Just as they did the other ranchers around him.
It matters not one whit whether he pays the fees or not. Their real goal is to shut him down.
You are overfocusing on an unimportant part of this, and in the process supporting and buying into the feds game.
MarMema: It matters not one whit whether he pays the fees or not.
It matters greatly. He could afford to pay the fees, right? Did he put them in an escrow account to be held by a neutral third party until this is resolved? No, he didn’t. That’s the normal procedure in law.
You can withhold payments if the other party is not living up to its contractual end of the bargain. Then you bring the case and you start out with the moral high ground. “Judge, this isn’t about not wanting to pay. It’s about a pattern of abuse of contractual obligations.”
Take a look at this case:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/144609491/United-States-v-Estate-of-Hage-No-2-07-cv-01154-RCJ-VCF-Findings-of-Fact-Conclusions-of-Law-and-Injunction-D-Nev-May-24-2013
I got the link off of another thread. Read it. Hage had a kooky idea as well that there was no such thing as federal land. But, in this case the court recognized the fedgov abuse.
Here’s the quote from the case:
“In the present case, the Government’s actions over the past two decades shocks the conscience of the Court, and the burden on the Government of taking a few minutes to realize that the reference to the UCC on the Estate’s application was nonsensical and would not affect the terms of the permit was minuscule compared to the private interest affected. ..Based upon E. Wayne Hage’s declaration that he refused to waive his rights—a declaration that did not purport to change the substance of the grazing permit renewal for which he was applying, and which had no plausible legal effect other than to superfluously assert non-waiver of rights—the Government denied him a renewal grazing permit based upon its frankly nonsensical position that such an assertion of rights meant that the application had not been properly completed.”