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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    The Bundy crisis in Nevada MSNBC




    Eric Parker from central Idaho stands watch on a bridge with his weapon as protesters gather by the Bureau of Land Management's base camp, where cattle that were seized from rancher Cliven Bundy are being held, near Bunkerville, Nevada, April 12, 2014.
    Jim Urquhart/AP Photo

    The Bundy crisis in Nevada

    04/14/14 05:11 PM—UPDATED 04/15/14 01:03 AM

    By Steve Benen

    It’s not uncommon for conservative media to put a very different spin on current events than major news organizations. For example, news consumers who surround themselves with nothing but conservative media might believe right now that the Affordable Care Act is in a death spiral, the IRS “scandal” is heating up; the nation is facing a debt crisis; the Benghazi conspiracy will soon rock the White House; etc.


    But once in a while, conservative media doesn’t just put a unique spin on the news, it also identifies stories that exist largely below the radar. Over the last week, for example, far-right news consumers have been captivated with coverage of Cliven Bundy, while for much of the American mainstream, that name probably doesn’t even sound familiar.

    If you don’t know the story, it’s time to get up to speed.
    U.S. officials ended a stand-off with hundreds of armed protesters in the Nevada desert on Saturday, calling off the government’s roundup of cattle it said were illegally grazing on federal land and giving about 300 animals back to the rancher who owned them.

    The dispute less than 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas between rancher Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had simmered for days. Bundy had stopped paying fees for grazing his cattle on the government land and officials said he had ignored court orders.

    Anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists camped around Bundy’s ranch to support him.
    By any fair definition, this was an intense standoff with a very real possibility of significant casualties.

    But to understand how and why the crisis unfolded as it did over the weekend, we have to start with how it started in the first place.

    Ian Millhiser did a nice job summarizing the backstory.
    This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.

    Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands – he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”

    So, on the one hand we have Bundy, who’s said, “I don’t recognize [the] United States government as even existing.” It led him to repeatedly ignore federal law, repeatedly blow federal court rulings, and refuse to pay federal fines for his transgressions. On the other hand we have the United States government – which does, in fact, exist – showing considerable restraint in trying to resolve the problem.


    All of this started to come to a head last week, with federal officials going to the area late last week to enforce the law and seize the cattle Bundy has been illegally grazing. Except this proved to be problematic – Bundy’s heavily-armed allies, egged on by conservative media, showed up from a variety of Western states to confront U.S. officials.

    Facing the very real possibility that the anti-government forces might open fire, U.S. officials backed off in the interest of maintaining public safety.

    “Based on information about conditions on the ground and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public,” U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze, said in a statement.

    Bundy’s cattle, which had been rounded up, were released. The Bundy supporters and assorted militia members were pleased, the crowds dispersed, and no one was shot.

    But you probably see the problem: it’s unsustainable to think a group of well-armed extremists can simply block the enforcement of American laws in the United States. It’s perfectly understandable that the Bureau of Land Management saw a crisis unfolding and pulled back to prevent bloodshed, but there’s an obvious problem with establishing a radical precedent: you, too, can ignore the law and disregard court rulings you don’t like, just so long as you have well-armed friends pointing guns at Americans.

    To put it mildly, that’s not how the American system works. Indeed, that’s not how any system of government can ever work.

    Tensions eased over the weekend, but it seems likely that this story isn’t over yet.

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...-crisis-nevada
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 04-15-2014 at 05:39 PM.
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  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Wow. I wonder if this came from either the White House press office or directly from Harry Reid's office.e

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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Tea party to rancher Cliven Bundy: Happy trails

    Vegas Review-Journal
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    By DAVID NATHER | 4/15/14 6:11 PM EDT

    Sorry, Nevada rancher guy, you’re no Obamacare.


    The story of Cliven Bundy, the rancher who stood up to the Bureau of Land Management after it rounded up his cattle over years of unpaid grazing fees, is getting lots of attention. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have interviewed him on their shows. Fox News’s “The Five” debated his actions. The Drudge Report is giving prominent play to all the latest Bundy coverage.


    Latest on POLITICO




    It’s got all the elements of a made-for-cable-TV fight — especially the element of a powerful federal government overplaying its hand, and freedom-living citizens standing up in protest.

    But is Bundy really the guy the right wants as its new hero? And is his fight against big government going to turn national, or is it just an interesting, high-traffic story?


    (Also on POLITICO: Reid: Ranch standoff 'not over')


    So far, all signs suggest that national Republicans and tea party officials aren’t about to jump on the Bundy bandwagon. After all, if they want to rally voters against big government, they already have Obamacare for that.


    Compare and contrast: With Obamacare, Republicans and tea party groups can talk about people being forced out of health coverage that they liked, higher premiums to meet the law’s new coverage standards, constant changes in the rules by the Obama administration — and, of course, the hated individual mandate.


    With the ranch standoff, they can talk about how a powerful federal agency took a guy’s cows — in an operation they blandly called a “cattle gather” — instead of solving the problem, say, any other way.


    (Also on POLITICO: Bundy to sheriffs: 'Disarm' the BLM)


    But they also have to talk about a guy who didn’t pay his grazing fees for more than 20 years, in a state where the federal government owns 86 percent of the land, and where other ranchers just go ahead and pay the fees.


    At that point, it’s not such a powerful rallying cry anymore.


    “It’s like, really, Glenn Beck? This is the issue you want to get behind?” said one Nevada conservative activist who has followed the story for years.

    “People who aren’t in tune with the story just jumped all over it. And then you go back and read the facts of the story, and then you go, ‘Uh oh.’”


    A quick recap: the Bureau of Land Management released about 400 cows it had rounded up from Bundy this weekend after hundreds of protesters, some reportedly armed with handguns and rifles, took Bundy’s side and demanded that the agency return the cattle to him.


    (Earlier on POLITICO: Feds release cattle after roundup)


    The agency declined to comment Tuesday, but it released a timeline of its 20 years of efforts to get Bundy to pay his grazing fees — dating back to 1993 — including court orders. Bundy insists that he doesn’t recognize federal authority over the land and that his family has run a ranch there since the 1870s.


    Top Republican operatives said they haven’t really followed the Bundy story that much. Officials at the top Republican campaign organizations, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Top lawmakers were silent.


    And a spokesman for the Tea Party Patriots said there was no one available to talk about the rancher issue on Tuesday. They had other battles on their hands — including suing the IRS for documents on the scrutiny of nonprofit groups — but when the group is outraged enough to get involved in a big-government fight, you usually know it.


    Not even Harry Reid — who insisted that the ranch standoff is “not over” and that a guy who breaks the law can’t just get away with it — could bring the national Republicans and tea party officials out to fight.


    It’s almost as if they haven’t been watching Hannity.


    The Fox News host rallied his viewers to get mad about an overreaching federal government flexing its muscles. “I mean, we have rapist and murderers and bank robbers and pedophiles out there, and they’ve 200 agents, you know, surrounding your ranch because your cows are eating grass on land that they don’t even want or need and that you’re arguing isn’t even theirs,” Hannity told Bundy during the interview. “So they realized, I think, at some point, politically, that this was going to backfire on them.”


    Some Republican operatives say the Bureau of Land Management clearly overreacted, and that its actions were another example of federal arrogance.

    “Most other litigants would have filed a lien on the property,” said GOP strategist Brad Todd. “But the Bureau of Land Management doesn’t think it’s like any other actor.”


    But Todd, who produces ads for House Republicans and other clients, said that even if the story gets more traction, it “won’t override Obamacare,” which makes a more powerful case for the Republicans about an Obama administration that ignores popular protests against its policies and rewrites the rules at will.


    “When he does that, he’s defying the will of his supervisors,” said Todd. “The voters sent him supervisors in 2010 because they didn’t like what he was doing. And they re-elected those supervisors in 2012.”


    And Republican strategist Kevin Madden noted that “Obamacare is embedded in the 2014 decision of voters … It’s an issue that goes beyond health care. It’s a budget issue, it’s a quality of life issue and it’s an issue that raises questions about the size of government.”


    “Sure, other issues or controversies may compete in that size of government issue space, but it’s unlikely they will impact voters’ lives as directly as Obamacare does,” Madden said.


    Democrats don't seem worried about whether the issue will galvanize conservative voters — at least outside Nevada. “The right’s biggest problem is its own echo chamber, which convinces them to focus on stuff like this instead of issues that matter to most middle-class Americans,” said one Democratic aide.


    And while the conservative activist said some Nevada Republicans will run on “the Bundy ranch” in the upcoming state elections, it’s not a good issue for outsiders who haven’t been following the story from day one.


    “This is one of those things that got way out of hand,” the activist said. “It just feels like something that should have been handled a long time ago.”


    http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...ty-105723.html
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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