Posted on 04/15/2014 10:47:39 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
RENO, Nev. (CBS Las Vegas/AP) — A Nevada rancher said Monday he’s trying to determine if federal agents damaged his cattle when the animals were rounded up then released in a showdown with angry protesters over a decades-long dispute about rangeland rights.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze said the agency backed off to avoid a potentially violent situation over the weekend.
However, he vowed to go to court to collect more than $1 million in back grazing fees he says Cliven Bundy owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s.
Bundy, whose family has operated a ranch since the 1870s southwest of Mesquite a few miles from the Utah line, does not recognize federal authority on the land that he insists belongs to Nevada.
On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy. The operation had been expected to take a month to collect as many as 900 cattle.
The animals were freed after armed militia members joined hundreds of states’ rights protesters at corrals outside Mesquite. Bundy said they were united in defense of their constitutional rights.
“They have faith in the Constitution,” he told KDWN-AM in Las Vegas on Monday. “The founding fathers didn’t create a government like this.”
Bundy told KLAS-TV that American citizens helped get his cattle back.
“There is no deal here. The citizens of America and Clark County went and took their cattle. There was no negotiations. They took these cattle. They are in possession of these cattle and I expect them to come home soon,” Bundy told KLAS.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegas.cbslocal.com ...
From another article:
According to [Ron] Paul, the entire incident in Clark County could have emerged differently if the government reconsidered the way it claimed land rights. Bundy said that the disputed property had been in his family for nearly 150 years, but the BLM insisted that his animals were trespassing on federal land since he stopped paying the government a grazing fee back in the early 1990s.
“I don’t believe I owe one penny to the United States government,” Bundy told Nevada’s Desert News last week. “I don’t have a contract with the United States government.”
On Friday, Paul told Cavuto that the Bundy family “had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it,” yet the law is “not clean enough.”
“I think land should be in the states and I think the states should sell it to the people,” he continued, adding that “it’s worked out quite well in big states.”
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And here’s an interesting and relevant post on that thread:
To: Jim Robinson
I wish the media would get out the whole story on this. They start with the Rancher refusing to pay federal grazing fees. They leave out that the fed confiscated his land, of which has been in the family for generations, years ago and then turned around and told him to pay for his cattle to graze on it. The land was confiscated and dedicated to the fed in order to protect a tortoise (and something else). But in the same vacinity, the fed allowed commercial development on the same land that was previously undeveloped.
The family refused to pay the fed to use their own property and refused to recognize the feds ownership of the property. So 20 years later, the fed decides to enforce the fees retroactively and confiscate the cattle that graze there.
What recourse did the family have? You can’t very well take the government to court or file a law suit against the fed or the BLM. Property rights are (or were) a founding fundamental right established by our founding fathers. It’s one of the things our freedom and existence is based on.
4 posted on 4/15/2014 10:43:59 AM by Tenacious 1
Now, more than thirty years later, I know exactly what he meant.
How could he have been so prescient?
Prayer and fasting?
If you study human history, you start to see themes repeated over and over again.
Times change. We don’t. At least, not very much.
What held true then, holds true now. What we did then, we will have to do again...
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
“How could he (Ben Franklin) have been so prescient?”
Because they knew their history. The Athenian & Roman Republics were very short lived before they morphed into empires with autocratic rulers.
I am curious as to whether those militiamen keep their jobs after changing sides? with this administration, I am guessing they won’t be there much longer.
Athens was not a republic, it was a democracy or more fittingly mob rule. The Roman Republic lasted approx. 500 years, not a short period of time.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24545747/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/sharpton-owes-nearly-million-back-taxes/
And how are they treating him on this debt?
.
After any given movie which utilizes animals, there is a politically correct warm and fuzzy feel good statement at the end that no animals were harmed during the filming of the movie. I haven't heard a Government spokesman announce yet that no animals were harmed during the commission of this Keystone Cops debacle.
What’s that you say? Sharpton owes millions? And they haven’t yet surrounded him with 200 armed federal officers? I’m shocked!
So where was/is PETA in all of this?
That’s what gets me. You will always be on the wrong side of “the Law” when the people who want control over you make the laws. Why do you think they make so damn many? So we will always be be in violation of, or required to. You don’t have to break laws or regulations, just live your life the way you have always lived and they will make up rules and regulations that put in in violation without you having to act. That’s what Obamacare does. The things they are charging this rancher with and many others are things they made up that should never have been allowed.
Later.
I heard that as many as 100 of them were ran to death by the fascist government helicopters during the roundup.
By the way, I wonder how many millions were spent by the government trying to collect this $1 mil? And why do they so desperately want Bundy off the land? I understand he’s the last cattle rancher standing in this particular region. The BLM has already run they rest of them out of business. Appears to be a dastardly plan in process here.
Appears to be exactly what happened here. I don’t blame Bundy for standing his ground. Our current tyrannical Marxist/fascist government is exactly what our Founders were trying to prevent when they established our Constitution.
Thank God for the second amendment. Without the people being armed, we would soon be the equivalent of Nazi Germany. And we’re nearly there anyway. Praying our people remain vigilant and forever determined to defend the constitution and liberty from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Oh boy: Bundy need to go to college to get his thinking straightened out - he certainly seems to be filled with all sorts of quaint, antiquated notions about how governance works in this country.
/s
Not sure how accurate that is, but looking at personnel involved, time, and assets they've shown so far, I'd guess it's pretty close.
Devine inspiration.
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