[GOPJ]

Over the last two or three decades, the Bureau has squeezed the ranchers in southern Nevada by limiting the acres on which their cattle can graze, reducing the number of cattle that can be on federal land, and charging grazing fees for the ever-diminishing privilege. The effect of these restrictions has been to drive the ranchers out of business. Formerly, there were dozens of ranches in the area where Bundy operates. Now, his ranch is the only one.

In other words, the purpose of the federal bureaucracy's "grazing fee" was never to provide a fair-market value for the cost to taxpayers of permitting grazing on public land but simply to drive those cattle off the land, and their owners out of the ranching business. As a form of coercion, it worked. But it is not a "law" that should command any respect.

I think it's absurd and obnoxious that an obscure and unaccountable government agency should rule an area the size of France, Germany and Italy combined. What for? Why should the 26th largest country on earth (which the Bureau of Land Management is) be maintained in perpetuity as the world's biggest nature preserve for the desert tortoise? The seven-eighths of the United States that isn't under the iron rod of the BLM is the Brokest Nation in History: it wouldn't hurt to have a little more productive land.

I'm sooooo happy Steyn's on our side. Would not want to have a mind like that on the other side...

[GOPJ]

Why should the 26th largest country on earth (which the Bureau of Land Management is) be maintained in perpetuity as the world's biggest nature preserve for the desert tortoise? The seven-eighths of the United States that isn't under the iron rod of the BLM is the Brokest Nation in History: it wouldn't hurt to have a little more productive land.

Why indeed?