Posted on 11/27/2015 5:09:19 AM PST by rktman
Ranchers in the West are engaged in 21st-century range wars, but their adversaries are not the rustlers and cattle barons of lore. Federal land management agencies, overzealous officers, and self-righteous judges are the foes western ranchers fear the most.
On October 7, father and son ranchers from Oregon, Dwight, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, were labeled as terrorists and sentenced to five years in federal prison under anti-terrorism laws. In 2001, a fire set by the Hammonds to eliminate overgrown sagebrush on their own property inadvertently spread to adjacent BLM land. The two were convicted of arson when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) accused them of using fire to destroy federal property. In 2006 Steven Hammond was again convicted of arson when he set several “backfires†on his ranch which burned nearby public acreage. Without seeking permission from the BLM, Hammond was attempting to save the ranch’s winter feed by setting prescriptive fires.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Some say it’s the government agencies that rule the country. It matters not for whom you vote. Actions described support such notions.
Typical BLM nazi tactics against American Citizens. Typical.
Reading only the excerpt above, I fail to see terrorism or arson because of lack of motive and intent. That said, there might be a case of reckless endangerment, but I don’t know enough of the facts to say whether such a case would be appropriate.
One thing does stand out, for these government types to be using terrorism and arson as charges show a disregard for appropriate application of law. Even if these ranchers were hostile to the law, it is inappropriate to harangue them as terrorists and to suggest they are arsonists for fires set to their own properties suggests the BLM and its court administrators went too far.
But again we don’t have all the facts here from the above excerpt.
We can recall the ranch war with the BLM and the Bundy family. Now that seems clear as a BLM overreach, so clear that even the Governor of Nevada intervened.
I wonder if the same BLM jerks in the Bundy war were involved in this thread’s terrorist/arsonist case.
It appears that this episode of screw the public started before the most recent Bundy incident. Must be another one of those rules/regs/requirements that have the weight of law or whatever that becomes a felony at the whim of the govt.
This war on natural resource harvesters (NRHs), (which includes ranchers, logger, miners, commercial fishermen, and farmers), began under Nixon and has proceeded apace ever since - for every very expensive legal battle won by the NRHs, two or three are won by the Feds. Any SCOTUS cases won by the NRHs are reversed without comment by lower courts as they know that the plaintiffs do not have the money to re-litigate. Numerous NGOs have stepped in, seek amicus curiae status in any court case while working hand in glove with the Feds to enrich their own pockets.
Congress critters only help when A) a proposed solution will mitigate a situation, but not solve it. There are always more votes found from the public than from the NRHs, and so there is nothing the politician will do, unless condition ‘A’ above applies. There is no B.
Those public lands denied will eventually be owned and managed by some NGO like American Rivers or The Nature Conservancy. The fix is in. The scam works like this:
1) The Feds sue the NRH over something.
2) The NGOs step in after the battle has gone on for some time and offer the poor NRH money for his land.
3) Having acquired the land, the NGO sells a portion to the Feds for equal or more than they paid for the entire piece.
4) The NGO then makes the remaining land available to its members at a ‘discount’.
5) The members generally use the land in the same fashion as the original NRHs, but are now protected.
I think I remember reading someplace that when the ngo’s get involved, the end result gets paid for by us. Lawyers fees, expert witness expenses etc. Nice use of tax dollars.
Greedy neighbor, you mean. I’ll just betcha BLM promises bounties to snitches.
Like having a liberal neighbor who knows you own guns. A SWAT raid is only a phone call away.
True, taxpayer dollars pay the whole legal bill from start to SCOTUS, where taxpayers generally lose - or always lose depending on how you look at it.
No BLM here in West TX so I’ll leave that part out. Our main ranch is 32 sections with neighbors to each side having about the same. From time to time we do burn a pasture to clear out undergrowth and prickly pear. We coordinate this with out neighbors who might be effected due to wind and out county fire department. We also notify the Sheriff’s Department and the Forest Service just incase they get call’s. We have fire fighting equipment on site and at least 2 tankers with another 400 barrels of water available. Unless he did at least that to keep the fire on his place I would hold him responsible for any damage off his property. Now if he intentionally let the fire get off his property and onto the BLM he was leasing to let it burn also that would definitely amount to charges being filed. Even under both scenarios I do not see where terrorism could be applied. When your leasing land you do nothing with out the landowners permission.
LOL! Whenever scotus or congress is in session, we lose somehow.
Except when one is on the losing end as a NRH there is no LOL just tears ...
People need to be ready for a Republican president in 2017 with pardon requests. This truly is a crime & these departments need to be shut down.
Give us our land back, Feds!
[10 minutes long] Hammond Video
Pretty damn disgraceful what’s been done by these alphabet agencies.
Latest email:
Dear Friends,
SHERIFF WARD IS FEEDING YOUR INFORMATION TO THE FBI (HAMMONDS)
After a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with family and friends our hearts are full of gratitude and joy. We hope yesterday found you with family, friends, fun and food. We love this time of year. We wish we had better news for you on such a fun time of the year.
However, Sheriff David Ward (the Hammonds sheriff) has unfortunately fallen to the influences of federal agents and has taken an adverse position against the Hammonds.
When you have an officer of the law that does not understand the constitution and allows fear to drive him, the people are negatively affected.
We would also like to warn anyone that has contacted the Sheriff; he has been feeding your information to the FBI.
We have reached out to him several times over the last week to try to understand his motives, but he refuses to take our calls or answer our messages.
His assistant has informed us that he is no longer accepting messages from the Hammond supporters.
For those who have received a letter from the Sheriff and would like to be able to understand it better please go to the link below prepared by a leader in Arizona. It is a clear explanation of the Sheriff’s lack of understanding.
Please be sure to understand that this battle is about a small powerful group of people using force to make all people live the way the want them to.
This is the age-old battle of Force vs. Agency. If what is happening to the Hammonds is allowed, it will set a standard of what these powerful people will do to all of us.
We must restore the Hammonds rights and make sure these types of thing do not happen in the future. Our children depend upon on us to act.
Please contact the Oregon State Representatives and ask them to meet with the Hammonds at their ranch & home and find out what kind of people the Hammonds are and what this is really about.
State Representative Cliff Bentz (R)
900 Court St NE H-475
Salem, OR 97310
Phone: (503) 986-1460
Email: rep.cliffbentz@state.or.us
State Senator Ted Ferrioli (R)
900 Court St NE S-323
Salem, OR 97310
Phone: (503) 986-1730
Email: sen.teferrioli@state.or.us
May all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving week,
The Bundy Family
bundyranch.blogspot.com
P.S. The Hammonds will not be in Burns for the Thanksgiving week. Let us give them this time to be together in peace.
Letter in Response to Sheriff Ward’s Letter:
http://bundyranch.blogspot.com/.../letter-below-prepared-by-l...
How does a lower court reverse SCOTUS?
After a case goes to SCOTUS, and some part of the ruling goes against Federal/NGO interests, the court rules that part legal, thus handing the verdict that the Feds wanted in the first place. For the plaintiffs to take that part back to SCOTUS, they need more money to pay the very expensive lawyers - so far no one has come up with the millions of dollars needed to bring such a case back to SCOTUS.
The Feds have all the money in the Treasury to fight with, NRH have only what they have in their pockets and can raise. After taking a case to SCOTUS and losing, moral and donors disappear. Mostly the NRH are concerned with making a livelihood and feeding their families - there is not much spare money and even less to take it up again, particularly once the bank comes to collect on the second or third mortgage ...
No one outside of the NRH community notices and so it goes ...
Terrorism charges for a few farmers who only started a proscribed burn on their own land? Who were they trying to terrorism a bunch of Grass?
BLM is the real terrorist here.
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