The importance of the Bundy case to the rest of us

National Review's David French summarized the Bundy case:

On one side was a collection of dangerous, out-of-control armed men who were deliberately provocative, prone to saying unhinged things in a single-minded quest to destroy their enemies, and who lied time and again to cover their misdeeds.

On the other side was Cliven Bundy.

Mark Steyn writes,

That's an entirely reasonable characterization given Judge Navarro's finding that "the universal sense of justice has been violated" and the government is guilty of "a deliberate attempt to mislead" the court. "The government's conduct in this case was indeed outrageous," she ruled. "There has been flagrant misconduct, substantial prejudice and no lesser remedy is sufficient" - other than a dismissal "with prejudice" to prevent the Justice Department embarking on new ways to screw the Bundys over for another few years. (They're already spent most of the last two in jail.)

In 2014 Mark wrote,

As SteynOnline readers well know, in the wake of Seal Team Six, America has also acquired a Bunny Team Six and a Deer Team Six. Now comes news from Nevada of Cattle Team Six. It's a long-running story of rights to graze on "federal land" vs protection of the "desert tortoise", but, like so many disputes with American bureaucrats these days, it ends with paramilitary commandos training their weapons on civilians:

'Federal snipers with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trained guns on members of a family yesterday after they dared to stop and take video footage of cattle...'

Whoa, hold that thought! "Federal snipers with the Bureau of Land Management". As I wrote only last week, if someone wants to stroll in to Fort Hood and shoot as many people as he's minded to, the fellows on the receiving end have to call 911 and wait for the county sheriff to send a couple of deputies - because "the only government department without a military force at its disposal is the military". But the Bureau of Land Management has snipers.

Go here to read the rest of Mark's "Bundy Morning Quaterbacking."

"Bundy and his sons cannot be retried, and will walk free."

Sundance reports at The Conservative Treehouse,

In a stunning rebuke to federal prosecutors a federal court judge has thrown out the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy “with prejudice”. Bundy and his sons cannot be retried, and will walk free.

In order for a federal judge to completely dismiss a case of this significance indicates the court has found serious and compelling evidence of “gross misconduct” on the part of the prosecuting team.

Read more here.

It's about the land.

Here is a video by a man who calls himself the Anonymous Patriot. He has done some homework on the situation in Nevada. He believes it's about the land. The town of Mesquite plans to use the land as a business loop. Cliven Bundy is in the way. The video starts with 50 seconds of bad music, but then gets pretty informative, so hang in there.

The Abundance Revolution

James P. Pinkerton writes a very clever article about the origins of the Abundance Revolution. The article pretends that it is the year 2064, and he is looking back at the pivotal year 2014. What happened in 2014? Fracking technology, and the revelation that the United States

possessed greater energy reserves than Saudi Arabia, China, and Canada combined. Cliven Bundy and hundreds of supporters stood up to the armed federal government, and state and local elected officials sought to take back federal lands in their states.

In 2013, the Institute for Energy Research issued a report noting that the total value of oil and natural gas under federal lands and federal waters amounted to $128 trillion. In that era, $128 trillion was more than seven times the GDP of the US, more than 10 times the national debt held by the public, and more than 40 times annual federal revenues. A few observers took note of the report, suggesting policies to make use of that wealth, and yet most figures, in both parties, seemed not to notice the bonanza beneath their feet.

At about the same time, in 2014, as the US was waking up to the crisis of scarcity, as well as the enticing prospect of energy abundance, Americans also began to realize that we faced other shortfalls, too.

In particular, we needed to secure our access to Rare Earth Elements (REE). For most of human history, such exotic REE as Lanthanum, Scandium, and Ytrrium were just mineral curiosities. Yet by the late 20th century, human ingenuity had found vital uses for REE in the new information economy. We found that it simply wasn't possible to run computer chips, lasers, batteries, and other advanced technology without REE.

Pinkerton concludes this fantasy voyage:

Today, America is not only exponentially richer than it was 50 years ago, it is also safer and more secure. Powered by cheap energy, we make things here at home, and we use our brains to keep finding more energy, more REE, and more wealth. We enjoy all the wonders that we once thought we could not afford, from first-rate infrastructure and generous old-age pensions to organ regeneration to minimal taxes—even a budget surplus. We are protected by missile defense, even as adventurous Americans embark on deep-space travel.

Yes, it’s been a great half-century for America, and we owe much of our good fortune to the bravery of Cliven Bundy.

Read more here.

Appreciating the rural way and its polite contempt for the softer world of the city

Victor Davis Hanson gives us his thoughts on the stand off in Nevada.

Mr. Bundy must realize that in about 1990 we decided to focus on the misdemeanor of the law-abiding citizen and to ignore the felony of the lawbreaker. The former gave law enforcement respect; the latter ignored their authority. The first made or at least did not cost enforcers money; arresting the second began a money-losing odyssey of incarceration, trials, lawyers, appeals, and all the rest.

Mr. Bundy knows that the bullies of the BLM would much rather send a SWAT team after him than after 50 illegal aliens being smuggled by a gun-toting cartel across the southwestern desert.

Instead, we all have followed Mr. Bundy for three reasons.

One, he called attention to the frightening fact that the federal government owns 83% of the land in Nevada.

Two, this administration has a long record of not following the law — picking and choosing when and how to enforce immigration statutes, depending on the particular dynamics of the next election; picking and choosing which elements of Obamacare to enforce, again depending on perceived political advantage; and picking and choosing when to go after coal companies, or when not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, or when to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, or when to allow Lois Lerner to destroy the credibility of the IRS for partisan advantage.

In other words, the Obama administration regularly breaks the law as it sees fit. So we wonder why a federal agency sends out swarms of armed security agents to the empty desert on behalf of a tortoise, when it could just as easily storm Jay Carney’s press conference and demand that the president promise to enforce the Affordable Care Act. Or start apprehending those who are not just violating immigration law, but also serially signing false federal affidavits or providing employers with fraudulent identities.

Finally, Bundy, for all his contradictions, is a throwback to a different age.

My other grandfather was a refined Welsh version of the rural way, but no less independent as a small farmer who worked all his land himself until he quit one day at 86 and died that night in the hospital. He was as wiry as my other Swedish grandfather was a hulk. The one was a master horse rider, the other an expert at plowing with horses. Growing up with them, I never much learned about the secrets of “business” or “how to make it” (sometimes I wish I had). Making it, as I at sixty look back at them now, was probably defined as talking bluntly, gaining a reputation for “straight shooting,” paying all your bills on time, never making excuses for failure, and in general being loyal to friends and of some worry to enemies. To understand Bundy’s fatalism is to appreciate the rural way and its polite contempt for the softer world of the city and the mush that now passes for making it. Losing nobly was preferable to winning badly — Old Ajax to the core.

Under Obama the government is becoming tainted and an ideological tool of social transformation. After just six years, we shrug that, of course, the IRS is biased. The Justice Department is politicized; ask Dinesh D’Souza or the AP reporters. No need to mention the NSA. The EPA makes laws up as ideologically required. No one believes the State Department that in the weeks before the election a video-caused “riot” led to expert jihadists zeroing in with their GPS-guided mortars on a CIA annex in Benghazi. And so on.

The point is Mr. Bundy is no Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, or Jay Carney. He is no Jay-Z or Sean Penn. He is a world away from the Kardashians and the BMW meets Mercedes crowd of the California coastal corridor or the psychodramas of brats at Dartmouth. Bundy does not have the white privilege that those who have it — mostly liberal, wealthy, and seeking an apartheid existence — damn in others.

Money is not Bundy’s point. Pleasing Harry Reid or the federal bureaucracy is not either. Making a living from the scrub of a desert by providing people good food probably is.

Grant him that. He’s our past, Harry Reid and the bunch in Washington our future. To paraphrase the ancients, sometimes we’d rather be wrong with Cliven Bundy than right with Harry Reid — and the SWAT teams that will revisit Mr. Bundy and his clan very, very soon to enforce a dispute over grazing fees and insensitivity to a tortoise.

Read more here.

Why Clive Bundy's neighbors support him

In an open letter, Bundy’s neighbor, Kena Lytle Gloeckner, explained why ranchers are supporting Bundy. Her letter, which has been posted on numerous blogs, said:

There have been a lot of people criticizing Clive Bundy because he did not pay his grazing fees for 20 years. The public is also probably wondering why so many other cowboys are supporting Mr. Bundy even though they paid their fees and Clive did not. What you people probably do not realize is that on every rancher’s grazing permit it says the following: “You are authorized to make grazing use of the lands, under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and covered by this grazing permit, upon your acceptance of the terms and conditions of this grazing permit and payment of grazing fees when due.” The “mandatory” terms and conditions go on to list the allotment, the number and kind of livestock to be grazed, when the permit begins and ends, the number of active or suspended AUMs (animal units per month), etc. The terms and conditions also list specific requirements such as where salt or mineral supplements can be located, maximum allowable use of forage levels (40% of annual growth), etc., and include a lot more stringent policies that must be adhered to. Every rancher must sign this “contract” agreeing to abide by the TERMS AND CONDITIONS before he or she can make payment.

In the early 90s, the BLM went on a frenzy and drastically cut almost every rancher’s permit because of this desert tortoise issue, even though all of us ranchers knew that cow and desert tortoise had co-existed for a hundred+ years. As an example, a family friend had his permit cut by 90%. For those of you who are non-ranchers, that would be equated to getting your paycheck cut 90%. In 1976 there were approximately 52 ranching permittees in this area of Nevada. Presently, there are 3. Most of these people lost their livelihoods because of the actions of the BLM. Clive Bundy was one of these people who received extremely unfair and unreasonable TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Keep in mind that Mr. Bundy was required to sign this contract before he was allowed to pay. Had Clive signed on the dotted line, he would have, in essence, signed his very livelihood away. And so Mr. Bundy took a stand, not only for himself, but for all of us. He refused to be destroyed by a tyrannical federal entity and to have his American liberties and freedoms taken away. Also keep in mind that all ranchers financially paid dearly for the forage rights those permits allow – – not rights to the land, but rights to use the forage that grows on that land. Many of these AUMS are water based, meaning that the rancher also has a vested right (state owned, not federal) to the waters that adjoin the lands and allow the livestock to drink. These water rights were also purchased at a great price.

If a rancher cannot show beneficial use of the water (he must have the appropriate number of livestock that drinks and uses that water), then he loses that water right. Usually water rights and forage rights go hand in hand. Contrary to what the BLM is telling you, they NEVER compensate a rancher for the AUMs they take away. Most times, they tell ranchers that their AUMS are “suspended,” but not removed. Unfortunately, my family has thousands of “suspended” AUMs that will probably never be returned. And so, even though these ranchers throughout the course of a hundred years invested thousands(and perhaps millions) of dollars and sacrificed along the way to obtain these rights through purchase from others, at a whim the government can take everything away with the stroke of a pen. This is the very thing that Clive Bundy singlehandedly took a stand against. Thank you, Clive, from a rancher who considers you a hero.
Thanks to Bob Gailey

Hero or scofflaw? Why can't he be both?

Is the federal government at war with the people? Will the federal government strike faster next time? With the establishment of the Bill of Rights, we established a free speech zone in the entire country! The establishment of a free speech zone just goes to show how much those rights have been trampled. Private landowners rarely show up with helicopters and AR-15s, threatening to rustle your cattle!

Armed supporters stay on at Bundy ranch

Did you know that 40 armed supporters of Cliven Bundy are still camping out on his property, acting as security guards? They don't plan to leave until Cliven Bundy tells them that they can. Ken Ritter writes about them and summarizes the showdown at AP's Big Story here.

BLM leaves, gives Bundy back his cows

Here is the Reuters photo of the final stand off in Nevada between the BLM (on the other side of the blocked interstate highway) and the supporters of freedom.

The government gave Bundy back 300 of his cattle that had been stolen from Bundy by the BLM. The BLM's director had formerly been the Chief of Staff to Senator Harry Reid. Bundy's family has been ranching there for many years. Senator Harry Reid and his son Rory want the land for a Chinese company Rory represents to build a utility scale solar energy project. The Chinese guy found out we do things a little differently here in America, including having an armed citizenry. Thank goodness we have the British press to cover the story. Here is today's story by Reuters.