Another Ruby Ridge on the Horizon?

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Harry Reid's son, a lawyer, is now mouthing off about the situation. The Reid family must have something cooking that requires near term action.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

How can anyone doubt Harry Reid's involvement in this? The current head od BLM is a young, former staffer for Reid with NO experience in land management. If he had any sense he would have never pulled this Janet Reno type fiasco. Reid wants the land to put a new fed funded solar energy farm on, another energy boondoggle Reid will profit from. He couldn't hide his disappointment when he said "it's not over." I don't think Bundy has a legal leg to stand on but I would ride by his side against an over reaching fed army empowered by the likes of Harry Reid.

It has to be proven. It has to be more than speculation or supposition.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

It is my opinion. Is it still OK to express those?

I might add that my opinion is based on some facts. If you have followed this story, you known from reports that Reid "lobbied" the BLM to change the desert tortoise's mapped habitat, allowing real estate Harvey Whitemore to build on land near Bundy's ranch. Last year Whittemore was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to Reid. Is it unreasonable to be of the opinion that Reid has further interest nth land Bundy is using? If you believe Reid is an honorable man be my guest.

[AUisAll 2]

So were the colonists considered rational? Probably not by those in Britain. They probably thought the same way about these crazy colonists as you feel about the Bundys.

What's your point?

And, do you believe in the rule of law or not?

You really can't understand my point? I've explained it several times.

(P.S.: Do you believe in the rule of law or not?)

Oh, the irony in this question considering it is coming from one of Obamas sheeple. Obama is destroying the rule of law along with Holder and Lerner who are both in contempt of Congress. Not to mention Obama and Holder have both said they have discretion on which laws they enforce.

LOL!!!

Well I guess you don't get it either. That was a totally mindless post. It brings to mind the question asked in another thread about who is dumb or lazy enough to have the right to vote?

But it's hilarious to see a self-professed "conservative" arguing against the rule of law of all things.

Speaking of mindless post. You have somehow created an over-inflated sense of self worth much like many Liberal/Democrats. You repeatedly question others on the rule of law as it relates to the Bundy situation while at the same time you continually defend and support Obama et al who are the most lawless this country has ever had in power.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

It is my opinion. Is it still OK to express those?

I might add that my opinion is based on some facts. If you have followed this story, you known from reports that Reid "lobbied" the BLM to change the desert tortoise's mapped habitat, allowing real estate Harvey Whitemore to build on land near Bundy's ranch. Last year Whittemore was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to Reid. Is it unreasonable to be of the opinion that Reid has further interest nth land Bundy is using? If you believe Reid is an honorable man be my guest.

Relax PT. I agree with you. You asked how anyone could doubt Reid's involvement. I'm just saying, all of the dots have to be connected.

BTW, If your opinion is challenged, that doesn't mean your right to your opinion is being challenged.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

I understand that.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

I understand that.

I hope so. I am on your side. I hope that if the evidence pointing to Reid is all correct and, this is motivated by political corruption, Reid gets hammered, not censured or admonished, HAMMERED.

[Tigermike 3,039]

Here's a map I found interesting. Before he stopped paying the fees for his allotment, the red outlined area was the land he was permitted to graze. He deliberately expanded the area of his cattle's trespass to areas he wasn't permitted to graze to begin with.

Beans those Bundy infringement lines are awfully straight, I,m sure he hasn't fenced leased land and mostly out there it's still "open range".

[icanthearyou 4,463]

Did you guys read the note on that map? "Not intended for any other use". You guys are in trouble!

[Tigermike 3,039]

Did you guys read the note on that map? "Not intended for any other use". You guys are in trouble!

Beans did it! Beans did it! :-\

[alexava 6,973]

Did you guys read the note on that map? "Not intended for any other use". You guys are in trouble!

that is exactly what he is using it for! plus notice the word "intended".

[Tigermike 3,039]

This is interesting.

Fight federal abuse of property rights by making the government obey its own rules

By Ron Arnold

APRIL 15, 2014 AT 6:55 PM

Cliven Bundy marched into my life one Friday morning in January 1992 in a protest bound for a federal courthouse in Las Vegas. He held up one side of a street-width banner that asked, “Has the West been won or has the fight just begun?”

To my great relief, just as Bundy promised, nearly 200 ranchers from all over the state marched behind him, yelling “Property rights!” Nearly a mile later, the marchers fell silent and filed into the courtroom where Wayne Hage of Pine Creek Ranch faced arraignment for the felony of cleaning brush out of his ditches without a U.S. Forest Service permit.

The Forest Service had already confiscated Hage's cattle and left him bankrupt, just as the Bureau of Land Management would try with Bundy 22 years later.

Hage had already filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in the U.S. Court of Claims, just as Bundy now has cause to do against the BLM – last week, during their failed attempt to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, agents wantonly bulldozed his water supply into oblivion without court authority.

Wayne Hage did not stand in that courtroom alone because I was honor bound to prevent it – I had published his 1989 book, Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands, which unleashed the federal fury.

The message terrified abusive bureaucrats: There are private rights in federal lands – vested rights, not privileges.

His book, the product of three intensive, grueling years consulting with dozens of experts and sifting through many archives, found the dirty little secret that could destroy the abusive power of all federal Western land agencies – by making them obey their own laws.

It was so stunning that a sitting Supreme Court justice secretly sent Wayne a message marveling at his shining intellect - burnished with a masters degree in animal science and honed by academic colloquies as a trustee of the University of Nevada Foundation - and warning of the titanic battle to come.

How true: Hage was convicted of brush cutting but acquitted on appeal. His own lawsuit against the United States took almost 20 years, but proved there are private rights in federal land. He died of cancer in 2006 before he could see how great a victory he had won – and how the battle is still just beginning, as Bundy foresaw.

Wayne’s son, Wayne N. Hage, now manages Pine Creek, and his daughter Ramona Hage Morrison is his intellectual heir. She helped research his book, lived the courthouse agonies with her father and assisted with his seminars on protecting ranchers’ rights. Morrison said:

Private rights in federal lands were recognized in an 1866 water law. It says, "… whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same."

That Act was passed a long time ago, but every federal land law since then contains a clause with language similar to, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impair any vested right in existence on the effective date of this Act."

Most ranchers don’t know that and federal agencies exploit their ignorance with harassment that runs them off the land. Actually, understanding vested rights is not too hard – they’re absolute rights not subject to cancellation – but proving up those rights by assembling your chain of title and other technicalities and then making the government protect them is very hard.

The agencies know they don’t own the water rights, so their lawyers fight viciously with misdirection to save their empire from the owners. Ranchers lose in court because they don’t know how to prove up their vested rights and they don’t get lawyers who know the precision required to plead a vested rights case. Very few lawyers know.

Ranchers, get smart. Don’t assume anything. You probably believe a lot of things that aren’t true. Get busy and prove up your vested rights as we did. Get a court to adjudicate them as we did. Yes, your whole life will be one battle after another, like ours. Seek help to develop an army of supporters, as we did. You can shout freedom slogans all you want, but only the courts can destroy the root power of federal abuse.

The BLM has now withdrawn. Bundy has his moment of triumph. The cries of victory are thrilling.

But we know it’s not over yet. The BLM did not leave because angry citizens outnumbered their assault force by 100 to 1. Nothing has touched the BLM’s ability to return.

Get real: the BLM invaders left when it got ugly because it’s an election year and they’re all Democrats. They’ll be back.

Property rights defenders can stop them. We can go on the attack in the courts with organized funding to adjudicate protection for every last vested right in the American West. We have the laws to do it. We now need organization, money, brains, and the will to make it happen. Every vested right that we protect will destroy that much federal power to abuse.

Let no ranching family go unprotected.

That's the hard way, but it's the only way that works. Stay on target: the federal power to abuse must be destroyed.

link

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Good article IMHO.

Caveat----you are all allowed to disagree with my opinion.

[alexava 6,973]

it was a good article. it sounds like the guy had a leg to stand on at one time.

[autigeremt 6,652]

I know this is a simpleton remark, but WHO exactly is the government of the US? Is it the citizenry or is it the beurochcracies?

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

Unfortunately these days it is the politicians and money rules.

[Tigermike 3,039]

I know this is a simpleton remark, but WHO exactly is the government of the US? Is it the citizenry or is it the beurochcracies?

The truth is for years congress has written vaguely worded laws and then turned it over to the bureaucrats to implement them. They in turn come up with rules, regulations and guidlines. Its then up to them to enforce the rules they wrote and those rules can be changed whenever. The #1 job of bureaucrats is to perpetuate their job.

[AUDub 11,158]

Beans those Bundy infringement lines are awfully straight, I,m sure he hasn't fenced leased land and mostly out there it's still "open range".

Mapped in units squared, I'd guess, though I'm not sure about the resolution.

Also, Beans?

[Elephant Tipper 430]

Beans those Bundy infringement lines are awfully straight, I,m sure he hasn't fenced leased land and mostly out there it's still "open range".

Mapped in units squared, I'd guess, though I'm not sure about the resolution.

Also, Beans?

You mean you don't know ?

[AUDub 11,158]

You mean you don't know ?

Looking at the key, it looks like it could be quarter mile squared. But I don't know for sure. I wasn't there when they took the survey.

[autigeremt 6,652]

From bennswann.com

In this ongoing story surrounding cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, there are a series of questions media has ignored. For instance, in the 20 years Bundy hasn’t been paying his fees, why hasn’t he been taken to court? Why this year, spend nearly $1,000,000 of taxpayer money to round up 400 cattle that ultimately have to be returned? Why didn’t the BLM just place a lien on the cattle rather than attempting to take them by force and then auction them off? The Bureau of Land Management has suffered a huge black eye this week because of their response to the Bundy situation. Perhaps though, there is a reason the BLM chose force over the courts.

In an exclusive interview with Benswann.com, Montana cattle rancher Todd Devlin says the BLM is now considering new ways of dealing with the Cliven Bundy situation. Devlin, is not just Montana cattle rancher but is also a County Commissioner in Prairie County Montana and he has worked with the Department of Interior, having taught workshops for the agency in the past. Monday, Devlin reached out to his contacts in the Department of the Interior to find out why the Bureau of Land Management has refused to work with Bundy rather than simply attempting to run over him.

Among the questions Devlin asked of the BLM, “Is it possible that this guy (Cliven Bundy) has prescriptive rights?” The response from top officials at the BLM, “We are worried that he might and he might use that defense.”

So what exactly are prescriptive rights? Prescriptive right to property is an easement that gives some one the right to use land owned by someone else for a particular purpose. An example is using a path through Party A’s land to get to your land, a prescriptive easement is allowed which gives the user the right to get to his land through A’s property.

In most states, if a trespass or use of land occurs regularly for at least 5 years without the “owner” of the land taking legal action, prescriptive rights come into play. Because Bundy stopped paying his grazing fees to the BLM in 1993 but continued to use the land for over 20 years, it is possible he now has prescriptive rights to the land. That might explain why the BLM has not taken this issue to court and never bothered to file a lien against the cattle.

Granted, there have been court actions over the years. In 1998 a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Bundy, ordering him to remove his cattle from the federal lands. He lost an appeal to the San Francisco 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet, the “trespass cattle” remained on the BLM land. In fact, it took until August of 2013 for a court order to be issued saying Bundy had 45 days to remove his cattle from federal land. 15 years went by from the time of the last court case over the cattle until the BLM attempted to remove the livestock.

Of course, Bundy has not made the claim that he will not pay the fees, he simply says he will not pay those fees to the BLM because he doesn’t recognize federal authority over the land. Bundy has said that in the past, that he would pay fees to Clarke County, Nevada, though Clarke County has refused to accept them. The BLM has insisted that Bundy owes $1.1 million dollars in grazing fees for his trespass cattle.

“The actual number is probably around $200,000. The $1.1 million claimed by the BLM is probably mostly interest and penalties for trespass cattle.” says Devlin, who goes on to say that it is unlikely that Clarke County would be able to collect those penalties.

When Devlin reached out to the BLM, he suggested that the federal agency just allow Bundy to pay the fees to the county rather than continuing with these aggressive tactics to confiscate his cattle.

“Why don’t you just let him pay them there (Clarke County)? I got a call back from the liaison saying ‘Yes, pursue it.’” Devlin reached out to contacts in Nevada to get that process moving forward. If that were to happen, Clarke County could collect the grazing fees and if it desired to do so could hand those fees over to the BLM.

Finally, Devlin says instead of allowing the situation with Bundy’s cattle to grow completely out of control, the BLM could have simply placed a lien on the cattle in the first place. Of course, that lien might have been rejected in court if Bundy were able to demonstrate those prescriptive rights. Then again, the courts so far have sided with the government, therefore it is even more baffling why the lien wasn’t placed on the livestock.

Days after the BLM has claimed they will stand down, they are now reportedly considering a lien on the cattle,

“I asked why you didn’t put a lien against the cattle?” Devlin asked the BLM. “They hadn’t thought about that but they are considering it now”

[AUDub 11,158]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Closed on a house today and we're packing like mad to get into it and out of this one by Friday.

The government holding land doesn't really make it public. I mean, take it to the extreme. What if the government owned all of the land? Would that situation represent a perfect concentration or absolute dilution? Is that a dilution of power or, a concentration of power that undermines the concept of communism (or any system for that matter).

Then what would being publicly held be considered, if not maintained in public trust by the government? Do you consider the federal government's management of 80+% of Nevada's land extreme?

Are you familiar are you with the conceptual "tragedy of the commons?"

Power is a funny thing. When an individual or entity holds enough power, they tend to wield that power rather than acting honorably and fairly. The rules begin to reflect the authority of power rather than a moral and ethical legitimacy.

Do you think the limits set by the BLM in this case could be considered unethical?

[Elephant Tipper 430]

You mean you don't know ?

Looking at the key, it looks like it could be quarter mile squared. But I don't know for sure. I wasn't there when they took the survey.

Just yanking your chain about "beans".

[AUDub 11,158]

Just yanking your chain about "beans".

I wonder if a mod like TigerMike could change it. BigBeans42 has a nice ring to it.

[Elephant Tipper 430]

Just yanking your chain about "beans".

I wonder if a mod like TigerMike could change it. BigBeans42 has a nice ring to it.

And I bet they're magic beans too. Just be sure you tell your wife.