Posted on 04/28/2014 5:21:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It is, in a way, too bad that Cliven Bundy — the rancher who became a right-wing hero after refusing to pay fees for grazing his animals on federal land, and bringing in armed men to support his defiance — has turned out to be a crude racist. Why? Because his ranting has given conservatives an easy out, a way to dissociate themselves from his actions without facing up to the terrible wrong turn their movement has taken.
For at the heart of the standoff was a perversion of the concept of freedom, which for too much of the right has come to mean the freedom of the wealthy to do whatever they want, without regard to the consequences for others.
Start with the narrow issue of land use. For historical reasons, the federal government owns a lot of land in the West; some of that land is open to ranching, mining and so on. Like any landowner, the Bureau of Land Management charges fees for the use of its property. The only difference from private ownership is that by all accounts the government charges too little — that is, it doesn’t collect as much money as it could, and in many cases doesn’t even charge enough to cover the costs that these private activities impose. In effect, the government is using its ownership of land to subsidize ranchers and mining companies at taxpayers’ expense.
It’s true that some of the people profiting from implicit taxpayer subsidies manage, all the same, to convince themselves and others that they are rugged individualists. But they’re actually welfare queens of the purple sage.
And this in turn means that treating Mr. Bundy as some kind of libertarian hero is,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Bundy family used that land 80 years before the BLM was even founded.
And what about the government wanting Mr. Bundy to reduce the size of his herd by 90%? That would put him out of business right there (which is what the Agenda 21 types want).
Still carrying Dingy Harry’s water, I see.
Paul Krugman my favorite slime ball.
Scumbag Paul Krugman.
Thugman’s DemocRat plantation ain’t too pretty.
oh, I see. So small miners are welfare queens, too. Nice, NYT, but wait, wasn’t that you that trotted out a heavily edited tape and then pretended an extended tape didn’t exist? Oh, and while thinking up a response to that, please explain to us, NYT, why placer mining fees went from $100 to $1600 in one year, when anyone can go camp on that land at any time and, since it isn’t guarded 24/7, can pick up anything they want? why the raise in fees, other than to force claim-holders to abandon claims back to the BLM?
The author can’t even write an opening paragraph without telling multiple lies.
Now ... the real issue here is that BLM (among other agencies) is acting more like a hostile occupying army than like public servants. The whole agency needs to be disarmed and disbanded.
I believe Bundy owns his own ranch, but had a deal, for many years, to allow his cows to graze on public lands. He was happy to pay the grazing fees, to the State of Nevada, because he had expected the BLM to actually MANAGE the land, not just own it and charge ranchers for the use of it, without any stewardship at all.
Harry and his gang in Nevada gets the BLM to run people off "federal" land and in the process make it impossible for the ranchers to make any money by
setting limits on the size of their herds.
The ranchers are forced to sell out to a Reid front company for pennies on the dollar, and Reid sells to the BLM for big bucks.
How many of Bundy's neighbors were forced out of business and lost their property?
Clippers’ Donald Sterling is a typical white liberal elite - the New York Times hates that truth.
Clippers’ Donald Sterling is a typical white liberal elite - the New York Times hates that truth.
Hey Paul Krugman why aren’t you writing about all the democrats who have taken money and favors from Donald Sterling?
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