--Leslie <;)))><
For anyone who missed the story, because the national news
media have been avoiding it, the Bundy Ranch incident is only the tip of the
iceberg..
First, the Bundy ranch was founded in 1870, long before the
Bureau of Land Management was created, back in the days when the open range was
called "the commons" because it was open to common usage by all the
ranchers in the county. When Nevada became a state,
the grazing rights of existing ranchers were "grandfathered" into the
state laws, and ranchers were charged only a small usage fee by the state
government. When the BLM was formed, it
took over much of those public lands – and has kept claiming more and more of
the state wilderness lands – whereupon it threw out the grandfathered rights of
the locals, charged its own grazing fees, and subsequently kept raising them. These fees have driven several ranchers out
of business, so that today the Bundy ranch is the only ranch left in the
county.
Now, in recent years, the BLM has begun closing off those
"commons" altogether to use by ranchers, hunters, fisherman, even
campers – but not by big corporations, even foreign ones. The current excuse is the popular claim of
Protecting the Environment, but the BLM has a truly terrible track-record at
that, allotting "environmental waivers" to politicians' cronies which
allow for the killing of those same species of plants and animals that provided
the excuse. In the case of Bundy's
ranch, the animal-of-excuse is the Desert Tortoise – which, in fact, is not
endangered at all; it's found in
abundance in lands south and east of Nevada,
such as the states of Arizona and New Mexico, not to mention Mexico itself. Now consider:
"- Harry Reid killed more Tortoises in cahoots with Brightsource Solar
and jailed buddy Harvey Whittemore than Bundy Ranch.
"- Reid helped Whittemore procure environmental waivers for the Coyote
Springs golf and residential development. Reid was happy to let Brightsource
cover 8,300 acres of tortoise land of the 42,000-acre Coyote Springs. These
included powerline changes and most importantly, a land swap with BLM of Desert
Tortoise land."
(source:
http://www.dailypaul.com/316556/harry-reids-connection-to-bundy-ranch-siege)
As a "small miner" (fewer than 10 claims) myself (see: Fanhaven),
in filing my papers every year with the BLM, I've been made aware of the
federal government's growing tendency to close off public lands to citizen use
and sell them to the highest bidder.
This trend began well back in the Bush administration, if not before,
but has accelerated under Obama.
So has
the tendency to grab private land under any handy excuse.
"Senator Jim DeMint took to the pages of the
Washington
Post this morning to raise the alarm about a planned, 10 million acre
Western land grab by the Obama administration.
"According to the memo, around 380,000 acres of BLM and private land in
Colorado
would be subject to a 'conservation designation' under the National Monument
designation of the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Vermillion Basin,
northwest of Craig, and the Alpine Triangle near Ouray are listed in the memo.
This designation would close the areas off to multi-use activities including,
mining, hunting, grazing, oil and gas development and recreational
activities."
(source:
http://cofarmbureaublog.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/leaked-memo-uncovers-administration-land-grab/)
So, Harry Reid appointed an old friend to head the BLM, and began squeezing
out the local ranchers – in order to sell the land to a solar-electric company
based in China
and backed by the Chinese government.
The last rancher left, Cliven Bundy, fought back against the BLM's
squeeze for the last 20 years by challenging the BLM's policy of ignoring Nevada's grandfathered grazing rights, and he offered to
pay his fees instead to the county government, at the old Nevada rates.
He also tried to take his case to court and
settle it there.
The BLM refused to go to court, but simply waited until Bundy's cattle were
grazing on BLM land, and then "confiscated" – i.e., stole –
them.
The BLM also sent its own police
to Bundy's ranch to seize everything else he owned.
That was when the neighbors, the local
"militia", several sheriffs (though not the sheriff of his own county),
and volunteers from all over the state moved in. A local pilot found the
"secret" government location where Bundy's cattle were being held,
and radioed the coordinates to Bundy and his friends.
The federal government, through the FAA,
declared the area a "no-fly" zone, but by then the word was out.
When the BLM's agents moved in, they were
faced with a crowd of protesters – many of them armed – who outnumbered them,
and wouldn't let them proceed.
The
federal government tried to cut off local communications by shutting down the
cell-phone towers near Bundy Ranch, but the protesters maintained
communications through land-lines, the Internet, CB and Ham radio.
Local news media covered the whole
confrontation, and the reports got onto the Internet, and went viral.
The BLM, faced with the possibility of
starting a bloodbath that would immediately make the 6 o'clock news and the
Internet, backed down and agreed to return Bundy's cattle.
(source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHzQu3jxP1A)
The BLM refused to go to court, but simply waited until Bundy's cattle were
grazing on BLM land, and then "confiscated" – i.e., stole –
them.
The BLM also sent its own police
to Bundy's ranch to seize everything else he owned.
That was when the neighbors, the local
"militia", several sheriffs (though not the sheriff of his own county),
and volunteers from all over the state moved in. A local pilot found the
"secret" government location where Bundy's cattle were being held,
and radioed the coordinates to Bundy and his friends.
The federal government, through the FAA,
declared the area a "no-fly" zone, but by then the word was out.
When the BLM's agents moved in, they were
faced with a crowd of protesters – many of them armed – who outnumbered them,
and wouldn't let them proceed.
The
federal government tried to cut off local communications by shutting down the
cell-phone towers near Bundy Ranch, but the protesters maintained
communications through land-lines, the Internet, CB and Ham radio.
Local news media covered the whole
confrontation, and the reports got onto the Internet, and went viral.
The BLM, faced with the possibility of
starting a bloodbath that would immediately make the 6 o'clock news and the
Internet, backed down and agreed to return Bundy's cattle.
(source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHzQu3jxP1A)
The BLM, of course, isn't going to stop there.
"Despite being forced to release hundreds of seized cattle after an
astounding standoff on Saturday, the Bureau of Land Management has vowed to
continue its pursuit of Cliven Bundy, asserting that no deal has been made to
cease its case against the Nevada
cattle rancher.
"Despite Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie announcing on Saturday
that the BLM had agreed to cease its operation against Bundy, the BLM now
asserts that it played no part in the deal and will continue to pursue Bundy 'administratively and judicially' for the $1 million in grazing fees it claims
Bundy owes the feds.
"Since Bundy has steadfastly refused to pay the fee, offering instead
to pay it to Clark
County, the feds will
have no option other than to send armed men to arrest Bundy or restart the
operation to confiscate his cattle. Such action will then prompt thousands of
Americans to rally to Bundy’s defense just as they did last week, threatening
another standoff."
(source:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/blm-flip-flops-no-deal-on-dropping-actions-against-bundy.html)
Meanwhile, in other states, popular resistance is growing.
In Utah,
a collection of county sheriffs and state legislators are pushing a state bill
to limit the local powers of the BLM and the Forestry Service.
"Multiple rural county sheriffs from Utah testified Thursday about the abusive
use of police power by Bureau of Land Management rangers or forest protection
officers with the U.S. Forest Service.
"They are asserting it is time to rein in the authority the agencies
should have never been allowed to exercise.
"Sheriffs from San Juan, Kane and Garfield counties spoke in
favor of
HB155, sponsored by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, which proposes
to limit BLM rangers and forest protection officers from exercising police
power over state and local laws unless someone's safety is at risk or federal
contracts are in place with local police agencies."
(source:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865574454/Lawmakers-Utah-sheriffs-want-to-rein-in-renegade-BLM-Forest-Service-officers.html?pg=all)
Meanwhile, in Connecticutt, the state police have backed away from the
legislature's insistence, and sworn in public not to confiscate anybody's
guns.
"The new head of the state police, Dora Schriro, says she knows her
troopers will live up to their oath to serve and protect. She wants to make
very clear that the talk of confiscation is nonsense.
'There’s no plan in place nor has there been
any execution of a plan where we would, for example, go door-to-door and be
actively involved in the confiscation of weapons,' says Schriro, who took over
as Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection at the end of
January."
(source:
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/investigations/No-Door-to-Door-Gun-Confiscations-State-251346661.html)
More emphatically, in New York,
not only have citizens refused to comply with the Secure Ammunition and
Firearms Enforcement act, but several sheriffs and state police have complained
that the law is unconstitutional, unenforceable, and they'll refuse to even try
to enforce it.
"It was unclear how many of New
York's gun owners were complying with today's
deadline. The Safe Act exempts officials from disclosing information about the
registry. To date, state police have declined to release aggregate numbers that
could show compliance rates throughout the state.
"…many elected sheriffs have said they would not enforce
parts of the law.
Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh said he would refer
tips
about illegal possessions of assault weapons to the state police.
"The
union representing state troopers also has criticized the
laws."
(source:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/04/ny_safe_acts_change_of_repeal_near_impossible_say_two_lawmakers_critical_of_the.html)
In other words, the seed of resistance has sprouted – resistance to
unconstitutional federal and state laws – and it's growing.
Thanks to revelations about Reid's connection
to the Chinese solar company, that resistance is not just on the political
right, either.
The federal and state
governments really should have the sense to back off while the opposition is
still at the "resistance" stage.
Otherwise, this could be the beginning of a real – and not necessarily
nonviolent – revolution.