at nothing for private gain."

I'd rather limit government power thanks. Of the two, I prefer private enterprise because it can be driven to bankruptcy by a determined people simply by boycotting them. Government, not so much. It generally requires the blood of patriots and tyrants watering the tree of liberty to bring a rogue government to heel.