The Real Story Behind The Bundy Ranch Harassment

danaradio ^ | April 11, 2014

[george76]

By now you’re familiar with the standoff between the federal government, i.e. the Bureau of Land Management, and 67 year-old rancher Cliven Bundy. .. The BLM asserts their power through the expressed desire to protect the endangered desert tortoise, a tortoise so “endangered” that their population can no longer be contained by the refuge constructed for them so the government is closing it and euthanizing over a thousand tortoises. The tortoises, the excuse that BLM has given for violating claims to easements and running all but one lone rancher out of southern Nevada, is doing fine. In fact, the tortoise has lived in harmony with cattle in the Gold Butte, Clark County Nevada for over a hundred years, or as long as Cliven Bundy’s family has lived on the land as ranchers

...

A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher. They want his land. The tortoise wasn’t of concern when Harry Reid worked BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore. Whittemore was convicted of illegal campaign contributions to Senator Reid. Reid’s former senior adviser is now the head of BLM. Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over 84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests.

BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. ... If only Clive Bundy were a big Reid donor.

[Paladin2]

Send that to the NYT....

[When do we get liberated?]

Also known as “pick your fights”. I feel the same way. If I had access to the trillions of dollars the govt has I could be a rich man easily. But since I don’t own that money I do not expect to be able to use it. That isn’t his land even if his cattle grazed there for friggin millennia. Its not his and he shouldn’t assume access to it. I pick my fights and this is a crappy one.

[When do we get liberated?]

that is a great design...as long as you never have a friend there in bed. Hit the headboard and an 870 is ejected onto your forehead.

[weston]

The US purchased Louisiana years ago also.
Who has the rights to that land? The Feds or the state or the private property owners? Can the Feds or BLM go into any of the Louisiana purchased lands and claim it protected and off limits?
Nevada became a state after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo so your reasoning is preposterous.

[Chgogal]

I say give Nevada back to the Mexicans. That way Bundy can become an Illegal American in Mexico.

[AzNASCARfan]

Wondering where you read that? The article says he paid Clark County grazing fees until ‘93?? Says he does not have a problem paying the people of his state... I know here in Arizona, land that used to be posted as state trust land back when I moved here is now posted as BLM land 30 years later... and usage rules have changed too. With the feds managing state lands from Washington, we end up with huge losses from wildfires now because land can not be touched. You hear about the 19 firefighters we lost?? They were fighting a fire on BLM land... Then OSHA (another federal agency) fines the department for not fighting it correctly and letting the firefighters die... That’s our government logic for you.
This guys family has been ranching the land for 140 years, not up on my history but when did Nevada become a state?? Not sure if they beat us by 40 years or not, but I think that was still a territory when his family started ranching it... should be his by the old homestead act it seems like to me.
I mentioned it on another post, but if the family had set up a mine on this land 140 years ago and produced enough gold or silver from the land, it would have been a patented mine and he would have owned the property outright... 140 years of cattle ranching has to equal a damn large sum of gold... I don’t see a whole lot of difference here... Just curious, Anybody know how much land the Feds control in the south or on the east coast??

[maxwellsmart_agent]

The Obama administration is making a huge mistake here. The propaganda advantage they are giving the Republicans is really big. The sentiment is with Mr. Bundy. Why do they have to remove the cattle to protect a turtle? The cows are not looking to kill them. They will not even step on them. They do not go for the same food. Where is the conflict?
The administration is losing the argument. If they continue, what they are giving away, they will not get back.

[Abundy]

If I were a betting man I’d be that this entire fiasco is tied to the DOJ refusing FBI assistance to the state corruption investigation that appears to involve Reid and Lee.

There is just too much of Harry Reid, including his spawn, involved with the sale of this land to the ChiComs.

[devolve]

……..Reid, Obama, Holder - a new spin on Pigford 3 and reparations tossed into the blender except they never expecte to have thousands of angry American men and women to be headed for Nevada to back up Bundy as he faces the armed FBI and BLM and their trained dogs that have attacked and assaulted unarmed women

- Great PR exposure for the Democrats with a big election coming this November -

[khelus]

You make a good point, but this article is actually one of the better ones making the rounds. In the arid West, actual ownership of the land is not nearly as important as ownership and control of the water rights and the grazing rights.

Bundy claims that Clark County owns the land. The Federal government holds the title to the land, but Clark County controls the grazing rights and Bundy has a well established claim to those grazing rights for which he has paid the authorities. He also controls water rights, which is just as important. That’s the way things work in the West and why land disputes always center around water and grazing.

Reid and his cronies, together with their environmental wacko partners in crime have co opted the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Act to run legitimate ranchers out of business by denying them their water and grazing rights. It’s organized crime in operation out on the range and when they can’t get the courts to go along, they bribe or change the judges.

Kudos

And they are doing it to benefit a Chinese solar company in which Reid and his son have investments.

[Hoodat]

The failure may have been mine. I should have tracked back.

[MileHi]

I opposed it very strongly, as I did the murder of Eric Scott.

Glad to hear it.

[Mr Rogers]

“Can the Feds or BLM go into any of the Louisiana purchased lands and claim it protected and off limits?”

If the land has never been claimed by the state or by private owners, then yes, it remains federal land.

“Nevada became a state after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo so your reasoning is preposterous.”

As part of becoming a state, Nevada was required to agree to:

“In obedience to the requirements of an act of the Congress of the United States, approved March twenty-first, A.D. eighteen hundred and sixty-four, to enable the people of Nevada to form a constitution and state government, this convention, elected and convened in obedience to said enabling act, do ordain as follows, and this ordinance shall be irrevocable, without the consent of the United States and the people of the State of Nevada:

...Third. That the people inhabiting said territory do agree and declare, that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States;”

That doesn’t leave much room for claiming the land belongs to the state of Nevada.

[dsc]

Thank you for the information.

[dsc]

I think a more fundamental question here is, how did the people of the United States and the United States Government come to be adversaries?

That, in turn, leads me to wonder how, given our founding documents, can the US government rightly prevail in any such conflict?

[uncitizen]

The propaganda advantage they are giving the Republicans is really big

Republicans are not interested in any real propaganda advantage from this. there's virtually nothing that separates "DemocRATs" and "Republicans" anymore. It's one big game and they're all in on it, and we are their opponents.

[Mr Rogers]

“I think a more fundamental question here is, how did the people of the United States and the United States Government come to be adversaries?”

That is the real and horrible question. I wasn’t ashamed of my government in the 60s...not too much so, at least.

Perhaps the Anti-Federalists were right, and the US Constitution put too much power in a central government. It works OK as long as the population is a moral population, which largely self-regulates, but fails when people without morals take over. In today’s America, the federal government looks for excuses to take power over people and rule them.

I think another part is the increasing urban outlook in the US. A farmer or rancher HAS to be self-sufficient because there isn’t anyone else to do things for him. A rural kid learns early on to do things for himself. It seems to me that city folk want their buses & subways, want their cops, want to be taken care of in everything. If you know a call to the cops means someone MIGHT show up within an hour, you believe in owning guns. If you believe in your stupid city heart that the cops are seconds away, then you might accept the idea that Mr Cop will come to save me.

I’m very pessimistic about the future of the USA. I think the poor have figured out they can vote themselves other peoples money. I also think they figured out that tribal politics - give X to people like me - works well. The US government seems much more oppressive and unrepresentative today than in was in 1760, and what is the purpose of a Constitution if 9 judges in black robes can add, “Thou must admire homosexuals” to it any time they feel like it?

[Verginius Rufus]

Nevada became a state in 1864, just in time to participate in the 1864 election. Normally the population had to be over 60 thousand for a territory to be admitted as a state but Nevada had only 42,000 people as late as 1900. They might have been over 60,000 in 1864 depending on how many prospectors had gone there looking for gold and silver. I think they were let in early because the Republicans thought they might need those 3 electoral votes.

According to someone on one of the FNC programs last night, the land in question is state land, not federal land.

[dsc]

“what is the purpose of a Constitution if 9 judges in black robes can add, “Thou must admire homosexuals” to it any time they feel like it?”

The three branches can each do as they like, for as long as no one stops them.

[Jacquerie]

Yes, just as mineral rights, riparian rights, and others can be bought and sold separately.