Militia Arrives at Bundy Ranch

[Frankenrifle]

Does Bundy have a title or a deed to the property - if not to me he is nothing more than a squatter.

I'd say he was building a case for squatter's rights. Takes 30 years in that state though.

 

[Jamie6.5]

So Bundy enjoys an unfair business advantage via a handout from the federal government/taxpayers to be able to graze his cattle at rates far below market fees (I'm assuming competing ranchers in the area pay the dollar-and-a-half or so per head without much of a fuss). I'm seeing someone who refuses to pay even these heavily taxpayer subsidized fees insisting they have some sole right to the lands held in trust for ALL Americans. Not sure which is more disturbing: the hypocrisy at the root of all this, or the calls for armed violence.

What market price?
Nobody leases out desert ground with minimal vegetation on it except the government. And they set that up over a century ago, along with Bundy's title to his land, through the homestead act of 1862, signed into law by President Lincoln.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/

In addition, TPTB promised homesteaders the first right to graze-able land within the vicinity of their homestead property, due to the poor growing conditions and marginal yield of vegetation available in places like southeastern Nevada.

Market rates for grazing land(s) involve pasture, fences, easy entrance/egress and reliable water supply. None of which exist in the desert southwest, unless a farmer or rancher put in the time and money to make it that way.
The dotgov damn sure didn't, and lease fees reflect that.

The only fees Bundy takes issue with are the environmental fees the BLM imposed in 1993 without congressional authorization.
He's willing to pay the standard grazing fee, and paid them for decades.
He has standing in his original paperwork as well as a claim to eminent domain, from having used the property for over a century under (then) existing laws, and previous commitments and promises made by the government.
The fact that the dotgov wants to rescind those agreements so they can substitute the ground Bundy has been grazing on for 100+ years to supply "critical habitat" for tortoises is just bait and switch.
The dotgov got sued over said tortoise habitat for areas OTHER than Bundy's grazing land, and they want to sacrifice his heritage in lieu of that, to satisfy the suit, so they can pursue "green" energy elsewhere.
"Elsewhere" just happens to be someplace that Harry Reid and his son stand to make a lot of money apparently.

I don't blame Bundy one bit for being pizzed, I would be too.

 

[Jamie6.5]

 

[2506]

By market price I meant all the fees paid by a rancher to raise cattle. By disregarding fees his operating expenses are less than his competition, undercutting the market.
So, is Bundy grandfathered? The link you provided (thanks for that) says the act was repealed in 1976--does that mean his deed is no bueno?

 

[Oregonhunter5]

Ruby.
You say they must like Reid in Nevada cause they keep voting him in? I say, look at one of the largest employers in that state. Gambling. Then see the unions.
Follow the money my friend....

 

[2506]

Jamie-my last post was put up before I saw your video....it's not about grazing rights at all. Thanks for the vid.

 

[Jamie6.5]

In 1976 it was decided that no more government owned land would be made available for homesteading.
Not that all homestead agreements would be rescinded.
The last federal land made available for homesteading was in Alaska I believe.

As far as the cattle market the Bundy's are a part of, everyone in that local market either grazes public land, or has invested more heavily in water and feed/fodder farming or feed imports and storage. Which is their choice, as it has always been. When/if they choose to do that, they get a better grade of beef, which sells at a higher price/lb at auction, offsetting their investment. If it's not offsetting their investment, they are doing it wrong.
The reality however, is that most, if not all of Bundy's neighbors/competitors in that local cattle market were put out of business by the same environmental impact fees imposed in 1993, and no longer exist.
Again, they were put out of business by environmental fees arbitrarily imposed by the BLM more than a century after the homestead agreements were signed, and people had committed their lives and fortunes.

If you haven't yet, be sure and watch the video in the post above.

 

[Jamie6.5]

Jamie-my last post was put up before I saw your video....it's not about grazing rights at all. Thanks for the vid.

No problem Bud!

 

[JRuby]

It is my understanding that when Bundy started ignoring the law back in 1993 Harry Reid had not started the dealings with the Chineese - Bundy was squattng prior to the Chineese dealings with Reid.

 

[Jamie6.5]

It is my understanding that when Bundy started ignoring the law back in 1993 Harry Reid had not started the dealings with the Chineese - Bundy was squattng prior to the Chineese dealings with Reid.

Why would you say that JGR?
Bundy owns his land, and always has. He inherited it from his father and grandfathers before him.
He has leased hundreds of acres from the BLM for decades.

Where do you come up with this stuff JG?

 

[JRuby]

He does not own the Federal land that he is garzing his cattle on illegally. At best he had grazing rights but even that implied he had to pay the owner of the land in this case thew federal government for that grazing on a per head basis.

His personal property I will defend his right to but the BLM controlled land he has no right to. If so please provide a leagal document to prove that he does such as a land trust, a deed or such.

 

[Jamie6.5]

It's not on me to educate you JG, that's on you. Bundy has legally grazed his cattle for decades, as has his family for generations. Amounting to a century or more, by paying the grazing fees the BLM required, under the Taylor Grazing Act.
Under the guidelines of the TGA, he has first right of lease to all BLM property (ies) adjoining his land:
<broken link removed>

Please note the environmental rules that went into effect in 1995, as stated on the page linked.
It wasn't until the BLM imposed those environmental fees that he refused to pay, that he ran afoul of the rules.
Rules that by BLM's own admission, are not constitutional law, but administrative rules that were never subject to legislative scrutiny, or approval.

 

[Oregonhunter5]

Pretty clear some are city folks on this site

 

[JRuby]

The Taylor land grazing act was retired in 1976 - This Act was pre-empted by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 . Even under the taylor land grazing act - grazing permistss were not indefinite.

From 1934 to 1968, grazing use on the 16 million acres of Section 15 public lands was authorized under 10-year leases. Grazing fees were assessed on an acreage basis. Lessees were required to pay the lease regard-less of whether or not they actually had livestock on the leased lands. No provisions were made for refund or nonpayment due to drought, fire, or other factors.

The BLM has been tasked with managing the public domain lands as directed by congress. BLM can set rules as laws as it sees fit to manage the land that belongs to the public trust by the authroity that congress gave it.

Bundy has not legally grazed his cattle since he refused payment back in 1993 - he is nothing more than a squatter on land that belongs to the citizens of this country. By his refusal to pay he is not legally on that property and has not been for over 20 years. The federal government not the state is the owner of that property. Bundy cant make the rules up as he goes.

I have not seen any documents or heard anytthing about documents - all I have heard is that Bundy says that his relatives purchased grazing rights - if so where is the proof?

 

[JRuby]

Pretty clear some are city folks on this site

You mean voting law abiding hard working folks that think the law should be upheld and crimnals should go to jail = yeah your right. Is that realy the basis of your arguement.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

Lol, that's cute. Thanks for the laugh.

Heh, you should have been in the college class titled Sociobiology 33, where they used E. O.Wilson's textbook. The screams of female outrage were audible from miles away.

 

[gaijinsamurai]

Another perspective. Mind you, I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with...

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2014...bundys-land-is-not-solar-farm-for-harry-reid/

I'm trying to read all points of view with an open mind and try to form an opinion based on facts, rather than emotion.

.....and by the way, I lived on a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon as a kid. I may live in a city now, but my roots are very much rural.

 

[gaijinsamurai]

......and another......


There's been a widely disseminated report (see link above) that the Bundy family is being hounded with special vigor right now because of a solar-farm project involving Chinese firm ENN, whose chief counsel in the USA is Harry Reid's son, Rory Reid. Much of the background reporting in that story is correct, including the fact that the Bureau of Land Management's current director moved to that job from a position on Harry Reid's staff. The BLM study objecting to the Bundy cattle, and tying it to a "mitigation proposal" for solar-energy projects, is also relevant.
It's just not relevant to the Chinese-backed solar project. ENN dropped that project in June of 2013. It's no longer an active proposal, nor does the area for the project fall within one of the <broken link removed> (SEZs) designated by the Department of the Interior in 2012.

Read more at http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/04/12/feds-want-relocate-desert-tortoise-chinese-solar-farm-sponsored-harry-reid/#BYkXRcUT5SKctsXy.99

http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/0...oise-chinese-solar-farm-sponsored-harry-reid/

 

[gaijinsamurai]

From the first link:

It is amazing that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones would actually publish a map showing the location of the project. Anyone with the least geographic information can see it is not on the land where Bundy has been stealing the public's grass for a generation.
There is also a solar farm proposal near Laughlin, Nevada, at the very southern tip of the state. Some of the right wing news outlets also confuses this with the trespass land near Mesquite. Here is an earlier story about the Laughlin project. The Chinese Try to Harness the Nevada Sun. Regarding this plant, back on April 5, Bloomberg Businessweek tried to work a negative Chinese angle. Now it too has been morphed onto the public land where Bundy has no right to graze and where he has threatened violence if not allowed to continue his illegal activity.
The only thing that has been proposed for the public land where Bundy's cows continue to trespass is some kind of protective classification like a scenic area, recreation area, national monument.
The right wing media is using the unfortunate ignorance of Nevada geography to make the attack by the armed mob on the BLM into a political point against Senator Reid. Though it is doubtful Bundy knew what would happen, his cause has already been picked up by the Koch Brothers who really do want our public land — all of it. Their Americans for Prosperity front group is trumpeting Bundy's cause. The animosity between Senator Reid and the Koch brothers is well known. The Kochs have already spent perhaps 50-million dollars in attack ads trying to win a Republican senate majority this fall. Some Republicans worry these energy and chemical barons are trying to build a parallel political party.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

The Taylor land grazing act was retired in 1976 - This Act was pre-empted by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 . Even under the taylor land grazing act - grazing permistss were not indefinite.

From 1934 to 1968, grazing use on the 16 million acres of Section 15 public lands was authorized under 10-year leases. Grazing fees were assessed on an acreage basis. Lessees were required to pay the lease regard-less of whether or not they actually had livestock on the leased lands. No provisions were made for refund or nonpayment due to drought, fire, or other factors.

The BLM has been tasked with managing the public domain lands as directed by congress. BLM can set rules as laws as it sees fit to manage the land that belongs to the public trust by the authroity that congress gave it.

Bundy has not legally grazed his cattle since he refused payment back in 1993 - he is nothing more than a squatter on land that belongs to the citizens of this country. By his refusal to pay he is not legally on that property and has not been for over 20 years. The federal government not the state is the owner of that property. Bundy cant make the rules up as he goes.

I have not seen any documents or heard anytthing about documents - all I have heard is that Bundy says that his relatives purchased grazing rights - if so where is the proof?

You conveniently stopped your research, going back only to 1934:

Though grazing rights have never been codified in United States law, the concept of such rights descends from the English concept of the commons, a piece of land over which people, often neighboring landowners, could exercise one of a number of traditional rights, including livestock grazing.[1] Prior to the 19th century, the traditional practice of grazing open rangeland in the United States was rarely disputed because of the sheer amount of unsettled open land. However, as the population of the western United States increased in the mid-to-late 19th century, range wars often erupted over the ranchers' perceived rights to graze their cattle as western rangelands deteriorated with overuse.[2]

In 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act formally set out the federal government's powers and policy on grazing federal lands by establishing the Division of Grazing and procedures for issuing permits to graze federal lands for a fixed period of time. The Division of Grazing was renamed the US Grazing Service in 1939 and then merged in 1946 with the General Land Office to become the Bureau of Land Management, which along with the United States Forest Service oversees public lands grazing in 16 western states today.[3]

Be that as it may, the main issue here is that Bundy had WATER rights on that land and he used those water rights to raise cattle on the land. In depriving him of his grazing rights the federal government is depriving him of his water rights, which he in fact, OWNS.

[T]he eminent domain clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits the power of state and federal governments to impinge on the riparian rights of landowners by prohibiting the enactment of any laws or regulations [like the Taylor Grazing Act] that amount to a "taking" of private property. Laws and regulations that completely deprive a riparian owner of legally cognizable water rights constitute an illegal governmental taking of private property for Fifth Amendment purposes. The Fifth Amendment requires the government to pay the victims of takings an amount equal to the fair market value of the water rights.

This legal interpretation was validated in another similar case. Please note that the similarity in these two cases is eery. The caption from the last photo illustrates just how similar the cases are:

BLM Tonopah Field Office Manager Tom Seley (shown left shaking hands) in a Reno courtroom was "specifically found having intent to destroy the Hages' property and business interests. Mr. Seley can no longer be an administrator in this BLM district. I don't trust him to be unbiased. Nor can he supervise anybody in this district," the judge stated in his order from the bench. Seley and Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Service Ranger (USFS) Steve Williams were found in contempt of court Aug. 31, 2012. Shown here, Representatives from BLM, Solar Energy, the Nye County Commission, and Nellis Air Force Base gathered to witness signing of BLM's approval to proceed with the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, 13 miles northwest of Tonopah, Nev.

The judge here was ruling on the veracity of the witnesses for the BLM. His decision was to hold them in contempt for lying under oath. In his ruling on the main trial, he ended up awarding Hage's estate $4.5 million in damages for the "taking" of Hage's water rights by depriving him of the use of them through denial of grazing permits:

Hage Forage Right Trial Ends With BLM and U.S. Forest Service Employees Found in Contempt

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 4, 2012

RENO, NV—Friday, August 31, a weeklong show-cause hearing ended with Chief Federal District Court Judge Robert C. Jones finding Tonopah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manager Tom Seley and Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Service ranger (USFS) Steve Williams in contempt of court. The contempt, including witness intimidation, occurred during the pendency of the five-year-old forage right case, U.S. v. Estate of E. Wayne Hage and Wayne N. Hage.

Seley was specifically found having intent to destroy the Hages' property and business interests. "Mr. Seley can no longer be an administrator in this BLM district. I don't trust him to be unbiased. Nor can he supervise anybody in this district," the judge stated in his order from the bench.

The contempt finding was the result of the USFS and BLM having filed suit against Wayne N. Hage and the Estate of E. Wayne Hage in 2007 but then also seeking alternative remedies while the case was pending in derogation of the court's jurisdiction.

"The problem is Mr. Seley especially, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Williams...had to kill the business of Mr. Hage. They had to stop him in any way possible," the judge noted as the motive for their contemptuous actions. "My problem was that you were seeking remedy outside this court," he added.

The court noted, "You got a random draw of a judge. You submitted to this civil process." Then, Seley and Williams pursued their own remedies by trying to extort money out of third-party ranchers who had leased cattle to Wayne N. Hage. They issued trespass notices, demands for payments, their own judgments, and in one instance coerced a $15,000 settlement. All of this was done during the time the court had jurisdiction over these issues.

Counts against Seley and Williams included filing on top of the Hages' vested and certificated stockwater rights with intent of converting those rights to a new permittee; sending 75 solicitations for 10-year grazing permits in the Ralston allotment aiming to destroy the Hages' grazing preferences and water rights; issuing temporary permits to third parties, in particular Gary Snow of Fallon, Nev., with the knowledge that Snow's cattle would drink the waters belonging to the Hage family; and, finally, the assessment of fines, penalties and judgments on third parties whose cattle were under the legal possession of Wayne N. Hage.

Judge Jones remarked about the July 26 Federal Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling in the parallel constitutional Fifth Amendment takings case, U.S. v. Hage. The court expressly said the Hages have "an access right" to their waters. He also noted that the court did not overturn any of the Hages' property rights that the Court of Claims found the Hages to own. Also, the takings that were overturned were overturned on the basis that the claims were not ripe, not because the government was acting correctly.

The hearing began Monday, August 27, with a cadre of agency heads from Washington, D.C., regional and state offices turning up in Reno to defend their policies and employees in court. After intense questioning by the court, Judge Jones made witness credibility findings in which USFS Region 4 Director Harv Forsgren was found lying to the court, and Nevada head of the USFS, Jeanne Higgins, was not entirely truthful. After those findings, several other named witnesses did not testify.

In his bench ruling Friday night, Judge Jones stated: "The most persuasive testimony of anybody was Mr. Forsgren. I asked him has there been a decline in AUMs [animal unit months/livestock numbers] in the West. Then I asked him has there been a decline in the region, or this district. He said he doesn't know. He was prevaricating. His answer speaks volumes about his intent and his directives to Mr. Williams." The court noted that anybody who is school age or older knows "the history of the Forest Service in seeking reductions in AUMs and even an elimination of cattle grazing during the last four decades. Not so much with the BLM—they have learned that in the last two decades."

In his findings of witness intimidation, Judge Jones noted: "Their threats were not idle. They threatened one witness's father's [grazing] allotment." The judge referenced testimony wherein Steve Williams delivered trespass notices accompanied by an armed employee. In one instance the armed man snuck up behind one of the witnesses with his hands ready to draw his guns. "Packing a gun shows intent," the court noted.

In explaining the findings to Seley and Williams, the court found there was "intent to deprive this court of jurisdiction by intimidation of witnesses and threats against witnesses." He added, "Where you crossed the line is you took civil action yourself in order to kill the business of Hage."

Seley and Williams were held personally liable for damages totaling over $33,000 should the BLM and USFS fail to fund the losses to Hage and third parties. In addition, Judge Jones imposed an injunction wherein the BLM and USFS are prevented from interfering with third-party leasing relationships when the livestock are in the clear operational control of Wayne N. Hage. The judge ordered Hage to reapply for a grazing permit and ordered the federal government to immediately issue permits to the Hages for the winter grazing season on the Ralston allotment.

The judge said he had already written 100 pages of his final decision from the main trial ending June 6. He indicated his published decision should be forthcoming in early October. Wayne N. Hage represented himself, pro se, and Mark Pollot, a Boise, Idaho, attorney, represented the Estate.