Thread: Cliven Bundy- American Patriot or Domestic Terrorist?

Originally Posted by bsnub

Since 1993, the feds say the Nevada rancher has been illegally grazing his herd on federal land. So, acting on a court order, the Bureau of Land Management tried to seize some of Bundy’s herd

As the Feds and it's agent the BLM have no legitimate claim on the land, as such they have no power to ask any legal entity to pass judgement.

The Feds, Federal Government pass ownership of all lands to the State, when it is formed and accepted into the confederation of the States.

Mr Brundy has been paying "fees" to the State but not the Federal government agencies.

The right wing's sweetheart digs himself an even deeper hole...

Cliven Bundy: I'm Just Like Rosa Parks


Mike Stotts/ZUMA
You might have trouble keeping track of all the racists in the news cycle these past few days. But even though deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy's 15 minutes seem to have faded—especially with his conservative media pals no longer championing him following his remarks denigrating "the Negro"—a public statement he issued on Friday that drew little press attention is notable. Here is a classic example of a racist who's been revealed (by his own words) trying to claim that he's not a racist and—what's more!—he's really just like a civil rights hero. We've seen this before, with affirmative-action foes insisting they are more akin to Martin Luther King Jr.—who asked people to judge a person by the content of their character rather than the color of his or her skin—than are advocates of affirmative action. Adopting this black-is-white defense, Bundy went with Rosa Parks, not MLK Jr., and issued a press statement with this absurd argument:

I am standing up against [the federal government's] bad and unconstitutional laws, just like Rosa Parks did when she refused to sit in the back of the bus. She started a revolution in America, the civil rights movement, which freed the black people from much of the oppression they were suffering. I'm saying Martin Luther King's dream was not that Rosa could take her rightful seat in the front of the bus, but his dream was that she could take any seat on the bus and I would be honored to sit beside her. I am doing the same thing Rosa Parks did—I am standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.

This probably ain't worth unpacking. But Bundy is likening having to pay the government a below-market-rate grazing fee for feeding his cows on federal land to segregation. And in the full statement, he goes further, comparing what he considers to be modern-day federal overreach to…yes, slavery. Looking to repair his reputation, Bundy—or whoever wrote this statement—embraced the conservative trope that the current taxing, spending, and regulatory policies of the federal government are equivalent to slavery. Remember when Sarah Palin likened the federal debt to slavery? Bundy takes it to the next level:

We are trading one form of slavery for another.
What I am saying is that all we Americans are trading one form of slavery for another. All of us are in some measure slaves of the federal government. Through their oppressive tactics of telling the ranchers how many cows they can have on their land, and making that number too low to support a ranch, the BLM has driven every rancher in Clark County off the land, except me. The IRS keeps the people of America in fear, and makes us all work about a third or a half of the year before we have earned enough to pay their taxes. This is nothing but slavery from January through May. The NSA spies on us and collects our private phone calls and emails. And the government dole which many people in America are on, and have been for much of their lives, is dehumanizing and degrading. It takes away incentive to work and self respect. Eventually a person on the dole becomes a ward of the government, because his only source of income is a dole from the government. Once the government has you in that position, you are its slave.

Bundy is extending his original case. He goes beyond his initial argument that Americans who receive federal assistance (meaning African Americans) are no better off than the slaves of old. He asserts that all of us have been enslaved by the federal government.
Bundy notes, "I am trying to keep Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream alive." And he ends the statement with contradictory references to Concord and Lexington and a call for "peaceful revolution to regain our freedom." The folks who were aiming assault weapons at federal officers during the standoff two weeks ago near Bundy's ranch didn't look that peaceful. And Bundy has repeatedly hinted that he's willing to use violence against the feds.
Bundy's statement shows that this episode is really not about a grazing-fee dispute. He and his comrades view it in a larger and extreme context, and it is Bundy who has racialized the episode—and continues to do so by equating himself to Parks and King and insisting that he knows best about the plight of today's low-income African Americans. As of now, Bundy has lost his right-wing media darling status, and perhaps the feds will figure out a way to deal with him without another high-profile showdown in the desert. If so, this may be the last statement from Bundy that anyone—outside of the black helicopter, anti-government militia set—will have to pay attention to.

He would have a good case if the government had sent government owned cattle on his private land without permission and compensation. He's a thief stealing what doesn't belong to him, gaining an advantage over the competition by illegal means. The market has sorted his cattle out as a way to make a living, even the government subsidies can't keep him afloat, so he resorted to his private kind of communism. Take away all the ideological justifications and spins, and diversions like does the land belong to the feds or the state, and that's the core of the issue.

Found a story today that might help some people about grazing on government land and the prices they pay.

The national obsession with Cliven Bundy dissipated quickly after he said “the negro” might have been better off when they were slaves.

Conservative pundits and Republican senators ran from Bundy’s overt racism. Even if Bundy is forgotten, he brought fresh attention to a pernicious policy problem. The public is getting ripped off by ranchers.

The media obsessed over the shiny, but ultimately irrelevant, aspects of the Bundy incident. Militias, anti-American conservative conspiracies, the right of the federal government to own land and charge fees to use it, pervasive racism on the right, welfare, and bickering television personalities all are settled issues, but they get ratings.

Lost was the only real issue of substance down on the Bundy ranch: ludicrously cheap federal grazing fees.

Bundy refused to pay the fees and racked up penalties. That was enough to attract armed followers willing to fight federal officials enforcing the law. That he didn’t pay them doesn’t make him a welfare mom, it makes him a crook.

But welfare for ranchers is real. It’s just underreported. Fees that ranchers pay are a fraction of market rates for grazing on private land or purchasing feed.

The Bureau of Land Management administers about 245 million acres of public land mostly in Western states. It allows livestock grazing on about 155 million acres and issues about 18,000 permits and leases to ranchers that typically last 10 years.

BLM charges $1.35 per animal unit month. An AUM is grazing for a cow and calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. That’s the same rate the federal government charged in 2013, and the year before. In fact, that’s how much the government has charged for decades except for a few years under President George W. Bush when it went up a few pennies.

To put that in perspective, $1.35 will get you one or two cans of cat or dog food, far short of a month’s supply.

The rate is the result of a convoluted formula that Congress adopted in 1978 as part of the Public Rangelands Improvement Act. It sets $1.35 as the minimum, and it doesn’t adjust for inflation. It also is open to political manipulation.

When BLM redoes the math each year, ranchers and their lobbyists make sure nothing changes. Grazing on public lands remains cheap. Ranchers win. The public loses.

In 2013, the average rate for grazing on private lands in the West was $18.90 per head per month. Feed costs are comparably high.

Private Range Fees
Average private monthly grazing fees per state. Bold text is 2013. Regular text is 2012.

Conservatives insist that government should run more like a business. No business would remain viable if it charged 1/14th of the going market rate.

Federal lands are a public resource, and the American people deserve fair compensation from those who use them for private profit. That should include money to offset environmental damage and water pollution caused by grazing. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that federal agencies recouped only about 15 percent of their administrative costs from ranchers. In 2004, taxpayers lost $123 million to grazing.

Periodically a brave lawmaker bucks the ranching special interests and introduces legislation to fix that disparity. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, introduced legislation in 2012 to set fees comparable to nearby private rangeland. In Nebraska, grazing fees on private land cost $34. His bill died in committee.

Even the Obama administration, for all its talk about environmental stewardship and fiscal responsibility has been afraid to touch the grazing fee.

Let Cliven Bundy ride off into the sunset, as all cowboys must, but don’t let his fellow ranchers continue exploiting America’s resources without paying their fair share.

There is also a conservative oriented, commercial case to be made that, by undercutting free market rates so much on grazing or agistment fees, the federal government is harming private enterprise and distorting the free market. Foul!

I think Cliven Bundy may not get an invite to the next Ranchers hoedown.