Cliven Bundy Ranch

[Rory]

Yeah, it's definitely provocateurs and not that these heavily armed, angry, paranoid, racist and stupid men are cooped up together in a situation where they are amped up and itching for a fight that hasn't happened. And of course, alcohol and testosterone always need the catalyst of cointelpro to make conflict occur.

I'm sure at least half the fuckwits could be trusted to start a fight in an empty room

[Iamwhomiam]

^^^^ Without a doubt!

[82_28]

They should offer a truce and have a paintball match between the "milita" and the "government" for the grand prize. Winner takes the $1m and a free paintball business of playing fields in which the proceeds would go to pay for the cattle's grazing fees upon the various courses. Win win.

Nobody gets hurt and would underscore the poetic absurdity of this "standoff".

[justdrew]

I still want an answer to this simple question:

why don't the feds take him to state court, get a (probably) default judgement, then let the county sheriff go in evict and sell the property?

My understanding is that that is the normal procedure that would be followed in a case like this.

of course, I hear there've already been (many?) court judgements against bundy, but not sure about that, or why nothing is coming of that. I would think any of those judges would be well within their rights to have bundy hauled in on contempt of court charges at least.

[American Dream]

I still want an answer to this simple question:

why don't the feds take him to state court, get a (probably) default judgement, then let the county sheriff go in evict and sell the property?

My understanding is that that is the normal procedure that would be followed in a case like this.

of course, I hear there've already been (many?) court judgements against bundy, but not sure about that, or why nothing is coming of that. I would think any of those judges would be well within their rights to have bundy hauled in on contempt of court charges at least.

Could it be as simple as the Democratic Party's desire to maintain every possible advantage in the upcoming elections?

Although the Militia Movement as such is fairly marginal these days, sympathy for right-wing populist causes has a recurring history the United States- probably amongst specific demographics which the Dems hope to win over to their side.

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^Agreed, my hunch is that this is being stage-managed to drive a wedge into the Tea Party for mid-terms.

When you think about it, the simple fact those common sense basic legal procedures have not been followed here is confirmation there is some Fed-level tomfoolery afoot. Circuit court judges and state/local prosecutors don't get to exercise that much discretion, cabinet level officials certainly do.

[American Dream]

^^Agreed, my hunch is that this is being stage-managed to drive a wedge into the Tea Party for mid-terms.

When you think about it, the simple fact those common sense basic legal procedures have not been followed here is confirmation there is some Fed-level tomfoolery afoot. Circuit court judges and state/local prosecutors don't get to exercise that much discretion, cabinet level officials certainly do.

It would be the Establishment Republican faction which would gain electoral advantage from such a tactic, no? Would they be the main ones pulling the strings on Federal (in)action?

[seemslikeadream]

William Rivers Pitt | Cliven Bundy: Clown Car or Trojan Horse?
Friday, 02 May 2014 10:17
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Cliven Bundy, a rancher embroiled in a land dispute with the federal government, speaks to the reporters near Bunkerville, Nev., April 19, 2014. (Ronda Churchill/The New York Times)
The ongoing saga of freeloading Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is, on the surface, a perfect masterpiece of right-wing clown car stupidity. I'm sure you're already familiar with the story: Bundy, who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the federal government, has been grazing his cattle on federal lands for the last twenty years while refusing to pay grazing fees, said fees amounting to about the cost of a can of Campbell's tomato soup per cow. The feds ordered Bundy to pay the fees he owed, ordered him to get his cattle off publicly-owned property, and let him know when they would be coming to enforce these orders in person.
And that's when the clown car burst open. Between the end of March and April 10th, Bundy supporters whipped each other into a frenzy on social media, grabbed their AR-15s and AK-47s, and swooped down on the Bundy ranch to defend their newest freeloading patriot hero from the federal usurpers of the Bureau of Land Management. Once they arrived at the ranch, they were asked to sign in under a large banner that read "MILITA SIGHN IN," because of course that happened.
Fox News, and especially Sean Hannity, immediately began hyping the story all day and night, elevating Bundy to the status of instant Founding Father. How could they resist? Here was a guy who denies the existence of the US government while riding his horse on federal lands with an American flag strapped to his saddle. Cognitive dissonance is the meat and mead of Fox News, and the dissonance in that one image was weighty enough to bend the very light.
It took about two weeks for everything to go sideways.
First, Mr. Bundy delivered his now-infamous rant about Black people being happier picking cotton as slaves, a statement he doubled down on later by comparing himself to Rosa Parks before saying that if Black people didn't like his opinions, it's because "Martin Luther King hasn't gotten his job done yet."
Skreeeeeeech went the needle off the record. Every right-wing media personality and politician who had rushed to publicly embrace Cliven Bundy immediately fled his presence as if he were covered in Goliath tarantulas. I think there still may be a Hannity-shaped hole in the studio wall at Fox News.
His ardent gun-toting supporters at the ranch stood their ground...until a few days ago, when there was a sudden falling-out between Bundy's own ranch security - commanded by a man actually named Booda Bear - and a contingent of Oath Keepers who had come to the ranch because Jesus, or something. Their leader, one Stewart Rhodes, informed Booda Bear (God, I could type his name all day) that he had "intel" from a "source of intelligence of high value" that Eric Holder and the Justice Department were going to deploy a "hot drone strike" against the Bundy Ranch within the next 24 hours. Because of this, the fearless leader was forced to re-deploy his stalwart troops off the ranch and into hotels with room service back in town.
This did not sit well with Booda Bear, who told Radio Free Redoubt's John Jacob Schmidt, "This is a battle front in some sense of the word and to remove them is kind of, ah, that's some yellow curd, ya know, spineless backbone piece of shit maneuvering right there. He had pretty much said, 'Well, I need to pull my guys back so they can allocate resources to the exterior of the area,' meaning go into the next town and get hotel rooms, get showers, gamble, eat steak dinners, while we're out here on the battle front...and just so everybody knows, as Booda, head of security for the Bundy family, I can swear on the white skin that covers my ass there will not be an Oath Keeper - there WILL NOT BE AN OATH KEEPER allowed to set foot on the internal ranch property."
And so not with a bang, but with a Derp, solidarity at the Bundy ranch "battle front" fell to dust that swirled and eddied around the white skin of Booda Bear's ass.
It is all too easy to lay waste to this whole barge of absurdity with an avalanche of mockery, to blow it off, laugh it off, and enjoy the sight of Bundy's right-wing supporters heading for the hills after he went all jump-down-turn-around-pick-a-bale-of-cotton in a video that went viral in less time than it takes to misspell a banner.
But there's some very serious and troubling stuff here, and it cannot be ignored or buried beneath the eruption of stupid we've witnessed to date. First of all, these armed yahoos actually managed to successfully fend off federal agents who were attempting to uphold and execute the law. That sets a terrible precedent, one that will almost certainly inspire more armed yahoos to point rifles at people somewhere down the line. They're still on the Bundy ranch, they've started setting up "checkpoints" along the roads around the ranch, and the feds still have to execute those orders, so this thing is not over yet...
...and note you well: here in America, you can point a high-powered rifle at federal officers and get off scot-free with your gun still in your hand. Sit down at a peaceful Occupy protest on the campus of UC Davis in California, however, and you get a gushing face full of Mace for your trouble...while the cop who sprayed you gets $38,000 in compensation for "anxiety and depression."
Far more insidious is the fact that, until he pulled his little "What, Me Racist?" number for all the world to see, Mr. Bundy's most dedicated supporters were a couple of billionaire brothers named Charles and David Koch. The Koch Brothers, if truth be told, could not give less of a damn about Cliven Bundy and his band of merry men, but until Bundy blew out like an old, racist tire, they were intensely interested in using him as the avatar for a fight they've been waging for twenty years: placing control of publicly-owned federal lands back into the hands of the states, so the states can lease or sell those lands to companies like Koch Industries for cattle grazing, mining, drilling, fracking, and lumbering.
Right now, those lands are protected from such activities, but the Koch Brothers were hoping to ride Cliven Bundy's cause to a massive land grab. The fact that Cliven Bundy upended the intentions of the Koch Brothers by being a racist idiot on television does not change their intentions one whit. They want to drill, to mine, to frack, and to profit off those lands that belong to us, for now.
So, as matters currently stand, Cliven Bundy can certainly be quantified as a human clown car. Do not, however, lose sight of the real story here: Mr. Bundy was also a Trojan Horse filled with Koch Industries drilling equipment until he blew it. Bundy may be gone from the news soon, but the Koch Brothers still want that land, because the world is not enough for guys like that, which is why, to no small degree, the rest of us can't have nice things like clean air and water that doesn't catch on fire coming out of the tap.

They want to drill, to mine, to frack, and to profit

[Hunter]

Someone at the top made the call to ignore these guys because they didnt want to give the Koch brothers fuel for the upcoming election. The dems dont need a stand off with government agents and so called patriots that will fuel the tea party in November. Best call right now, ignore these idiots let them burn out on their own or send in a psy op and divide and splinter them which appears to be happening.

[Saurian Tail]

Here is some useful information to provide some context to the broader situation out west:

The nation’s 13 western states are home to 93 percent of federal land, according to 2010 agency data compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Almost exactly two-thirds of Utah land—66.5 percent—is federally owned, making it second only to Nevada’s 81 percent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/gov ... land-back/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/gov ... 2_PM-2.jpg

[Hunter]

The reason the feds own so much land out west is because nobody else wants it or wants to buy it, its dead mans land, there is nothing out here but dirt and cactus. I mean there is some nice forest area but much of in Nevada, Arizona, Texas etc, is just desert that nobody ever wanted.

[justdrew]

but hasn't the whole matter of owing the fee's been dragged out for more than a decade? I'd guess it's FAR more likely a scumbag bush appointee in the BLM decided to make an issue out of it (and in the questionable way in which it was done) now to fuel the right and create an election time issue. Only the intervention of a higher-up called off the staged circus. I've little doubt that appointee (or rather, likely inappropriate partisan hire (bush did that all the time despite the laws against it, and no one ever did a damn thing about getting rid of them)) who decided to 'pull the trigger' on this issue now, is well protected by the rules of bureaucracy from being fired, named and shamed, but the wheels may grind slowly, but grind they do, sooner or later, that head will roll.

and the next obvious important question... how many other people owe past due grazing fees?

[Hunter]

Yes Bundy and the BLM have been at this for the last ten years, this is not new at all. It does seem like someone wanted this to happen now, just before the election, to rally the tea party troops. But they got outsmarted when someone high up decided to ignore them and basically silence their mantra that the govt is coming to round up patriots and take our guns. They wanted a standoff and someone who is smart decided not to give it to them. The bad part of that is that it LOOKS like these yahoos were able to chase off the BLM with their threats and that will no doubt fuel their fire down the line when something else happens, they think they can just show up and point their guns and get their way now but had the BLM decided to engage them it would have really rallied the tea party in November, so politically speaking, denying them that was a good, smart move.

But yea, I would like to know who was behind this to begin with because its been going on for ten years and obviously someone wanted this to be an issue right now leading up to the election. Kochs were behind it, funding it from the get go, I know that, they apparently pulled their support when Bundy went racist, so they said.

I live out west and know many ranchers and I can tell you for certain A LOT of ranchers owe grazing fees, Bundy is not even remotely the worst offender, his situation may have just been the best for the TV cameras.

[American Dream]

Freedom Rider: The Lessons of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling

Wed, 04/30/2014 — Margaret Kimberley

http://www.blackagendareport.com/conten ... d-sterling

“Black people or even white people on the left would not get away with publicly brandishing fire arms, forming a de facto militia and threatening the lives of federal employees.”

There is nothing like the musings of racist white people to garner media attention and public outrage. Unfortunately there is usually more heat than light generated in these situations and the opportunity to gain insights on the condition of black America is lost.

Such is the case with mooching rancher Cliven Bundy and racist basketball team owner Donald Sterling. Hopefully they woke black Americans from any delusion of a post-racial society and in Sterling’s case simultaneously revealed the traitors and mis-leaders in our midst.

Bundy is a Nevada rancher who like 16,000 others across the country grazes his cattle on federal property, which comprises 85% of that state’s land area. Bundy is within his rights to graze his cattle there but he is required to pay a fee for doing so. He has gotten away with paying absolutely nothing for 20 years and after losing many court cases now owes the Bureau of Land Management more than $1 million.

When the BLM finally had enough and confiscated his cattle, Bundy issued a call to arms to other terrorist minded white people. They came from all over the country, pointing guns at federal agents and creating a media firestorm. In the ironically named town of Bunkerville, Bundy held court among his fellow domestic terrorists and became the darling of Fox news and the Republican Party.

It is obvious that black people or even white people on the left would not get away with publicly brandishing fire arms, forming a de facto militia and threatening the lives of federal employees. The government backed down to prevent violence but Bundy’s fifteen minutes of fame went on a little too long for his own good. He ended what had been a galvanizing event for the right wing when he uttered his opinions about “niggers.” Some media claim he used the word “nigra” and others say “negro” but the audio is clear. Bundy expressed the opinion that black people were better off in slavery than we are today because we had work to do when we picked cotton. He rambled on against abortion and mused about why black people are in jail, but he summed up his theories by saying that freedom just didn’t help black people very much. The best part of this debacle was watching Republicans flee from the public relations disaster but the whole episode should be treated as a serious lesson.

“There are millions of Americans who would take up arms to kill mostly because they would enjoy it.”

Bundy is no outlier in any of the opinions he holds. There are millions of Americans who would take up arms to kill mostly because they would enjoy it. They might defend their actions with an appeal to patriotism or a sage brush rebellion or doomsday prepping or whatever rationale would be most convenient, but the bottom line is that they would like to get away with killing as many people as possible. That is why we have stand your ground laws and why Georgia recently passed legislation making it legal to carry guns anywhere and everywhere in that state.

Bundy is also not alone in seeing chattel slavery as being worthy of nostalgia. It is not a coincidence that gun and slavery lovers so often find common cause. The two go together and the Second Amendment is directly tied to the granting of police force status to every white person in the country in the days of slavery. Bundy’s popularity is deep and dangerous and he is no less popular now in some circles than he was before he made his remarks. Most racists know how to filter their thoughts in polite society. But Bundy is an ignorant man with no clue about niceties and said what was on his and others’ minds. It doesn’t matter that Rand Paul and Fox News back tracked from the Bundy love fest. If millions of white Americans were granted their ultimate fantasy, black people would be back in chains on the auction block.

[Iamwhomiam]

I'll write more later. I just lost a monster of a post and I need to get some sleep. Rats! I must have hit a control key or sumpin. gone! Later.