How the Feds Support Eco-Terrorism

Tate Fegley
Mises Wire

Both before and after September 11, 2001, the FBI has considered “eco-terrorism” one of its primary domestic terrorism concerns. The FBI defines “eco-terrorism” as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”

It comes in several forms, but one of its primary tactics is “ecotage” or “monkey-wrenching” where radical environmental groups sabotage the property of companies whose activities they deem to be bad for the environment (such as the capital goods used in the logging industry).

But, some groups have discovered a tactic in which they are able to not only avoid punishment by federal law enforcement, but also enlist the feds as willing partners in their effort to destroy private property or deprive people of it.

One of the groups that has practiced this method to perfection is the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), which has the intention of abolishing all grazing on lands claimed by the federal government. As detailed by William Grigg, the WWP sends people to search for endangered species (including while trespassing on private lands) in order to sue the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revoke grazing permits for ranchers using those lands, or to sue the ranchers themselves. The federal courts have been more than willing to indulge WWP in their efforts. In one case, the WWP sued an 85-year-old rancher named Verl Jones, claiming that irrigation of water on his own property harmed the bull trout. Despite not presenting any evidence to demonstrate this, the federal court required Jones to stop irrigating and to pay the WWP’s legal fees. After losing his ranch and being forced to sell off his assets in order to pay them, Jones soon passed away.

The legal actions of the WWP that have decreased grazing allotments have not only made life more difficult for ranchers, but have led to lands growing vegetation that has served as extra fuel for range fires. One such fire, the Soda Creek Fire, occurred last year and devastated nearly 300,000 acres. Ironically, the WWP, aided by the federal courts and the BLM, has helped to destroy much of the habitat of Sage Grouse and other federally protected species, as well as kill wild horses and cattle. Whereas other radical environmental groups intentionally avoid harming humans (at least physically) and animals, the joint efforts of the WWP and the federal government have led to the deaths of both. In this way, the feds have enabled radical environmentalists to be more dangerous than they would be on their own.

Of course, it isn’t uncommon for the US government to provide material aid and comfort to groups that itself has labeled as terrorist. Allies transform into national security threats, and vice-versa, depending on the times and what crises are needed by politicians to obtain more power. On the one hand, selling the threat of terrorism allows them to create legislation in order to prosecute people who have no intention of committing terrorist acts. Ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, for example, were prosecuted under an anti-terrorism statute for lighting fires on their own land (to give themselves a buffer against fires that the BLM fails to prevent or contain) that minimally spread to remote federal lands. On the other hand, the feds have a clear incentive to exaggerate all environmental threats and promote themselves as savior, provided they are given the money and power to regulate nearly all human activity.

It should not surprise us that the federal government plays both sides of the fence in order to increase its own power. Although the FBI considers eco-terrorism — the use or threat of violence to violate property rights in the name of the environment — a top domestic terrorism threat, the purpose of another federal agency, the EPA, is to violate property rights in the name of the environment. Just as in foreign policy, whether a particular action is considered a terrorist act depends on the identity of the perpetrator. Bombing civilians is not terrorism, but collateral damage. Burning down someone’s house because it is on a wetland is terrorism; imposing excessive fines until they leave or forcibly preventing them from building it in the first place (when done by the EPA) is considered good policy.

Therefore, everyone should recognize that the federal government has little interest in protecting property rights or the environment (which are not mutually exclusive; protecting the former naturally protects the latter). Rather, whether it is aiding and abetting radical environmentalist groups to drive ranchers off their lands, or creating anti-terrorism laws to ostensibly target radical environmentalist groups, the feds will do whatever is necessary to increase their power.

Helicopter crash marks troublesome cattle roundup near Searchlight

Wild, feral, and menacing cattle of the McCullough Range near Searchlight, NV.

By Henry Brean and David Becker
Las Vegas Review-Journal

The wild remnants of one of southern Clark County's last cattle herds are now being cleared from the mountains between Henderson and Searchlight, but the work so far has not gone smoothly.

A crew of cowboys from Utah is gathering stray and feral cows from the McCullough Mountains under a contract with the Nevada Department of Agriculture.

Flint Wright, animal industry administrator for the department, said the operation started Friday and has no scheduled completion date. As of Monday, just 17 cows had been collected.

"They're essentially wild cattle, and it's going to take some time," Wright said.

The roundup hit a major snag Sunday, when a helicopter being used to find and chase cows crashed just off state Route 164 west of Searchlight.

On Tuesday, the wrecked helicopter and its pilot could still be found at a motel in the town 60 miles south of Las Vegas.

Richard Dick of Hutchinson, Kan., said he was hovering about 12 feet off the ground, trying to move a pair of stubborn bulls, when a gust of wind pushed his helicopter into a Joshua tree. The 1962-vintage Bell model 47G ended up on its side in pieces, but he walked away with bumps and bruises.

The pilot said it was his first domestic accident in 17,000 hours of flying, though he crashed three times in Vietnam.

When he climbed out the wreckage Sunday, Dick said, the bulls were just staring at him.

The cattle now being rounded up have roamed the range untended since 2006, when rancher Cal Baird relinquished his federal grazing permit and sold his water rights to the county to preserve habitat for the desert tortoise and other federally protected species.

According to the Bureau of Land Management, Baird moved most of his livestock from the 111,000-acre federal grazing allotment to Arizona, but a few stragglers were left behind.

For the past several years, officials say, those survivors and their unbranded descendants have been damaging springs and menacing people in the mountains and desert between Interstate 15 and U.S. Highway 95 south of the Las Vegas Valley.

BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said the animals are aggressive and "present a danger to the public recreating in the area."

Wright said: "We've had some complaints from people who were hunting deer and were run off by the cattle."

Baird could not be reached for comment.

Under Nevada law, unbranded stray or feral livestock are considered state property. The BLM has been asking the state to remove the unclaimed cattle from the McCullough Range for several years.

In 2013, the state rounded up and sold off approximately 30 animals, but an unknown number remain. Last year, the BLM counted about 40 unbranded cows spread across two wilderness areas west of Searchlight. Wright guessed there could 100 to 200 feral cows still out there.

He figures it would cost the state as much as $200,000 to try to collect that many animals. The Department of Agriculture has been "trying to get this deal cleaned up for a number of years," but it never seems to have the money or the resources, he said.

The animals are now being rounded up by Sun J Livestock, a ranching operation from Vernal, Utah. Wright said the ranchers aren't being paid directly, but they have plenty of incentive to do a thorough job.

"They get to keep the livestock," he said. "They'll get every cow they can."

Rancher’s family takes grazing fight to sheriff

Ammon Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy files a criminal complaint against the Bureau of Land Management at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, Friday, May 2, 2014 in Las Vegas. Last month, federal agents launched a cattle roundup on the Bundy ranch after they refused a court order to remove their cattle from public land and pay a grazing fee. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Ken Ritter
The Associated Press
Nevada Appeal

LAS VEGAS — Family members and other supporters took a Nevada rancher’s grazing rights fight against the U.S. government to the sheriff in Las Vegas on Friday, filing reports alleging crimes by federal agents against people protesting a roundup of cattle from public land.

Rancher Cliven Bundy wasn’t among those who filed handwritten complaints with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — the agency with jurisdiction over Bundy’s ranch in the Bunkerville area and much of Clark County.

Sheriff Douglas Gillespie said through a department spokesman that the complaints would be investigated and any appropriate criminal charges would be turned over to the Clark County district attorney.

In encampments around the Bundy ranch, self-described militia members from around the country continue to camp with handguns on their hips and heavier weaponry within reach in a show of support for Bundy.

But no weapons were seen Friday among those who responded to his call for supporters and witnesses of a tense April 12 standoff beneath an Interstate 15 overpass — and lesser confrontations in preceding days — to file complaints against U.S. Bureau of Land Management police.

Ammon Bundy of Phoenix headed a delegation of three Bundy sons, two sisters and perhaps 15 other supporters who filed reports accusing Bureau of Land Management agents of wielding high-powered weapons, using attack dogs and stun guns, closing public lands, blocking roads, harassing photographers and threatening people.

“We fervently hope and pray that these heavy-handed tactics will not be used on us or any other Americans ever again,” Ammon Bundy said as he read a three-page media statement at the door of police headquarters.

“Will our sheriff keep his oath this time and use his lawful forces to stop them?” Bundy asked. “Or will the people be left to their own protection?”

Ammon Bundy said Cliven Bundy didn’t join supporters Friday in Las Vegas because he previously filed a complaint asking Gillespie to investigate.

Gillespie didn’t immediately respond to questions about Ammon Bundy’s comments.

Bureau of Land Management officials have accused Cliven Bundy of failing to pay grazing fees for 20 years, racking up more than $1.1 million in fees and penalties, and failing to abide by court orders to remove his cattle from vast open range that is habitat for the endangered desert tortoise.

The agency responded to the filing of police reports with a wry statement.

“We welcome Mr. Bundy’s new interest in the American legal system,” spokesman Craig Leff wrote.

Openly carrying a pistol or rifle is legal in Nevada, and permit holders can carry concealed weapons.

Ammon Bundy credited armed guardians with coming to the aid of his family when the sheriff in Las Vegas would not. He also worried that armed federal agents who pulled out after the standoff nearly three weeks ago will return to Bunkerville.

“Will they come back with greater force and more cunning tactics than before?” he asked.

Hundreds of people and law enforcement officers were involved in the April 12 incident. Las Vegas police officers massed nearby but remained on the sidelines while department brass negotiated a truce between Cliven Bundy and the BLM.

Well-armed bureau police and a group of roundup contractors faced off against protesters backed by a picket line of militia members on the overpass displaying handguns, AR-15 and AK-47 and other military-style arms.

“It was the most frightening thing in my life, to have federal agents of my government pointing guns at me,” said John Lauricella, 44, a Las Vegas resident who backs Bundy and said he was in the potential crossfire.

“I was walking right in the front,” he said. “They said, ‘Keep walking and we’re going to shoot you.’”

Lauricella said he filed a police report Friday accusing federal agents of violating his civil rights.

In the end, the BLM released about 350 Bundy cattle that had been rounded up during the previous week then left the area near Mesquite, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

“We believe that the BLM men who pointed guns at over 1,000 people ... committed a criminal act and that the Clark County sheriff’s office should be required to investigate,” Cliven Bundy and his wife, Carol, said in an overnight email asking supporters to file police reports.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, who lives in Las Vegas and represents Bunkerville and Mesquite, has also called for federal authorities and Gillespie to investigate the gun-toting force that Horsford said was frightening for residents.

After the standoff, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada branded Bundy supporters who pointed weapons at federal agents “domestic terrorists.” Nevada Republican U.S. Senator Dean Heller called them patriots.

'Bigger than Bundy': Land agency's battles go beyond rancher dispute

April 12, 2014: The Bundy family and their supporters fly the American flag as their cattle is released by the Bureau of Land Management. (AP)

By Barnini Chakraborty
FoxNews.com

It's the most powerful agency you've never heard of -- at least, until recently.

The Bureau of Land Management, the nation's biggest landlord, found itself in the spotlight after a high-profile brawl with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and another dispute with state officials over the Texas-Oklahoma borderlands.

But the seemingly obscure agency, which is in charge of millions of acres of public land, is no stranger to controversy. History shows the power struggle over property rights and land use is one that's been fought -- fiercely -- ever since the bureau was created.

In the nearly seven decades of its existence, the BLM has struggled to find its footing and exert its power, pitted against a vocal states' rights movement.

"The federal government already owns too much land," Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the champions of that modern-day movement, recently told Fox News. He called for the federal government, and by extension the BLM, to "divest itself of a huge amount of this landholdings that it has across the country."

The Bureau of Land Management was formed in 1946, consolidating two now-extinct agencies into one for the purpose of overseeing public land. In the beginning, the BLM mostly focused on livestock and mines. Its mission shifted, though, in the 1970s when it took on the role of mediator between commerce and conservation, and faced a second identity crisis in the 1980s. That's when the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion gained new momentum in its push to return control of federal lands to individual states.

That "rebellion" may be underway once again, as states renew concerns about the amount of land controlled by the BLM. Congress also recently weighed in, with House lawmakers passing a bill in February that would prevent the BLM from buying new land.

Currently, the agency, which falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Interior, oversees 247.3 million acres -- or about one-eighth of the land in the country.

It also owns 700 million acres of on-shore federal mineral estates.

The BLM is responsible for managing a large spectrum of natural resources. The federal agency regulates logging, mining and fracking practices across the country. It also administers close to 18,000 permits and leases a year held by ranchers who graze their livestock on land managed by the federal government. The permits and leases they issue usually last a decade and can be renewed.

In 2009, regulation of public lands in Western states generated $6.2 billion.

By acreage, the agency's largest stake is in Alaska where it owns 72.4 million acres. Nevada ranks second, with 48 million acres under the BLM, and then Utah, with 22.9 million acres.

In Nevada, rancher Cliven Bundy's recent refusal to hand over his family's cattle to the feds re-ignited the national debate over the BLM's power.

On the heels of that controversy, more than 50 lawmakers from nine Western states came together to protest federal land expansion. The state leaders discussed ways to combine their joint goals of taking control of oil-, timber- and mineral-rich lands away from the federal government.

"It's so much bigger than Bundy. There are issues ... all across the West where the federal government is exerting control over things it was ever supposed to control," Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory told Fox News. "The federal government was supposed to be a trustee. They do own the land. They do hold title to the land in trust ... but they have a duty to dispose of the land with all states east of Colorado."

Ivory says he wants the federal government to keep a promise it made in the 1894 Enabling Act that made Utah a state. He argues that public lands, except for congressionally designated national parks and wilderness areas, should be transferred back to the states.

So far, state lawmakers in Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington are looking for ways to transfer land management back to the states.

Utah, though, has been the most successful. Lawmakers there passed a measure demanding the federal government extinguish title to federal lands, aside from national parks. Ivory was also the primary backer of the 2012 Transfer of Public Lands Act which established a model for the transfer of certain federal lands to the state in the coming years.

The Bundy case has been largely viewed as the first leadership test for new BLM Director Neil Kornze, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office in April. The local land-use dust-up fed into a growing apprehension over just how much authority the BLM has and how far it is willing to go to maintain control.

In Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott sent a letter to Kornze looking into allegations the BLM was eyeing a massive land grab in northern Texas. "Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box," wrote Abbott, a GOP gubernatorial candidate.

The agency indicated that the land in question was determined to be public property. "The BLM is categorically not expanding Federal holdings along the Red River," a BLM spokeswoman said in a written statement.

Attention on the Bundy-BLM battle has lately turned to racially insensitive remarks that Bundy made in several media interviews and appearances.

Conservative and libertarian lawmakers like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, initially came to Bundy's defense, calling his situation the latest example of big government overreach. Both, though, have since scaled back their comments in light of Bundy's remarks.

"Senator Paul spoke out against federal over-regulation and BLM handling of a situation," Paul spokesman Doug Stafford said in a written statement. "He has never spoken to or met Mr. Bundy and is not responsible for the vile comments that come out of his mouth."

Others say Bundy was at fault, failing to pay $1.1 million in fees for letting his cattle graze on government grass for more than two decades.

"I wish Mr. Bundy would mind his law requirements and not try to play to the television cameras about confronting the evil federal government," former BLM director Patrick Shea told KSL TV. Shea has been on both sides of the land-use debate. He represented activist Tim DeChristopher who took on the BLM over the 2008 sale of controversial oil and gas leases in Utah.

The BLM has run into trouble elsewhere.

In March, BLM officials rounded up a horse herd in Wyoming after area ranchers and farmers complained that the herd grazed down pastures and damaged cattle rangeland. The horses were turned over to Wyoming officials. The state then quickly sold all 41 horses to a Canadian slaughterhouse. Animal rights groups protested the sale and slaughter.

A year earlier, BLM agents in Nevada announced they would be removing 50 wild horses from a herd that had grown too large to be sustained.

But the complaints go beyond horses. In 2011, several Utah counties filed a lawsuit against the agency over exceeding its authority by establishing wilderness protections without the consent of Congress.

Back in the nation's capital, House lawmakers passed a package in February that includes a collection of public land access and restoration provisions. They also adopted two amendments that extend the length of grazing permits on federal lands to 20 years from 10 years and also allow expired or transferred permits to remain effective until new ones can be issued.

Calls to the BLM for comment were not returned.

Congressman wants to cut funding for federal ‘paramilitary units’ after BLM dispute

Protesters arrive at the Bureau of Land Management's base camp on April 11, 2014 where cattle seized by the BLM were being held. (Reuters)

FoxNews.com

A Republican congressman wants to crack down on the proliferation of armed law enforcement units within the federal government, on the heels of the standoff last month between supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and a federal land agency.

Both sides of that standoff -- agents with the Bureau of Land Management, and states' rights protesters who streamed into Nevada -- were armed, leading the BLM to back down for fear of violence.

But Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart told The Salt Lake Tribune that the BLM doesn't need an armed unit in the first place. He's reportedly looking at ways to cut funding for what he calls "paramilitary units" and require them to rely on local law enforcement instead.

"There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team," he told the newspaper. "They're regulatory agencies; they're not paramilitary units, and I think that concerns a lot of us."

The bill could apply to a host of federal agencies, including the BLM, IRS and others.

FoxNews.com previously reported, followed controversy over a separate armed raid by the EPA last year in Alaska, that 40 federal agencies have armed divisions. This includes nearly a dozen typically not associated with law enforcement.

The agencies employ about 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 Justice Department report.

Though most would expect agents within the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Prisons to carry guns, agencies such as the Library of Congress and Federal Reserve Board also employ armed officers.

Among those with the largest armed units are the Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and Park Service.

A BLM spokeswoman told the Tribune that the BLM and Park Service had law enforcement on the scene in Nevada to ensure safety -- and that, with just 300 officers covering millions of acres of public land, they already coordinate with local law enforcement.

But Stewart says they should be able to rely on the local sheriff in these types of incidents.

Other lawmakers, though, are focusing more on the armed militia members who showed up to protest agents taking Bundy's cattle over a grazing fee dispute.

KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reported that Sgt. Tom Jenkins, of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said officers were concerned for their lives.

"We didn't show any fear that day, but I can tell you, we all thought in the back of our minds, we all thought it was going to be our last day on earth, if it went bad," he reportedly said.

Long History of BLM's Agressive Cattle Seizures

Bureau of Land Management law enforcement officers block the Overton Beach Road at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Overton, Nev. Thursday, April 10, 2014, as protestor's shadows are seen in the foreground. (John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

by KERRY PICKET
Breitbart.com

Every month, Raymond Yowell, the 84-year-old former chief of the Shoshone Indian Tribe in northeastern Nevada, has almost $200 garnished from his $1,150 Social Security check, and it all dates back to a 5:00am phone call on a Friday morning in 2002.

That morning, a government official from the Bureau of Land Management told him to come down to a seizure site where the 132 cattle he owned were about to be impounded.

When he arrived, men brandishing handguns told him he couldn't get any closer than 250 yards from his cattle. He watched from a distance as the government loaded the livestock onto stock trailers.

Within a week, the cattle had been sold at a private auction – for what Yowell estimated to be a quarter of their market price. The proceeds belonged to BLM, officials told him, paying a portion of the grazing fees he suddenly owed. It wasn't enough to cover the full debt, and BLM sent Yowell a bill for $180,000.

Yowell has been fighting the BLM in court ever since, but while the case moves its way through the system, his Social Security check takes a hit every month.

The story, ranchers in Nevada say, is far from unique. Beginning in the late 1980s, BLM adopted aggressive tactics in the West, leading to large-scale cattle seizures and a disruption of life for ranchers that had utilized public lands for decades prior.

While the press has showered attention on Cliven Bundy, a polarizing man who prompted a tense standoff between Bundy's well-armed militia supporters and federal police, the struggle between ranchers and the BLM is much broader.

In 1994, Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt rushed through a total overhaul of cattle and sheep grazing regulations on over 260 million acres of land that was managed by the BLM and Agriculture Department's U.S. Forest Service, The Washington Post reported.

The 1994 “Rangeland Reform” regulations included doubling the current fees charged to ranchers for public forage and further environmental rules to prevent “overgrazing.” Opponents noted that in the runup to the new regulations, the National Academy of Scientists – a preeminent scientific authority on which federal agencies rely for expert analysis – had issued a report concluding so little was known about the condition of U.S. range lands that the new standards were essentially a shot in the dark. But Babbit forged ahead anyway.

At the time, former-Sen. Pete Domenici ripped the plan, a version of which he had defeated in Congress when it was a legislative proposal the year before. "The last thing we should do is hurry decisions that have far-reaching effects on western states," he said.

Underlying the move to raise fees was BLM's view that the fees on public lands were too low – much lower than fees to graze on private land, for example.

But as Heather Smith Thomas, an Idaho rancher, noted in a 1994 article in Rangelands, a peer-reviewed academic journal, the private grazing fees were artificially high because the government owns so much land in the West.

“What many people do not understand is that the ‘low’ fee is just one small portion of the rancher's many costs in using public land. The total costs amount to much more than renting private pasture, yet the rancher is locked into this situation, totally dependent on the public range. He can't just walk away if the fee gets too high, and rent pasture elsewhere; there is not sufficient private pasture available,” Thomas wrote.

The new fees imposed upon ranchers in the 90’s were skewed, according to Thomas, because the fee was based on private land lease rates, but private lease rates were high due to the scarce availability of private land and the lack of regulations on private land compared to federally owned land.

Thomas noted the“BLM states that "land treatment solely oriented toward meeting livestock forage requirements will be discontinued". Additionally the reforms have less emphasis on grazing, “yet the BLM wants to charge the rancher more for something that is being made much more difficult to use.”

Before the Babbit rule, fees were based on a formula that reflected annual changes in the costs of production.

“All the legislative history involving FS and BLM fees show that grazing fees were intended to be based on the rancher's ability to pay, not on some arbitrary value of forage or budget needs of the administrative bureau,” Thomas said of the 1978 legislation.

Ranchers found themselves in court for years fighting the BLM immediately following 1994 regulations.

Idaho Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage and her husband Wayne Hage, lost their grazing permit on their Nevada ranch property for federal lands in 1991, when the federal government refused to renew it. This incident started a 20-year battle with the BLM. The government also denied access to the Hage family’s water rights, which pre-dated the implementation of the 1934 Taylor Act’s grazing permit requirement, by not allowing access to streams and wells. Eventually, the agency built fences around any water source, so the cattle could not drink. The BLM seized Hage’s cattle and filed a civil trespass action against Hage.

A little over twenty years later, however, seven years after Hage and his wife died, Hage’s children, Wayne Jr. and Ramona Morrison Hage won a victory for the family in court.

Last May, U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Jones ruled that “the government and the agents of the government in that locale, sometime in the ’70s and ’80s, entered into a conspiracy, a literal, intentional conspiracy, to deprive the Hages of not only their permit grazing rights, for whatever reason, but also to deprive them of their vested property rights under the takings clause, and I find that that’s a sufficient basis to hold that there is irreparable harm if I don’t … restrain the government from continuing in that conduct.”

Judge Jones found the government’s demand for trespass fines and damages from innocent ranchers to be “abhorrent to the Court and I express on the record my offense of my own conscience in that conduct. That’s not just simply following the law and pursuing your management right, it evidences an actual intent to destroy their water rights, to get them off the public lands.”

Jones went further and accused federal government personnel of racketeering under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations) statute, and accused them of extortion, mail fraud, and fraud, in an attempt “to kill the business of Mr. Hage.”

Morrison Hage, a member of the Nevada Agriculture Board, told Breitbart News that “In the west our governors almost conduct themselves as if they’re a colonial governor and as if they’re only governor over the private land, adding “They take their hands off the steering wheel even though all state power emerge from the state. They take their hands off the steering whenever there’s anything to do with federal land management.”

Harvey Frank Robbins became a Wyoming dude ranch owner in 1994, after buying a piece of land in the state, but Robbins troubles began soon after his purchase. He told Live Stock Weekly, "The government — the Forest Service, the BLM and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department — were trying to buy the ranch," he explains. "They had these plans of grandeur of having this sanctuary of elk and trout fishing and all the things they could do. Then this guy from Alabama comes in at the last minute, not knowing any of this, and buys this ranch."

Robbins accused BLM employees of trying to force him to renew an easement to the point of almost putting him out of business. When Robbins refused to do so, according to his lawyer, Karen Budd Falen, BLM employees broke into his house and demanded to be allowed on to his property without a court order, among other things. While Robbins won victories in lower courts, a RICO case against the BLM employees eventually went before the Supreme Court in 2006, where the majority ruled the BLM agents were not liable for the alleged actions against Robbins.

Justice David Souter wrote opinion for the majority, stating, “Souter wrote that "we think [that] any damages remedy for actions by Government employees who push too hard for the Government's benefit may come better, if at all, through legislation."

Legislative changes could very well happen in the near future. New legislation to reform how much land the government does own could be headed to Capitol Hill. The meeting of western lawmakers in Utah last week signaled such a plan. Additionally, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced the Lone State’s plan to defend its own land from BLM seizures.

After Nevada ranch stand-off, emboldened militias ask: where next?

Eric Parker from central Idaho stands watch on a bridge with his weapon as protesters gather by the Bureau of Land Management's base camp, where cattle that were seized from rancher Cliven Bundy are being held, near Bunkerville, Nevada April 12, 2014.(REUTERS/JIM URQUHART)

BY JONATHAN ALLEN
REUTERS

(Reuters) - Flat on his belly in a sniper position, wearing a baseball cap and a flak jacket, a protester aimed his semi-automatic rifle from the edge of an overpass and waited as a crowd below stood its ground against U.S. federal agents in the Nevada desert.

He was part of a 1,000-strong coalition of armed militia-men, cowboys on horseback, gun rights activists and others who rallied to Cliven Bundy's Bunkerville ranch, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, in a stand-off with about a dozen agents from the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The rangers had rounded up hundreds of Bundy's cattle, which had been grazing illegally on federal lands for two decades. Bundy had refused to pay grazing fees, saying he did not recognize the government's authority over the land, a view that attracted vocal support from some right-wing groups.

Citing public safety, the BLM retreated, suspending its operation and even handing back cattle it had already seized.

No shots were fired during the stand-off, which Bundy's triumphant supporters swiftly dubbed the "Battle of Bunkerville," but the government's decision to withdraw in the face of armed resistance has alarmed some who worry that it has set a dangerous precedent and emboldened militia groups.

"Do laws no longer apply when the radical right no longer agrees?" said Ryan Lenz, a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors militia group activity.

Armed Americans using the threat of a gunfight to force federal officers to back down is virtually unparalleled in the modern era, militia experts said. But the BLM, which says it is now pursuing legal and administrative options to resolve the dispute, has won praise for stepping back and avoiding violence.

Energized by their success, Bundy's supporters are already talking about where else they can exercise armed defiance. They include groups deeply suspicious of what they see as a bloated, over-reaching government they fear wants to restrict their constitutional right to bear arms.

Alex Jones, a radio host and anti-government conspiracy theorist whose popular right-wing website, Infowars, helped popularize Bundy's dispute, called it a watershed moment.

"Americans showed up with guns and said, 'No, you're not," before confronting the armed BLM agents, Jones said in a telephone interview. "And they said, 'Shoot us.' And they did not. That's epic. And it's going to happen more."

Militia experts interviewed by Reuters said they could not think of another example in recent decades where different militia groups had banded together to offer armed resistance to thwart a law enforcement operation.

In the days since the showdown, right-wing websites have begun searching for other Bundys. Several conservative and survivalist blogs have seized on the case of Tommy Henderson, a rancher on the Texas-Oklahoma border who they say is fighting BLM attempts to seize some of his land.

MILITARY FATIGUES, RIFLES

Few people had heard of Bundy and his ranch until a few days before the stand-off. Right-wing websites and advocacy groups such as Americans for Prosperity, founded by one of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, cast his tale in a folksy David and Goliath light and helped spread it online.

Someone who has known Bundy since his early 1990s fall-out with the BLM is Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who founded the militia group Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.

Mack is also a prominent member of Oath Keepers, a similar group of serving or former soldiers, police and firefighters who view themselves as defenders of the U.S. Constitution. More than 100 Oath Keepers headed to the desert, Mack said.

Mack, who proposed putting women on the front line of the stand-off with the agents, said armed resistance was a justified response to a "totally unnecessary" show of force by the BLM.

"It was so obvious it looked like it was going to be another Waco or Ruby Ridge," Mack said, referring to two bloody sieges in the 1990s involving federal agents and armed civilians that fueled the militia movement.

"We weren't going to let that happen again," he said.

A number of Bundy supporters wore military fatigues and carried rifles and pistols and had traveled from California, Idaho, Arizona, Montana and beyond. Most kept their handguns holstered.

Mack, who wore his gun on his hip, and other Bundy supporters interviewed by Reuters said they would not shoot first but would retaliate if fired upon.

"We did not want anything to get out of hand," Mack said.

GAME-CHANGER?

The weekend showdown marked the latest resurgence of violent, anti-government sentiments that have existed in rural America for centuries, said Catherine Stock, a history professor at Connecticut College who specializes in rural militias.

"The question is whether we're going to see sustained flame-up now. We could see more of that if they actually think that the federal government is going to stand down," she said.

"It's not the groups, it's not their concerns, it's not their anger, all of that is old, but the federal government backing down? I was like, wow! Seriously?"

Stock said the rise of right-wing media outlets and websites and the election of Republican politicians who have shifted the party further to the right have given a new legitimacy to groups that were once dismissed as being on the fringe.

At least half a dozen state legislators from Nevada, Washington, Utah and Arizona attended protest rallies in Bunkerville at the weekend.

Michele Fiore, a Republican Nevada assemblywoman from Las Vegas who said she joined the protesters daily after getting a torrent of supportive emails about Bundy from constituents, called the resistance "justified."

"This is historic," she said. "This is the first time we went arm to arm with the federal government."

GOVERNMENT MISSTEPS?

The Bundy dispute has been simmering since 1993, when the BLM took over the management of the land on which his cattle grazed. The agency ordered him to reduce the number of grazing cattle to protect the habitat of the desert tortoise, which had been listed as "threatened."

Bundy refused and has not paid grazing fees since then. The BLM says he now owes more than $1 million.

Critics of the BLM, which administers 245 million acres of public land in the 12 Western states, say it mishandled the situation and was unprepared for the armed resistance, despite fears in past years that the seizure of the illegally grazing cattle could spark violence.

BLM spokesman Craig Leff said the "safety of employees and the public was key throughout the course of the operation." The BLM, National Park Service and the U.S. Park police "had the minimal personnel needed to maintain the safety of the operation," he added.

Two sets of images were frequently cited by those who saw the roundup of Bundy's cattle as a call to arms.

The first showed BLM agents using a stun gun to subdue one of Bundy's sons at a small protest on April 9, bloodying his shirt over his heart, and a female relative of Bundy being knocked to the ground in a tussle with agents.

"Looking at that made it extremely clear that these federal agents are willing to hurt people and didn't think they would be accountable," said militia leader Mack.

Photographs of a so-called "First Amendment Zone", a taped-off patch of desert where agents would allow protests to be held, also prompted outrage.

Mack, and other militia members, say they have yet to pick their next battle. "We're only reacting to what the government does," he said. "We hope that they'll keep it a little calm from now on and not overreact."

What the Networks Aren't Telling You About the Nevada Cattle Battle

Cliven Bundy's son interviewed on the Today show.

By Rich Noyes
Newsbusters.com

The showdown between federal authorities and rancher Cliven Bundy, his family and supporters in Nevada is one of those rare topics from the libertarian-conservative news agenda that actually made its way into the establishment media. Between last Thursday and Monday, ABC, CBS and NBC gave the story a total of nearly 16 minutes of coverage on their morning and evening newscasts.

Network journalists have consistently framed the case as one of a rancher failing to pay the requested fees for his use of government land. But they have failed to use the case to tell the larger story of how environmental rules — in this case, regulations to protect the desert tortoise, have been implemented in ways that help favored interests (land developers, or solar companies) while hurting others (cattle ranchers, for example).

The networks have focused on the amount of money the government has demanded of Cliven Bundy, and let the Bundy side talk about the government’s heavy-handed tactics in seeking collection. On Saturday’s Good Morning America, for example, ABC’s Mike Boettcher framed the story this way: “For 20 years, rancher Cliven Bundy has refused to pay rent to herd his cattle on government land, $1.1 million in grazing fees.”

The next morning on NBC, Sunday’s Today included a soundbite from Bundy’s son, Ammon, talking about the intimidating force employed by federal agents: “They had the tasers, they had the weapons, they had the dogs, and we had nothing except us. We were almost equally numbered, and then they were the aggressors.”

Omitted from the network coverage: How cattle ranchers like Bundy have been victimized by federal government plans to protect the desert tortoise, and how the current showdown was provoked by an environmentalist lawsuit. As the Las Vegas Sun explained: “Things came to a head when environmentalists threatened to sue the agency to protect the endangered desert tortoise that lives on the land where Bundy’s cattle grazed. The BLM said Bundy’s cattle trampled the tortoise’s habitat.”

In their coverage of the Nevada showdown, neither ABC nor NBC ever acknowledged the role of regulations designed to protect the tortoise, while CBS’s Teri Okita in a Friday morning report included it as an afterthought: “Authorities want the cattle off this land for another reason: Environmentalists say it’s home to the endangered desert tortoise and it’s protected land.”

In fact, the tortoise is listed as a “threatened” species, not yet “endangered,” but it’s that designation (applied in 1989) which led to restrictions on cattle ranchers’ use of land in Nevada, California and Utah. And the federal government has for decades permitted some destruction of tortoise habitats if they like the project, while cracking down on others as they see fit.

As the Powerline blog has well-documented, the BLM has enforced these rules in ways that favor projects endorsed by federal bureaucrats, such as solar projects, while being tough on the cattle ranchers.

But go back more than 20 years, and you’ll find a similar effort in the Clinton era to sacrifice 22,000 acres of tortoise habitat to Las Vegas area land developers, even as they set up restrictions on cattle ranchers including Cliven Bundy. As the Washington Post’s Tom Kenworthy documented in a March 21, 1993 article (retrieved via Nexis, so no link):

Three years ago, with tortoise populations crashing largely because of habitat destruction across its range in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah, the federal government added the tortoise to its list of threatened species. The designation immediately imperiled tens of millions of dollars worth of construction projects in this development-crazed city.

But it also triggered a novel experiment in the peaceful resolution of endangered species conflicts that is similar, in many respects, to the process Babbitt would like to try nationwide to defuse explosive development-versus-environment fights.

Employing a rarely used mechanism approved by Congress a decade ago, environmentalists, developers, government officials, cattlemen, miners and off-road vehicle enthusiasts began negotiating a “habitat conservation plan.” The hope was it would satisfy both the needs of the tortoise and the Las Vegas area’s rapacious appetite for development.

The result was a plan to protect the tortoise by providing vast tracts of federal land as a refuge while sacrificing other tortoise areas to development....

By mid-1991, the Fish and Wildlife Service had approved a short-term conservation plan that allows for development of about 22,000 acres of tortoise habitat in and around Las Vegas in exchange for strict conservation measures on 400,000 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land south of the city. The plan is funded by development fees of between $ 250 and $ 550 an acre paid by builders. Almost $ 10 million has been raised so far.

Among the conservation measures required are the elimination of livestock grazing and strict limits on off-road vehicle use in the protected tortoise habitat. Two weeks ago, the managers of the plan completed the task of purchasing grazing privileges from cattle ranchers who formerly used BLM land....

Cattlemen are particularly irate, and have gone to court to prevent grazing restrictions on BLM land now outside the tortoise management area, where the federal agency has tried to keep cattle from competing with tortoises for forage for three months in the spring. Ranchers like Cliven Bundy, whose family homesteaded his ranch in 1877 and who accuses the government of a “land grab,” are digging in for a fight and say they will not willingly sell their grazing privileges to create another preserve.

The Post article was written more than 21 years ago, before Bundy had been assessed even one dime in fees, and validates his claim that his grievance is about the intrusiveness of federal rules aimed at protecting the desert tortoise, and how the government has used the rules as yet another tool to pick economic winners and losers.

It’s background and context that the networks could have provided as they picked up on the story of a rancher fighting the feds — but, sadly, was omitted from the broadcast coverage this past week.

Feds accused of leaving trail of wreckage after Nevada ranch standoff

By William La Jeunesse
FoxNews.com

The federal agency that backed down over the weekend in a tense standoff with a Nevada rancher is being accused of leaving a trail of wreckage behind.

Fox News toured the damage -- allegedly caused by the Bureau of Land Management -- which included holes in water tanks and destroyed water lines and fences. According to family friends, the bureau's hired "cowboys" also killed two prize bulls.

"They had total control of this land for one week, and look at the destruction they did in one week," said Corey Houston, friend of rancher Cliven Bundy and his family. "So why would you trust somebody like that? And how does that show that they're a better steward?"

The BLM and other law enforcement officials backed down on Saturday in their effort to seize Bundy's cattle, after hundreds of protesters, some armed, arrived to show support for the Bundy family. In the end, BLM officials left the scene amid concerns about safety, and no shots were fired.

The dispute between the feds and the Bundy family has been going on for years; they say he owes more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees -- and long ago revoked his grazing rights over concern for a federally protected tortoise. They sent officials to round up his livestock following a pair of federal court orders last year giving the U.S. government the authority to impound the cattle.

The feds, though, are being accused of taking the court orders way too far.

On a Friday night conference call, BLM officials told reporters that "illegal structures" on Bundy's ranch -- water tanks, water lines and corrals -- had to be removed to "restore" the land to its natural state and prevent the rancher from restarting his illegal cattle operation.

However, the court order used to justify the operation appears only to give the agency the authority to "seize and impound" Bundy's cattle.

"Nowhere in the court order that I saw does it say that they can destroy infrastructure, destroy corrals, tanks ... desert environment, shoot cattle," Houston said.

Bundy's friends say the BLM wranglers told them the bulls were shot because they were dangerous and could gore their horses. One bull was shot five times.

But Houston said the pen holding the bull wasn't even bent. "It's not like the bull was smashing this pen and trying tackle people or anything," he said. "The pen is sitting here. It hasn't moved. No damage whatsoever. Where was the danger with that bull?"

Plus he said BLM vehicles appear to have crushed a tortoise burrow near the damaged water tank. "How's that conservation?" he asked.

The BLM has not yet responded to a request for comment on these allegations.

Bundy has refused to pay the grazing fees or remove his cattle, and doesn't even acknowledge the federal government's authority to assess or collect damages.

The bureau has said if Bundy wasn't willing to pay, then they would sell his cattle.

However, there was a problem with that plan -- few in Nevada would touch Bundy's cattle for fear of being blacklisted.

"The sale yards are very nervous about taking what in the past has been basically stolen cattle from the federal government," Nevada Agriculture Commissioner Ramona Morrison said.

Documents show the BLM paid a Utah cattle wrangler $966,000 to collect Bundy's cattle and a Utah auctioneer to sell them. However, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert refused to let Bundy cattle cross state lines, saying in a letter: "As Governor of Utah, I urgently request that a herd of cattle seized by the Bureau of Land Management from Mr. Cliven Bundy of Bunkerville, Nevada, not be sent to Utah. There are serious concerns about human safety and animal health and well-being, if these animals are shipped to and sold in Utah."

That letter was sent three days before the BLM round-up, which is why the cattle were still being held Saturday in temporary pens just a few miles from Bundy's ranch. Morrison says BLM was sitting on cattle because it had no way to get rid of them -- setting up a potential tragedy as orphaned calves were not getting any milk and feed costs were about to skyrocket.

The showdown is far from over. The BLM says it will "continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially," though Bundy still doesn't recognize federal authority over the federal lands that he continues to use in violation of a court order. The federal judge who issued that decision says Bundy's claims "are without merit."

That order from October 2013 says Bundy owes $200 per day per head for every day he fails to move his cattle. That amounts to roughly $640 million in damages owed to the federal government for illegally grazing his cattle.

Why One Man Traveled Almost 3,000 Miles To Take On The Federal Government At A Ranch In Nevada

Protester Eric Parker from central Idaho aims his weapon from a bridge next to the Bureau of Land Management's base camp where seized cattle that belonged to rancher Cliven Bundy are being held near Bunkerville, Nev. April 12, 2014. U.S. officials ended a standoff with hundreds of armed protesters in the Nevada desert on Saturday, calling off the government's roundup of cattle it said were illegally grazing on federal land and giving about 300 animals back to rancher Bundy who owned them.

Brett Logiurato
Business Insider

In early March, the Bureau of Land Management sent a letter to cattle rancher Cliven Bundy informing him they intended to impound his "trespass cattle," contending he owes more than $1.2 million in fees. On April 5, they started rounding up the cattle on his property. Since then, his story has become a cause for conservative activists frustrated with the federal government. The plight has attracted numerous activists to his property, and the conflict between Bundy's supporters and federal officials exploded onto the national scene last weekend.

Days after agents with the Bureau of Land Management ended their effort to round up Cliven Bundy's cattle to ease mounting tensions, the showdown between the rancher and the federal government is still attracting armed conservative activists from around the country to a dusty stretch of land about 80 miles east of the Vegas Strip.

Last Tuesday, as he started to read more and more about the situation on The Drudge Report, Jerry DeLemus decided to give Bundy a call.

They spent more than an hour on the phone. "What do you need?" said DeLemus, who was calling from some 2,700 miles away in Dover, N.H.

"I need help," Bundy told him. "I need bodies."

"I'm coming," DeLemus said.

It was as simple as that, DeLemus told Business Insider Tuesday. Soon, he began the long drive in his truck. His son; his friend, Jack; and Jack's son accompanied him on the cross-country trip. All in all, it took 41 hours across a three-day span. They began driving at 5:30 a.m. last Thursday and made it there by Saturday afternoon. They barely took any breaks.
This Wednesday, DeLemus remains in Nevada. He is now running the makeshift "militia" of conservatives protecting the ranch, some of whom are armed with handguns and rifles. DeLemus said about 100 conservative activists are still there, three days after federal agents returned hundreds of cattle they had taken from the ranch.

To DeLemus and these other activists, the Bundy ranch standoff is one of their most important fights yet over what they consider to be an oppressive federal government.

"We are willing to give our lives," he said in a phone interview.

Bundy's fight with the federal Bureau of Land Management dates back to 1993, when the BLM eliminated livestock grazing in the area, citing protection of an endangered tortoise species.

That was when Bundy decided to stop paying grazing fees. And now, the agency says he owes more than $1.2 million in fees. A federal judge first ruled in 1998 that Bundy was trespassing on federal land. Last year, a federal judge ruled the agency could remove the cattle. The BLM, among others, says Bundy is breaking the law.

But activists view the situation in terms of a dispute over states' rights and an oppressive federal government. It was a major topic of conversation among conservative activists last weekend in New Hampshire, where the grassroots groups Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Citizens United hosted the Freedom Summit. It was there that Business Insider met DeLemus' wife, Susan, who said he had been inspired by "freedom."

"Lawlessness," DeLemus said of the situation. "You look that up in the dictionary, and you'll see the definition of our government right beside it. They all are. Congress, both houses, and the White House."

Despite the retreat of the BLM, which cited "escalating tensions" when it returned the cattle to Bundy, DeLemus and many others there have no plan to leave anytime soon.

"You s---in' me?" he said, when asked if he was planning to head back to New Hampshire.

They, and the Bundy family, do not believe their fight with the federal government has ended. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the senior senator from Nevada, said Monday the situation was "not over," citing Bundy's apparent violation of federal law. BLM spokesman Craig Leff told CBS News the agency would now seek to resolve the situation "administratively and judicially," but was unclear on the specific next steps.

Bundy, DeLemus, and the other activists, however, might face another, more unexpected hurdle. They have failed to see much support from some prominent conservatives, who are far from unified in their opinions on the situation.

Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson said on Fox News Monday that, while Bundy was mistreated by the federal government, the land doesn't belong to him. Conservative host Glenn Beck warned conservatives against glorifying "the right's version of Occupy Wall Street."

DeLemus is an avid follower of Beck, having started up a local version of Beck's "9-12 project," comprised of nine principles and 12 values Beck says represent those of the Founding Fathers.

Though he said he actually agreed with some of the points made by Occupy Wall Street, DeLemus thinks there's a key difference here: The Bundy supporters are not being reactionary and "causing destruction." They are fighting for constitutional rights, he said.

His message to Beck and other skeptical conservatives: Come to Nevada and see the situation firsthand.

"Glenn doesn't know the whole story," DeLemus said. "He needs to come out here."

‘The Rise of the West’

Nevada standoff signifies movement against federal control of public lands

Cowboys and patriots pause for the National Anthem outside of Bunkerville, Nev. while gathering with other supporters of the Bundy family to challenge the BLM. (Reuters)

Elizabeth Harrington
Washington Free Beacon

BUNKERVILLE, NEV.— For some, the story of Cliven Bundy and his 20-year fight against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is about one man’s refusal to pay grazing fees on public land he doesn’t own.

For the family, and scores of supporters that have come to his aid in the face of aggressive force used by the federal government, what happened in Bunkerville, Nev. is about the “rise of the West.”

“As important as it is for a man to fight for his ranch and his livelihood, this is much bigger than that,” said Ammon Bundy, Cliven’s son. “This is the American people fighting for their freedoms.”

The BLM brought 200 armed officials, helicopters, and snipers with them to take the Bundys’ cattle away, a result of a two-decades court battle over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees, and the BLM’s decision to block off nearly a third of the land for the “critical desert tortoise.”

After a week of heated clashes with the family, the standoff ended on Saturday when the federal government called the operation off citing safety concerns, and cowboys and protesters stormed the impound gate to set the Bundys’ cows free.

As of Monday, not a single BLM ranger remained. But for the Bundys, and many like them, the fight has just begun.

***

Hundreds of supporters from across the country gathered off Interstate 15, about 70 miles outside of Las Vegas, on Monday. A sea of cowboy hats, “No BLM” pins, and American flags, many members of the crowd had their own story of federal bureaucrats infringing on their land.

“I’m standing on a metal knee that I got from a Bundy bull 43 years ago,” said Allen, who came from just across the border in Utah.

Allen used to do rodeo, and was bucked off one of Cliven’s brother’s bulls in 1971.

“We’re totally completely surrounded by the Forest Service where our ranch is on the mountain,” he said. “And they screw with us constantly.”

Allen said he’s been harassed by Forest Service Rangers patrolling near his family’s livestock ranch, telling him he can’t ride his ATV on the land because it isn’t “licensed.”

“I tell them, ‘You’re on my property, dude. You ain’t gotta tell me what I’m gonna do on my property.’”

“I’m sorry the Bundys are going through this, but it’s a good thing,” said Bruce Olsen, from Arizona. “It had to happen sooner or later.”

“I’ve been waiting for this event for 59 years,” he said.

Olsen grew up near Kansas City, and watched thousands of farmers displaced after the government built a dam he said the community didn’t want or need.

“The federal government in this country is gone,” Olsen said. “The best thing that could happen to this country is go to Washington, D.C., throw a long chain around the District of Columbia, drag it down the Potomac out to sea, let it sink. And it’d be two months before anyone in America ever missed them.”

David R. Rawls from Florence, Ariz., has spent most of his life battling the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service.

When Rawls, 70, was 15 years old the family was told that a railroad would be built through their six mining claim properties. His family then spent decades battling the government in the courts, and Rawls and his mother were evicted by dozens of heavily armed U.S. Marshals and Forest Service officials.

His father, a “real man of the West,” died a decade into the ordeal.

“All of the strain of this put him under so much stress, after 10 years he got kidney cancer and died,” Rawls said. “He got heart broke and sick. When dad saw that everything he had worked so hard for all his life was being stolen he got sick and died.”

Rawls has set up camp just off River Cliff Road. His white van that’s covered in political signs and quotes from Thomas Jefferson sits on the shoulder, along with hand-made six-foot signs telling his story, and messages against “totalitarianism.”

“They’re just thieves,” he said.

“Over the last 55 years I’ve watched with an eagle eye, I’ve watched them wipe out thousands of small miners, thousands of small farmers,” he said. “They’ve basically wiped out the family farm.”

Rawls said he hopes the Bundy standoff will bring awareness to what his family and so many others have gone through at the hands of federal bureaucracies.

“If fault was done to us, and a whole bunch of other people, these people could get wide exposure in this country. They would turn everything around,” he said.
“The American people would be really outraged of what’s been going on.”

***

The Bundy family stood proud during the Monday press conference, standing atop a trailer that was used for a stage. Margaret Houston, Cliven’s sister who was pushed to the ground by BLM rangers, said she feels like she has friends “all over the United States.”

“We’ve opened the door for the sheriffs and the people to step in, take care of their areas,” she said. “I feel wonderful.”

Though the family and supporters felt a sense of accomplishment, they won’t be satisfied after just pushing out the BLM.

“It’s incredibly important that we take that victory and take it and spread it around the West,” said Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, an organization of current and former military, police, and first responders who came to the Bundys’ aid.

“What’s going to happen now is the rise of the West,” he said.

In a post noting that Bundy doesn’t have a leg to stand on legally, attorney and blogger John Hinderaker explained why people should nevertheless be sympathetic to the family’s plight.

“The bedrock issue here is that the federal government owns more than 80% of the state of Nevada. … Most of the land is federal. And the federal agencies that rule over federal lands have agendas,” Hinderaker wrote. “At every opportunity, it seems, they restrict not only what can be done on federal lands, but on privately-owned property. They are hostile to traditional industries like logging, mining and ranching, and if you have a puddle in your back yard, the EPA will try to regulate it as a navigable waterway.”

For the Bundys, the issue isn’t about grazing fees, or the desert tortoise. The 600,000 acres of public land that the family has ranched since the 1870s should be in the hands of Nevada, they say.

“It’s not at all [about grazing fees],” Ammon Bundy said. “Because you shouldn’t have to pay rent on your own property.”

The Bundys lost in court because the federal government has held title to the land since 1838. The BLM did not begin managing the land until 1946, when the agency was founded. Believing the agency doesn’t have Nevada’s interest at heart, the Bundys want the land to be ceded to the state, and are hopeful their state government will work to make that happen.

“I think our state elected officials are going to completely take over from here,” Ammon Bundy told the Washington Free Beacon. “And they’re going to protect the people in most areas, and in ones that won’t, they’ll be replaced.”

“We’re gonna get this right,” he said. “It’s going to take a little bit of time, but we’re gonna get it right.”

Over 80 percent of Nevada is public land, but the majority of it is no longer ranched. Bundy is the last public land rancher in Clark County, and only three remain in all of Southern Nevada, according to the BLM.

The future of Bundys’ ranching in the Gold Butte area remains uncertain. Though they called off the impoundment, the BLM said it would continue to “work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said, “It’s not over.”

“We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it,” Reid said, who has close ties to the Interior Department and energy companies that have benefited from fast-tracked approval to lease federal lands for solar projects in Nevada and California. Neil Kornze, the principal deputy director for the BLM is a former energy staffer for Reid.

“So, it’s not over,” he said.

***

Armed with his DPMS 5.56 Oracle, Dale Potter was stationed at the top of the ridge, guarding the entryway into the Bundy Ranch homestead. Though the BLM is gone, armed Bundy supporters remain, in case the government comes back.

A member of the North Dakota Defense Force, Potter quit his day job doing garage door installation to help protect the Bundys.

“We are not leaving until the Bundys are safe,” he said. “Even if they think they can run us out.”

Outside the Bundys’ home were Booda Cavalier and Ryan Payne, former Marines who have joined local militias, and are running security for the Bundys’ and their 14 kids and 48 grandchildren.

“I don’t get much sleep,” said Cavalier, who operates an off-road vehicle business in Prescott, Ariz. He returned home on Saturday after the cattle were released, but quickly realized the Bundys still needed his help.

“There are still safety issues here,” he said. “And Mr. and Mrs. Bundy are concerned with their safety and their family’s safety.”

“This is duty,” said Payne, an industrial and commercial electrician from Montana. A former assistant team leader in a long-range surveillance unit for the XVIII Airborne Corps, Payne joined the West Mountain Rangers, 41st Mountain Field Force militia group a year and a half ago.

He started Operation Mutual Aid, a coalition of militias that travel across the country to provide defense of “public and private property, lives, and liberty,” with Jerry Bruckhart.

“We’re normal people, just like anybody else,” Cavalier said. “We’ll sit here and bullshit, and have a beer and a campfire, let the kids run around.”

Cavalier said the Bundys’ stand against the BLM will have major implications.

“It’s huge. I wish there would have been more, true mainstream media coverage to share this to the world,” he said. “This is a serious event.”

“Part of Operation Mutual Aid’s mission is to illuminate how you can stand in defense of liberty and actually accomplish it, because people are scared and they don’t know how to do it,” Payne said. “They just saw how to do it.”

For Cavalier and Payne, witnessing the Bundys’ young grandchildren play as if nothing has happened makes the sacrifice of their time and energy worth it.

“Seeing the kids reinforces why we’re here,” Payne said. “This is to secure freedom for our progeny.”

“I come out here to do a duty that’s right,” Cavalier said. “And to see the feeling of Mr. Bundy’s cattle coming down that hill. And [Cliven] just tells me, ‘Booda, let’s go into my river.’”

“And we all went into that river, and watching him bend over and splash some cool water in his face, and then Mrs. Bundy coming down, and him splashing his wife, saying, ‘Hey, we almost did it, honey.’ And the kids playing out here,” he said. “The people’s comfort that they provide you is—it’s almost erotic. I can’t walk into that house without coming out and Mrs. Bundy trying to rifle some food down our throats.”

“The rewarding feeling of something like that, I can’t even put it into words,” he said. “That’s the simplicity of it.”

Obama administration’s ‘Culture of intimidation’ seen in Nevada ranch standoff

Critics say fight isn’t first instance of feds’ ‘overkill’

By Valerie Richardson
The Washington Times

Sending scores of armed agents along with helicopters and dogs to confront an elderly Nevada rancher over grazing fees may seem like overkill, but critics say it’s not inconsistent with the federal government’s recent approach to environmental enforcement.

The simmering truce between the Bundys and the Bureau of Land Management comes after high-profile raids last year by armed federal agents on small-time gold miners in tiny Chicken, Alaska, and guitar makers at the Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee.

That doesn’t include more subtle threats, such as recent efforts by the Obama administration to raise grazing fees or pressure permit holders to transfer their water rights as a condition of renewal, said Ryan Yates, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau.

“Some have called it a culture of intimidation,” Mr. Yates said. “It’s issue after issue, threat after threat. It’s becoming harder and harder to keep those operations in business.”

The atmosphere was quiet but tense Tuesday at the Bundy ranch near Bunkerville, Nev., just days after Bureau of Land Management chief Neil Kornze pulled federal agents off the property and returned about 400 head of cattle to rancher Cliven Bundy.

A BLM spokesman said the agency would work to resolve the dispute “administratively and judicially,” but so far Bundy supporters aren’t buying it. Patrols of armed supporters remained at the ranch on the lookout for the return of BLM agents, instead of heeding calls from lawmakers to disband and return home, according to KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.

That may be in part because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned Monday that “it’s not over.”

Meanwhile, former Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Republican, told Fox News he worried the federal government could hit back hard at the Bundy ranch.

“The other thing is, governments don’t give up their power easily, and they may well come back with a lot more force, like they did at Waco with the Davidians,” said Mr. Paul, referring to the deadly 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound. “So I don’t know which way it’s going, but so far, so good.”

Examples of hostile behavior by federal agencies prompted an Oct. 29 oversight hearing by a House Natural Resources subcommittee on “Threats, Intimidation and Bullying by Federal Land Managing Agencies.”

Rep. Rob Bishop, Utah Republican, said in his opening statement at the time that the hearing would feature “a number of troubling cases in which federal land managing agencies have employed abusive tactics to extort rural families into giving up property rights or to bully farmers and ranchers into making concessions to which the federal agency had no legal right.”

While Mr. Bundy has been criticized for failing to pay his grazing fees, a move made after federal efforts to limit grazing after the desert tortoise was listed as threatened, the BLM’s over-the-top response has helped turn him into a sympathetic figure among rural Westerners.

“I think there are many people who object to someone not paying grazing fees but who also find the federal government’s behavior in this situation in particular, and with regard to management of the enormous federal estate in general, to be increasingly indefensible — intimidating, destructive and cruel,” said Heritage Foundation senior adviser Robert Gordon.

As Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval put it shortly after the BLM’s arrival, “No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation, which currently exists, nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans.”

Nevada Rancher: ‘The Founding Fathers Didn’t Create A Government Like This’

Rancher Cliven Bundy outside his ranch house on April 11, 2014 west of Mesquite, Nev. (George Frey/Getty Images

CBS Las Vegas
AP

RENO, Nev. — A Nevada rancher said Monday he’s trying to determine if federal agents damaged his cattle when the animals were rounded up then released in a showdown with angry protesters over a decades-long dispute about rangeland rights.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze said the agency backed off to avoid a potentially violent situation over the weekend.

However, he vowed to go to court to collect more than $1 million in back grazing fees he says Cliven Bundy owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s.



Bundy, whose family has operated a ranch since the 1870s southwest of Mesquite a few miles from the Utah line, does not recognize federal authority on the land that he insists belongs to Nevada.

On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy. The operation had been expected to take a month to collect as many as 900 cattle.

The animals were freed after armed militia members joined hundreds of states’ rights protesters at corrals outside Mesquite. Bundy said they were united in defense of their constitutional rights.

“They have faith in the Constitution,” Bundy told a local Las Vegas radio station on Monday. “The founding fathers didn’t create a government like this.”

Bundy told KLAS-TV that American citizens helped get his cattle back.

“There is no deal here. The citizens of America and Clark County went and took their cattle. There was no negotiations. They took these cattle. They are in possession of these cattle and I expect them to come home soon,” Bundy told KLAS.

The BLM’s National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board was meeting in Sacramento on Monday on the broader issue fueling the conflict over how to divide the scarce forage on mostly dry lands across the West between livestock, wild horses and wildlife.

Wild-horse protection advocates say the government is rounding up too many mustangs while allowing sheep and cattle to feed at taxpayer expense on the same rangeland scientists say is being overgrazed. Ranchers say the government refuses to gather enough horses in the herds that double in size every five years.

Advocates on both sides accused the board of not addressing their concerns.

“Americans want wild horses on our public lands,” said wild horse advocate Bonnie Kohleriter. “You cattlemen and wildlife people are special interest groups. … You need to stop attacking the wild horses, attempting to diminish their numbers, and make resources available to them.”

Debra Hawk, a biologist representing the Wildlife Society, said the BLM’s failure to cut the number of wild horses is harming other species that rely on the land. She criticized the agency for indicating it may not continue the horse roundups, saying the BLM should “utilize all methods available” to cut the population.

“Not conducting roundups will result in further degradation of native ranges, harming native wildlife and plants,” and is better for the health of native horses, she said.

Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore said she spent much of the past week with the Bundy family and helped feed some of the calves that were returned over the weekend.

“It’s going to take a lot to revive the calves that were nearly dead when they were returned to the Bundy Ranch because they had been separated from their mothers during the roundup, and a few most likely won’t make it,” said Fiore, a Republican from Las Vegas. “It’s time for Nevada to stand up to the federal government and demand the return of the BLM lands to the people of Nevada.”

Horse protection advocates and other critics of livestock grazing on federal land said the government’s suspension of the roundup sends the wrong signal to law-abiding ranchers who secure the necessary grazing permits to use the land.

The BLM “is allowing a freeloading rancher and armed thugs to seize hundreds of thousands of acres of the people’s land as their own,” said Rob Mrowka, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s backing down in the face of threats and posturing of armed sovereignists.”

BLM spokesman Craig Leff said the agency will work to resolve the matter “administratively and judicially” but planned no further public comment on Bundy’s case.

“The gather is over,” he said in an email.

In 1998, BLM secured the first of a series of court orders that found Bundy’s cattle in trespass, rejecting his argument the land in an area known as Gold Butte belonged to the state.

BLM filed a new complaint in U.S. court in Las Vegas in May 2012 seeking an injunction to prevent what it called Bundy’s continued trespassing, and Judge Lloyd George issued another order last July authorizing the agency to impound the cattle.

Flashback: Sen. Reid Breaks Ground for Nevada Solar Farm Near Bundy Ranch

The senator’s plan for solar farms in Nevada wasn’t just limited to the shelved project near Laughlin

(From RIGHT to left) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) joins Moapa Band of Paiutes Chairwoman Aletha Tom, First Solar CEO James Hughes, LADWP director of power system planning and development Randy Howard, and the Moapa Band of Paiutes Tribal Council to break ground on the 250 MW Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. (Photo: Business Wire)

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who was exposed last Friday as the mastermind behind the Bureau of Land Management’s persecution of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, can be seen in this March 2014 photo breaking ground for a new solar farm near the Bundy Ranch, emphasizing that the senator’s plan for solar projects in Nevada wasn’t just limited to the shelved solar farm near Laughlin.

Signaling the first day of construction of the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project, which is about 35 miles from the Bundy homestead in Bunkerville, Nevada, Sen. Reid joined representatives from the Moapa Band of Paiutes, executives from First Solar, Inc. and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for the groundbreaking ceremony on March 21.

“First Solar is thrilled to celebrate this important milestone with Sen. Reid and distinguished guests, and honored to work with the Moapa Band of Paiutes on this landmark project,” Jim Hughes, the CEO of First Solar, said at the time.

The development of solar farms just like this one is exactly why Sen. Reid was using the BLM, whose director is Reid’s former senior advisor, to push Bundy out of the Gold Butte area his family has worked for over 140 years.

As we revealed last Friday in an article that became the #1 news story in the world for 24 hours, the BLM specifically stated that it wanted Bundy and his cattle out of the area as part of the agency’s “regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone.”

The BLM attempted a cover-up by deleting documents exposing the plan from its web site, but fortunately contributors at the Free Republic were able to save them for posterity.

Others have attempted to whitewash the situation by suggesting that the solar farm development was only limited to the shelved 2012 deal between Sen. Reid and Chinese-owned ENN Energy Group in Laughlin, Nev., but by reading the BLM’s own documents it is quite obvious that this is not the case.

“The BLM’s current action builds on the Western Solar Energy Plan, a two-year planning effort conducted on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Energy to expand domestic energy production and spur development of solar energy on public lands in six western states,” the BLM announced in a March 14 press release. “The Western Solar Energy Plan provides a blueprint for utility-scale solar energy permitting in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah by establishing Solar Energy Zones with access to existing or planned transmission, incentives for development within those Solar Energy Zones, and a process through which to consider additional Solar Energy Zones and solar projects.”

“The Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone is the first of several pilot plans to be developed by the BLM,” the press release added.

In summary, the BLM, acting under Sen. Reid’s corrupt interests, wants Cliven Bundy out of the 600,000 acre Gold Butte area so the agency can use the land for future solar projects and de facto buffer zones surrounding the solar farms.

This is crony capitalism at its finest and Bundy’s supporters, who numbered in the thousands, knew it.

Why The Feds Chickened Out On A Nevada Ranch

Show down: Ranchers on horseback and protesters gather at the BLM camp to try to claim back cattle the agency has already rounded up. (Reuters)

Kevin McCullough
Townhall.com

Let me obliterate a bit of confusion here: the Obama administration attempted to go to war with a rancher in Nevada. Let me amplify a little bit of truth: They tucked tail and have returned home. And let me add a bit of clarity: they had no choice!

As the nation began to become familiar with the plight of the family of Cliven Bundy, many of us harkened back to another standoff in which the Federal government attempted to bully it's outcome: Waco, Texas and the Branch Davidian massacre.

It is telling that in the Nevada case the feds pulled out so quickly, given all they had indicated they were willing to do to resolve the matter to their satisfaction. They had set up a perimeter around the Bundy's family land, ranch, and home. They had brought in extra artillery, dogs, and snipers. They were beginning the process of stealing more than 300 head of cattle that did not belong to them.

They did so--or so we were told--for the reason of protecting the desert tortoise. But then it was revealed that the Bureau of Land Management had shot far more desert tortoises than the Bundy cattle had even possibly destroyed. We were told they did it because the Bundys had broken federal laws by not paying what amounted to retroactive grazing fees to the federal government. But the Governor of the state of Nevada told us that Bundy had paid every ounce of state tax, met the state requirements, and their family had been improving the property more than 100 years previous.

Finally we were allowed to know the connection between a communist Chinese wind/solar power plant and its connection to that senator named Harry Reid. Evidently a plan had been hatched to use the Bundy property for a solar farm and instead of paying the Bundys, someone, somewhere in the administration believed it was easier to just take what they wanted.

That approach is at least consistent with the readily documented abuse of eminent domain where the government for any number of reasons--few of them valid--have taken to taking what doesn't belong to them. Americans then watch as it gets handed over to some multi-national corporation for the "cause" of the "greater good."

There were a few specific reasons why the feds chickened out in the Nevada desert though.

1. Technology - As the Bundy family members were abused, cameras captured it. Not television network cameras, but dozens of cell phone video devices that gave witness to a Bundy aunt being shoved to the ground, and a Bundy son being tazed. All of this while threatening protestors with dogs, brandished weapons and vehicles was captured, uploaded and made viral to the watching world.

2. States' Rights - As the drama unfolded it became clear that the Governor of Nevada, and the Sheriff of Clark County knew that Cliven Bundy's family had not only not broken any state law regarding the land, but that they had gone to the enth degree to insure compliance with Nevada laws on the property. The Governor and the Sheriff, to their credit, did not favor the feds as a more powerful party in the conflict. Though there must have been pressure from Senator Reid's office, the administration via the Bureau of Land Management, and local officials who were bought and sold like the Clark County Commissioner who told those coming to support the Bundys to have "funeral plans in place."

3. Grassroots Response - As other incidents have transpired in the past, the amount of time it took honest information to reach the grassroots and thus the response to the action came to slow. In the massacre in Waco, most of the nation had been sold a single narrative from the limited media outlets covering the events. Similarly the events surrounding the abduction of Elian Gonzales from his family in Florida and deportation to Cuba took place in such a response vacuum that by the time Americans knew the real story, the damage was done. With the Bundy ranch, internet outlets by the dozen had competing information with the limited "official news" being released by the networks, and in most cases the alternative sources had it correct and usually a full day or so ahead of the news cycle. By the time afternoon drive hit, when the network news rooms in New York were preparing their first stories, talk radio audiences had already been dialing their elected officials in Washington demanding action.

The majority of Americans saw through the efforts to spin the story in Nevada. Couple that with the leadership failures that the American people view the administration responsible for, from Benghazi to the Affordable Care Act, all it took was the unedited video of federal agents tazing Bundy's son, followed by his pulling the wires from his chest and continuing to stand his ground for there to be comparisons made to the American revolution.

It's also important to note that merely pulling back from the Bundy property hasn't settled the matter for the American people either.

The feds have stolen 352 head of cattle, and will not confirm or deny if they euthanized some or all of them. Recompense must be made. And to be candid, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see if a few ambitious law firms don't try to convince the Bundy family of the validity of litigation.

Fortunately for the American people, the feds were not able to ultimately bully a simple rancher, not for a tortoise, a solar power plant, or a dirty Senator and his administration.

We owe the Bundy family a great deal of thanks for standing tall.

For if the federal government is allowed to do it with one, then there will be nothing stopping them from doing it again.