WA Ping
Some comments on his Face Book page
Posted on 04/17/2014 8:28:37 PM PDT by MarMema
Spokane Valley state legislator Matt Shea traveled to Nevada last weekend to support defiant rancher Cliven Bundy’s stand that he doesn’t have to pay grazing fees on federal land.
Shea is among a small coalition of legislators from Western states calling for federal lands to be handed over to states. The Nevada episode led to a standoff between Bundy and a large group of armed protesters against agents with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The agents had arrived to enforce a federal judge’s order to remove Bundy’s cattle from the land, but left and deflated the volatile scene.
Shea spoke the following day from property near the center of the dispute, saying the federal government has declared “war on rural America” with its rules and regulations on land use.
A spokesman for a group challenging Bundy said the rancher is doing something other cattlemen can’t – grazing hundreds of cattle for free on federal land without a permit.
Bundy has refused to obey federal court orders to remove his cattle from federal land managed by the BLM. The agency says he has failed to pay grazing fees for some 20 years, while Bundy says his family has historic grazing rights on the land dating to the 1800s and he’s willing to pay fees to the county but not the federal government.
The agency seized close to 400 head of the cattle last week, prompting states’ rights groups, self-styled constitutionalists and militia members to flock to the ranch to support Bundy. Oath Keepers, a group of current and former military, law enforcement and elected officials, announced Shea was leading a group of state legislators and others to the Bundy ranch “to prevent bloodshed and to stand in defense of hardworking rural Americans who are under assault by a runaway government.”
Shea did not return calls to his Valley and Olympia offices asking for a comment. At one point last week, his legislative aide Jim Robinson said he didn’t know where Shea was or if he was going to Nevada. “I don’t know. He hasn’t told me,” Robinson said.
The BLM backed down on Saturday, saying it wanted to avoid violence, and released Bundy’s cattle. Shea and a fellow representative and legislative ally, David Taylor, R-Moxie, apparently arrived on the scene Sunday and appeared with several other elected officials after a press conference, said Gavin Seim, of Ephrata, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in Central Washington’s 4th Congressional District.
“This isn’t going to stop here. It’s already happening in other places in America,” Shea says in a video Seim posted on YouTube. “This is a war on rural America.”
Legislators from Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada and Arizona were forming a coalition, Shea said, to prevent problems like what Bundy was facing by transferring federal land to the states and allowing states and counties to manage them, “not faraway Washington, D.C.” He also criticized BLM staff for pointing weapons at protesters during the standoff.
“A sniper rifle is not due process. We cannot let that stand as legislators,” Shea said, who called for elected officials and citizens to work to “restore our God-honored constitutional republic.”
Taylor said in the video that he and Shea made the trip because “if we don’t stand up for our neighbors, there won’t be anybody left when they come for us.”
Seim said he had been at the Nevada desert standoff for several days before the video was shot, having made the trip to represent “the Constitution and the people’s liberty.” For part of the time he served as a media contact for some of the protesters.
“I decided to put my money where my mouth is,” he said in a phone interview while returning to Washington from Nevada.
Although Bundy supporters call this a battle over the rancher’s constitutional rights and due process, others say he has been violating the law for more than 20 years. The BLM says he owes more than $1 million in fees; Bundy says it’s more like $300,000.
The federal government owns the land in question, and has since 1848 when it bought the land from Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War, Rob Mrowka of the Center for Biological Diversity said. The center, based in Tucson, Ariz., is among the nation’s leading environmental groups.
Bundy did have a permit to graze 150 cattle on the land, but he stopped paying grazing fees to the BLM in 1993. He argued the federal government didn’t own the land. At one point, he tried to pay fees to his local county, but Clark County officials wouldn’t accept them because they had no authority to do so. In 1998, he was found guilty of trespass by a federal court and ordered to remove his cattle, but those orders weren’t enforced and Bundy still refused to pay fees to the BLM.
Meanwhile, Clark County was buying up Bundy’s neighbors’ grazing rights and retiring them to create habitat for an endangered species of tortoise as replacement for habitat land it wanted to develop closer to Las Vegas, Mrowka said.
Eventually, the Center for Biological Diversity complained to the BLM and the agency prepared to round up cattle on the land but canceled the plans because of threats of violence. The center, in turn, threatened in 2012 to sue the BLM, and the agency returned to court in another effort to force Bundy to remove the cattle.
Last July, U.S. District Judge Lloyd George said not only had Bundy failed to comply with the previous order covering the original land, but his cattle had spread “and are trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land” managed by the BLM and the Park Service.
Lloyd again rejected Bundy’s claims that the federal government doesn’t own the land, as well as several other legal arguments involving federal and states’ rights. The judge ordered the rancher to remove his cattle in 45 days or the BLM could seize them.
That seizure stopped for the time being Saturday. Some protesters remain at the Bundy ranch, and the BLM has not said what its next step will be.
Wonderful. Each day it grows . Washington will create a martyr soon and it will be very sad. They lost their chance to snuff it out a year ago but now MILLIONS ARE WATCHING!!
Ted Cruz needs to get out there silently, and NOW.
BTTT
I give this evil satanic government full credit for being fully capable and willing to meet or exceed the standard set in Jonestown for murdering sitting Congressmen.
I blame the RHINO republicans for letting our govt become so lawless that our militias now have to protect us. They could have fought to stop this takeover but they just stood by and they still are. The genie is now out of the bottle and its not going back in.
I was at their outposts on State Route 170, and I will tell you, they ain't agonna leave soon.
Silently? I think that our gutless wonders, both Palin & Ted Cruz along with 100 or so other so-called "conservative, limited government" congress critters & senators need to grow some balls and speak out loudly & clearly and to condemn the near-massacre & tyranny by the fascist BLM death squads.
It also is way overdue and our legislatures need to speak out & to DISREGARD unjust laws & rulings by black robed tyrants, such as the judge who ruled against Cliven Bundy. All of a sudden liberals are for "a nation based on laws" over 900 cattle grazing, but are eager to ignore 20 million illegal aliens trespassing everywhere in the US including national & state lands. I say bulls__t and to ignore unjust judicial rulings.
Please remember that the Supreme Court has reversed more than 150 of earlier Supreme Court decisions on natural law. Is that what you would consider as someone being consistent and reliable in interpreting the Constitution?
The Resolution of 1780, "the federal trust respecting public lands obligated the united States to extinguish both their governmental jurisdiction and their title to land that achieved statehood."
In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, The Charter of Liberty contained these words, "The new Federal Government is an agent serving the states.", "The delegated powers are few and defined", "All powers not listed are retained by the states or the people", "The Resolution of 1780 formed the basis upon which Congress was required to dispose of territorial and public lands", "All laws shall be made by the Congress of the United States". (not agency bureaucrats!)
That should be sufficient for you to determine who all public lands belong to, hint - NOT the Federal Government!
"The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, it's meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted. it means now". So said the Supreme Court in South Carolina v United States in 1905
Articles of Confederation, Article VI, clause 1 All engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. In Article IX "... no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States."
Formation of a "more perfect union" does not absolve that union of prior engagements, including those obligations establish by the resolution of 1780 and the Articles of Confederation.
Our government system is established by compact, not between the Government and the State Governments but between the States as Sovereign Communities. By James Madison 1821 (This is what make the County Sheriffs the highest law enforcement officer in that County and gives him/her the authority to tell the BLM, the FBI or any other Federal Agency to get out of the County or they will be arrested and jailed.)
What I have written here is but a short piece of the process that the Founder went through to establish our Constitution and system of government.
Please view these videos and see if they don't change your mind about whether or not Cliven Bundy is in the wrong by defying the BLM.
1of3 Stephen Pratt speaking to Sheriffs at WSSA conference
2of3 Stephen Pratt speaking to Sheriffs at WSSA conference
3of3 Stephen Pratt speaking to Sheriffs at WSSA conference
Here's one that shows why the Sheriff of Clark County is duty bound to keep the BLM and all Federal agents from arresting Cliven Bundy.
!
keep posting this is great stuff. same applies to most of what government has been doin for about 100 yrs
Thanks for being there!!
B y “silently”, I mean when the BLM guys start shooting and throwing pregnant women to the ground and stealing cattle, he should be in place with a cell phone, and then LOUDLY playing the feed on every media imaginable.
Ok...... Thanks! I agree!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.