The second link has some additional critical details.
In sum, the Bundy family is the last of the ranchers.
This L O N G campaign has never been about collecting reasonable fees for grazing land — ever.
It’s always been about un-turfing the legacy ranchers from the American desert — with Nevada at the top of the list.
There is NO WAY that this fiasco is not being orchestrated via the Majority Leader’s office. He’s slotted one crew member after another into the BLM top job. This is Putinism in America.
It’s scary the amount of firepower the feds bring to bear in these situations.
Those videos should give you a good view of the op.
Wonderful post by Hinderaker, finally (and fairly and fascinatingly) describing what it is all about.
I loved his concluding paragraph, a more generalized description – – the kind where you say “yes, how true, so well put” – – after I read it, and it occurred to me once more how great novels and movies really ought to be emerging based on the twisted legal and social conditions of America at this time, but are not:
So let’s have some sympathy for Cliven Bundy and his family. They don’t have a chance on the law, because under the Endangered Species Act and many other federal statutes, the agencies are always in the right. And their way of life is one that, frankly, is on the outs. They don’t develop apps. They don’t ask for food stamps. It probably has never occurred to them to bribe a politician. They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies or regulations that hamstring competitors. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They have never even gone to law school. So what possible place is there for the Bundys in the Age of Obama?
The law is whatever tyrants using democracy says it is.
I guess I must be a little slow today. I can’t find the post Tonawanda is talking about. I’ve went to all the links in this article and find no posts by- Hinderaker ??
Ann Barnhardt has a good summary also.
Mike: I made the same mistake at first. Neo has an almost unnoticeable link right below the headline. It says “here.”
It is a sad story. I don’t think they have a prayer of prevailing, and someone could end up dead before it is over.
As Hinderaker made clear, the story is a little more complex than the drive-by media reports. But, Mr Bundy lets his argument be distilled to an issue of excessive Federal ownership of western land. Here he is on a slippery slope because this is fait accompli. It doesn’t seem that he can even get the support of the state of Nevada on this issue. (States are too dependent on Fed handouts to take them on over open land ownership.) I am also afraid that by letting militias join him, he has invited trouble as well. Some of those are eager for a violent confrontation.
It seems to me that the best argument would be the arbitrary changes to the grazing leases that ranchers had paid for over generations; the improvements that his family had made to the land under the provisions of those leases; and the massive bureaucratic monsters that all Americans must deal with these days. I believe that most Americans, who bump up against the government in their own lives, would sympathize with him. Various members of the family have made those points, but they tend to be drowned out; and the old man tends to go off on tangents.
Old, you didn’t watch the video, did ya.
“Militias”, Oldflyer? Only time I saw that word used re Bundy was as an allegation by a jornolist.
“Militia” is not a dirty word.
That you believe in making a “best argument” shows you are still full of hope, perhaps quite unrealistically; the days of reasonableness and reasoned public discourse are long behind us, IMO.
As to the lack of having a prayer of prevailing, I offer Sun Tzu: “On desperate ground, proclaim to your soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives. The only chance of life lies in giving up all hope of it.” (500 BC)
Hinderaker gets the bigger picture, which a lot of people don’t understand.
This is just the beginning. The Feds are not going to let this stand. They can’t, if they want to continue to get people off of public lands using the Endangered Species Act. And that is what they have been doing for the last 20 years. It began under the Clinton administration. Slowed some during the Bush years, but has been going full tilt during Obama’s years. The Watermelons (Green on the outside , red on the inside) have had this as their goal since the late 60s when the Endangered Species Act was passed (the most anti-private property law ever passed in this country) and the EPA established.
At one time the BLM and Forest Service partnered with loggers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and others who put public land to productive use. For which the users always paid fees to the government. The Watermelons don’t want that. They want to drive private activity from public lands. 20 years ago when the Desert Tortoise was declared endangered, there were 52 ranchers in Clark County, Nevada, Bundy is the last one. All the others have been driven out. It’s all been done under color of the law. Bundy doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on as long as the Endangered Species Act and Watermelon friendly judges exist. He doesn’t seem to understand what has happened. He says the land belongs to the County or State. Not so, under present law. He needs to point out how the law (Endangered Species Act) was used against him and his fellow ranchers. That is where the problem lies and is the ultimate solution to the problem.
In the meantime, the government will bide its time. They can use facial recognition, cell phone monitoring, and spies to find out who is supporting Bundy and will work to bring legal pressure to bear to intimidate them. My sympathies are with Bundy, but he’s in bad position unless he can enlist some legislators who will point out the problems with the law and the way the BLM and Forest Service have become agents of the Watermelons and their agenda. If the Watermelons ever succeed in getting anti-global warming laws passed, things will get much worse for all private enterprise everywhere, not just on government lands. We need to try to get people to see how this has been working and where it leads. Bundy is a good example, but like so many other outrages (IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious) the mainstream media are not covering it or
covering it with a pro-government stance.
The Feds aren’t going away. But all of us need to recognize the bigger pattern. Logging shut down in the PNW. Mining shut down all over the country. Ranchers harassed and run out of business. Farmers denied irrigation water in the San Joaquin valley. Those are just the most visible ones.
Many other people have been harassed by these people. I’m one of them. That’s why I know what’s been happening. I used to own a share in an irrigation ditch to water my small hay fields. Out of the blue we were attacked by the Watermelons and forced to spend $1.25 million on our irrigation system, or shut down. My share was $12,500. I saw the handwriting on the wall when our lawyer told us that this wasn’t the end. That the Watermelons would keep harassing us until we were forced to shut down. I sold out and walked away. That’s what most people choose to do. And that’s what Bundy refuses to do. He’s got more gumption than me, but his family has a 100 year history with the land. Those are deep roots!
The idea that someone could end up dead, is based on MSM style info gathering.
Someone already died. BLM’s park rangers or goons or mercs, shot them. One dead, bicycle rider, 20 something year old.
So… yea, someone “could end up dead”.
Also since the battle is over, not sure what people mean by the other stuff. The war is never over so long as the Left exists.
Powerline has an incomplete understanding of this conflict. I doubt they have offensive or defensive powers against lawfare. To obey the law is to be compliant in lawfare.
That’s why I know what’s been happening.
Back in 07, people didn’t even get 10% of what was going on with the Leftist Dominion and Regime.
So now do we know 50 or 100% of what’s going on? No.
I estimate that the stuff you’re talking about is merely another front, and that the sum total of what people know about what the Left’s been doing is between 10% and 19% now.
People have yet to see even 80% of the Left’s true power.
Here’s an addendum to my earlier comment:
“But, as documented by Free Republic and others, a separate BLM document naming Cliven Bundy, last updated in March 2014, had this to say about his cattle:
Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.
(As of this writing, a cached version of the BLM document in question was available here.)
“Non-governmental organizations” means, in this case, environmental activists. Not all of them favor development of the Dry Lake SEZ. But some who are neutral about that, or even opposed to it, have nevertheless taken the opportunity posed by the mitigation plan to press for more exclusionary federal policies in Gold Butte.* There has long been a push to declare Gold Butte a national conservation area (NCA), something on which locals in Clark County are deeply divided (with the environmental activists on one side, and most other long-time residents on the other).”
Some have disagreed with certain of my statements. Ok, but they seem to have chosen oddly.
First, I think I did say that the situation is more complex than the media reports. However, when the media says that armed militiamen have arrived, and show film of armed civialians, it seems reasonable to accept that fact.
I did not say that militias are bad, per se. I did say that some of them would welcome a violent confrontation. I think it goes without saying, that when you show up to face down a heavily armed government force, you welcome, if you don’t actively seek, violent confrontation.
I think the corollary is that some in government may also welcome such a confrontation if they can orchestrate events in their favor. Make themselves look tough a a time when they look like Pansies. I am not talking about the folks on the line; much further up the food chain.
Finally, unless people rally to the cause by the thousand or tens of thousands rather than by the hundreds, I am willing to put money on the outcome favoring a government that has recently bought millions of rounds of ammo, and numerous armored vehicles for its semi-military “security forces”. The Bundys are badly out gunned, and the short attention span of the population does not favor their cause. Government can be patient.
The fact that the lap dog Federal Courts have already sided with the bureaucratic power/land grab is also a telling sign.
Sorry. My heart goes out to the Bundys. I doubt that they wanted this fight. I am convinced that they were going about their business, abiding by the agreements that they thought protected their rights, until the bureaucracy changed the rules. The Old Man probably got a stiff necked. He would have to have some of that in him to be where he is and doing what he is doing. He inherited it. Looks like his kids have as well. They are not easy to push, and probably don’t have much respect for people who work in air conditioned offices, and make up rules that favor other people in air conditioned offices. I am sympathetic because I grew up around people who were trying to scratch a living from the land while government “experts” told them how much cash crop they were allowed to plant. Never enough. In the usual manner of unintended consequences–or were they?–the big dogs bought up the allotments dirt cheap, and the red necks (actually we called ourselves Crackers before it became an epithet) worked for the “man” to eke a living. Still, the Bundys are holding a losing hand. Unless we all are ready to draw the line and head to Nevada and are willing to stand indefinitely in the heat and dust, and face down the big dogs and the tasers; and maybe the guns. Somehow I doubt that will happen. There will be much pontificating, but precious little action. Me too.
O.F. this time may be different. This time people don’t seem to care about court orders and the law. I think they are sick of Greens in and out of government using lawfare to steal peoples property.
Enough armed people showed up for .gov to run away. One story I saw said they left personal equipment and government documents behind when they abandoned their base in haste.
My fear is .gov being stupid bullies will kill one of the Bundys and someone will begin a “a hundred heads” campaign in response. Then it might well be game on.
It mentions the case of Wayne Hage, a rancher in northern Nevada, who has been fighting the BLM and Forest Service in court for over twenty years. Hage’s case was shown by Fox News last week in a program called, “Enemies of the State.”
Hage has won his court battle and the court decreed that the government owed the Hage ranch several million dollars in damages. The government has not paid and is appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court because, “That’s where we always win.”
These are important, even Earth shaking, cases that will determine whether our Federal lands will be used productively for the good of the nation or closed off to productive activity to satisfy the tastes of the Watermelons.
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What if we the people have decided that we have had enough of law fare by government for cronies and simply refuse to let this happen?
http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/04/12/feds-want-relocate-desert-tortoise-chinese-solar-farm-sponsored-harry-reid/
On the oft chance that this link needs more linking. ^^^
http://tavernkeepers.com/bundyranch-its-the-land-stupid/
The second link has some additional critical details.
In sum, the Bundy family is the last of the ranchers.
This L O N G campaign has never been about collecting reasonable fees for grazing land — ever.
It’s always been about un-turfing the legacy ranchers from the American desert — with Nevada at the top of the list.
There is NO WAY that this fiasco is not being orchestrated via the Majority Leader’s office. He’s slotted one crew member after another into the BLM top job. This is Putinism in America.
It’s scary the amount of firepower the feds bring to bear in these situations.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/blm-nevada-and-reid-did-get-one-kill/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD61YFxUga4
Those videos should give you a good view of the op.
Wonderful post by Hinderaker, finally (and fairly and fascinatingly) describing what it is all about.
I loved his concluding paragraph, a more generalized description – – the kind where you say “yes, how true, so well put” – – after I read it, and it occurred to me once more how great novels and movies really ought to be emerging based on the twisted legal and social conditions of America at this time, but are not:
So let’s have some sympathy for Cliven Bundy and his family. They don’t have a chance on the law, because under the Endangered Species Act and many other federal statutes, the agencies are always in the right. And their way of life is one that, frankly, is on the outs. They don’t develop apps. They don’t ask for food stamps. It probably has never occurred to them to bribe a politician. They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies or regulations that hamstring competitors. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They have never even gone to law school. So what possible place is there for the Bundys in the Age of Obama?
The law is whatever tyrants using democracy says it is.
I guess I must be a little slow today. I can’t find the post Tonawanda is talking about. I’ve went to all the links in this article and find no posts by- Hinderaker ??
Ann Barnhardt has a good summary also.
Mike: I made the same mistake at first. Neo has an almost unnoticeable link right below the headline. It says “here.”
It is a sad story. I don’t think they have a prayer of prevailing, and someone could end up dead before it is over.
As Hinderaker made clear, the story is a little more complex than the drive-by media reports. But, Mr Bundy lets his argument be distilled to an issue of excessive Federal ownership of western land. Here he is on a slippery slope because this is fait accompli. It doesn’t seem that he can even get the support of the state of Nevada on this issue. (States are too dependent on Fed handouts to take them on over open land ownership.) I am also afraid that by letting militias join him, he has invited trouble as well. Some of those are eager for a violent confrontation.
It seems to me that the best argument would be the arbitrary changes to the grazing leases that ranchers had paid for over generations; the improvements that his family had made to the land under the provisions of those leases; and the massive bureaucratic monsters that all Americans must deal with these days. I believe that most Americans, who bump up against the government in their own lives, would sympathize with him. Various members of the family have made those points, but they tend to be drowned out; and the old man tends to go off on tangents.
Old, you didn’t watch the video, did ya.
“Militias”, Oldflyer? Only time I saw that word used re Bundy was as an allegation by a jornolist.
“Militia” is not a dirty word.
That you believe in making a “best argument” shows you are still full of hope, perhaps quite unrealistically; the days of reasonableness and reasoned public discourse are long behind us, IMO.
As to the lack of having a prayer of prevailing, I offer Sun Tzu: “On desperate ground, proclaim to your soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives. The only chance of life lies in giving up all hope of it.” (500 BC)
Hinderaker gets the bigger picture, which a lot of people don’t understand.
This is just the beginning. The Feds are not going to let this stand. They can’t, if they want to continue to get people off of public lands using the Endangered Species Act. And that is what they have been doing for the last 20 years. It began under the Clinton administration. Slowed some during the Bush years, but has been going full tilt during Obama’s years. The Watermelons (Green on the outside , red on the inside) have had this as their goal since the late 60s when the Endangered Species Act was passed (the most anti-private property law ever passed in this country) and the EPA established.
At one time the BLM and Forest Service partnered with loggers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and others who put public land to productive use. For which the users always paid fees to the government. The Watermelons don’t want that. They want to drive private activity from public lands. 20 years ago when the Desert Tortoise was declared endangered, there were 52 ranchers in Clark County, Nevada, Bundy is the last one. All the others have been driven out. It’s all been done under color of the law. Bundy doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on as long as the Endangered Species Act and Watermelon friendly judges exist. He doesn’t seem to understand what has happened. He says the land belongs to the County or State. Not so, under present law. He needs to point out how the law (Endangered Species Act) was used against him and his fellow ranchers. That is where the problem lies and is the ultimate solution to the problem.
In the meantime, the government will bide its time. They can use facial recognition, cell phone monitoring, and spies to find out who is supporting Bundy and will work to bring legal pressure to bear to intimidate them. My sympathies are with Bundy, but he’s in bad position unless he can enlist some legislators who will point out the problems with the law and the way the BLM and Forest Service have become agents of the Watermelons and their agenda. If the Watermelons ever succeed in getting anti-global warming laws passed, things will get much worse for all private enterprise everywhere, not just on government lands. We need to try to get people to see how this has been working and where it leads. Bundy is a good example, but like so many other outrages (IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious) the mainstream media are not covering it or
covering it with a pro-government stance.
The Feds aren’t going away. But all of us need to recognize the bigger pattern. Logging shut down in the PNW. Mining shut down all over the country. Ranchers harassed and run out of business. Farmers denied irrigation water in the San Joaquin valley. Those are just the most visible ones.
Many other people have been harassed by these people. I’m one of them. That’s why I know what’s been happening. I used to own a share in an irrigation ditch to water my small hay fields. Out of the blue we were attacked by the Watermelons and forced to spend $1.25 million on our irrigation system, or shut down. My share was $12,500. I saw the handwriting on the wall when our lawyer told us that this wasn’t the end. That the Watermelons would keep harassing us until we were forced to shut down. I sold out and walked away. That’s what most people choose to do. And that’s what Bundy refuses to do. He’s got more gumption than me, but his family has a 100 year history with the land. Those are deep roots!
The idea that someone could end up dead, is based on MSM style info gathering.
Someone already died. BLM’s park rangers or goons or mercs, shot them. One dead, bicycle rider, 20 something year old.
So… yea, someone “could end up dead”.
Also since the battle is over, not sure what people mean by the other stuff. The war is never over so long as the Left exists.
Powerline has an incomplete understanding of this conflict. I doubt they have offensive or defensive powers against lawfare. To obey the law is to be compliant in lawfare.
That’s why I know what’s been happening.
Back in 07, people didn’t even get 10% of what was going on with the Leftist Dominion and Regime.
So now do we know 50 or 100% of what’s going on? No.
I estimate that the stuff you’re talking about is merely another front, and that the sum total of what people know about what the Left’s been doing is between 10% and 19% now.
People have yet to see even 80% of the Left’s true power.
Here’s an addendum to my earlier comment:
“But, as documented by Free Republic and others, a separate BLM document naming Cliven Bundy, last updated in March 2014, had this to say about his cattle:
Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.
(As of this writing, a cached version of the BLM document in question was available here.)
“Non-governmental organizations” means, in this case, environmental activists. Not all of them favor development of the Dry Lake SEZ. But some who are neutral about that, or even opposed to it, have nevertheless taken the opportunity posed by the mitigation plan to press for more exclusionary federal policies in Gold Butte.* There has long been a push to declare Gold Butte a national conservation area (NCA), something on which locals in Clark County are deeply divided (with the environmental activists on one side, and most other long-time residents on the other).”
The article has good maps of where everything is. The Watermelons (NGOs) pushing for more mitigation on the Gold Butte area where Bundy ranches is typical of the way they work. They will try to drive out private use of public lands.
It’s well worth reading more at: http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/04/12/feds-want-relocate-desert-tortoise-chinese-solar-farm-sponsored-harry-reid/#syOQHckZIqe1L0sb.99
Some have disagreed with certain of my statements. Ok, but they seem to have chosen oddly.
First, I think I did say that the situation is more complex than the media reports. However, when the media says that armed militiamen have arrived, and show film of armed civialians, it seems reasonable to accept that fact.
I did not say that militias are bad, per se. I did say that some of them would welcome a violent confrontation. I think it goes without saying, that when you show up to face down a heavily armed government force, you welcome, if you don’t actively seek, violent confrontation.
I think the corollary is that some in government may also welcome such a confrontation if they can orchestrate events in their favor. Make themselves look tough a a time when they look like Pansies. I am not talking about the folks on the line; much further up the food chain.
Finally, unless people rally to the cause by the thousand or tens of thousands rather than by the hundreds, I am willing to put money on the outcome favoring a government that has recently bought millions of rounds of ammo, and numerous armored vehicles for its semi-military “security forces”. The Bundys are badly out gunned, and the short attention span of the population does not favor their cause. Government can be patient.
The fact that the lap dog Federal Courts have already sided with the bureaucratic power/land grab is also a telling sign.
Sorry. My heart goes out to the Bundys. I doubt that they wanted this fight. I am convinced that they were going about their business, abiding by the agreements that they thought protected their rights, until the bureaucracy changed the rules. The Old Man probably got a stiff necked. He would have to have some of that in him to be where he is and doing what he is doing. He inherited it. Looks like his kids have as well. They are not easy to push, and probably don’t have much respect for people who work in air conditioned offices, and make up rules that favor other people in air conditioned offices. I am sympathetic because I grew up around people who were trying to scratch a living from the land while government “experts” told them how much cash crop they were allowed to plant. Never enough. In the usual manner of unintended consequences–or were they?–the big dogs bought up the allotments dirt cheap, and the red necks (actually we called ourselves Crackers before it became an epithet) worked for the “man” to eke a living. Still, the Bundys are holding a losing hand. Unless we all are ready to draw the line and head to Nevada and are willing to stand indefinitely in the heat and dust, and face down the big dogs and the tasers; and maybe the guns. Somehow I doubt that will happen. There will be much pontificating, but precious little action. Me too.
O.F. this time may be different. This time people don’t seem to care about court orders and the law. I think they are sick of Greens in and out of government using lawfare to steal peoples property.
Enough armed people showed up for .gov to run away. One story I saw said they left personal equipment and government documents behind when they abandoned their base in haste.
My fear is .gov being stupid bullies will kill one of the Bundys and someone will begin a “a hundred heads” campaign in response. Then it might well be game on.
Here’s a link to an article that explains better than I can what has been happening and how:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/fight-federal-abuse-of-property-rights-by-making-the-government-obey-its-own-rules/article/2547278?custom_click=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
It mentions the case of Wayne Hage, a rancher in northern Nevada, who has been fighting the BLM and Forest Service in court for over twenty years. Hage’s case was shown by Fox News last week in a program called, “Enemies of the State.”
Hage has won his court battle and the court decreed that the government owed the Hage ranch several million dollars in damages. The government has not paid and is appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court because, “That’s where we always win.”
There’s a good discussion of the Hage case here:
http://nj.npri.org/nj98/04/hage.htm
These are important, even Earth shaking, cases that will determine whether our Federal lands will be used productively for the good of the nation or closed off to productive activity to satisfy the tastes of the Watermelons.