Stand-off in Nevada

[Spartana]

I'm actually surprised they let Bundy go for so many years without nipping it in the bud from the onset if they have the legal authority to do so. I worked as a government regulator (environmental compliance stuff) and would never let someone continue to violate the law or continue non-payment of fees that long. There's generally a process that is followed and if, within a certain time frame, compliance isn't met then it's met with legal action asap. Why did they wait years to enforce this?

[Rogar]

That's an interesting take. What has he done other than fail to pay grazing fees? What actually prompted a small army of government agents to surround his property? And finally, what makes you think race has anything to do with anything?

Just curious.

The courts ruled that he owed trespass damages caused by the cattle and that he had unlawfully grazed cattle on federal land, in addition to the backlog of grazing fees. Since some of the restrictions on his grazing were to protect the dessert tortoise, I suppose you could say that the trespass damages included irreparable or measurable harm to a natural resource. I suspect the governments agents expected trouble based on previous experiences with Bundy and is the same reason they released a couple hundred head of Bundy cattle they had rounded up to pay for damages. Some where in the mess of it there is probably impeding the duties of a law officer. Maybe creating a public nuisance if his deputies are really stopping cars on a public highway. Someone might find public endangerment an as a possibility. I don't think I want to touch the race issue, but you can suspect the answer.

Here's the court ruling on the charges of trespass and unlawful grazing.
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medial...%2010-9-13.pdf

[Tiam]

That's an interesting take. What has he done other than fail to pay grazing fees? What actually prompted a small army of government agents to surround his property? And finally, what makes you think race has anything to do with anything?

Just curious.

I'm still unclear on that.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I tend to think in terms of political calculations - that a certain amount of non-threatening (and actually like I said a good front man for those who have far worse plans for the land than ranching - think mining, development etc.) dissent is allowed for a certain while. Useful politically to divide and conquer and so on. Maybe he even bribed local officials for awhile to avoid paying, I don't' know . They sure did let the fees slide.

So I hadn't thought of the race angle though it's fair enough, but it's seldom *just* race.

I'd prose that if Bundy were wearing a hoodie instead of a cowboy hat and if he had a slightly deeper tan, he'd be dressed in orange eating off a tray in a nice government sponsored cafeteria.

I propose that if he was a homeless white guy he'd be shot by law enforcement. See how that works? And based on the news too. If you don't really have parallel situations to compare to you can make the claim there is systematic racism (but not just from this example) but you can't really make the claim that poor white people aren't sometimes treated just as badly, as they are.

Since some of the restrictions on his grazing were to protect the dessert tortoise, I suppose you could say that the trespass damages included irreparable or measurable harm to a natural resource.

You could. Meanwhile BP puts another rig in the gulf (all restrictions have been lifted - they are). How much wildlife did that kill? Meanwhile fracking spreads and people can set their water on fire. Meanwhile another oil pipe bursts and poisons a town. Because one need not support Bundy in any way to realize that he is probably still small fry (so he's a millionaire, but is he a corporate person? that don't impress me much ...). And that the laws don't apply to the truly big guys. It's a multi-tier legal system. And just because Bundy may be treated better than a poor minority doesn't mean he has the legal immunity of the big guys like BP (the fine was a slap on the wrist) - who actually ARE the ones doing most of the irreparable harm to natural resources. At worst he makes a good front for them to move in (but even that won't be primarily Bundy - he's at worst PR - if that happens it will be because the government is bought up)

[bae]

And finally, what makes you think race has anything to do with anything?

That's an easy one:

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

[Alan]

The courts ruled that he owed trespass damages caused by the cattle and that he had unlawfully grazed cattle on federal land, in addition to the backlog of grazing fees. Since some of the restrictions on his grazing were to protect the dessert tortoise, I suppose you could say that the trespass damages included irreparable or measurable harm to a natural resource. I suspect the governments agents expected trouble based on previous experiences with Bundy and is the same reason they released a couple hundred head of Bundy cattle they had rounded up to pay for damages. Some where in the mess of it there is probably impeding the duties of a law officer. Maybe creating a public nuisance if his deputies are really stopping cars on a public highway. Someone might find public endangerment an as a possibility. I don't think I want to touch the race issue, but you can suspect the answer.

Here's the court ruling on the charges of trespass and unlawful grazing.
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medial...%2010-9-13.pdf

As long as we're suspecting, I wonder what brought this to a head now, after 20 or so years of legal wrangling? I'd suspect that there's some political wrangling going on as well, in an effort to cherry pick a known scofflaw and create a right vs left situation guaranteed to generate publicity.

The Senate Majority Leader represents Nevada. The Senate Majority Leader is well known for his creative use/misuse of facts and often laughable rhetoric in an effort to hurt his political/ideological opposition, and has gone on record referring to Mr Bundy and his supporters as domestic terrorists. The Bureau of Land Management initiates this operation against Mr Bundy at the same time as the Senate Majority Leader's long time lieutenant is being confirmed as the new Director of the BLM. A great deal of media coverage ensues and controversy escalates along ideological divides.

I suspect shennanigans are in play and further suspect that this situation will come to a head in the fall, just prior to mid-term elections and the exact time it garners the most political capital.

[Rogar]

Maybe, Alan. Although both both left and right including the Ron Paul bunch have pretty much disowned him now, which seems to subtract from the supposition. My suspicions are more that either due to changing politics or a long festering situation, someone said this can't go on any longer and we should do something. It might be totally impossible to separate politics from the issue as much as it is impossible to deny that he ignored paying grazing rights on the same public land everyone else pays to graze on.

I can imagine that the 1995 banning of all grazing on the land he used in order to protect the land tortoise, which resulted in his trespass damage charges, also had a touch of politics. It was still wrong, at least by the court's standards, which are probably a little further distant from the political arena.

[bUU]

It was still wrong

This is key. Even if you don't like the way the laws are, that still doesn't excuse transgressing them - even as a matter of principle: Principled noncompliance means having the honor and integrity to abide the consequences of your transgressions. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led nonviolent resistance to laws he and his supporters found oppressive and indefensible: They did so fully cognizant, and yes even welcoming, of authorities' enforcing those laws, arresting them, incarcerating them, etc. The imposition of the penalties imposed due to enforcement of unjust laws is what legitimate resistance uses to raise public awareness to get laws changed. Refusing to acknowledge authority that doesn't kowtow to your own personal edicts is nothing more than childish petulance.

[dmc]

Many laws are not enforced now. It seams we pick and chose depending on who is in power.

[ApatheticNoMore]

The Senate Majority Leader is well known for his creative use/misuse of facts and often laughable rhetoric in an effort to hurt his political/ideological opposition, and has gone on record referring to Mr Bundy and his supporters as domestic terrorists.

But that pretty much meets the current definition. Occupy was considered possible terrorists by the FBI. The Pentagon for awhile labeled protest terorrism in an anti-terrorism exam. The expansion of the definition of terrorism to label much protest as terrorism when needed has been going on for quite awhile now. This is undersirable but it's not a feature of one person or party, it's widespread.