Parasites
Badtux has been covering the the Bundy case in Nevada [post 2 and post 2], so that’s where to look for the background on this rip-off of US taxpayers. Basically Bundy thinks he has the right to graze his cattle on Federal land without paying for the privilege, and he has been freeloading for 20 years.
A number of my relatives were/are dairy farmers. If they wanted to expand their herds and needed more grazing land, they had to lease it from private landowners at commercial rates. The grazing fees on Federal land in the West are a pittance compared to what a dairy farmer in the Northeast has to pay. The grazing fees are effectively a subsidy of Western ranchers by the taxpayers.
Bundy is a moocher, making money off of Federal resources, and that has to stop. He is stealing from the ranchers who pay their fees, and from all of the taxpayers. It may be time to reintroduce mountain lions and wolves on Federal lands in Clark County, Nevada.
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There’s already mountain lions, though they’re fairly scarce on the ground outside the Grand Canyon National Park. This isn’t historic wolf territory, wolves are pack animals and there isn’t enough game in this dry desert area to support a pack of wolves unlike mountain lions, who are solitary creatures most of the year. There’s plenty of coyotes though, you can tell because their scat looks like a small dog’s except it’s full of rodent fur and bones. They take down the occasional stray calf (as do the mountain lions) but aren’t a threat to a herd of beefs.
What is most annoying is that this cretin has forced me to be on the same side as the Center for Biological Diversity, a group of lawsuit trolls that make their living by suing the Federal government. A lot of their lawsuits result in closure of roads that have been open for over a hundred years and resulting loss of access to large swathes of the backcountry. One reason why the BLM decided to press the issue after 20 years of dithering is that the CBD is promising to sue if they don’t — the CBD says the law requires that there be a desert tortoise management plan for any Federal desert land that’s being grazed and Bundy hasn’t signed one, thus Bundy can’t run his cows on Federal lands, and that the BLM is in violation of Federal environmental laws if they don’t remove said cows either with or without Bundy’s cooperation. While likely true, that’s not the main moral point, which is that Bundy is a frickin’ deadbeat making a living off of public lands without paying a dime of rent.
Well, we could let Nellis AFB use it as a drone range using any cattle as targets.
I wonder what the ‘patriots’ would think if food stamp recipients starting acting like Bundy, treating a privilege as an ‘entitlement’.
This guy has almost no chance of having anything to pass on to his kids – he has given away in his delusion about his ‘property rights’. Federal judges aren’t nice about people ignoring their orders. Bundy will shortly be dealing with the US Marshals Service, not the BLM, and things will get natsty.
http://mikethemadbiologist.com/2014/04/17/putting-the-bundy-ranch-dispute-in-context/
So theft is nothing new in the Bundy saga 😉
“Ancestral and sovereign rights”? Uhm. One of the first laws passed after the conclusion of the American Revolution was regarding the disposition of the new lands the British had given the United States as reparations. It was decided in 1784 they were property of the U.S. government until sold or given away. This decision was reaffirmed in 1796 when George Washington signed the Land Act of 1796, which stated that all lands purchased or acquired from foreign powers were property of the United States until sold or given away. It is amazing that the Bundies apparently believe they know the Constitution better than the people who wrote it!
If they don’t claim a higher purpose, they have to admit they are parasites ripping off ranchers who pay the fees and the taxpayers. I’m sure they will claim that they did it all themselves with no mention of the actions of government troops in the original acquisition of the land.