Why we should have sympathy for him:
The new head of the BLM is a former Reid staffer. Presumably he was placed in his current position on Reid’s recommendation. Harry Reid is known to be a corrupt politician, one who has gotten wealthy on a public employee’s salary, in part, at least, by benefiting from sweetheart real estate deals. Does Harry Reid now control more than 80% of the territory of Nevada? If you need federal authority to conduct business in Nevada–which is overwhelmingly probable–do you need to pay a bribe to Harry Reid or a member of his family to get that permission? Why is it that the BLM is deeply concerned about desert tortoises when it comes to ranchers, but couldn’t care less when the solar power developers from China come calling? Environmentalists have asked this question. Does the difference lie in the fact that Cliven Bundy has never contributed to an Obama or Reid campaign, or paid a bribe to Reid or a member of his family?
Based on the evidence, I would say: yes, that is probably the difference. When the desert tortoises balance out, Occam’s razor tells us that the distinction is political.
Yup.
This is why they need super-strong property rights and no government on mars. America passed the tipping point over a century ago.
That’s a recipe for a power vacuum.
Yes, but it gets filled by locals who must all respect the property rights of others.
So let’s have some sympathy for Cliven Bundy and his family. … They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies
Their cattle literally subsist by grazing on government land, which would be a subsidy even if he were paying for it.
This is why they need super-strong property rights
Bundy doesn’t own the property in question — what good would “super-strong property rights” do him?
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. When Bundy refused to pay grazing fees beginning in around 1993, he said something to the effect of, they are supposed to be charging me a fee for managing the land and all they are doing is trying to manage me out of business. Why should I pay them for that?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/why-you-should-be-sympathetic-toward-cliven-bundy.php
I don’t know why I respond to your comments, you’ll just wiggle out of them with some lame red herring.
You know, why does the federal government own so much land in the first place? I know how it happened historically, but it seems to me that most of it should be auctioned off, and most of the remainder should be ceded to the state where the land is located.
The federal government was supposed to sell off its lands in 1976. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act was enacted for this to happen. Many states, like Nebraska have all of the federal lands relinquished to them. Other states like Utah and Nevada do not.
In other words, the feds are breaking the law by owning land in Nevada.
Well, if you actually read the act (PDF – page 6 talks about sales) the Secretary “may” sell land if he gives Congress 90 days to object. Doesn’t say anything about being required to sell land. Scrolling down, it appears that states may apply to withdraw land from BLM management, again with a requirement to let Congress object.
“the Secretary “may” sell land if he gives Congress 90 days to object. ”
Ya, like the Obama administration is going to sell land to a cattle rancher who they blame for all the evils in the world past and present.
The Federal government spent a century trying to give it away under the Homestead Act. Nobody wanted it.
Nobody wanted it.
Will really need to savor this expression… Nobody wanted some land as a gift.
Why? Only one possible reason. The government insured it had negative value. If it had positive value, somebody would want it. I’d want it, if it had value and was free. What could give it negative value? Hmmm… could it be weak property rights that allowed it to be taxed or regulated?
This is not entirely correct. Homestead Act land was not entirely free. In the case of stock raising land, you could claim 640 acres if you made improvements worth $1.25 per acre. So the land nobody wanted to homestead wasn’t worthless, it was just worth less than $1.25 per acre. Converting for inflation, that’s still very poor pasture land.
Which is important to remember when someone tells you how much acreage BLM owns in Nevada. That’s a lot by acres, but by value not so much.
“Will really need to savor this expression… Nobody wanted some land as a gift.”
Usually you either needed to be Working a mining claim, Farming, ranching,
living on it and paying taxes on it. It wasn’t a gift, it was a contract. Live here, work here, for 7 years.
most of the federal lands were not economically viable
For once dn-guy you are mostly correct. The government always wants it’s hand on your wallet.
most of the federal lands were not economically viable
Not developed is different from not viable. Many indian casinos for example are built on these non viable lands. Not all are winners for sure, but you can turn something consider worthless into something of value by simple development.
^ This.
If one is paying fees that are supposed to be used to maintain the land, yet the landlord/landowner diverts those fees away from the land and doesn’t hold up their end of the agreement with regards to maintenance, the renter has a legitimate claim against paying those fees.
That said, the last image in the Powerline Blog article gave me pause. The caption says “Solar energy projects don’t draw BLM snipers.” Only problem is, I see zero snipers in the photograph. I see, from “front to back” (right to left), man crouching holding riot shield, man with PAINTBALL gun, man with grenade launcher (presumably with tear gas), man with M16.
If I was at home and had time, I would do a google image search and likely come across similar scary captions for that photo, but I hope that I would also find similar corrections about the actual weaponry being deployed. When the point man is using paintballs, I’m not sure that I fear as much for my life as if he was using a Barret (granted, the guy with the Barret is probably 100 yards behind them on an elevated position).
It’s good to see that the polarization machine is still churning away on both sides, though, and that’s why I think I join Hinderaker in being unsure of how to really feel about this situation.
If one is paying fees that are supposed to be used to maintain the land, yet the landlord/landowner diverts those fees away from the land and doesn’t hold up their end of the agreement with regards to maintenance, the renter has a legitimate claim against paying those fees.
Only if that maintenance is a condition of the lease, and/or a provision of the law. I’m guessing neither is the case here, which is why Bundy lost in court, and is resorting to civil disobedience.
Why should I pay them for that?
Because, if you believe in property rights, you don’t get to use property that doesn’t belong to you without meeting the owner’s terms.
But the Federal government has refused to pay state and local property taxes on the land (and about a trillion dollars worth of other real property), so why doesn’t the state just foreclose and auction the land to someone who will pay taxes?
Well, in Nevada’s case, their state’s constitution specifically recognizes Federal supremacy.
Ya, this guy really doesn’t have much to stand on legally but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with regulations, the BLM, the system, Harry Reid, or environmentalists gone wild.
It is nice to see Democrats are all about law and order and disproportionate use of force all of a sudden though.
Just because Federal law is supreme over Nevada state law doesn’t excuse the fact that the federal government is a corrupt dead beat that exempted itself from paying state and local taxes. Nevada should foreclose before Obama and Reid manage to give the state to the Chinese in return for illegal campaign contributions, which is apparently what was going on.
Federal land is exempt from local taxes.
“Bundy doesn’t own the property in question.”
The hell he doesn’t! He’s an American citizen, isn’t he? Whatever happened to of the people, by the people, and for the people?
“Of the people” not “of Cliven Bundy”.
If Bundy wants to buy the land he can, otherwise, he should stop playing welfare cheat.
He’s not a “people”?
He’s a person, not “The People”.
The Bundy family had almost 150 years to buy range land around their ranch.
They bought 150 acres, they weren’t willing to do more then that.
News Alert!!!
Jim breaths air owned by the federal government and doesn’t pay a dime for this subsidy. Law enforcement officials have been notified and his home and business will shortly be surrounded by Bradley fighting vehicles armed with hellfire missiles.
Forgot the link.
Wow–Jim takes the side of the State in this one! Who would have thought it?
As long as the democrats are in charge, he will. Being partisan without contemplation merely allows the State to take more power. Republicans, unfortunately, do it too.
Ya, shocker. How quick they go from public land belonging to the public to public land belonging to the state (federal government) depending on whether or not Democrat activists are involved.
I realize no one here is interested in any facts, but prefer the propaganda of the side they believe, but grazing fees on federal laws started in the 1930’s under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ag.071
So if Mr. Bundy has been on the land since the 1880’s, twenty years after Nevada became a state and assigned that land to the federal government, then he, and his ancestors had been paying grazing fees for nearly 60 years before he decided to stop. Also, under the law, the government is being kind in just seizing the cattle for back rent, legally they could take his ranch as it is supposed to be considered collateral for the grazing fees.
To put what happen in terms Rand could understand, suppose one of Rand’s house renters decided after years to stop paying rent and Rand went to the Sheriff to get them evicted, but the renter responded to call out the local Occupy movement to protest against the “rich” Californian owner and scare the Sheriff off when he showed to enforce the eviction order. I am sure Rand would be screaming his head off about it yet that is just what happened here. Again, a double standard.
Mr. Bundy has lost repeatedly in court over the last twenty years over his refusal to pay his grazing fees, but for some reason believes he is above the legal system outlined in the Constitution.
As for the BLM squeezing ranchers in Clarke County, the reality is most have simply sold out to developers for the big bucks resulting from the expansion of Las Vegas. That is why so few ranchers are left in Clarke County Nevada, not the BLM. And those that have stayed, along with thousands of other ranchers in the west, have continued to pay their grazing fees.
That said, there are a number of problems with how the BLM has restricted public use of the lan over the last several decades, but picking someone who hasn’t pay his bills for twenty years as a poster boy for it only discredits those with real arguments against it.
“That said, there are a number of problems with how the BLM has restricted public use of the lan over the last several decades,”
Yes, we know the government is very corrupt at all levels especially in the state of Harry Reid. Can’t imagine why anyone wold vote for the guy. A vote for Reid is a vote for corruption.
You do know that Sharon Angle’s husband spent his entire career working as a BLM agent don’t you?That is why she has been quiet about this issue. Its also why Nevadan’s, including most Republicans, didn’t trust her when she said she was for state’s rights, small government and freedom. If she was then why was her husband the very symbol of the opposite…
No matter how bad Sharon Angle may have been, it says something about you that Harry Reid as Senate majority leader was preferable. I’d have trouble looking in a mirror, myself.
Funny, given how you claim you voted for both Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader for President, and vote against Ronald Reagan twice….
But if your tea parties buddies really wanted Senator Reid out they wouldn’t have hijacked the Republican primary. Then Sue Lowden, a true Republican, would have been Senator today instead of a failed AIP candidate pretending to be Republican. Really, only out of state fools could have been stupid enough to pick the one person in Nevada who was able to lose to Senator Reid, and did.
But I guess you like Sharron Angle because like you, she proudly claims to have voted against Ronald Reagan, twice 🙂
Wodun,
I will take that as an acknowledgement you haven’t a clue about Nevada politics since you are not able it answer the most simple questions anyone in the state would be able to answer. More so, like most trolls you are not willing to look it up, preferring to add useless noise to the discussion. But then that about sums up most of Rand’s blog once it moves beyond space policy and NASA 🙂
You can imagine whatever alternate reality you wish to help you sleep at night. We know how Reid is in this reality.
Your ignorance of Nevada politics is showing. What is the one thing Clive Bundy and Senator Reid have in common? And why is it important in Nevada?
Boogie Boogie Sharon Angle Boogie Boogie Tea Party Boogie Boogie.
You are imagining what the monster under the bed will do and ignoring the monster in your bed.
Thomas, legally but immorally the state can take anybodies stuff without charging them with any violations what-so-ever. That is where this worship of state has brought us to today. Some people have successfully fought back but they are in the minority. Even to successfully fight back means to lose all the expense of the fight.
It shouldn’t be legal. It certainly isn’t right. Legal does not equal right.
Ken,
But the right for the federal government to take the property of a citizen is included in the Constitution as long as due process is followed, and it was in this case. So are you saying the Constitution is wrong?
Unfortunately, not everyone who migrates off-Earth will share a philosophy with Heinlein and Ayn Rand. Getting everyone to agree to something would be problematic. We can’t even get agreement in this self-selected group of loudmouths. Even if a miracle occurs and they set up a constitution better than the USA, which somehow obviates the need for government altogether, what happens in 20 years? 40 years? Are the children and grandchildren unanimously going to go along with it?
Human nature being what it is, you’re going to need to start a religion to make it work. The US constitution held an almost religious significance at one time, which is part of the reason the left had to try to destroy religion itself.
OK, that somehow appeared way down here instead of in response to Ken up top.
As for what Thomas just said, let’s ask Suzanne Kelo, shall we? And note that the site of her demolished home still isn’t under development yet.
“But the right for the federal government to take the property of a citizen is included in the Constitution as long as due process is followed”
So let’s just kill everyone and kill their cattle for good measure. Nothing cruel or unusual there.
Solar panels don’t trample tortoises underfoot. Cattle do. Solar panels don’t eat the same food or drink the same water that tortoises do.
The people who build solar panels in the desert pay their leases. Bundy doesn’t.
The federal government has dedicated nearly 2,000 times more acreage to oil and gas leases than to solar development. In 2010 the Bureau of Land Management approved nine large-scale solar projects, with a total generating capacity of 3,682 megawatts, representing approximately 40,000 acres. In contrast, in 2010, the Bureau of Land Management processed more than 5,200 applications gas and oil leases, and issued 1,308 leases, for a total of 3.2 million acres.
Did all those oil and gas people pay a bribe to Harry Reid?
“Solar panels don’t trample tortoises underfoot. Cattle do. ”
Really? Links please. I have walked many miles in cattle country and never seen a trampled animal.
Has there been any trampled tortoises found on the land in question?
And why minimize the effects of solar power plants on the environment? Is this like how it is now totally cool for windmills to slaughter eagles?
well, this site tells me that baby tortoises are smaller than a ping-pong ball and that the species takes 15 to 20 years to get to sexual maturity. You really want to argue that cattle aren’t trampling animals less than an inch long? Also from the above, primary threats = “The loss of forage plants due to competition with grazing livestock and replacement by invasive species.”
The Ivanhoe solar plant in California’s Mojave desert spent $22 million trying to protect the tortoises. How much did Bundy spend?
“well, this site tells me that baby tortoises are smaller than a ping-pong ball ”
But does it say anything about cows trampling them? That is what you claimed, that cows trample tortoises.
“You really want to argue that cattle aren’t trampling animals less than an inch long?”
Prove it. Cows are not malicious and they do watch their step so lets see the bazillions of dead tortoises you say are out there.
““The loss of forage plants due to competition with grazing livestock and replacement by invasive species.””
Yes, this is the pretext used by environmentalists to remove cattle from public lands because they don’t like cattle or people eating meat. Hasn’t seemed to matter the last 100 years. Tortoises and cows have coexisted on the land in question. Seems to me that if the primary threat is a cow, then the tortoises are doing pretty good.
Should we take a closer look at your link? Ok, let’s do that. “the tortoises tend to live on steep, rocky hillside slopes” A lot of tortoise habitat is unsuitable for cattle and cattle would naturally avoid it.
“The Ivanhoe solar plant in California’s Mojave desert spent $22 million trying to protect the tortoises. How much did Bundy spend?”
Ya, too bad Bundy didn’t bribe the environmentalists and Democrat politicians.
Did you think that a solar farm that by necessity destroys a large area of habitat would need to spend money to mitigate damage while little if any would need to be spent when animals can coexist? The improvements that Bundy made to the land for his cattle probably benefit the tortoises too.
Wow, the Gerbil has taken idiocy to a new level. Those mean old cows out looking for baby tortoises to trample.
You really are clueless.
So you think cattle step on tortoises but deer, bison, and antelope don’t?
Little known fact: Tortoises eat plants that can’t survive if massive solar cells are stealing all their sunlight. That’s why you rarely end up with a basement full of tortoises.
Another little known fact: Until cows were introduced North America didn’t have any mammals that competed with tortoises for plant food.
Oh wait. That second one is wrong.
Yes, and the solar plants require no construction, no roads, no workers, no power lines or substations, no nothing. They just sort of spontaneously bloom in the desert, and produce beautiful, pristine, free electricity.
But, wait… What about the tortoises that will be trampled by the unicorns, or incinerated by an errant rainbow?
Also perhaps highly significant is this TED talk on desertification being prevented by grazing cattle on the land, because grasses need the periodic and intense trimming and pooping to stay healthy, because they evolved with vast herds of grazing animals. Remove the grazing and the marginal grassland can turn into a desert, which is exactly what would happen in the BLM replaces the American cows with Chinese solar cells.
Have you ever been within ten feet of a cow?
Hey, Chris. Did you actually read the act? (I don’t think so.) And I didn’t, because I’m not a lawyer. However, there are certain parts of it that were agreed upon.
In 1976, Congress struck a “bargain” with those western states. The “bargain”, expressed in its most simplistic terms, was this: The western states would not oppose the retention of these lands if the Federal Government would manage them under multiple use/sustained yield principles, protect valid existing rights, limit wilderness review and consider the needs and concerns of adjacent communities when formulating land use plans.
http://www.delalbright.com/Articles/flpma.htm
http://americanstewards.us/federal-land-policy-and-management-act-flpma/55-federal-land-policy-and-management-act-flpma/24-summary-of-the-statutory-criteria-for-coordination
These words tells me that the federal government should not own lands in which it has no interest. But you’re right, they can weasel their way into anything they want, including selling land to give Harry Reid a nice profit.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/fed-land-manage-act.html
FYI, this the October 2013 Court Order on the issue, just so you have some data instead of speculation to use.
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nv/field_offices/las_vegas_field_office/cattle_trespass.Par.40211.File.dat/Dkt%2056%20Order%20Granting%20Motion%20to%20Enforce%2010-9-13.pdf
It should be noted that part of the problem is that he is now running cattle on land he never had a grazing permit for, including National Park land on Lake Meade National Recreation Area. So its not just failing to pay his grazing fees, but that his cattle are trespassing on land he never had any grazing rights for.
Again, this is why he is a bad poster boy for those seeking to move the BLM to more rational management of public lands.
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1061959.html
The above listing is US v Gardner where the courts took most of these Range Rebels claims and
tossed them in the trash.
150 years of settled law and now a bunch of whackos want to rewrite all that.
That’s what you Democrats said when we protested the Dred Scott decision.
Hey Didn’t Lincoln send the Union Army to burn the south?
So are you going to claim Sherman and Grant as GOP hero’s?
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/cliven-bundy-nevada-ranch-tea-party-105723.html
Aside from a few truly demented maniacs, the mainstream GOP isn’t following this.
It is well to know that the Bundy family have been sucking at the Federal teat since 1871. Until 1936 they grazed on Federal land without charge. Legally, but it was a sweet deal for them. Then they bought grazing rights on Federal land for far less than they would have paid for equivalent private land until 1993. Ditto. Then they stopped paying entirely.
No, they inspire no sympathy. If it was up to me I’d start by garnisheeing Cliven’s Social Security payments.
“If it was up to me I’d start by garnisheeing Cliven’s Social Security payments.”
You think they would have done something like that rather than the military option to seize the cattle and sell them at auction.
The problem is that until they get rid of his cattle they won’t be able to offer grazing leases on that land to other ranchers, those willing to obeying the law and pay their fees. The problem is also compounded by him running cattle in the Lake Meade Recreation Area where he never had any leases.
they should garnish his checking account, place a lien on his ranch and
impound his SSA.
simple enough.
Garnisheeing his Social Security would have been a good start, but insufficient. He was accumulating fines much faster than his Social Security would cover.
How did the tiny Lil’ Torts ever survive those big, nasty grazing Bison?
Doesn’t matter the Land Manager told Bundy to get off the land.
So that Harry Reid and his son could make a ton of money from a Chinese scheme to scam the people of Nevada and kill off an endangered US species. I wonder if part of the plan was to round up all the tortoises and sell them as a delicacy in Beijing?
As far as I can tell, the Reids and the Chinese narrative is a red herring. The Chinese solar project was going to be 180 miles away, on county rather than BLM land, and in any case the Chinese abandoned the project in 2013.
And the bus driver told Rosa Parks to go to the back. At least we know whose side YOU’RE on.
“Doesn’t matter the Land Manager ”
Oh look now the federal government can be a person.
Bizarrely, they evolved armored shells to cope with getting stepped on.
Back in the old West a lot of the toughest codgers tried tortoise ranching, but it died out because it took years to drive the herds up to Kansas City or Chicago. On a good day they might cover a mile and a half, but most days they could only drive them about a mile because a herd has to graze. There was no use bringing skinny turtles to market. In frontier towns along the drive it was a always big week when the boys brought a herd through, and people would grab their kids out of the streets in case there was a stampede as the torts got a whiff of the salad bar at the Golden Corral and Saloon.
A lot of people don’t realize it, but Westerners learned to say little and talk slowly so they didn’t run out of things to say during the big tortoise drives. Now that’s part of our Western culture. But then came the barbed wire fences, and the last of the free-grazing tortoise drives stopped because the tortoises didn’t give a s**t about the barbed wire, but the cowboys would have to carry their beer coolers and lawn chairs the long way round and try to catch back up to the stock, and that was just too much work for the world’s laziest f**king ranchers.
The only ones left are the ones who run mixed herds of cattle and tortoises, like Cliven Bundy’s family. If the BLM wins, an historic and traditional American way of life will come to a final, bitter end, and this nation will close a fascinating chapter of its history.
I stand in awe of you, sir.
Interestingly, very little of the bison’s original range extended into Nevada.
But it did extend into Washington State. Those things were all over.
All of the places suitable for supporting large herds of bovines. The bison didn’t think that southern Nevada was on the list.
And now dn-guy and Admiral Gerrib weigh in on the side of Der Staat! More shock!
(Do these guys ever get tired of being so servile?)