Thread: 7 Things Conservatives Should Take Away From Last Week’s Siege On Nevada

Western Journalism
Michael Oberndorf
April 15, 2014

We are not talking about the middle and lower management and field personnel. The vast majority of these folks are hard-working Americans who give the taxpayers their money’s worth and more on a daily basis.

It’s the executive level, the Washington bureaucrats, their political bosses, and their corrupt, globalist, neo-fascist policies that are the problem and the target of this movement.

7 Things Conservatives Should Take Away From Last Week’s Siege On Nevada

Let’s do what we need to do to take back the West...

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The events in Nevada this week have made a number of things crystal clear:

1) Our government, at least at the upper management/executive service level, is incredibly corrupt.

2) Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Majority Misleader, is incredibly corrupt.

3) Obama’s Executive Branch, which allowed this situation to take place in the way that it did, is incredibly corrupt.

4) The judicial branch that has consistently allowed “environmentalists” to dictate public land policy is incredibly corrupt.

5) The “environmentalists” and their co-conspirators in Congress who foisted the so-called “Endangered Species Act” and numerous other extreme laws on us, and turned a blind eye to the above mentioned corruption, are incredibly corrupt.

6) The massive amount of “public land” controlled by the federal government in the West is anything but public.

7) If the United States of America is to survive as a single, sovereign nation, the states, and particularly the Western states, need to take back the land unconstitutionally ruled over by the federal government.



There is a movement among a handful of state legislators in the West to get the federal government to turn back the land they have taken over the years and “managed” with agencies like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the USDA-Forest Service, the Corps of Engineers, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) (none of which appear to be authorized by the Constitution.) We need to aid and abet this movement as if our lives depend upon it. But, let me make clear here, that we are not talking about the middle and lower management and field personnel. The vast majority of these folks are hard-working Americans who give the taxpayers their money’s worth and more on a daily basis. It’s the executive level, the Washington bureaucrats, their political bosses, and their corrupt, globalist, neo-fascist policies that are the problem and the target of this movement.

We are no longer self-sufficient as a nation when it comes to natural resource or food. For example, the radical, Marxist greenies have pretty well destroyed our ability to provide our own timber, a major reason housing prices went sky-high, pushing the working class out of the housing market. This made it possible for the Marxist Democrats to pass laws like the ones that forced banks to lend money to people who obviously couldn’t pay it back, bringing on the economic collapse that allowed the Marxists and global neo-fascists – aka Establishment Republicans – to take us untold trillions of dollars into debt, and ensuring our eventual economic collapse.

While some of the inflation we see in things is a result of this, some is not. Beef prices, for instance, are astronomical largely because of the laws, policies, and criminal corruption that brought about the Bundy situation in Nevada. Produce prices are up, too, and quality is down because much of it comes from foreign sources, many of them Third World countries. This is because our government has used “environmental” laws and unconstitutional thug agencies like the EPA to make farming and ranching so expensive and difficult that few can do it anymore and still make a decent living.

We have seen the supreme Court Jesters rule, in Kelo v. New London, that government can take private property by eminent domain and give it to another private entity that claims it will generate more tax revenue. By extension then, government can also take permits to use public land and give them to someone else if it will get more money for government – and for the corrupt politicians who set up the deals. In the West, the federal government “owns” around 50 to 90 percent of most of the states. It controls land that contains vast reserves of oil and gas; but as we know all too well, Obama and his Marxist and fascist cronies have shut most of it down. They are trying to kill the coal industry, too, and the cheap power that it generates using the same phony, extreme regulations and interpretations of federal laws and rules.

The states need to step up and take their land back. Most states, when the insane cost of complying with tyrannical and draconian federal laws and regulations is removed, are economically sound. With the ability to fully incorporate public land into the states, most would experience an economic boom and a significant rise in the standard of living for their citizens.

What is euphemistically called “crony capitalism” is actually old fashioned fascism. Period. It clearly didn’t die at the end of WWII. It’s alive and well in Washington, DC and bared its fangs in Nevada for all to see. Let’s do what we need to do to take back the West, return to government by the Constitution, and kill the lawless fascism being practiced by the Democrats and Establishment Republicans.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/7-t...-siege-nevada/

April 15, 2014, 06:00 am
By Timothy Cama


Feds play waiting game at Nevada ranch

Two days after a dispute over grazing rights, cattle and $1 million in fees and fines threatened to spin into a Wild West shootout, officials with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) promised they weren’t finished with Bundy.

“The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially,” BLM Director Neil Kornze said in a statement that followed the bureau’s decision to release nearly 400 head of Bundy’s cattle that had been seized as part of a fight over grazing fees.

Spokesman Craig Leff declined to be more specific.

States rights supporters, including some armed militia members, stormed to Bundy’s aid in the last week amid a confrontation that had been building for more than two decades. It had provoked fears of a violent standoff like the 1993 standoff in Waco, Texas, that ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian compound that killed 76 people.

Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-Nev.) last week said the BLM operation was a violation of Nevadans’ rights.

"Most disturbing to me is the BLM’s establishment of a ‘First Amendment Area’ that tramples upon Nevadans’ fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution," he said in a statement.

The government says Bundy’s cattle have been trespassing on and grazing on federal land for 20 years. They say Bundy hasn’t paid for a grazing permit since a dispute that began in 1993 over protections for the desert tortoise, when the government first sought to make Bundy pay.

The agency has obtained numerous court orders mandating that Bundy stop using the land.

Bundy doesn’t recognize the federal government’s authority over the land, which his cattle have grazed upon for decades. He has asserted that his family has used the land as a ranch for generations, before BLM existed.

The rancher, his family and supporters have also cried foul at what they see as unnecessary force from federal officials and contractors, including carrying guns and allegedly assaulting protesters.

Bundy did not return requests for comment.

Observers say the government would be smart to wait for the dust to settle, and then to try to resolve the situation.

“It’s a very prudent strategy for the government to say ‘we’re going to let this go for now, but we’re going to revisit it,’ ” said James McCarthy, a professor of political geography at Clark University.

“They can afford to play the long game,” said McCarthy, who suggested the government could wait six months or longer for its next action.

Jonathan Emord, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney specializing in disputes over federal land, predicted that the government will move to the courts for the next battle.

“They’ll press charges against him in federal court, and they’ll try to basically bleed his ability to defend himself, and beat him up on technical grounds,” Emord said. “They’ll put him in a situation where he’ll end up with a determination of liability that would be so great that he would have to sell his ranch to them to extinguish his debt.”

McCarthy said the dispute can be linked to federal government decisions in the late 19th century to keep large swaths of land in public ownership while allowing private citizens to use the land for various reasons.

“When our federal land system was set up, it was completely understood and accepted and part of the design that the private landowners … would have really extensive access to and use of public lands,” McCarthy said.

One of BLM’s predecessors, the Grazing Service, was established to manage the land that had been set aside for livestock grazing. Though the federal government owned the land, it always had a system to allow grazing.

“There’s a long history of federal allowance of trespass,” Emord said.

The land management also was put in place in order to encourage settlers to move to the remote areas and use it for purposes like ranching, logging and gold exploration.

“Here you have the law inviting people to settle in the West,” he said. “You create populations out there who are then dependent on the business that you invited as the federal government.”

But in the latter half of the 20th century, as the country become more aware of its effects on the environment, the government’s priorities moved away from providing economic benefits through its land and more toward conservation.

“They are not wrong that the system that was set up really explicitly with the understanding that it would be used for commodity production and economic purposes,” McCarthy said. “The rules and the priorities shifted on them somewhat quickly.”

Emord said restrictions on land use, such as grazing fees, sprung up in the 1990s. Since those restrictions devalue people’s livelihoods and businesses, they amount to taking of property, Emord said.

“It destroys the economic value of the ranch without just compensation,” he said.


http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-...-standoff-ends

Why the feds chickened out on a Nevada ranch

By Kevin McCullough, OneNewsNow.com April 15, 2014 12:27 pm

Let me obliterate a bit of confusion here: the Obama administration attempted to go to war with a rancher in Nevada. Let me amplify a little bit of truth: they tucked tail and have returned home. And let me add a bit of clarity: they had no choice!

As the nation began to become familiar with the plight of the family of Cliven Bundy, many of us harkened back to another standoff – way back in 1993 – in which the federal government attempted to bully its outcome: Waco, Texas and the Branch Davidian massacre.

It is telling that in the Nevada case the feds pulled out so quickly, given all they had indicated they were willing to do to resolve the matter to their satisfaction. They had set up a perimeter around the Bundy's family land, ranch, and home. They had brought in extra artillery, dogs, and snipers. They were beginning the process of stealing more than 300 head of cattle that did not belong to them.

They did so – or so we were told – for the reason of protecting the desert tortoise. But then it was revealed that the Bureau of Land Management had shot far more desert tortoises than the Bundy cattle had even possibly destroyed. We were told they did it because the Bundys had broken federal laws by not paying what amounted to retroactive grazing fees to the federal government. But the governor of the state of Nevada told us that Bundy had paid every ounce of state tax, met the state requirements, and their family had been improving the property more than 100 years previous.

Finally we were allowed to know the connection between a communist Chinese wind/solar power plant and its connection to that senator named Harry Reid. Evidently a plan had been hatched to use the Bundy property for a solar farm and instead of paying the Bundys, someone, somewhere in the administration believed it was easier to just take what they wanted.

That approach is at least consistent with the readily documented abuse of emminent domain where the government for any number of reasons – few of them valid – has taken to taking what doesn't belong to them. Americans then watch as it gets handed over to some multi-national corporation for the "cause" of the "greater good."

There were a few specific reasons why the feds chickened out in the Nevada desert though.

Technology – As the Bundy family members were abused, cameras captured it. Not television network cameras, but dozens of cell phone video devices that gave witness to a Bundy aunt being shoved to the ground, and a Bundy son being tazed. All of this while threatening protestors with dogs, brandished weapons and vehicles was captured, uploaded and made viral to the watching world.

States' rights – As the drama unfolded it became clear that the governor of Nevada, and the sheriff of Clark County knew that Cliven Bundy's family had not only not broken any state law regarding the land, but that they had gone to the nth degree to ensure compliance with Nevada laws on the property. The governor and the sheriff, to their credit, did not favor the feds as a more powerful party in the conflict. Though there must have been pressure from Senator Reid's office, the administration via the Bureau of Land Management, and local officials who were bought and sold like the Clark County commissioner who told those coming to support the Bundys to have "funeral plans in place."

Grassroots response – As other incidents have transpired in the past, the amount of time it took honest information to reach the grassroots and thus the response to the action came too slow. In the massacre in Waco, most of the nation had been sold a single narrative from the limited media outlets covering the events. Similarly the events surrounding the abduction of Elian Gonzales from his family in Florida and deportation to Cuba took place in such a response vacuum that by the time Americans knew the real story, the damage was done. With the Bundy ranch, Internet outlets by the dozen had competing information with the limited "official news" being released by the networks, and in most cases the alternative sources had it correct and usually a full day or so ahead of the news cycle. By the time afternoon drive hit, when the network news rooms in New York were preparing their first stories, talk radio audiences had already been dialing their elected officials in Washington demanding action.

The majority of Americans saw through the efforts to spin the story in Nevada. Couple that with the leadership failures that the American people view the administration responsible for, from Benghazi to the Affordable Care Act, all it took was the unedited video of federal agents tazing Bundy's son, followed by his pulling the wires from his chest and continuing to stand his ground for there to be comparisons made to the American revolution.

It's also important to note that merely pulling back from the Bundy property hasn't settled the matter for the American people either.

The feds have stolen 352 head of cattle, and will not confirm or deny if they euthanized some or all of them. Recompense must be made. And to be candid, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see if a few ambitious law firms don't try to convince the Bundy family of the validity of litigation.

Fortunately for the American people, the feds were not able to ultimately bully a simple rancher, not for a tortoise, a solar power plant, or a dirty senator and his administration.

We owe the Bundy family a great deal of thanks for standing tall.

For if the federal government is allowed to do it with one, then there will be nothing stopping them from doing it again.

http://www.gopusa.com/freshink/2014/.../?subscriber=1