Militiamen make their presence felt in protest of BLM’s livestock grab

[bsteadman1]

Militiamen make their presence felt in protest of BLM’s livestock grab

Las Vegas Sun
Ed Komenda
4/10/2014

Excerpt:

BUNKERVILLE — The militiamen rolled in to draw a line in the dirt.

About 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas, they set up camp on a sun-baked patch of land next to a bend in the Virgin River, keeping supplies — like rucksacks and sleeping bags — in neat piles under the roof of an abandoned shack.

Gruff and largely unshaven, dressed in camouflage fatigues and cut-off shirts, the men kept their intentions quiet, telling news reporters the reason they pulled their trucks into this rural desert town — on one of the hottest days of the year — is simple enough: “We’re here to camp,” said one man who would not share his name.

The group even had a sign, posted for arriving members: Militia Sign In.

But they were really here to protect one of their own from the perceived enemies: a band of federal agents recently dispatched to the scrub desert to seize the cattle of embattled rancher Cliven Bundy.

“They’re here to protect Cliven’s family and home,” said Lynn Brown, one of Bundy’s daughters.

A 68-year-old Nevada native, Bundy has long been at the center of a battle with the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency controlling the 150 miles of desert where the rancher’s cattle have roamed for decades. A renegade when it comes to any sort of government control, Bundy — the father of 14 children — has refused to pay BLM a dime of required grazing fees for his 900 cattle, a tab that has since reached $300,000. Bundy has fought the fee, he says, because his Mormon ancestors set up shop on the land long before the BLM formed.

The problem? The land where Bundy’s cattle graze is federally owned, and the BLM now says the livestock aren’t supposed to be there. Federal agents this week cordoned off sections of land and sparked a monthlong operation to seize the cattle.

Tensions boiled over this week when a scuffle between the BLM and Bundy’s supporters ended in violence: Agents reportedly used a stun gun to subdue Bundy’s son and knocked his daughter to the ground. Though called “brutal” by some, the brawl did not land anyone in a hospital or jail.

But the incident did prompt Operation Mutual Aid — a national militia with members from California to Missouri — to visit Bundy’s ranch and set up a camp just in case things got out of hand again. Before their arrival Thursday, dozens of Bundy’s friends and relatives gathered at a protest camp in solidarity for the recent woes that have colored his rustic ranch.

Traveling from as close as St. George — and as far as Montana — a mix of characters waved picket signs at an encampment just before a bridge over the Virgin River, protesting the BLM’s campaign.

“This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” said Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage kids to the ranch. “They’re learning about the Constitution.”

Ence’s 19-year-old son Kayden and his brothers shared their opinion with a sign of their own: “CONTROL OUR BORDERS! NOT OUR RANCHERS!”

“It’s crazy,” Kayden said.

As the temperature crept into the 90s, supporters drove by — beeping their horns and delivering water drinks so the protesters could keep hydrated.

Jack Faught, Bundy’s first cousin, drove his forest green 1929 Chevy truck from Mesquite loaded with water and Gatorade.

“It’s not about the cows,” he said. “It’s about the freedom to make our own choices close to home.”

Polo Parra, a 27-year-old tattoo artist from Las Vegas, even showed up with two of his friends to support the rancher. Dressed in baggy clothes and covered in tattoos, the group carried signs that read “TYRANNY IS ALIVE” and “WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?” in red spray-painted letters.

One of Parra’s friends, who would not share his name, had a pistol tucked in his waistband.

“I think it’s bull, and it really made me mad,” said Parra, who decided to make the trip when he heard about the violence that broke out on the ranch. “This isn’t about no turtles or cows.”

The land in question — the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area — is a habitat of the endangered and federally protected desert tortoise.

Harry Pappas, a 60-year-old native and “concerned citizen,” grabbed the microphone at a makeshift podium and blasted the BLM.

“It’s all a fraud,” Pappas said, arguing the BLM’s preservation of the desert tortoise was just a way to “get rid of all the ranchers.”

The BLM drew criticism for creating “First Amendment areas” — patches of land where protests are allowed. Authorities arrested two protesters — brothers from St. George — for interfering with the BLM's operation Thursday.

The First Amendment debacle caught the attention of Gov. Brian Sandoval, who ordered the BLM not to limit the constitutional rights of Nevadans.

But the governor backed off from his statement after violence broke out at Bundy’s ranch:

“The ability to speak out against government actions is one of the freedoms we all cherish as Americans. Today I am asking all individuals who are near the situation to act with restraint,” Sandoval said. “Although tensions remain high, escalation of current events could have negative, long-lasting consequences that can be avoided.”
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View the complete article at:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014...-blms-livesto/

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Not Just Nevada, BLM Land-Grabbing 90,000 Deeded Acres in Texas Too

[Watch] Not Just Nevada, BLM Land-Grabbing 90,000 Deeded Acres in Texas Too

GOP The Daily Dose
Rick Wells
4/11/2014

Excerpt:

While the eyes of the nation are focused upon the rural Nevada town of Bunkerville and the Bundy Ranch, another significant land grab is underway in the other half of the country. While less physically confrontational at present, government oppression is none the less at the root of a dispute on the border between Oklahoma and Texas. It’s an on-going process, following the migration of the Red River, which the feds define differently dependent upon their their “needs.”

Tommy Henderson lost a lawsuit thirty years ago and with it 140 acres of his ranchland. The BLM victory resulted in the Oklahoma/Texas border being redrawn a mile to the south of where it had previously been.

Henderson received nothing in exchange for his land. Not one cent, and the BLM is back for more. This time they’ve got their eyes on roughly 90,000 acres. And they are employing similar tactics to what won for them in the eighties.

BLM seeks to use the previous lawsuit as precedent in their attempt to steal land along a 116 mile stretch of the Red River. The natural migration of the Red River is at the heart of the dispute and the opportunity being seized upon by the Feds.

BLM is making a claim that the land never belonged to Texas, which the landowners vehemently dispute.

Tommy Henderson explains the absurdity of the BLM claims. He asks, “How can BLM come in and say ‘Hey, this isn’t yours’ even though it was patented from the state, you’ve always paid taxes on it, our family’s paid taxes for over a hundred years on this place. We’ve got a deed to it, but yet they walked in and said it wasn’t ours.”

Historically the vegetation line on the south side of the Red River is the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. Over time the river moves. BLM claims that when the river moved south, the property line moved with it. However, they don’t apply the same criteria when the river moves back north. The property line, according to BLM, only moves in one direction.

It seems the primary function of the BLM may have shifted to serving in more of a land acquisition role than a land management one. Even though these are fairly wealthy individuals, with large parcels, they are no match for the resources of the federal controlling authority. A large, central government was created to serve the desires of the few who control it.
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View the complete article, including video, at:

http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/04/1...-in-texas-too/

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20 Cowboys Break Fed Blockade in Nevada, Retrieve Cattle

Inforwars.com
4/10/2014

Excerpt:

Ammon Bundy, the son of besieged Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, told Infowars reporter David Knight today around 20 cowboys went on land claimed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and retrieved cattle.

“We gathered about 30 head,” said Bundy. “We did have a small confrontation with them, but they didn’t have the forces to do a whole lot. They couldn’t mobilize fast enough and we were able to gather those cattle and get them to the ranch.”

Cliven Bundy and his family are currently engaged in a standoff with the BLM over a long standing refusal to acknowledge a 1993 modification to grazing rights on land that Bundy asserts has been in his family since 1870. On Saturday, hundreds of federal officials, aided by helicopters, low flying aircraft and hired cowboys, began rounding up Bundy’s cattle in northeastern Clark County.

Bundy’s dispute with the feds escalated yesterday when several of his supporters were assaulted by BLM officials. The BLM is currently rounding up Bundy’s cattle in order to enforce a regulation in order to protect an endangered desert tortoise after 600,000 acres of public land was reclassified as federal property.

During that confrontation, Ammon Bundy, was tasered. His sister, a cancer victim, and a pregnant woman were assaulted by BLM agents.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.infowars.com/20-cowboys-b...trieve-cattle/

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BLM Rangers Brought in From Out of State for Nevada Ranch ‘Emergency’

‘They’re almost like a hired gun’

The Washington Free Beacon
Elizabeth Harrington
4/10/2014

Excerpt:

Armed Rangers were brought in from out of state by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in security surrounding the Bundy Ranch, according to the family.

A heated confrontation on Wednesday resulted in Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon being tasered by BLM officials and a 57-year-old protester being shoved to the ground.

Stetsy Bundy Cox, Cliven’s daughter, told the Washington Free Beacon that some of the rangers had Oregon and California license plates.

“You know, some of these guys don’t even know why they’re here,” she said. “A few people have talked to them and they got called in here on an emergency feed and they didn’t know what it was for, it just said they had to be here.”

“They’re almost like a hired gun,” Cox said. “Because what they’re supposed to do is they each have a road, and are told to stay on that road, and they’re supposed to keep people off that road, whatever means possible. That’s their job. They don’t even know how many cows have been gathered.”

The BLM did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Cox said she spoke with an out-of-state Ranger who was ashamed of his job.

“I actually went and talked to one, he was in the back, nobody was even talking to him. He didn’t say much,” she said. “He had a huge big gun on him, but he didn’t really even touch his gun.”

“I asked him, ‘What are you doing? Do you know what you’re doing? You’re stealing an old man’s cattle, his livelihood. He’s a poor man that doesn’t have anything,’” she said. “And I said, ‘You’re pushing baby cows’—I watched a baby cow not want to move and a helicopter swoop down and honk at him till he had to move.”

Cox said the Ranger said, “No, no, we don’t want that.”

“But I saw it,” she said.

“‘Well, well,’ and he goes, ‘I don’t even want to be here. Do you think my grandfather’s proud of me? You think I like this? You think this is fun for me?’”

“Then what are you doing here?” Cox asked him.

“He said, ‘It’s my job.’”

As of Wednesday, 352 cattle have been removed from the public land ranched by the Bundy family for more than a century. An estimated 200 armed officials have surrounded the ranch, the culmination of a dispute dating 20 years over “grazing fees” and the protection of the “desert tortoise.”

In a statement Wednesday evening, the BLM and the National Park Service said safety “remains the number one priority for the operation.”

“In recent days, some peaceful protests have crossed into illegal activity, including blocking vehicles associated with the gather, impeding cattle movement, and making direct and overt threats to government employees,” the agencies said. “These isolated actions that have jeopardized the safety of individuals have been responded to with appropriate law enforcement actions.”

“Today, a BLM truck driven by a non-law enforcement civilian employee assisting with gather operations was struck by a protester on an ATV and the truck’s exit from the area was blocked by a group of individuals who gathered around the vehicle,” they said. “A police dog was also kicked. Law enforcement officers attempting to protect the civilian federal employee from the attack were also threatened and assaulted. After multiple requests and ample verbal warnings, law enforcement officers deployed tasers on a protestor.”

The Bundy family posted a statement online that the Wednesday confrontation began after members of the family were taking pictures on an unmarked road of “helicopters running Bundy cattle to death.”
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View the complete article at:

http://freebeacon.com/issues/blm-ran...nch-emergency/

[bsteadman]

Media-Suppressed Nevada Case History Shines Truth on Government Ranch invaders

Canada Free Press
Judi McLeod
4/11/2014

Excerpt:

Coming clearly through the throbbing of helicopters and the roar of the SUVS of the feds harassing the Cliven Bundy Ranch, patriots there for Bundy should “tell it to the judge”.

There is mainstream media-suppressed case history in Nevada the feds are desperately trying to keep under wraps.

Chief Judge Robert C. Jones of the Federal District Court of Nevada smacked down high-handed, abusive feds, sending the pretend cowboys riding roughshod over Western ranchers and property owners back to their cobweb-laced offices in 2013.

In spite of their 200 armed snipers with boy toys in tow, those Stetson-wearing feds hunkering down on Cliven Bundy’s Ranch are nothing more than a bunch of cowardly ‘cobweb cowboys’ doing duty for radical environmentalists.

In the upheaval of Bureau of Land Management bureaucrats caving in fear to the radical environmentalists of the day, the Rule of Law still works in court, and everyone of those feds brandishing weapons knows it down at heart.

“The court case, U.S. v. Hage, has been keenly watched by legal analysts and constitutional scholars—but has been completely ignored by the major media.”
(New American, June 3, 2013)

“As we reported last November (”Judge Blasts Federal Conspiracy; Ranch Family Vindicated — Again!”), in June 2012, Judge Jones had issued a scorching preliminary bench ruling that charged federal officials of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with an ongoing series of illegal actions against Nevada rancher E. Wayne Hage that the judge described as “abhorrent” and a literal, criminal conspiracy.

“Judge Jones said he found 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.”

No cowpoke cuss could ever transcend what Judge Jones openly called feds invading ranch land.

“In fact, Judge Jones accused the federal bureaucrats of racketeering under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations) statute, and accused them as well of extortion, mail fraud, and fraud, in an effort “to kill the business of Mr. Hage.”

Judge Jones bottom-lined what the government is doing to ranchers and property owners—end of chapter!

He, and likely other federal court black robes, know that the mainstream media goes into overdrive in trying to keep the truth from the masses.

Tragically, Fed-harassed rancher Wayne Hage was vindicated three years after he died. (Capital Press, Dec. 8, 2009).

While no one (mercifully) has died on the Bundy ranch—yet—the stories of Bundy,—-Hage, Wally Klump and others are a disturbing match.

“In a previous court decision, Senior Judge Loren Smith referred to the well-publicized Hage lawsuit as “a drama worthy of a tragic opera with heroic characters.”

“A federal judge has added $150,000 to the original $4.22 million judgment won by the estate of rancher Wayne Hage in a years-long battle over property rights.

“The federal government had asked Senior Judge Loren Smith to throw out the judgment. Instead, he increased it.

“Hage, a leader of the “Sagebrush Rebellion” against federal control of land, was the husband of former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho. They both died in 2006.

“The order is the most recent victory in a legal dispute that stretches back to 1991, when Hage filed suit against the government for taking his private property without just compensation.

“Hage’s 7,000-acre ranch in Nye County, Nev., bordered several allotments in the Toiyabe National Forest on which he built fences, corrals, water facilities and other rangeland improvements for cattle grazing.

“Tensions began to mount between the rancher and the U.S. Forest Service in the late 1970s, when the agency permitted the introduction of elk to the national forest, resulting in damaged fences and scattered cattle, according to court records.

“Over the next decade, other incidents aggravated the strain and eventually led to the lawsuit.

“According to court documents, the Forest Service excluded Hage’s cattle from forage and water in certain allotments, impounded animals that entered those allotments and prevented him from maintaining ditches needed to exercise his water rights.

“In his legal complaint, Hage claimed the agency had breached its contractual obligations and violated his constitutional rights.

“During the course of litigation, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims decided the Forest Service could legally prohibit grazing on the allotments without compensating Hage, since grazing permits are licenses and not contracts.

“As such, the impoundment of cattle was not an unconstitutional taking because the cattle had trespassed on government land, the court said.

“However, the court ruled that the agency had taken Hage’s water rights, ditch rights-of-way, roads, water facilities and other structures without just compensation and in 2008 ordered the government to pay him $4.22 million.

“The federal government asked the court to change or set aside the financial compensation, alleging there’s no evidence Hage actually built hundreds of miles of fences, trails, ditches and pipelines on the allotments.

“Under the law, Hage would qualify for compensation only if he had built the structures, the government said.

“Because his grazing permits only authorized Hage to maintain the structures, he was not entitled to their full value, the government said.

“The judge disagreed.

“In the context of the grazing permits, “maintenance” included placing or construction, he said in the most recent ruling.

“The government’s argument “cannot be squared with the language of the statute and the reality of range work and construction,” Smith said.

“In adding more than $150,000 to the award, the judge ruled that his previous decision had mistakenly omitted the value of ditches and pipelines taken by the government.”

Yesterday, there were reports of confrontations “teetering on violence” at the Bundy Ranch, where family members and supporters angrily confronted rangers holding tasers and barking dogs.
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View the complete article at:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/62362