I have to agree with him. Cliven Bundy got to use public land without paying even a fraction of what it is worth. He is a tenant - no more and no less. We all know what happens when we stop paying our rent to our landlord. The sheriff ultimately comes to evict us from the property. The only difference here is the landlord in question is the federal government.
Our law of contracts doesn’t change because of the nature of the lawful owner. The federal law doesn’t grant Bundy any more standing than a private tenant would have. We have laws and we have to live by them. If the Feds trespassed on private land, that would be one thing. But neither Bundy nor any one else has the right to use public land as they see fit.
Of course, if the American people want to change the arrangement, they can do so - through their elected representatives passing a new law. Until that happens we must obey the law regardless of our personal feelings about them and none of us get to decide what laws we would like to obey in this country.
RE: Cliven Bundy got to use public land without paying even a fraction of what it is worth. He is a tenant - no more and no less.
The question that concerns most FReepers is this — Why is the FEDERAL government in control of 84% of land in a State?
Bundy actually wanted to pay for grazing TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN NEVADA.
The dispute began in 1993, when the BLM interfered with Bundy’s grazing rights, citing protection of the Mojave Desert tortoise. Everything was OK before that.
It is not clear how cattle are a threat to the tortoise. They capped his herd to 150 animals on a 250-square-mile rangeland allotment. When Bundy saw his grazing fees were no longer being used to help ranchers, but to thwart them, he stopped paying monthly federal land fees of $1.35 per cow-calf pair, insisting that local government, not the BLM, should be in control of the lands.
Bundy’s family has raised cows on the land since the 1870s. The BLM was established much later in 1946. Cozy with federal judges, beginning in 1998, the BLM began to get rubber-stamped court orders requiring Bundy to remove his animals.