How can such rank idiocy and pugnacious heel-dragging end? So the BLM backed down to prevent bloodshed. I feel kinda positive for that. But then what? It still remains that this moocher Bundy is grazing cattle on land that is not his and refusing to pay for it.
Where will it go?
And what will be done about the 1000 idiot assholes who think they aren't Americans?
And this just abysmally dysfunctional completely unsupported fictional idea that the American government is anything like the rule of King George. Just - gah! How do they breathe without machines?
You are, no doubt, reliant on either the partisan left media and/or the msm liberal press for your information - that would explain your misunderstandings and mischaracterization of the standoff and related issues.
Last week hundreds of armed federal agents and contract cowboys descended on the BLM property. They came well armed in SUV's and helicopters, some of them reputed to be snipers. Public protestors and militia members also arrived, the first (and only) violence starting when the government tased Ammon Bundy, a member of the Bundy family. Federal officials pulled back out of fear of escalating tensions. (No doubt Ruby Ridge and Waco has taught some of them something).
The federal government has been a part of a campaign to drive out ownership in-holdings, lease holders, and permit holders in the West for many decades. It has done so under many pretexts - some valid, many not. As 80 percent of the State of Nevada is owned by the federal government, like many Western states, there has been a great deal of state citizen resentment of their economic lives being controlled by Washington DC.
Supposedly the reason that the BLM is taking action against Bundy is on behalf of the desert tortoise which is on the endangered species list. In 1993 they reduced his allotment to 150 cattle 'for the tortoise', in retaliation Bundy refused to pay his fees, in 1994 they revoked his permit and closed off the Gold Butte area to grazing. (All other ranchers in the area are now gone, their permits being bought back by the feds).
In 2012 an environmentalist group sued the BLM for not removing Bundy's cattle. In 2013 the BLM announced a plan to euthanize hundreds of tortoises in its Vegas refuge area due to budget shortfalls (developer tortise mitigation fees, once 300,000 a year has plummeted).
There is some speculation that Reid and his son Rory were deeply involved, as they were in a deal with a Chinese-owned ENN Energy Group to build a 5 billion dollar solar farm in Laughlin Nevada. And the new head of the BLM was a senior policy adviser to Reid, who left Reid's office in 2011. The Senate voted 71 to 28 to confirm Kornze as the new director in 2013.
Bundy does not have a legal leg to stand-on BUT, one should have sympathy for his situation. And the fact that he stood down the federal leviathan's attempt to take his livelihood...well, that warms the heart.
