Posted on 04/09/2014 8:28:06 AM PDT by xzins
Armed federal agents deployed last week to northeast Clark County, Nev., for what can only be described as a major escalation in a decades-long standoff between a local cattle rancher and the U.S. government.
.Cliven Bundy, the last remaining rancher in the southern Nevada county, stands in defiance of a 2013 court order demanding that he remove his cattle from public land managed by the U.S. Department of the Interiors Bureau of Land Management.
The 67-year-old veteran rancher, who has compared the situation to similar confrontations with government officials in Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas, told TheBlaze that his family has used land in the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area since the late 1800s.
I have raised cattle on that land, which is public land for the people of Clark County, all my life. Why I raise cattle there and why I can raise cattle there is because I have preemptive rights, he said, explaining that among them is the right to forage.
Who is the trespasser here? Who is the trespasser on this land? Is the United States trespassing on Clark County, Nevada, land? Or is it Cliven Bundy who is trespassing on Clark County, Nevada, land? Whos the trespasser?
Claiming that all other options have been exhausted, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. National Park Service responded to Bundys inflexibility on the issue by calling on federal agents and contract cowboys to restrict access to the public land and to confiscate Bundys trespass cattle.
.Cattle have been in trespass on public lands in southern Nevada for more than two decades. This is unfair to the thousands of other ranchers who graze livestock in compliance with federal laws and regulations throughout the West, the Bureau of Land Management stated on its website about the case.
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(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
"I would strongly discourage you all from hitching your cart to this particular horse. While I have all manner of criticisms of the BLM and certainly of thuggish FEDGOV tactics, it is essential that one pick ones battles very carefully, and this is NOT a good battle to pick. The guy in question has been grazing his cattle at essentially zero feed cost for upwards of twenty years (well, THAT makes the cattle business easier, doesnt it!) because he stopped paying the BLM any lease charges. Again, we can debate all manner of things including the ridiculous rules about closing land to grazing in order to protect lizards or prairie chickens or whatever the fake endangered species du jour is, and certainly we can debate the existence of the BLM itself, but there is no free lunch; everyone else pays to graze. This guy is claiming, as I understand it, some grandfathered right to the land through the Mormon cult (again, BIG red flag), but I dont buy it. This situation stinks all around to my refined sniffer, and I would NOT die on this hill. Since so many have asked, that is my read. Just be careful with this one."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3142504/posts?page=21#21
Whose land is it?
Land and lively hood that goes back that far isn't a throwaway commodity. Homeland is often worth dying for. A man has to make a stand somewhere, I'll respect his decision and courage.
I’m offended by the roped off “first amendment area”
It’s belonged to the federal government since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
What did Jefferson do with the Louisianna Purchase?
Who came west and fought the Indian and the drought, the long trails, the wolves and the bears? Whose family has been working on the land for over a hundred years?
Who owns the land and who is the problem?
Bundy responds that had the BLM erected the proper fencing, his cattle wouldnt be in trespass.The failure of the BLM to fence this land adds a new aspect to this story, although I need to consider to what extent Nevada state laws apply to federal property.Nevada law is a fence out law that requires adjoin property owners, in this case the BLM, to maintain a fence that prevents cattle or other stock from encroaching in unwanted areas.
If the U.S. had properly maintained its fence, my cattle would hot have strayed or drifted off my property, Bundy said.
Bundy's quote contradict his other statements regarding the disputed land belonging to the State of Nevada, or being part of his property. "If the U.S. had properly maintained its fence" indicates ownership of the land by the federal government.
I’ve dealt with prescriptive rights and adverse possession but never pre-emptive rights. Certainly he is not so delusional to think that his self described rights preempt those of the federal government.
However he may have a case if he can prove the Feds didn’t enforce their right to contract for this access. Again this would be based upon some sort of documentation on his part or him not receiving any documentation from the feds stating their rights and his need to contract or face consequences (highly unlikely)...
Bundy is part of the problem, because he elected not to renew his grazing contract on this property twenty years ago. As part of his argument, he has stated on different occasions that the land belongs to (a) the State of Nevada, (b) his ranch, or (c) the BLM, whichever owner suited his argument at the time.
Bundy is part of the problem because he ignored court orders to remove his cattle after refusing to sign a new grazing agreement.
The BLM is part of the problem, because it didn't fence its land once it decided to prohibit all grazing on the land, some five years after Bundy refused to sign a new gazing agreement, and some three years or so after Bundy was first ordered by a federal court to remove his cattle from the land.
Maybe I’m just being skeptical, but this seems like a false flag set up to smoke out the not-smart. US Pravda is carrying the story without their usual censorship and sniping. It has a weak moral justification that the avg lo-info would not understand. instead of “they’re coming for your guns!”, it’s “they’re coming for your cows!”
Note the white older guy who hates government theme. aka, how they portray Tea Party every chance they get.
Ann is spot on.
I am not a believer in symbolic last stands. I’d rather live, and scalp the whoresons who robbed me on another day.
They will murder him. Sure as Lon Horiuchi is an over educated murderer.
If he is correct that his family has used that land since the 1800s, then he has standing, the same as right of way.
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That used to be true. The Supreme Court has made takings arbitrary now.
So...where do you draw your line?
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Person, not property. If people were circling the fedcoats as the feds circled me... Calculation might be different.
Great map on pre and post Civil War fed behavior.
Simon Kenton was claiming land in Ohio and Kentucky into the 1800’s using tomahawk claims.
You mark it, and it’s yours.
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