From another article:
According to [Ron] Paul, the entire incident in Clark County could have emerged differently if the government reconsidered the way it claimed land rights. Bundy said that the disputed property had been in his family for nearly 150 years, but the BLM insisted that his animals were trespassing on federal land since he stopped paying the government a grazing fee back in the early 1990s.
“I don’t believe I owe one penny to the United States government,” Bundy told Nevada’s Desert News last week. “I don’t have a contract with the United States government.”
On Friday, Paul told Cavuto that the Bundy family “had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it,” yet the law is “not clean enough.”
“I think land should be in the states and I think the states should sell it to the people,” he continued, adding that “it’s worked out quite well in big states.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here’s an interesting and relevant post on that thread:
To: Jim Robinson
I wish the media would get out the whole story on this. They start with the Rancher refusing to pay federal grazing fees. They leave out that the fed confiscated his land, of which has been in the family for generations, years ago and then turned around and told him to pay for his cattle to graze on it. The land was confiscated and dedicated to the fed in order to protect a tortoise (and something else). But in the same vacinity, the fed allowed commercial development on the same land that was previously undeveloped.
The family refused to pay the fed to use their own property and refused to recognize the feds ownership of the property. So 20 years later, the fed decides to enforce the fees retroactively and confiscate the cattle that graze there.
What recourse did the family have? You can’t very well take the government to court or file a law suit against the fed or the BLM. Property rights are (or were) a founding fundamental right established by our founding fathers. It’s one of the things our freedom and existence is based on.
4 posted on 4/15/2014 10:43:59 AM by Tenacious 1
That’s what gets me. You will always be on the wrong side of “the Law” when the people who want control over you make the laws. Why do you think they make so damn many? So we will always be be in violation of, or required to. You don’t have to break laws or regulations, just live your life the way you have always lived and they will make up rules and regulations that put in in violation without you having to act. That’s what Obamacare does. The things they are charging this rancher with and many others are things they made up that should never have been allowed.