BLM backing down, says the Sheriff from creating an unsightly war-like scene, rallying opposition from all corners out in the open, and that is the part that cheers my heart -- citizens spending their own money using their own resources to converge and take visible action. But, surely there will be a way to squeeze out the rancher later quietly without creating such a fuss so damaging to public relations.
The county is shown unwilling to challenge Federal grab, Nevada is shown unwilling to back its citizens in the face of Federal land grab and manipulations. The thing is, the land-owning family is more steady than Local and State and Federal governments throughout. From territory to state, through federal government changing its own rules, snapping the rugs, this way and that, all around the landowner family, surrounding the family with its unsteadiness through time and through generations, switching arrangements as they go and laws and Department composition allowing for corruption in full bloom today, while the family stays steady doing what ranchers do. And even as government Departments grab the rancher's land and herd up his cattle they are elsewhere measuring his stock farts and dreaming up ways to tax him further, resulting in ranching altogether more difficult were it not for steady families.
Well played, Cliven Bundy, well played.
Hey! I just now thought of something. Wanna see something? This is a package aged bone-in rib-eye steak sitting in the refrigerator, mustn't freeze a thing like this...
...so no slouch of a steak and you can expect it to be expensive, up to pay a hundred bucks in a restaurant, but not this expensive raw. It's only a LB, not a side. But I heard the guy say "aged beef" and that made me not care because it saves me a trip to Oliver's. I bought it anyway. But this kind of brutal government dictatorial and frankly unsteady activity, bearing down on ranchers militaristically like this, roping off "free speech zones" is effrontry to even faint-blooded Americans and measuring cow farts and deciding for global warming concerns or for vegetarian concerns or for whatever concern our most fiercely compulsive activists drawn to government dream up for us are the reasons why this beef is this expensive.
That and the dollar jacked with simultaneously.
I started off differently. Earlier I was loading 6 gallons of milk into a trolly when a bald man rolled up. This was two days ago. It seemed I am in his way and I do have gallons spread out on the floor in front of the cooler. "Would you like a gallon of milk?" I offered cheerfully.
"Are you really going to drink all that?Teutonic accent. Mess with him. "Yes." His eyes visibly widened. "I drink a gallon a day." He honestly had nothing to say to that obsenity. The corners of his mouth went downward. "But I'm trying to cut back to half a gallon." His face tightened. "In chocolate form."
"Oh."His face relaxed and he rolled off. I lied. Didn't mention freezing it, but faking was fun.
19 comments:
Amazingly enough, the backing down occurs shortly after it comes out that Harry Reid, his family and the Chinese are working a deal to push ranchers off of their lands in order to build solar energy boondoggles. They stood to make millions if not billions by this scheme. They got caught and now are scrambling to come up with another tactic to dispossess people of their lands and livelihoods. They aren't done. The Feds are just regrouping.
Nope, no corruption here. No coercion from the Feds to take away property, water rights, mineral rights and give them to the "chosen few". The well connected.
Tell me again about this land of the free hypothesis and ONE nation under God fairy tale.
The only thing that is saving us now is the internet which gets information out past the 'gatekeepers'. Is it any wonder that the US is in cahoots with other totalitarian countries to restrict the internet and turn off the spigot of information?
I love it when a plan comes completely unstuck.
Nice victory for the 1st, 9th, 10th, and, to a certain degree, 2nd Amendments.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
The only thing that is saving us now is the internet which gets information out past the 'gatekeepers'. Is it any wonder that the US is in cahoots with other totalitarian countries to restrict the internet and turn off the spigot of information?
More like our Commie overlords in this Administration and its lackeys in Congress, but, yeah, point well taken.
The federal government only has the best interest of the delicate Nevada desert ecosystem at heart.
Iowahawk
This BLM Technical Report implies the potential for a land transfer asserted by the rancher, as well as this BLM Grazing Fact Sheet, which has some different assertions, also makes reference to cattle damage to BLM lands claimed by a another environmental group (PEER).
In short, BLM uses whatever assertion suits the political purpose of the day.
The rancher has a likely righteous claim, if you read the "Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone" that BLM has been trying to manage him right out of business, more or less, by boundary shifting and re-classifications, apparently for a third party's economic interest.
Given the vastness of the western deserts one would think that BLM and whomever developers could find land that is not critical to cattle ranching. That this incident grew to this magnitude is as much the feds fault as anyone else.
Frankly, however, I am at a loss at how the rancher expected to win by withholding land use fees...which he apparently had paid at one time per his own words to ABC News (Link):
"I was paying grazing fees for management and that's what BLM was supposed to be, land managers and they were managing my ranch out of business, so I refused to pay."
I did enough battle with the IRS for years to know that not paying something to the Feds can get you in deep trouble...even if you didn't actually gain from the non-payment, but were only had a fiduciary responsibility for it. The rancher flat out just stopped paying...you will never win with that. Never. I just do not understand how he thought that action would help him keep access to the grazing lands...lands he technically does not own.
It is a mess and I assure you the Feds are not done with the rancher. At least someone had the wits to realize that the militarized option was stupid....and was contradictory to the claim that only the trespass (no fee paid) cattle were the problem. The cost of the enforcement fandango exceeds the fees owed by multiple of 100.
So the Harry Reid gambit seems to make sense.
Harry Reid belongs behind bars. Eric Holder should be impeached.
April...I think they should both share a cell at Leavenworth.
You know how you can tell when Chip is animated about something? .. .. he used 4 tags.
One thing that doesn't amaze me (but it should) is that BLM was so gawd damned foolish to let this affair grow in to a "revolutionary" episode with all the blarney that entails. I am not surprised because my experience, first hand, is that senior feds have very tin ears and little acquaintance with ordinary people. They lie to each other so often they believe their own lies...seriously.
Just as an aside to this discussion of "land management" compare the "Technical Report" in my comment above (re: Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone) that is 3rd party use oriented, versus a land management study, with BLM participating, such as this one on land management oriented on animals thereon.
The approach is rather different when science and husbandry is the goal, not propping up another green weenie firm with your and my dollars. Similar studies have been done for cattle, this one on feral horses is just one I am quite familiar with myself.
BTW...just reading those two reports should take the place of any sleeping pills otherwise necessary :-))
Here - this is the modern face of the corruptocrat party.
Here are some faces of corruption in government, and none are elected, although all are Democrats:
One
Two
Three
B logger must not like me...I open Chips post about a fine steak and I get this Photo Advertisement ...yuk.
Ha ha ha ha ha
One of the vinca seeds I planted on the balcony rail grew out of the dirt, a speck of green, and now it will snow.
This happens.
So I covered it back with a teaspoon of dirt for insulation.
Mud, dirt.
Well played, Cliven Bundy, well played.
Cliven, not behooved.
Cliven could have played it far better, but for now he wins. The idea of just not paying grazing fees because he didn't like BLM boundary changing would have been far better served if he had gone to court originally over the boundaries, not the fees. Maybe he did and I missed it? As I've said, BLM can be imperious in the extreme.
Never-the-less, Chip is right...the experience is thrilling...especially with free ranging cattle. My first time experiences were around Buena Vista, CO...before all the development. Best hot springs resort I know of is STILL on Mount Princeton's flank.
In my heart of hearts I am on Blivens side, even to the degree of willinglness to join him and volunteer to defend him however that might be necessary...if for no other reason than I have immense affection for honest cowboy culture that includes cutting horses, essentially "working cow horses" that work hard to segregate cattle for various treatments and purposes. My favorite of all my horses, who came from working cow horse lineages (Dry Dock daddy, Doc Bar lineage...others came from similar lineages, such as Pat Star and Otoe) in the past 40 or so years, was a cutting horse of King Ranch lineage. He died of an aortic aneurysm at 12 years of age...and I cried like a baby. We buried him on the spot he died and he is there to this day. Never been a better horse under my saddles, ever...not even the early on Trakehners I adored over fences and dancing in the ring....ole "Stretch" could match them on the oblique at a fast canter, with lead changes every other stride. He was my love of that day and time.
Riding him in any competition was shear delight...and the very smartest horse, bar none, I ever owned. He had "sense" beyond what you might associate with a horse....even enough sense to leave me and go home from a late night beer & BBQ bonfire when I didn't pay attention to his nudges to get up and get gone. Found him, after a long walk, at the pasture gate, enjoying clover, and looking at me like I was an idiot.
Which I was.
My comment from TOP,
The feds own 90% of the land west of the Mississippi. I guess we should be grateful they let some of us lease some of it. I say privatize that land homestead style or sell it out right. The proceeds could pay off part of the national debt and the land would be a perpetual source of local real estate taxes.
Why do we need a BLM? This land ought to belong to the people or the states. The BLM does not do anything in South Carolina as far as I know. Why does it do anything in Nevada? It seems like just a source for corruption of politicians.
Ken...while I agree with you about BLM and the potential solution...without BLM (and USACE) Califonication would have not enough water or power. Beat that and your idea is a solid. Very solid.
Ken ... I think you are right aboput no BLM in SC...but you have some federal lands and properties to be managed by two or more of this list of agencies:
Department of the Interior
Bureau of Land Management
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
National Park Service
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Reclamation
Department of Agriculture
United States Forest Service
United States Department of Defense
United States Army Corps of Engineers
Tennessee Valley Authority
Some are fairly efficient and others not so much, from my direct experience with them. It certainly seems the list could be paired down by half and not be a problem.
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