Posted on 04/12/2014 10:31:38 PM PDT by servo1969
Let me obliterate a bit of confusion here: the Obama administration attempted to go to war with a rancher in Nevada. Let me amplify a little bit of truth: They tucked tail and have returned home. And let me add a bit of clarity: they had no choice!
As the nation began to become familiar with the plight of the family of Cliven Bundy, many of us harkened back to another standoff in which the Federal government attempted to bully it's outcome: Waco, Texas and the Branch Davidian massacre.
It is telling that in the Nevada case the feds pulled out so quickly, given all they had indicated they were willing to do to resolve the matter to their satisfaction. They had set up a perimeter around the Bundy's family land, ranch, and home. They had brought in extra artillery, dogs, and snipers. They were beginning the process of stealing more than 300 head of cattle that did not belong to them.
They did so--or so we were told--for the reason of protecting the desert tortoise. But then it was revealed that the Bureau of Land Management had shot far more desert tortoises than the Bundy cattle had even possibly destroyed. We were told they did it because the Bundys had broken federal laws by not paying what amounted to retroactive grazing fees to the federal government. But the Governor of the state of Nevada told us that Bundy had paid every ounce of state tax, met the state requirements, and their family had been improving the property more than 100 years previous.
Finally we were allowed to know the connection between a communist Chinese wind/solar power plant and its connection to that senator named Harry Reid. Evidently a plan had been hatched to use the Bundy property for a solar farm and instead of paying the Bundys, someone, somewhere in the administration believed it was easier to just take what they wanted.
That approach is at least consistent with the readily documented abuse of imminent domain where the government for any number of reasons--few of them valid--have taken to taking what doesn't belong to them. Americans then watch as it gets handed over to some multi-national corporation for the "cause" of the "greater good."
There were a few specific reasons why the feds chickened out in the Nevada desert though.
1. Technology - As the Bundy family members were abused, cameras captured it. Not television network cameras, but dozens of cell phone video devices that gave witness to a Bundy aunt being shoved to the ground, and a Bundy son being tazed. All of this while threatening protestors with dogs, brandished weapons and vehicles was captured, uploaded and made viral to the watching world.
2. States' Rights - As the drama unfolded it became clear that the Governor of Nevada, and the Sheriff of Clark County knew that Cliven Bundy's family had not only not broken any state law regarding the land, but that they had gone to the enth degree to insure compliance with Nevada laws on the property. The Governor and the Sheriff, to their credit, did not favor the feds as a more powerful party in the conflict. Though there must have been pressure from Senator Reid's office, the administration via the Bureau of Land Management, and local officials who were bought and sold like the Clark County Commissioner who told those coming to support the Bundys to have "funeral plans in place."
3. Grassroots Response - As other incidents have transpired in the past, the amount of time it took honest information to reach the grassroots and thus the response to the action came to slow. In the massacre in Waco, most of the nation had been sold a single narrative from the limited media outlets covering the events. Similarly the events surrounding the abduction of Elian Gonzales from his family in Florida and deportation to Cuba took place in such a response vacuum that by the time Americans knew the real story, the damage was done. With the Bundy ranch, internet outlets by the dozen had competing information with the limited "official news" being released by the networks, and in most cases the alternative sources had it correct and usually a full day or so ahead of the news cycle. By the time afternoon drive hit, when the network news rooms in New York were preparing their first stories, talk radio audiences had already been dialing their elected officials in Washington demanding action.
The majority of Americans saw through the efforts to spin the story in Nevada. Couple that with the leadership failures that the American people view the administration responsible for, from Benghazi to the Affordable Care Act, all it took was the unedited video of federal agents tazing Bundy's son, followed by his pulling the wires from his chest and continuing to stand his ground for there to be comparisons made to the American revolution.
It's also important to note that merely pulling back from the Bundy property hasn't settled the matter for the American people either.
The feds have stolen 352 head of cattle, and will not confirm or deny if they euthanized some or all of them. Recompense must be made. And to be candid, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see if a few ambitious law firms don't try to convince the Bundy family of the validity of litigation.
Fortunately for the American people, the feds were not able to ultimately bully a simple rancher, not for a tortoise, a solar power plant, or a dirty Senator and his administration.
We owe the Bundy family a great deal of thanks for standing tall.
For if the federal government is allowed to do it with one, then there will be nothing stopping them from doing it again.
“...once you peel back the layers of the onion, the Feds DO NOT OWN this land. They were originally paid to “manage” the land, which they stopped doing once their intention was to take it.”
Like all government bureaucracies, the BLM has decided that it’s not “the people’s land,” but rather it’s “their land.” Ditto for those land grabbers, The Army Corps of Engineers. The GOP would do well to start talking right now about returning substantial portions of this land to the citizens, and not take 20 years to do it.
Sometime in the last year, I kept getting messages from a local group to attend a speaker talking about the BLM and Arizona public lands. I think it was held in Mesa. I was going to go because everyone was saying how this was going to become “THE” issue in Arizona. It was all tied in to Agenda 21, etc. In the end I did not go because I thought, “I’m a city dweller, this does not pertain to me.” And then this happens. It pertains to all of us. I just wish I could find out what happened at that meeting, but I’ve come up empty-handed searching the web.
What a fast track, eh? Thanks for posting all of that info.
I do not want to come to blows but after spending all of my adult life working around the Federal Government I have very low expectations of a peaceful outcome that ends up favoring our constitution.
Having worked around over paid government employees who have an attitude of entitlement, watching more and more of them show outright disdain for the citizens who pay their salaries, and from where I live I watch hundreds of government employees being trained in combat operations at the military/government facilities located a stones throw away from my home.
I fully believe the Government is training up thousands of personnel and giving them paychecks much greater than their true abilities should ever garner so they will swear fealty to their political lords and masters. I have had conversations with many of these people and they are average IQ types who seem to relish their status as armed agents of the Government and they do show contempt for anybody who is not in their ranks.
I do fear for the future and I will fight when needed for our Constitution, freedom, and liberty tho I would prefer not and would like to retire in a couple of years to hunt, fish and relax a bit.
5.56mm
My Full Understanding Missileer. I’ll go with you, my friend.
Yes, I saw that on Fox too. My brother knows the son that was telling the story. He has been watching their case for several years.
My brother has had similar difficulties, but not as bad.
If no law has been violated by the government, then who is responsible for letting the law get as draconian as that?
Riiiiiight! “WE THE PEOPLE”
We have big time REPENTING to do before the Lord ourselves before we can dare preach to others.
I’m not sure what all that means, I am just saying what so many others are, that they’re getting fed up with government control at all levels...This is no secret. The government is using imminent domain, insects, fish, regulation and weather as excuses to control and regulate nearly everything.
Most people are taking notice.
Well whose watch was this on.
If we start to name presidents.... WRONG.
What does it say at the top of that Constitution?
“WE THE PEOPLE”
QED
I wrote last night that “this isn’t over”.
I wrote that as a result of several things:
1. Libs/Progs/Rats...whatever the label, widely believe the BLM was correct in its actions and Bundy wrong.
2. There’s still a legal document that gives the BLM rights and takes away from Bundy
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/reptiles/desert_tortoise/pdfs/Order_US_v__Bundy_7_9_13.pdf
3. The culture in Nevada & DC that permitted this are still in power.
People may very well go home after yesterday, but they can’t go to sleep...
I heard yesterday that more were moving in from Idaho and Montana. Also read that Bundy had set up a campground for them. Maybe they can work out an outpost there and rotate patriots in and out to keep it manned for the forseeable future.
And yes, we do hope this is so.
Golden boy.
“In the end I did not go because I thought, “I’m a city dweller, this does not pertain to me.” And then this happens. It pertains to all of us.”
I think you, like a lot of folks, have figured out that it IS ABOUT ALL OF US.! For the life of me, I still can’t figure out what drives Marxists. Do they think that they are really smarter than all of the rest of us and if we only had their “intellect,” we’d see that they were actually “right.” Or is it simply the old fashioned “dictator complex” at work. One thing that I do know, is that the Marxists have this “I’m some sort of an aggrieved party” down pat. But I think
P.J.O’Rourke says it best:
“At the core of Liberalism is the spoiled child—miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
The few Liberals with whom I am forced by circumstances to associate, fit this description to a tee.
My thoughts to. I can’t believe that they would shoot to kill if they were told.
The patriots were able to carry the day - this time. The problem lies in the massive size of the BLM and other agencies like them. They have government jets at their disposal and can move their forces anywhere in the country quickly. We still need to communicate and then gather together enough manpower to face them down. By the time we do that they can move to another site and wear us out.
So we have to change our rules of engagement to allow us to hit them where they don’t expect it. To that end we need to remember the “Clinton Rules of Engagement” that were utilized during the Bosnian war. When the Clinton administration began to lose support for the war because of unfreindly news posts by Serbian journalists Ol’ Bill just added those journalists to his ‘enemies list’ and authorized military strikes against them. If Bill could do it, why can’t we?
Also, during WWII the NAZI SS rounded up Jews and sent them to their deaths. We’ve condemned the soldiers of the SS for their part but - in general - we’ve given a pass to the office workers who compiled the list of Jews to be arrested. Weren’t they just as culpable as the footsoldiers? If so, then how about the GS-7 who compiles the information the government SWAT team uses? How about the mechanic who maintains the armored vehicles? And let’s not forget the assistant to the Congresscritter who pushed the law the SWAT team is enforcing.
Until all those people feel there is a target on their backs they will continue to “just follow orders” and draw their paychecks. Only when the SWAT team has no list to work from or vehicle to get to the site will we see a change in attitude by .gov. Agents for the Bundy fiasco were drawn from a number of western states. So those offices are just as complicit in this aborted atrocity as are the local forces. Aren’t they and their people as worthy of censure as any of the men with their boots on the ground?
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