Please see these two posts concerning the standoff as well:
- Last Man Standing – Federal Fascism Cowboys Up In Nevada
- Cliven Bundy speaking at the Moapa Valley Town Board meeting 04/09/14
The standoff in Nevada is personal to me. It involves people who are my family and principles that I believe in with all my heart and soul. Nevada State Rep. Michele Fiore is on the ground there helping the Bundys and she is rallying State Reps from numerous states in the fight against the Feds and to protect Constitutional rights. Michele might as well by my sister — we have known each other for decades. She sat with me all night when my Dad passed away in 1999. A better friend, you could never ask for. Say a prayer that God watches over her and all the others on the ground in Nevada.
Cliven Bundy’s family has ranched on his property since the 1870s. He has about 900 head of cattle and as of yesterday, the Feds had seized about a third of them. Don’t believe everything you hear out there – hype is being spewed to disparage Bundy as some kind of freeloader which is just not true. He’s the last rancher there – over 50 others have been driven off by the government. He does pay fees to the county, what he contests is the racket of paying the government for grazing on open range land. 600,000 acres that the government simply deemed as theirs and then further decreed that Bundy had to pay or else. Well son… we have arrived at ‘or else.’
The Feds tasered, beat up and arrested one of his sons day before yesterday. Yesterday, they hit his sister, I believe, with a front loader. They tased another man three times, threw a 57 year-old woman who is a cancer survivor on the ground, hit a pregnant woman and used dogs on these people. They have arrested three – two of them for walking past a cattle area that was cordoned off. They were beaten up and accused of violence, which is not true. And this is just the beginning. Some of them did break out about 30 head of cattle yesterday. I don’t blame them, not in the least. Tempers and emotions are running high and they, at times, are confrontational… but they aren’t armed. The Feds however, are.
The BLM is bringing in armed Rangers from other states to fight this. They have heavy artillery there, machine guns and snipers. They are hired guns and many of them don’t even know why they are there. Well, they are beginning to figure it out:
Cox said she spoke with an out-of-state Ranger who was ashamed of his job.
“I actually went and talked to one, he was in the back, nobody was even talking to him. He didn’t say much,” she said. “He had a huge big gun on him, but he didn’t really even touch his gun.”
“I asked him, ‘What are you doing? Do you know what you’re doing? You’re stealing an old man’s cattle, his livelihood. He’s a poor man that doesn’t have anything,’” she said. “And I said, ‘You’re pushing baby cows’—I watched a baby cow not want to move and a helicopter swoop down and honk at him till he had to move.”
Cox said the Ranger said, “No, no, we don’t want that.”
“But I saw it,” she said.
“‘Well, well,’ and he goes, ‘I don’t even want to be here. Do you think my grandfather’s proud of me? You think I like this? You think this is fun for me?’”
“Then what are you doing here?” Cox asked him.
“He said, ‘It’s my job.’”
My friend, you need a new job… right now. You’re on the wrong side here. The Feds are removing the watering areas for the cattle. They will die of thirst and/or be driven to the river. It’s calving season – those calves will die. I hear that they are slaughtering the cows that they are taking from Bundy. The whole thing is beyond despicable. Government rustlers unite – in the old days you got hung for that. Now you get free healthcare.
Just how does everyone think this will end? Thousands of Oath Keepers and militia members are en route. They don’t want an armed confrontation, but they believe their large numbers will deter the government. I doubt it and I don’t see this ending well. If it fizzles out, that is almost as bad, as it is a win for the Feds. What the goons don’t get is these people are willing to go down for their land and families. On the other hand, maybe that is what the Feds want – it’s been a while since they’ve had a good slaughter. Is this the pivotal moment that lights fire to the confrontation the Progressives have wanted for so long? It could very well be and if it does, they’ll come down with all their might. If it is not this event, it’s not far off judging from how angry Americans are over this confrontation.
The politicians in Nevada are worried this will end badly as well:
Nevada state Sen. Peter Goicoechea (R.) expressed concern that the federal government was exacerbating the problem.
“This morning was the first I actually heard that there were military personnel there,” said Goicoechea, who is also a public land rancher. “If, in fact, we actually have military personnel down in that area because that equates to martial law.”
Goicoechea brought up the questionable handling of a previous case by armed BLM officers in the state two months ago.
“We have always challenged that BLM Rangers have no jurisdiction or police powers in the state of Nevada,” Goicoechea said. “They typically are an unsworn officer. And we had the case where a young man was shot a couple months ago at Red Rock by two BLM Rangers.”
That young man was shot seven times by two BLM Rangers, who claimed he was going for a rifle in their vehicle. Listen, in a state where you can strip your clothes off, neatly fold them in your sports car, walk out into the desert, tie your hands behind your own back and then shoot yourself in the back of the head and it is ruled a ‘suicide,’ let’s just say I am suspicious of the BLM’s claims. By the way, the previous sentence is true and is a story for another time. Me thinketh the BLM is full of crap:
The BLM officers shot and killed an unarmed young man in February near the Red Rock National Conservation Area, just outside of Las Vegas.
A graphic video documented the encounter. BLM officers fought with the suspect, ultimately shooting him seven times when he attempted to get into a Nevada Highway Patrol vehicle and remove an AR-15 rifle from a locked compartment, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
“He was definitely disoriented, he was unarmed, and they were questioning him, along the state highway,” Goicoechea said. “And if you press for this they’ll tell you it’s still under investigation.”
“They shot him seven times, killed him dead,” he said. “They said, well, they thought he was trying to get—there was a highway patrolman there, and they said it looked like he was trying to get into the highway patrolman vehicle, and we were afraid he’d get the shotgun out of there. So they shot him. They killed him.”
These ranchers are homesteaders. I wish before people in the national media started just flatly condemning Bundy, that they would actually look into homesteading and how these disputes were handled in the past:
Since the 1800s ranchers have taken up homesteads and used land for their cattle herds. Ranchers abided by the “Three-mile Water Law,” which entitled them to grazing rights for land three miles around water the rancher owned or maintained. Disputes were settled amongst the ranchers themselves.
“There have been people shot through the last century over grazing disputes,” Goicoechea said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Until 1934, disagreements over the land were not adjudicated. The “Taylor Grazing Act,” signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, set up districts for grazing on public land, and issued permits to ranchers for a more orderly process.
However, those permits for the majority of Clark County—including the permit for the Bundy Ranch—were transferred in 1998 to the Habitat Conservation Plan to protect the desert tortoise.
So, one day the government used a tortoise for an excuse to seize land and because it was just a bunch of ranchers in Nevada, no one got riled up over it. Well, we better get angry over this. The government has seized (notice I did not say ‘owns’) 81 to 83% of the land out west. Out west where most of the food production is. You control the food, you control the people.
The ridiculous ‘First Amendment Areas’ have been ignored and basically taken down. But that is a huge indicator of the mindset of the government over this. More alarming is the fascist rhetoric coming from Dems in the state. Harry Reid is cheering the BLM on. Well, why wouldn’t he? They want those water and mineral rights. There is prime real estate along I-15 that they would love to sell for condos and green energy plants. Nothing new under the Nevada sun here. But I want you to hear the downright chilling statements of Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins – Democrat (although you have to look long and hard to find out his party affiliation). Collins is one classy Progressive Marxist:
Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins has caused outrage by remarking that Utahns planning to travel to Nevada to support Cliven Bundy in his standoff against the feds “better have funeral plans”.
The comments were revealed by Darin Bushman, a Piute County, Utah, commissioner after he spoke with Collins about Utah ranchers and his colleagues on the County Commission complaining about tactics used by Bureau of Land Management agents during their seizure of Bundy’s cattle in southern Nevada.
“I was just told by commissioner Collins of Clark County NV that all of us folks from Utah are a bunch of “inbred bastards” and if we are coming to Clark Cointy NV to support Cliven Bundy we all “better have funeral plans”. We should “turn our asses around on mind our own f-ing business”. Now there’s some classy leadership for you,” wrote Bushman on his official Facebook page.
After the story was picked up by the Las Vegas Review Journal, Bushman responded to the controversy by posting on Facebook, “I guess I’ve made an enemy in Las Vegas.” The commissioner also lambasted Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie as being, “too spineless to exercise his Jurisdiction”. Earlier this week, Cliven Bundy called on Sheriff Gillespie to start arresting BLM feds on charges of trespassing and theft.
Collins’ remarks were made in the context of him fearing that protests against the BLM could turn violent, which is ironic given that the only person invoking direct violence is Collins himself.
“I’m trying to do everything I can to discourage anybody who tells me they’re coming here with loaded guns,” Collins said. “I’m going to tell them not to come,” adding, “The Bundys want peace, they don’t want any violence going on so all these gun-packing folks just need to go home.”
Special, huh? This is the true face of the Democratic criminal party. Soon, the threats will get real, but they might not turn out quite the way Collins and Reid would like. The standoff in Nevada is where ranchers, patriots and citizens are drawing a line in the desert sand against federal overreach and control. I stand with them.
It’s getting closer where Socialist Communist Traitor in Chief might be very itchy to grab people land.