The War on Western Working People

By Mark Humphrey

February 19, 2016


The occupation by armed rebels of the Fish and Wildlife buildings near Burns, in eastern Oregon was heroic, but tragic. The occupiers mostly conducted themselves bravely. They risked their lives and freedom in behalf of a cause that is, in most respects, just. Yet the rebels did not seem to understand all that justice requires in the situation. And the rebellion was quixotic—doomed to fail from the start by their infatuation with the “romance” of armed rebellion.

Levoy Finicum lost his life fighting for this cause. Ammon Bundy, who led the rebellion, and his brother Ryan are in jail, as are many of their followers. Their father Cliven Bundy, who flew to Oregon from Nevada to broker a peaceful surrender, has been arrested and charged by the FBI. Clearly, this was a misbegotten adventure. But however tactically flawed the rebellion, the cause for which these people fought is a just one.

They are right to protest federal policy that has sacrificed ranchers, loggers, miners and oil drillers, more and more over the last 40 years, to misanthropic environmentalism and a greedy federal land grab. They are also right to protest the persecution of the Hammonds and other stockmen by federal bureaucrats determined to drive them from their ranches by force. But the rebels’ solution, which is to force the federal government to relinquish control of its vast western lands empire to local or state governments, will not bring justice. It will only impose another kind of injustice that these men wrongly believe would restore their rights.

People such as the Hammonds, Bundy’s, and many others like them, who struggle to earn an honest living on federal lands all across the West, should have their rights restored under a regime of justice. To understand what is just, in this or any other situation, requires thinking about ethics and its nature, which we’ll discuss later. But first, let’s glance at the history of the settlement of the West.

CONGRESS HOBBLES SETTLERS WITH THE HOMESTEAD ACT

In 1862, after the South had seceded from the federal union, its opposition to free homesteading thereby nullified, Congress passed into law the Homestead Act. This legislation was a political fix for the problem of how to settle vast areas of the Louisiana Purchase, and the Oregon and California territories, with Americans, under the theory that possession is 90% of legitimacy. But Congress permitted only tiny homesteads of usually 160 acres in semi-arid country that required far more land to support farming and livestock raising. This restrictive policy guaranteed that many homesteaders in the West were bound to fail.

During World War One, grain prices skyrocketed and the rains fell generously on arid lands, so some homesteaders prospered. But the end of the war crashed grain prices, and in the twenties the rains began to fall off. A great many of the homesteaders sensibly gave up trying to grow low-value crops in dry soil that, by 1930, became parched. Vast areas were abandoned by broken farmers and their families, leaving a sea of grass, windswept prairie, and badlands to cattle and sheep owners eager to acquire more grazing lands. Across most of the semi-arid or arid West, grazing was the highest and best use of the land, where ever stock water could be found or developed.

As cattle and sheep owners moved onto mostly empty federal grasslands, they began to make necessary improvements to profitably run their herds. They developed and built water wells, springs, and reservoirs; hay meadows and irrigation; homes and utility buildings; and gleaming barbed wire fences that shot and snaked across the landscape. None of these improvements could have been built without the foresight and hard work of the earliest ranchers, who saw opportunity in struggling to build herds and run them on lands that were unclaimed by other herdsmen or farmers.

There were ugly fights between cattlemen and sheep men, and between these stockmen and persistent farmers who held small tracts of productive bottomland along creeks. But the overall thrust of activity was homesteading, not in the legal sense of laws enacted by Congressmen, but in the philosophical sense of John Locke, who explained that private ownership results when an individual combines his or her labor with unclaimed land or other resources.

WHY PRIVATE PROPERTY IS GOOD

Now we can begin to see why private ownership of real property, and of various kinds of personal property, is much more than a legal institution that has been considerably compromised over the last century. Private property is an ethical principle that is grounded in reason and the requirements of human life.

Property is good because people need it to live. They need private property to feed and clothe themselves, to live securely, and to create and sustain proper lives for themselves and those they care for. Without private property, people perish, because they lack not only the means of subsistence but the means of any achievement whatsoever.

The moral basis for private property is deduced from human nature. People are creatures that live by thinking and choosing. As plants automatically respond to sunlight, nourishment and water in pursuit of life; and as animals instinctively organize their behavior around the principle of furthering life; so people must choose to think and try to make appropriate choices in order to live.

Thinking requires that one be free to act on one’s ideas, because thinking where action is prohibited is futile. If action is not possible, then thinking stops. Therefore, human nature requires that people live free of coercive restraint, so they can try to realize their highest potential to create, produce and flourish.

Note that freedom to act presupposes peaceful activity. If one sets out to take from another person, by threats of violence or by fraud, then one thereby negates freedom.

To live and thrive, people need private property, in order to secure their moral sovereignty as free and independent individuals. Moral sovereignty is respect for cause and effect in human life. Under a regime of private property, individuals who initiate effort and awareness to make good choices, and who therefore act rationally, productively, with integrity and so forth, are free to enjoy and keep the benefits of their success. They deserve their success. Those who don’t rouse themselves to higher consciousness and effort, and who therefore make bad choices involving reckless, destructive or vicious behavior, experience diminished lives that are at least partly of their own making.

The reason that private property is constantly under assault by socialists and big government types is clear: it is the logical foundation of all freedom. Without property, there could be no freedom of assembly and association, speech and religion; and privacy would be impossible. For without property, there is no moral realm within which one is free to choose one’s associates, ideas and activities. There is no moral realm where one is free to live a life of one’s own. When private property is outlawed, or to whatever extent it is compromised, people lacking moral sovereignty are threatened and invaded by others.

HOW THE WEST WAS WON

With these principles in mind, we can properly judge right and wrong in the conflicts and controversies of the settlement of the West. The people who hauled themselves and their belongings across the wild prairies and mountains were galloping after opportunity in every line of work. There were vast expanses of unclaimed lands; cheap space in growing towns where business flourished; gold, silver and copper deposits in unexplored mountains, deserts and streams, gleaming just below the surface–free for the taking! These pioneers were virtuous in their pursuit of self-improvement: They were prudent, practical and energetic. They identified opportunities they hoped would enable them to create wealth for themselves and their others. They saved to fund their expeditions and ventures, worried about risks and costs, and then tried to carry out their daring plans. This was how the eastern half of the United States had been built—a spiritual quest for opportunity by people who didn’t need official permission.

During the great American migration westward, Indians were often abused, but not entirely in the way that most people believe. There were many instances of unjust killing by both whites and Indians. The US army was a vastly superior force and wielded power to kill, terrorize and bully on a grand scale. So treaties were repeatedly broken. Beaten Indians were taken hostage and herded onto reservations where it was impossible for them to support themselves on 160 or 320-acre farms.

However, the fable of the noble savage is a myth. Often the Indians of the Plains, both men and women, used blood curdling methods to torture their captives to death, regardless of race or sex. Such cruelty was typical of warrior tribes. They lived by hunting and by making war on other tribes and on Whites and Hispanics who offered opportunity for plunder, enslavement and killing. The reason these tribes lived by making war was because the western lands could support only a comparatively small number of hunter-gatherers. Tribes fought, not merely for sport, but for dominance; and in the end, survival. (1)

As such, these warring tribes had mostly not appropriated private or even quasi-private tribal property. Indian people that lived by farming and hunting, such as the Creeks in Georgia; or that lived as livestock traders and breeders, such as the Nez Pierce of the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, had their farms and grazing lands stolen from them by the federal government. But tribes that wandered as nomads across vast stretches of wild country did not own those ranges, because ownership requires applying one’s ideas and work to the task of appropriating, defining and developing one’s property. Nomadic tribes lived by war, and they acquired the territories they claimed through conquest.

Therefore, ranchers who began building and running their herds on unsettled federal lands after the Civil War were acting with merit and justice. The lands were available for just appropriation, because they were unused by other settlers, farmers, and herdsmen. The ranchers’ acts were meritorious, because they acted prudently and productively. They exercised prudence by using foresight, good judgement, and careful planning to create value from the unused and increase their material well-being. They were productive, bringing in cattle and sheep where none had existed before, and improving and building on the land to run their herds.

At first, in the Northwest beginning in the eighteen sixties, ranchers ran their cattle on open-rangeland. They would homestead a small tract on which they constructed buildings and eventually developed hayfields. They would buy other small homesteads to add to theirs. But throughout the year, the cattle were herded and grazed over open range, in common with herds owned by other ranchers. This grazing of a vast common area led to costly over grazing. No herdsman wanted to reduce the number of cattle he ran on the commons, because any reductions would be filled by other ranchers. (2)

Although formal property rights to the range were not sanctioned by legislation, informal property arrangements among people living in western communities sprang up quickly. If a rancher developed a water source and fully stocked the surrounding rangeland with his cattle, other stockmen would stay away. However, the rancher had to keep his range area fully stocked, without saving grass he’d need for the dry years. If the rancher understocked to save grass, other stockmen would move in. This arrangement drastically reduced calving and lambing crops, and increased the rancher’s livestock losses in winter and during drought. Also, homesteaders undeterred by poor crop growing conditions and frequent lack of water for their domestic and livestock use, were moving into the ranches established by the cattle and sheep men. So establishing and defending property ownership in this way was not very effective.

Soon cattlemen formed livestock associations; these organizations asserted exclusive rights to large expanses of grassland where members grazed in common. The association would publish notice that it had appropriated for its members a particular territory, occasionally including as much as several million acres, for exclusive use by its members based on years of past and present use. The announcement would state that the territory was fully stocked and that non-members were unwelcome. To discourage outsiders from grazing additional cattle, members denied them the use of association corrals for working and shipping, and excluded them from the association spring and fall roundups. Because the members’ many thousands of branded cattle were ranging together across vast landscapes, gathering those cattle in the spring to brand and again in the fall to ship calves were each a major undertaking lasting a month or so, with the riding and other work done by representatives from each member’s ranch. Exclusion from the roundup and corrals made it impractical for non-members to use the range.

The assertion of grazing rights to real property by the cattlemen’s associations was spontaneous and voluntary, growing rapidly in response to federal policies that restricted formal ownership to small semi-arid tracts on which no one could earn a living. The claims of the livestock associations were justified because their members had been the first to appropriate and use empty rangeland under common law prescriptive rights.

The associations restricted the grazing of their members to prevent depletion of the grassland. The number of cattle each member was allowed to graze was allotted based on private ownership among the ranchers of stock water sources, which being scarce and valuable were quickly homesteaded or purchased. Association membership was a valuable right that increased the market price of a ranch’s deeded base property.

However, as general settlement progressed, outside competition for the rangeland grew. This motivated association members to cheat on their rules to get their grass before a competitor could. The livestock associations broke down under this pressure.

With the invention of barbed wire in the eighteen seventies, association ranchers began fencing their own range to assert ownership and better manage their herds. These ranchers claimed informal property rights under the common law practice of prior appropriation. By continuing to graze the pasturelands they made private through fencing and water improvements, they more particularly defined their claims to ownership started under the livestock associations.

By the 1880’s expensive fences had been built across a lot of rangeland nominally controlled by the federal government. Fences increased ranch values and made it possible to efficiently manage and improve herds and pastures, in ways that were impossible on the open range. They also increased the collateral value of land and livestock, so that ranchers could get bank financing for the costs of operating and expansion.

HOW THE FEDS OUTLAWED PRIVATE OWNERSHIP ACROSS ONE-HALF OF THE WEST

But the progress achieved by developing private but illegal ownership collided with an opposing trend: the Progressive Movement. Starting in the eighteen eighties and nineties, this political/philosophical movement became a powerful force that promoted federal “ownership” of western lands, in the name of democracy and conservation. Progressives favored land socialism in the West and inveighed against the alleged wickedness of profit seeking and private ownership in a free economy. The movement was wheeled forward by political operators such as Theodore Roosevelt, who was a failed North Dakota rancher but enormously popular as a politician; Presidents Wilson and Taft; and many others enamored of the Progressive ideals of government ownership and regulation.

The Interior Department reacted with hostility to efforts of ranchers to assert their claims of ownership. This hostility was not surprising, since many Progressives gravitated into government jobs and the imperative of bureaucracy is to advance its power. The General Land Office of Interior derived its funding for the purpose of parceling out small tracts, regardless of the impracticality of farming 160 acre homesteads in dry country. Possessory rights to range claimed by ranchers threatened the GLO’s future.

Also, Agents working for the GLO were allowed to earn up to $3,000 in annual fees, in addition to their salaries; so their pecuniary interests clashed with private claims of ranchers.

The Interior Department sent out agents to survey the range and tear out fences that compromised their dominion, while threatening offending ranchers with prosecution. This policy reversed the big gains in productivity that had been achieved through fencing land claims. It encouraged overgrazing and halted improvements by ranchers, who were deprived of their natural rights and uncertain of their future on the federal commons.

In the decades following the eighteen eighties, federal enforcement of anti-fencing laws waxed and waned. Under the administrations of Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, enforcement was strict. However, because this policy was destructive of ranching enterprises built by decades of hard work, political pressures forced officials to relax enforcement every few years.

Homesteading declined rapidly during the twentieth century, so that by 1925-1930, this activity was nearly extinct. Migrants had learned that farming small tracts in dry regions was not profitable. Consequently, illegal range fences that remained no longer had the effect of obstructing homesteader access to tracts located inside of lands that had previously been claimed and used by ranchers. The small farmers who hung onto their land through the hard times, using irrigation and advanced dryland farming techniques, benefited from the illegal fences. Those fences sometimes ran along the farmer’s boundary line, which saved the cost of building fence for farmers, and in any case kept cattle off their crops. For these reasons, settlers stopped filing complaints against the ranchers with the General Land office in the teens and twenties.

This fact had no influence on federal enforcement. Usually, complaints during this period were filed by Interior Department agents, not settlers.

With homesteading dwindling, around 1920, the Interior Department stopped advocating disposal of federal lands to settlers under the Homestead Act. Instead, it pushed for bureaucratic management of “unclaimed” federal lands of roughly 200,000 square miles, most of which had long been claimed by ranchers under possessory right. This total did not include 265,000 square miles controlled by the Forest Service, whose dominion had been declared off-limits to homesteading since the turn of the century.

Quite often, from 1900 through about 1933, federal agents aggressively sought out and prosecuted illegal fencing. However, enforcement during this time was compromised by the rivalry that had developed between the Interior Department and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture, each competing to control federal lands. Both departments sought political support from ranchers, who used this leverage to negotiate for better grazing rights.

In 1901, the Interior department pursued strict enforcement of anti-fencing laws at the behest of President Roosevelt. Simultaneously, the Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Division told ranchers they could keep their fences on Forestry lands and get permanent grazing rights if they would support a transfer of the forests from Interior to Agriculture. In 1905, the Department of Agriculture took control of forest lands, having won support from Theodore Roosevelt and livestock groups.

During World War One, the federal government suspended anti-fencing enforcement to support the production of meat for the war effort. This was a tacit admission that private ownership was essential to ranching productivity.

After World War One, in 1921, both cabinet level agencies offered competing bills to award control of unclaimed lands to themselves. In 1923, Interior Secretary Work promised ranchers they could keep their fences on remaining federal rangeland, provided that the range was administered by his department. From 1922 well into the nineteen thirties, both agencies engaged in continuous lobbying and maneuvering, sometimes deceitfully, to gain control.

However, the quarreling agencies did share one important mission, which was to prevent any private ownership of federal rangeland. In 1926, secretaries of both departments testified in Congress against a bill that would have formally recognized grazing rights of ranchers.

In 1929, the Hoover administration formed a committee that recommended turning over to the states remaining federal lands. But support for the proposal was weak because the federal government intended to keep the valuable mineral rights and to cut off funding for highways.

Finally, in 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act was passed assigning the range to Interior. Interior Secretary Ickes marshaled support from ranchers with promises of cheap grazing fees in future grazing districts. He prosecuted illegal fencing and other private range improvements and promised ranchers free fence building and water improvement, once his legislation was passed.

For about three decades, grazing fees were low, as promised, reflecting the political sway of the ranching industry. But ranchers’ influence fell with the rise of the environmental movement in the Sixties.

HOW THE FEDS BEGAN TO ATTACK RANCHERS AND TAKE THEIR RIGHTS

The environmental crusade amplified ideas implicit in the Progressives’ conservationist movement, to the effect that human activity is destructive of what is supposedly the ultimate moral value: untrammeled nature. Why is pristine nature morally valuable? It is held to be inherently valuable, a claim that is buttressed with promises of vague benefits to future generations. But no value is inherent; a thing is valuable to humans because it furthers the objective of living well. If land is locked away, it damages the productivity of humans today and in the future. People must be productive to achieve prosperity. This is why the green movement is misanthropic.

Today, the federal government controls roughly half of the territory encompassing eleven western states, mostly through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Forest Service, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and National Parks Service. The government has added significant holdings of formerly private lands to its empire since 1970, so that it now controls 1 million square miles throughout the United States.

Grazing fees have ratcheted steadily up over the decades and grazing rights have been reduced, restricted and sometimes eliminated. The Fish, Wildlife, and Parks wildlife refuge in Harney County Nevada is a case in point. This refuge is a part of the Harney Basin, which was settled by numerous ranchers in the 1870’s and used to support 300,000 cattle. These ranchers developed a productive irrigation system to water their hay meadows that attracted large flocks of migrating water fowl. The Malheur Wildlife Refuge, that today covers an area of 37 by 45 miles, took over 100 privately owned ranches.

The story of how these ranches were captured by the federal government is not a pretty one, if facts and details presented in an on-line article by Ammon Bundy are true. (3) Mr. Bundy seems to draw on conversations he had with the Hammonds concerning a long history of federal land grabbing and abuse of the Hammond’s and other ranchers in the Harney Basin. He describes the takeover of the rancher irrigation system by federal people in the nineteen eighties, who then used the system to flood several ranchers on the productive Silvies plains. These ranchers, who had long refused to give into federal acquisition requests, were now forced to sell to the government; after which, in a few years, the flood waters receded.

He also describes blatant violations of the Hammond’s property rights by zealous federal people: these included barricading the county road that connected the Hammond’s lower and upper ranches, to deny them access to their property; forcing the Hammond’s into court to defend their water rights from federal taking; fencing off the Hammond’s water source in their upper ranch to stop Hammonds from using their water, after Hammond’s had prevailed in court; and then having Dwight Hammond thrown in jail for two days and nights for resisting this invasion of his right to use his private water. The BLM then revoked the Hammond’s grazing allotment adjacent to their upper ranch, which forced them to abandon running their cows there, because they could not afford to build many miles of new fence separating their private from federal land. This was the source of prolonged financial hardship to the Hammond family; they had to sell their ranch to buy another with two federal grazing permits, both of which were later revoked.

As Mr. Bundy further describes, in 1999, the Hammonds started a fire on their private property to burn juniper and sagebrush that were choking off the grass their cattle grazed. The fire spread to a small area of BLM land. In 2001, Steve Hammond phoned the fire department to inform them of his plan to perform another routine burn of brush on his land; the fire burned about 127 acres of adjacent federal land and was extinguished by the Hammonds. A BLM specialist testified that the fire improved the federal range.

In 2006, a big fire started by lightening threatened the Hammond’s winter pasture and home. Steve Hammond started a backfire, which put out the wild fire and saved their ranch. A BLM ranger and the sheriff then arrested and charged Steven Hammond and his father, Dwight with multiple Oregon state offenses. However, after reviewing the case, the district attorney dismissed all the charges as unwarranted.

But five years later, the U.S. attorney’s office charged the father and son with terrorist arson, under The Federal Terrorist Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. These federal charges rested on the implausible claim that the Hammond’s had started the backfire, not to save their ranch, but to destroy evidence of deer poaching! Of course, deer entrails are massive and impossible to destroy by starting a grass fire. But the jury bought the story and Hammonds were sentenced for terrorist arson. 73 year old Dwight Hammond served 3 months and his son Steven served one year, and they were fined $400,000. Following their release, while they were still struggling to pay the draconian fine, BLM personnel complained to the U.S. attorney that the jail terms were less than the five-year minimum punishment prescribed by the law. The Hammonds were then both sentenced again, this time to five years in prison. At the time they were taken away to prison the second time, they had paid $200,000 of the fine, but had only a short time left to pay the remaining $200,000. If they cannot pay it, they will be forced to sell their ranch, almost certainly to the BLM, to which the court awarded the first right of refusal.

The Bundy brothers and compatriots traveled to Burns, Oregon to protest the abusive treatment of the Hammond family and to draw public awareness to the injustice of federal control of 50% of the American West. The Bundy takeover of the FWP buildings aroused cries of indignation from people who believe that government ought to compel obedience to its vision, including, “if necessary”, taking over and ruining the lives of those who resist its hegemony.

However, the Bundy cause is just. Not only have the Hammonds and many other people been treated badly, but federal claims to “public ownership” of 50% of the West are ethically indefensible. The federal government does not own that vast expanse of territory. It did not discover, appropriate and improve for its own use an unclaimed tract of land. It did not get what it claims to own, peacefully and voluntarily, using its own efforts and wealth. Government activity is funded by force; its every acquisition is taken by force or paid for with wealth extorted from other people. Therefore, its claims to ownership are false and its control of half the American West is illicit political empire.

The progressive notion of “public ownership” is deeply rooted today, because people imagine it symbolically upholds their importance as members of a great democracy. But the notion is absurd on its face. Ownership begets control of property, but the “public” controls very little as such; and certainly not the use and disposal of half the American West. “Public ownership” is a metaphor designed to elicit popular support for the federal empire. Only a tiny percentage of citizens actually set foot on public lands, away from parking lots, restaurants, and paved viewing points. Drive through Yellowstone Park and view the edge of a million acres of rocks and wasted pine trees, half burned and fallen down.

Continue for hours through the pitch black of night, and you will see not a single inviting light of human habitation.

Federal lands ought to be dispersed into private ownership. Ranchers who have run livestock on federal lands appropriated and developed by their predecessors in title should be awarded the right to buy at a big discount. Funds that flow into the federal treasury from land sales should be returned to taxpayers who have been forced to fund this unethical political adventure.

The benefits of justice would be profound because the injustices heaped on the Hammonds, Bundy’s and a great many others would stop. Ranches and farms would become secure in title and productive again. Timber raising and logging, mining and oil drilling, outfitting and recreation; these and other private uses that no one has yet conceived, would thrive. There would be an outpouring of enterprise that would indirectly and directly benefit everyone, sooner or later.

Then the West would be won again, still the most beautiful stretch of country on earth, and home finally, to a free and prosperous people.

Notes

The routine use of torture by many plains tribes is described in detail in the book, The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin (Simon and Schuster, 2013)
My description of the history of the federal takeover of western lands draws heavily on a wonderful book published by the Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, Locking Up The Range by Gary D. Libercap (1981).
The essay by Ammon Bundy is posted on-line here: http://bundyranch.blogspot.com/2016/01/full-story-about-whats-going-on-in.html

Showdown Over Land Grab: Piute County Sheriff threatens arrest of Forest Service personnel

February 24, 2016


The disputes between the men who raise America’s meat supply and the federal government will not go away.

Meet Stanton Gleave and listen to his story in the embedded video below.

Longtime rancher Stanton Gleave is at the center of a conflict that includes the County Sheriff on one side and the U.S. Forest Service on the other.

Gleave wore his cowboy hat and held up a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution as he spoke with the Rural Caucus of the Utah State legislature on Feb. 12.

“These federal people have no right to be here if you follow (the Constitution),” Gleave said.

The Piute County Sheriff, Marty Gleave, (We’re told Marty is Stanton’s nephew) also talked with the Rural Caucus.

“We’re not taking no more cuts on the Mountain. I’ll deputize every man, woman and child in the county to stop what’s going on,” Sheriff Gleave said, referring to Monroe Mountain, where the Forest Service has taken grazing permits from Stanton Gleave and another rancher, Keith Anderton.

The Forest Service is working to revitalize aspen growth on Monroe Mountain.

Seventy-four percent of the land in Piute County is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.

The government of the United States no longer serves it’s people, but demands our money in the form of taxes.

As the ranchers resist the land grabs, even city man Donald Trump has weighed in. He says we must obey the law, but that as president he will investigate. That sounds reasonable.

Listen to the complaints of the ranchers in the video:

https://youtu.be/aHCOo4j4jWM

From Showdown to Show Trial: The Bunkerville Crackdown is Just Beginning

By William Norman Grigg

Pro Libertate Blog

March 9, 2016


What happened at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, was an eruption of terrorist violence against the forces of order and decency, insisted Peter Oliver, a former Massachusetts Bay Superior Court Judge. His history of the American rebellion was published in 1781, but it has an oddly contemporary flavor – almost as if it had been published by an 18th Century analog of the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center.

General Gage, “having intelligence that a quantity of warlike stores was collected at Concord … judged it most prudent to seize them,” Oliver narrated. The troops acted with efficient professionalism, only to find themselves under assault by an organized band of gunmen determined to resist the enforcement of lawful orders.

“Much stress hath been laid upon [the question of] who fired the first gun,” observed Oliver of the engagement on Lexington Green. “This was immaterial, for … the military Power had a right to suppress all hostile appearances. But in the present case, the commanding officer ordered the armed Rabble to disperse, upon which some of the armed Rabble returned an answer from their loaded muskets.”

The “Rabble” compounded that impudence with tactics Oliver regarded as dishonorable, sniping at the troops “from houses and from behind hedges, trees, and stone walls” and otherwise concealing themselves against reprisal. The beleaguered British retreated, yet the “battle thickened upon them … for every town, which they passed through, increased the numbers of their enemies so that they had not less than 10 or 12,000 to combat with in the course of the day.”

Not being able to boast of a victory, the arch-Tory took solace in what he described as “the instances of the British soldiers’ great humanity, in protecting the aged, the women and the children from injury, notwithstanding the great provocation they had to a general slaughter.” The Redcoats were entitled to exact a horrible price in blood, Oliver contended, but they displayed heroic forbearance by refusing to do so.

Instead of chastened gratitude for the magnanimity of their armed overlords, the American rebels circulated accounts that Oliver denounced as “atrocious falsehoods” intended to “inspire the people to the grossest acts of violence.” This led directly to further “barbarities” committed “by Washington and his savages” against the British troops and their contract mercenaries, who embodied the sanctified will of the Sovereign.

After diving into the mendacious artifact that Daniel G. Bogden, the US Attorney for Nevada, calls an “indictment” against Cliven Bundy and eighteen of his relatives and associates, it’s a good idea to read some excerpts of Oliver’s very similar treatment of the American revolt as a way to decompress. Abruptly rising to reality after plumbing the depths of Bogden’s dishonesty might otherwise lead to the intellectual equivalent of the bends. The rodent form Bogden is a jurist in Oliver’s tradition, a servile instrument of enthroned corruption.

The document Bogden extracted from a typically pliable federal grand jury refers to April 12, 2014, standoff in Bunkerville Nevada as “a massive armed assault against federal law enforcement officers,” a discreditable description of an incident in which not a single shot was fired by either side. Indeed, the presence of several hundred witnesses, most of whom were “armed” only with cameras or protest signs, prevented mass bloodshed by agents of a Regime that does not scruple to kill helpless people.

The rebellion at Bunkerville, a genuinely inspiring act of peaceful rebellion against decades of criminal misconduct by the BLM and allied agencies, is depicted by Bogden as a “conspiracy” against federal authority.

“Bundy and other leaders and organizers of the conspiracy … used deceit and deception to recruit gunmen and other `Followers’ for the purpose of using force, threats, and intimidation to stop the impoundment [that is, the rustling of Bundy’s cattle], flooding the internet with false and deceitful images that law enforcement officers were abusing Bundy and stealing his cattle,” whines Bogden. “Deliberately lying, the leaders and organizers pleaded for gunmen and others to travel to Nevada to `stop the abuse’ by `making a show of force against [the officers]’ in order `to get them to back down’ and `return the cattle.’”

By the morning of April 12, continues Bogden’s petulant recital, “hundreds of people, including gunmen armed with assault rifles and other firearms, had traveled to Bunkerville, becoming Bundy’s `Followers’ conspiring with, and aiding and abetting him, and the other leaders and organizers, to execute a plan to recover Bundy’s cattle by force, threats, and intimidation.”

Oliver depicted the Redcoats as hapless victims of “savages” who sniped at them from behind cover and exposed them to withering ridicule. In less elevated diction, Bogden offers the same complaint, protesting that the federal Berserkers were “met with angry taunts” from the demonstrators, who “demanded the release of Bundy’s cattle.” Meanwhile, he claimed, some of the protesters could be seen “bobbing up and down behind the concrete barriers that bordered the northbound I-15 bridge, indicating to the officers that the gunmen were acquiring, and determining the range to, their officer-targets.”

Nowhere in the indictment is mention made of the fact, attested by several witnesses and participants, that the Feds had broadcast a warning that they were authorized to use deadly force. They were, in other words, willing to kill people in order to keep the pilfered cattle – not because of their value, but as a tangible display of federal “authority” over lands to which they are not constitutionally entitled.

Retired Judge Andrew Napolitano, one of the few representatives of that profession who understands and cherishes the rule of law, points out that if the Feds had been seeking to validate a legitimate claim to unpaid grazing fees they would have placed a lien on Bundy’s ranch, rather than dispatching a cadre of contract rustlers defended by a company of armor-clad, M16-toting Brownshirts.

Just as Peter Oliver did in 1781, Bogden and his comrades want the public to see the BLM’s decision not to slaughter people en masse as an act of nobility. In a supplemental filing against Hailey, Idaho resident Eric J. Parker, whose over-watch helped deter a massacre, Bogden’s comrade Justin Whatcott invites the public to pretend that if not “for the courage of the victim officers to back away from their assaulters and abandon the cattle, the actions of Parker and his co-conspirators would have resulted in catastrophic death or injury to the officers and others.”

Unlike other bullies, the federal government has the luxury of prosecuting victims who force them to back down — and this butt-hurt bully won’t be satisfied with the nineteen rebels it has rounded up. Under the terms of this indictment, anybody who was present in Bunkerville that morning, irrespective of his or her role in that incident, is liable to prosecution as part of that “conspiracy.” This is also true of those who arrived after the standoff in support of Bundy; such people are described in the indictment as “co-conspirators” in the effort to “protect his cattle from future removal actions” and to “deter and prevent any future law enforcement actions….”

The indictment could actually be expanded to include reporters (your correspondent among them) who published accounts of the standoff that do not comport with the Regime’s official version of the event. Statist media courtesans like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, who praised Bundy for his resolute defiance of the BLM until the predictable campaign of demonization began, will be granted absolution for their subsequent denunciations of the rancher as a “racist.”

Although consistently described as a “scofflaw” and “deadbeat,” Cliven Bundy has never refused to pay grazing fees. He has repeatedly offered to pay those fees to Clark County, rather than to the federal agencies who have usurped control over lands within the county. Like other embattled ranchers throughout the intermountain region, Bundy is demanding that the central government end its illicit control over rural lands in the western states. Confronting a lawless federal government that considers its powers to be illimitable, Bundy, along with his sons and associates, chose the course of interposition.

To minds rendered inoperable through decades of collectivist indoctrination, those views seem presumptuous, and Bundy’s effort to defend his property seems an impermissible act of armed sedition. Those with a sense of American history might be reminded of the Suffolk Resolves of 1774, in which James Warren, Paul Revere, and similarly disreputable anti-government radicals acted to nullify the unlawful Coercive Acts – and threatened to arrest any British official seeking to enforce them.

The thirteenth “resolve” warned General Gage that the Rebels were aware of a plan “to apprehend sundry persons of this county, who have rendered themselves conspicuous in contending for the violated rights and liberties of their countrymen….” In the event soldiers were dispatched to carry out that design, the Rebels were prepared “to seize and keep in safe custody, every servant of the present tyrannical and unconstitutional government throughout the county and province, until the persons so apprehended be liberated from the hands of our adversaries, and restored safe and uninjured to their respective friends and families.” Bogden’s indictment describes the “armed checkpoints and security patrols” established on Bundy’s property as a supposedly criminal effort “to prevent and deter law enforcement actions against the conspirators….” Those actions are morally and, yes, legally indistinguishable from the actions were taken by the Patriots in and around Boston during the early 1770s: Under the “laws” in place at the time, and as seen by people of Bogden’s ilk, the actions of Samuel Adams and his cohorts constituted a criminal conspiracy that culminated in bloodshed. It was that “conspiracy” that led to the formation of the government that provides Bogden with his plunder-derived paycheck.

A case can be made that Bundy and his associates have been more restrained than their noble forebears in colonial Massachusetts; after all, at Bunkerville, once the servants of “the present tyrannical and unconstitutional government” had been forced to return the stolen property and leave the scene, no effort was made to arrest them for their crimes.

Referring to the BLM’s conduct as criminal is not hyperbole: The same U.S. District Court before which Bundy and his colleagues would be tried has ruled that the agency has engaged in a criminal conspiracy against the rights of Nevada ranchers for at least the last two decades. U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones, in a May 2013 ruling, described the BLM’s campaign of harassment, malicious prosecution, trespass, theft, and extortion against the late Wayne Hage and his family.

In 1993, Hage, a prominent rancher, and land rights advocate, applied for a federal grazing permit while explicitly reserving his rights. Hage had every reason to suspect the Feds of dishonesty: During the first Bush administration, the Forest Service, which administered lands owned outright by Hage, arbitrarily ordered him to reduce the number of cows on the allotment, claiming – without evidence – that the land had been overgrazed.

When Hage refused, the Feds stole 104 head of his cattle in an armed reprisal raid. Hage’s grazing permit was revoked and the Forest Service issued an order forbidding him to remove trees that had obstructed his right-of-way – timber that had previously been described as a “nuisance” by the same agency. This led to a spurious – and ultimately dismissed – charge of “destruction of government property.” Four months before that charge was lodged against him, significantly, Hage had filed a lawsuit against the Feds, accusing them of an unconstitutional “taking” of his property.

Given this backstory, it’s hardly surprising that as Hage signed his grazing permit application, he added a notation explicitly reserving his rights. This led to what Judge Jones calls the “nonsensical” federal claim that “such an assertion of rights meant that the application had not been properly completed.” That act was unlawful, Jones ruled, given that “the Government cannot withdraw [grazing rights] or refuse to renew them vindictively or for reasons totally unrelated to the merits of the application….”

That act of bureaucratic malice in 1993 was a “due process violation” that begat multiple criminal actions by the BLM.

While the Hages, at considerable expense, pursued their grievances against the Government in court, the BLM filed specious water rights claims on the family’s land, sought to entice several of their neighbors to steal water rights that belonged to the Hages, and “issued trespass notices and demands for payment against persons who had cattle pastured with Hage, despite having been notified by these persons and Hage himself that Hage was responsible for these cattle….”

As if the BLM’s intentions weren’t sufficiently transparent, the BLM “sent trespass notices to people who leased or sold cattle to the Hages, notwithstanding the Hages’ admitted and known control over that cattle, in order to pressure other parties not to do business with the Hages, and even to discourage or punish testimony” in the family’s ongoing lawsuit. (Emphasis added.)

This was a full-spectrum criminal campaign by the BLM: Racketeering, extortion, multiple instances of falsifying official documents, witness tampering and intimidation, official retaliation – all of it carried out by agencies capable of murdering the victims while shielded by official privilege.

Judge Jones, who had not exhibited any symptoms of “anti-government extremism,” concluded that the BLM and other agencies “entered into a literal, intentional conspiracy to deprive the Hages not only of their permits but also of their vested water rights.” Invoking the critical legal threshold for a 14th Amendment suit, Judge Jones observed that the BLM’s behavior “shocks the conscience of the Court,” held several key officials in contempt of court, and “referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

The U.S. Attorney tasked by that order to deal with the BLM’s criminal misconduct is Daniel G. Bogden, the same official seeking life sentences against Cliven Bundy and his associates as punishment for their successful effort to impede the BLM’s criminal designs. Rather than complying with that order, the Feds simply arranged for the dispute to be assigned to a more sympathetic judge. The willingness of Judge Jones to describe criminal misconduct in candid terms insisted judicial commissar in a Susan Graber, demonstrated that he “harbored animus toward the federal agencies” involved in the case.”Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves,” observed the Bard in Measure for Measure. When robbers and rustlers have rigged the system, the only alternatives that remain are abject subjection or armed interposition. The impending Bunkerville show trial will be intended to cultivate submission. It will most likely produce the opposite result.

And the remedy is the same as the one which presented in 1775.

After imprisoning Oregon ranchers, Obama to sign an executive order legalizing BLM tyranny to take over any land it wants

Monday, May 23, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer

(NaturalNews)

At the heart of a free and prosperous society is the principle of private property ownership. Without private property, the centralization and corrupting influence of power grows, as the freedom of the individual dissipates. Democratic socialism is a great example of the dissolution of private property, under which, the demands of the majority override those of the individual. The majority claims they have a "right" to the goods and services (property) of individuals and businesses. They then use the government as a vehicle of force to conscript property and take it.

It is much more liberating and moral to contract with others freely and compensate one another, making agreements mutually. It is better to earn one's own keep, be responsible for personal decisions, and be respectful of each other's personal property. The tenet of private property follows the principles of natural law, establishing boundaries so one party cannot harm or take from another.

When property is owned by the state, it is referred to as public property. Public property serves important purposes in today's society; however, it can also be used to serve the interests of the powerful. When property is federalized and concentrated into the hands of the powerful, the individual ambitions of the people become stifled. When property is federalized and used for monopolistic purposes, individuals are herded and turned into serfs who must do as they are told. When property is concentrated into the control of powerful central planners, they decide what they think is best for everyone.

Today, an overwhelming amount of property in the Western United States is now owned and mismanaged by the federal government of the U.S., and is being used for international and secretive purposes (e.g. United Nations global sustainability programs, and large scale mining operations). According to statistics from TaxFoundation.org, the federal government now owns more than half of the land in the states of Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Idaho. The federal government owns over a third of the land in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming and California. This is not good use of public property. This is power unchecked – a federal government accountable to no one.

Federal government finding new ways to take over property
Federal government bureaucracies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are being used as armies to intimidate and bully private property owners into complying with their demands. The EPA created the term, "Waters of the United States" to declare any rainwater that sinks into the ground as being connected to "navigable waters." In this way, the EPA can dictate what individuals do with their private property, by declaring someone's property a wetland, owned and overseen by the EPA. Private property owners are bullied into paying fines or giving up their property to the federal government through this tactic.

The BLM uses the same tactics to bully ranchers into paying grazing fees when their cattle roam freely and feed on the wild grasses of adjacent BLM land. This is what spurred the protests at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. The armed BLM came to confiscate Bundy's cattle, but backed down when the Bundys and other patriots defended their personal property.

When the Hammond family of Oregon attempted to save their cattle's winter feed by starting back fires on their property, the flames inadvertently moved onto adjoining BLM land. Dwight and Steven Hammond now await a five year federal prison sentence because the BLM accused them of destroying federal property. These cases show that the power of the BLM is ridiculously out of control, unreasonable and dangerous. This case is the reason why there was a protest at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The protesters had every right to assemble peaceably, defend themselves, and speak their mind about government abuses, but the FBI arrived on the scene in paramilitary fashion, unjustly executing rancher Lavoy Finicum, arresting the peaceful assembly of ranchers, and even detaining a member of the press, Pete Santilli.

An even greater BLM land grab is in the making
U.S. Congressman Rob Bishop recently sent out a press release about 14 pages he uncovered from a Department of Interior (DOI) internal memo which details the Obama Administration's plot to bypass Congress, and make it easier to confiscate and federalize land into the jurisdiction of the BLM.

The DOI memo reveals that a large BLM land grab is in the making. The pages reveal the need for an executive order which would bypass legislative hurdles by using an "Antiquities Act" to appropriate "cultural land" to be confiscated and managed by the BLM. The executive order would seek to target the "acute" problem of private land ownership that is adjacent to land already governed by the BLM. The targeted land includes 412,675 acres.

"In order to expand this network of treasured lands to include the diversity of landscapes currently managed by the BLM," it states. The DOI memo also reveals, "The BLM recommends that any major funding increases be phased in over a five-year period to allow the BLM time to build capacity in order to accomplish the increased work-load."

The war on private property ownership will continue in the West, as the BLM plans to take more and more land. The cries will grow louder to return public lands to the states, as individuals are forced to defend their private property against the federal government.

Sources include:

InvestmentWatchBlog.com

StateOfTheNation2012.com

TaxFoundation.org

RobertScottBell.com

Heavy.com

OregonLive.com

We are at war...The people just haven't figured it out yet...So far we are losing and losing badly...Until we hang a bunch of them we will keep losing.

Greywolf

Utah Sheriffs Threaten To Arrest Rangers If They Try To Close Public Lands


May 31, 2016
Kirk Siegler


Even with Cliven Bundy and many of his militia supporters in jail, anger toward the federal government is still running high in some parts of the West.

Clashes between ranchers and federal land managers over grazing rights are continuing. In southern Utah, things have gotten so bad lately that some local sheriffs have threatened to arrest federal rangers who try to close forest roads and cut off access to ranchers and other users.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Garfield County Sheriff James "Danny" Perkins is serious or pulling your leg.


"Now you are in a police vehicle, you understand that right?" he asks, while gesturing toward the center console in his pickup truck. "There is a gun in here, if you happen to ever need a gun, I don't think you will."

Garfield County is roughly the size of Connecticut, and it's up to Perkins and a half dozen deputies to patrol all of it.

"The country's big and it's vast," Perkins says. "I mean it's like this for miles and miles and miles."

Federal land makes up 94 percent of this county, so you'd think that Perkins would welcome the help of federal authorities. Think again. In the sage brush hills outside the one-stoplight town of Panguitch, he pulls off the highway and points to a dirt track.

"This is a conflict, and you're gonna see just a little bit of it. Here's a road right here, that was put here with teams and wagons," Perkins says.

"We're talking pioneer wagons here. Boulders lie in front of it and a bulldozer chewed it up so pickups or ATVs can't drive up it anymore. Federal rangers did this recently," he says. Locals have had access here for generations.

"There is an agenda — and don't kid yourself — there's an agenda to get rid of the grazing, there's an agenda to shut down our roads," Perkins says.

Tensions over federal land — who gets to do what on it, and who is in charge of it — are as high as they've been out here since at least the 1990s. Perkins and many others in his position will give you an earful about how they believe federal agencies have been taken over by environmental extremists. But this is more than just a turf battle. Perkins, too, has an agenda. He proudly refers to himself as a constitutional sheriff.

"Because I raised my arm to the square and I swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," he says.

A few miles away, in his office, he swivels back in his chair and starts digging through a file cabinet. He keeps copies of the papers and the Constitution on hand. Nowhere in them, he says, does it say anything about Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service law enforcement officers, let alone whether they have authority to pull people over for driving off-road or arrest people for illegal campfires. He says, as sheriff, he answers to the state of Utah.

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined," he says. "I can even understand that!"


There are a few dozen or so sheriffs mostly in rural Western states who refer to themselves as "Constitutionalists." It's not really a movement, but they are outspoken and rarely do they hesitate to get in very public fights with the Obama administration — over everything from gun control to whether the BLM should have law enforcement powers.

It's clear that Sheriff Perkins, who's also a rancher, wants to push some boundaries. He talks openly about detaining, or as he says "Mirandizing," federal rangers. He recalls one case recently.

"I told the Forest Service ranger that if he went out and closed a road that Garfield County has jurisdiction on, I would arrest him," he says.

And then there was the time that his deputies did arrest a BLM ranger they said was illegally issuing citations to campers.

"Wasn't me that pulled the trigger on that deal. Do I think he needed to come to jail? I do, the guy's a fruitcake," Perkins says.

For federal land managers, this was the latest instance of threats and intimidation directed at their field staff in the West. There's been an increase in reported confrontations lately.

But the BLM's second in charge in Washington, D.C., Steve Ellis, downplays the tensions, saying they're actually not that common.

"The key thing is working cooperatively with local law enforcement, with these sheriffs, that's our desire," Ellis says.

Ellis also says that the BLM's mission is inherently controversial.

"This is the national system of public lands, so we manage these lands for all Americans," he says.

Still the BLM is worried, especially after the armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon. And there are sheriffs in the West who sympathize with the now jailed Cliven Bundy and his militia followers. A lot of the principles these "Constitutional" sheriffs espouse are some of the same things you hear from the Bundys.

Sheriff Perkins told me he was invited, and in some instances pressured, by local ranchers to join the Bundys. But he would have none of it.

"I said it at the time, and I'll stand by it, that is nothing but domestic terrorism," he says. "Yes, there's been a story, a lot of these guys have been bullied around by the BLM, but you don't handle it that way."

So despite all his tough talk, Perkins is being careful, still working within the system. He and other sheriffs have been going to Washington, D.C., a lot lately, lobbying. And in the past few weeks, he says, after Utah Republicans introduced a bill to strip law enforcement powers from the BLM, relations out here are getting better.