Posted on 04/15/2014 4:11:13 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Federal officials appear to be waiting out Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters.
Two days after a dispute over grazing rights, cattle and $1 million in fees and fines threatened to spin into a Wild West shootout, officials with the Bureau of Land Management promised they weren’t finished with Bundy.
“The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially,” BLM Director Neil Kornze said in a statement that followed the Bureau’s decision to release nearly 400 head of Bundy’s cattle that had been seized as part of a fight over grazing fees.
Spokesman Craig Leff declined to be more specific.
States rights supporters, including some armed militia members, stormed to Bundy’s aid in the last week amid a confrontation that had been building for more than two decades. It had provoked fears of a violent standoff like the 1993 standoff in Waco, Texas that ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian compound.
The government says Bundy’s cattle have been trespassing on and grazing on federal land for 20 years. They say Bundy hasn’t paid for a grazing permit since a dispute that began in 1993 over protections for the desert tortoise, when the government first sought to make Bundy pay.
The agency has obtained numerous court orders mandating that Bundy stop using the land.
Bundy doesn’t recognize the federal government’s authority over the land, which his cattle have grazed upon for decades. He has asserted that his family has used the land as a ranch for generations, before BLM existed.
The rancher, his family and supporters have also cried foul at what they see as unnecessary force from federal officials and contractors, including carrying guns and allegedly assaulting protestors.
Bundy did not return requests for comment.
Observers say the government would be smart to wait for the dust to settle, and then to try to resolve the situation.
“It’s a very prudent strategy for the government to say ‘we’re going to let this go for now, but we’re going to revisit it,’” said James McCarthy, a professor of political geography at Clark University.
“They can afford to play the long game,” said McCarthy, who suggested the government could wait six months or longer for its next action.
Jonathan Emord, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney specializing in disputes over federal land, predicted that the government will move to the courts for the next battle.
“They’ll press charges against him in federal court, and they’ll try to basically bleed his ability to defend himself, and beat him up on technical grounds,” Emord said. “They’ll put him in a situation where he’ll end up with a determination of liability that would be so great that he would have to sell his ranch to them to extinguish his debt.”
McCarthy said the dispute can be linked to federal government decisions in the late 19th century to keep large swaths of land in public ownership while allowing private citizens to use the land for various reasons.
“When our federal land system was set up, it was completely understood and accepted and part of the design that the private landowners … would have really extensive access to and use of public lands,” McCarthy said.
One of BLM’s predecessors, the Grazing Service, was established to manage the land that had been set aside for livestock grazing. Though the federal government owned the land, it always had a system to allow grazing.
“There’s a long history of federal allowance of trespass,” Emord said.
The land management also was put in place in order to encourage settlers to move to the remote areas and use it for purposes like ranching, logging and gold exploration.
“Here you have the law inviting people to settle in the West,” he said. “You create populations out there who are then dependent on the business that you invited as the federal government.”
But in the latter half of the 20th century, as the country become more aware of its effects on the environment, the government’s priorities moved away from providing economic benefits through its land and more toward conservation.
“They are not wrong that the system that was set up really explicitly with the understanding that it would be used for commodity production and economic purposes,” McCarthy said. “The rules and the priorities shifted on them somewhat quickly.”
Emord said restrictions on land use, such as grazing fees, sprung up in the 1990s. Since those restrictions devalue people’s livelihoods and businesses, they amount to taking of property, Emord said.
“It destroys the economic value of the ranch without just compensation,” he said.
“They’ll press charges against him in federal court, and they’ll try to basically bleed his ability to defend himself, and beat him up on technical grounds,” Emord said. “They’ll put him in a situation where he’ll end up with a determination of liability that would be so great that he would have to sell his ranch to them to extinguish his debt.”
Nicely protects Harry Reid from mention. “Bundy didn’t return comment”— he’s been so busy giving interviews, he probably didn’t have a minute.
“They’ll put him in a situation where he’ll end up with a determination of liability that would be so great that he would have to sell his ranch to them to extinguish his debt.”
The plan.
No mention of Reids son or the China solar plant.
That would be the prudent, cooler head approach of the regulatory state that strangles all that it opposes. However, that contrasts with unverified reports that a SWAT armed raid is planned that would likely set off a conflagration before the election.
The courts have already ruled against Bundy several times and affirmed that he already owes over a million. When they start going after his bank accounts and remove his ability to sell his cattle and buy his food and ranch supplies then they'll effectively put him out of business without a shot being fired.
EXEMPT Obama has long-failed from Libya, through Syria,
through Crimea, and openly threatened allies
from Poland, through Israel, to Japan.
So, “mom-jeans and girl’s bike” Obama
— to compensate and to appear ‘strong’ —
will DECIMATE and KILL any American family
who stands in his, or EXEMPT Reid’s EXEMPT family’s,
way of selling out America for money and/or treason.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/04/harry_reid_and_its_not_over.html
“.....here is Reid post-George Zimmerman verdict:
On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asked for the Justice Department to prosecute George Zimmerman, who was acquitted Saturday night in the killing of Trayvon Martin. “I think the Justice Department is going to take a look at this,” Reid told NBC’s Meet the Press. “This isn’t over with and I think that’s good. That’s our system, it’s gotten better, not worse” (emphasis added).
.....Harry really, really likes “it’s not over” language.
Here he is again on gun control: “I want everyone within the sound of my voice to know that the conversation is not over.”
It’s not just in NV. Also being done inTX and CO
I would hope that the Bundy’s have moved their funds into hands/names that the gubmint cannot touch. I see their bank accounts being frozen and in the not to distant future, liens put against their properties and numerous other ways the gubmint will use to put this man under.
> The government says Bundy’s cattle have been trespassing on
> and grazing on federal land for 20 years.
Illegal aliens and drug cartels have been tresspassing, stealing from and killing Americans on federal, state, and municipal land for about 60 years, and they don’t seem to mind that.
This force would be better applied to our southern border, doncha think?
They are going to wait until after the election. A bunch of white cowboys killed by JBTs while waving American flags is really bad optics in an election year.
Which could have been avoided if Bundy simply placed the fees in an interest bearing escrow account. If he’d simply paid the fees over the last 20 years into that account then he won’t have to lose his farm.
Bundy did pay the fees and worked with the BLM from 1954 thru 1993. Then he came upon a kook theory that’s lost over and over again in the courts. Bundy will lose and he will lose his ranch and money. His is not a winning case.
This writer feels competent to gather info and quotes for an article yet doesn't see the clear photos and videos of the Taser use as evidence enough to not use the word "allegedly"??? C'mon man!!!
As Khrushchev said, “We will bury you.”
They don’t WANT to “resolve the matter administratively and judicially”.
They WANT to have a show of force such that it sends a message to anyone who would dare resist the fedgov.
The Government was testing the waters. Trying to gauge the amount of serious resistance that is put there. This Administration is not sure how much actual support it could get from the US Military in open armed conflict with American citizens. The level of dislike, and distrust for the Obama Administration in the military is extremely high. The Government needs to know if it can quell any uprising using its armed Government agents from dozens of agency’s.
He said something to the effect of “we can’t have the American people violate federal law and just walk away”.
Well, Harry, how about “American” GOVERNMENT people violating the law, the Constitution, and continuing to do so without consequence?
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