Cliven Bundy no racist, as unedited video clearly shows
Posted by Non_mooching_artist 10 years, 9 months ago to News
So, the NYT selectively edited the video. Go figure. A negative light shed on a person who wants limited government and freedom! Who will not back down from a fight from an overreaching fed agency. Start a smear campaign against the guy. That's the ticket.
And in a most frightening fashion, the iron fisted actions of the BLM and the screaming liberal press are indeed reminders of a certain sociopathic fascist named Adolf Hitler. He used the same tactics to stir loathing against the jews and any other group whom he felt were not pure.
The world would be a better place had Cliven Bundy taken a speech class. His remarks on race, the nanny state, and land use verge on incoherent. He's right, the welfare state saves the body while killing the soul, but most of the soulless within our welfare state are white and mentioning race causes people to miss the point.
Regarding Mr. Bundy's land use thoughts; what exactly are they? I can't understand them and I'm from a western state. Western states were formed from land the Federal Government purchased from Mexico at the end of the war, and later via the Gadsden Purchase. Mexican citizens who owned land were allowed to keep it, but all other lands became the property of the US Federal Government. The Government then sold or granted land to propel settlement of the West, but most western states were at one time almost entirely Federal property. Some remain so, and because of this fact agencies like the Forest Service and BLM wield immense power in those states. Whether those agencies crush us or not depends entirely on the executive branch. Six years ago Federal land agencies were mostly benign. Under this administration those some agencies have become very aggressive in wielding their fully legal power to deindustrialize and depopulate large parts of the west. Deindustrialization may be motivated by the anti-carbon agenda or an attempt to punish political opponents, but I don't pretend to know why the government seems to be depopulating large areas. If I figure out the answer to that question I hope to express it better than does Mr. Bundy.
I agree that the way to combat this is for the States to re-assert their sovereignty via the 10th Amendment and reject any attempts by the Federal Government to own more land or assert more control without an actual bill from Congress - not some bureaucrat's rules.
You are factually incorrect. At statehood, all land not ceded by the US Federal Government remained Federal land. Remember, these were not existing, independent states creating a new union (the original 13 colonies) or petitioning to join an existing union (Texas); these were lands acquired by the US Federal Government through purchase, over which the only authority was the US Federal Government, which afterward created the states within, imposing on them at the time of statehood, rules persisting to this day. The State of Nevada never owned any land the US Federal Government didn't cede to it. On the question of ownership there is no doubt. The 10th Amendment does not prohibit land ownership by the Federal Government. The US Federal Government retained ownership of 85% of Nevada as a condition of statehood. The State of Nevada administers civil life on lands both private and public, but does not own those lands. The BLM may have broken a contract with Cliven Bundy, but there is no question about land ownership. Neither Cliven Bundy nor the State of Nevada own that land. Until 1848 Mexico owned it. Since 1848 the US Federal Government has owned it and all your wishing and bluster will not change that fact. The BLM, not the State of Nevada, is Cliven Bundy's landlord.
One thing I would point out, however, that would be a legal challenge to this for any State is that Courts have repeatedly held that ownership in title defers to ownership by management and improvement. If the State (or a private individual) is actively using and improving the land - even in cases of squatters - and the legal owner of the land does not do anything about it for a length of time, the land's rights actually then become those of the improver. Even George Washington lost land to squatters on his property in this manner, so this provides a strong legal framework that would challenge even the claims of the Federal Government pursuant to the creation of Nevada as a State. In the case of Bundy, his family had been ranching and improving the land long before Nevada ever became a state or before the Federal Government began demanding fees for use, so there is both legal precedent and a strong claim for "squatters' rights" in this case that would override the claims of the Federal Government. I believe that this was brought up by Bundy when the BLM initially attempted to alter the conditions of the land-use deal.
Just something to consider.
The US Federal Government retained ownership of those lands not specifically ceded to the states at the time of statehood. The US Federal Government determines what, if any activities are permitted on Federal lands. The US Federal Government, as owner, has the right to refuse to allow industrial activity or squatters on its land. For most of our history the US Federal Government was a cooperative landlord, selling grazing rights to ranchers and mining permits to industries. The Federal Government is reducing issuance of grazing rights and mining permits. This is frustrating, but fully legal. The US Federal Government owns the land. It is inside its rights to refuse use. Just exactly why the government seems to be trying to force ranchers and miners out of business, I'm not sure but, from the first day we paid the Treasury to let us graze cattle or drill on Federal land we accepted the principal and set the precedent that the US Federal Government owns and administers the land as it sees fit.
Ask the question: Does the US Federal Government own the White House (DC), the Capitol (DC), the Pentagon (VA), West Point (NY), Fort Jefferson (FL), the Presidio (CA)?
If not, what entity owns those real properties and what entity owned the land surrounded by Nevada's borders between 1848, when the US Federal Government bought it from Mexico and 1864, when Nevada became a state?
If so, we've established that the US Federal Government can acquire and own land in existing states and land not within existing states. Once you accept this, Federal ownership of 85% of Nevada follows.
I am a westerner. We despise the Federal Government. It has retarded our economic and social development. It takes much more from us than we get back but, trillions of dollars of mineral royalties and land fees because we were late to the party. We came into statehood AFTER being purchased by the US Federal Government. The provenance is clear. They owned the land before we existed as states and granted us statehood under those conditions. The US Federal Government is not taking land away from Nevada. The US Federal Government owned those lands before there was a Nevada.
We'd love to get rid of them. Put all Federal lands up for sale and I guarantee every western state would mortgage future generations just to get out from under the burden of Federal land ownership. But, wishing it doesn't make it so, and if Cliven Bundy's family had owned that land prior to 1848 their claim would have been recognized, as were all other Mexican landowners. If Cliven Bundy's family showed up after 1848, they don't own the land, no matter what they think.
I keep writing, and you keep not reading. The Federal Government owned the land prior to statehood and specifically refused to cede it to the states when they were created. That doesn't mean Nevada isn't a state. It means the Federal Government is the largest landowner and landlord in Nevada and, as long as it stays within the terms of its contracts as a landlord, it has the right to do with its land as it sees fit. Had the Bundy family tried to purchase that land a century ago, when the Federal Government was more inclined to sell, they might now own it and have legal standing to run as many cattle as they want. They didn't, so the Federal Government is their landlord.
I believe your narrow reading of the Constitution "Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings" would be laughed at by EVERY current Supreme Court Justice. Is White Sands Missile Range needful? Is it a building? Hanford Nuclear Reserve?
No, the Federal Government has an established and agreed upon right to acquire land for its needs, whether they be buildings or not. If we didn't understand the Constitution to allow the purchase of land the United States of America would have stopped east of the Mississippi.
I think your take is not only legally incorrect and without moral force (we all knew prior to accepting statehood the Federal Government would own much of our states) it is pointless. Waving your interpretation of the Constitution in the air doesn't move the matter forward. Arranging a sale of Federal lands would. For that there is legal and moral precedent.
Read about The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and The Gadsden Purchase. The US Federal Government bought the land from Mexico, guaranteeing the continued property rights of all Mexican and other private landowners. All land not privately owned at that time would become the property of the US Federal Government. These purchases were similar to Jefferson's acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, It's what happened afterward that is different.
In 1812 the General Land Office was formed to grant or sell most of the 828,000 square miles Jefferson bought from France. Within 30 years most of the land we now call the Midwest had been sold and much of it had subsequently been organized into states.
It appears the Federal Government's attitude toward land changed sometime between 1842 and 1848. Texas freed itself from Mexico in 1836, and in 1845 the independent Republic of Texas negotiated statehood without ceding any land to the US Federal Government. In 1848 the US fought what was probably an unjust war against Mexico and, after winning, bought about 30% of that country for 3 cents an acre (Jefferson paid France 4 cents an acre for the Louisiana Purchase). In 1853 the Federal Government acquired another 30,000 square miles of Mexico for a similar price.
From 1803 to 1842 the US Government acquired huge amounts of land and sold much of it to private citizens. After that land sales slowed. Was it Texas's insistence on retaining ownership of its land that changed the Federal attitude, or was it the discovery of gold in California in 1848? I don't know, but even now, some of the land Jefferson acquired through the Louisiana Purchase has not been sold and most of the land acquired from Mexico, along with its minerals remains the property of the US Government.
It's as though somewhere around 1848 the US Government realized North America was finite, there was a west coast and we were fast approaching it and - decided to quit selling land to the public.
So, you see, the principle has been the same since 1803, the US Federal Government has the right to purchase land not already within the boundaries of the United States but, as time went by, the willingness of the Government to distribute those lands to private owners changed dramatically. Settlers were prevented from owning land in Oklahoma until 1898 and the Federal Government still owns half of the land inside Wyoming's borders.
We westerners were victimized not by changing laws, but by a changing Federal attitude. The land that lies within Illinois' borders was acquired at the same time as the land within Wyoming's borders but almost all of Illinois is private land, while most of Wyoming belongs to the US Government, because Illinois was settled before the Federal Government's change in attitude and Wyoming was settled afterward.
Bundy's real complaint is the US Federal Government won't sell him the land his family was not wise enough to, or not allowed to buy in 1848, unlike lands that were sold on demand to pioneer families just like his. He cannot state this coherently because there is no legal or moral imperative behind "we wish we'd stopped in Texas or kept going to California, where we could have bought all the land we wanted, instead of stopping in Nevada and leasing land we could never own."
Your assertion that "forts, magazines, ..." would be laughed out is incorrect. Those are all federal military purposes and like installations would be treated as such.
As for whether the state of NV could cede the lands to the fed gov't, it would take the state being in existence in the first place, and under the Constitution then owning the land, to have them cede it back to the fed gov't. This was done a priori, which was impossible, since the state of NV didn't exist.
Under the interpretation favored by both of you the Louisiana Purchase, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, The Gadsden Purchase, and Seward's purchase of Alaska would all have been unconstitutional and all lands west of the Mississippi River would have remained colonies or possessions of France, Mexico and Russia; meaning - not only would there be no Federal lands, but no State of Nevada and no Bundy family therein.
I had hope for this website, but I'm losing it. Your claim that the Constitution forbids the acquisition and ownership of land by the US Federal Government means the country would have remained what it was in 1802. While people questioned Jefferson's wisdom in buying the Louisiana Territory and the moral justification for going to war against Mexico and the wisdom of making the Gadsden Purchase and buying Alaska from Russia, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to say these purchases could not be made.
Read my longer explanation to Strug below. If you still think the Federal Government has no right to own land, fine, waste your life trying to overturn 212 years of precedent and, depending on where you live, start working on you French, Spanish, or Russian, because without the legal right to own land, most of the US would not be a part of the US.
I agree with the solution, but there is moral imperative behind ownership of grazing rights. Those rights have a bound and the BLM not only denied those rights to be exercised they tricked ranchers into handing them over in exchange for consideration that was not delivered. It's a complicated situation and discussion. Thanks for your information. Hope to see you contribute on other posts.
And I agree with Robbie that nothing that he or I said in any way indicates that the federal government could not buy or otherwise acquire land. But they need to be transferred to a state or be a semi-autonomous territory (like Puerto Rico or Guam) and not a wholly owned property of the federal government. Keep in mind that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not written to give rights to the subjects; they were written to expressly limit the rights and powers of the federal government.
I believe what I wrote is: your interpretation would be laughed at by EVERY Supreme Court Justice. It's obvious no one, including the founders, interpreted the Constitution to mean the Federal Government couldn't own land within a state. From our founding the Federal Government has owned land outside DC. All that was required was the state's acceptance of such ownership. Nevada's Territorial Legislature accepted 85% Federal ownership at the time it became a state. Wyoming's Territorial Legislature accepted 49.5% Federal ownership when it became a state. Not only did Nevada's Territorial Legislature approve, the US Congress granted the Territory's wishes as regards to their borders, taking land from Utah and Arizona. So you see, at the time of statehood the necessary Constitutional requirements were met. Everyone involved agreed. The fact that we wish they hadn't doesn't mean it was unconstitutional.
I am not changing the Constitution, nor did the founders, shortly after the convention think they were changing it by acquiring various state lands for Federal purposes, because those Federal purposes made sense.
Many years ago the Federal Government acquired land containing strategic minerals. Recently the Federal Government acquired large tracts of private land in southern Colorado. Some of the ranchers objected, but the Feds used eminent domain to take the land. The Feds weren't being malicious. The newly acquired land will allow the army to move from Fort Carson to much cheaper, more remote ranch land, allowing for development of the prime front range real estate it now occupies, Colorado did not object, so those ranches became Federal property.
I sense this is the real argument here; you wish the states would object, had objected, but they didn't. They have made and continue to make Federal land ownership constitutional by not objecting. Your argument is not with the Federal Government, it's with the States.
The way forward is for States to petition the Congress to sell the Federal land contained within their borders and not necessary for the Federal Government's purposes, as it did for most Midwestern states. It worked in the case of the Presidio. It will work in the case of Fort Carson. However, for some lands I predict the Congress will refuse, because the mineral royalties derived from said lands are huge and the Federal Government is broke.
Our hero's got to be bullet proof; eloquent, educated, probably female or transgendered, definitely not Caucasian. Think we can find an Objectivist nonCaucasian female Harvard grad running an organic goat ranch on BLM land?
http://www.ignatius-piazza-front-sight.c...
The only person who could pull this off might be Condolezza Rice. Maybe. She just needs to start raising goats.
Other than skin color, sounds like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_...
None of this has to do with the heavy-handed law enforcement tactics, which are the issue for me.
Anyway, the war on drugs is supposed to target everybody, and to a certain extent it does, but it doesn't target all populations equally. Some populations (i.e. ethnic minorities) are scrutinized more closely than others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgjs58i7...
(Ignore the video's title, listen to what he says.)
Here's a video you should watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60Gu...
As an aside, I went into the comments now I'm in a little battle with a troll
This has been going on for decades but most people in urban areas and in the east know nothing about it. See Wayne Hage, Storm Over Rangelands, 3rd ed. The progressives do not want this discussed and are trying to smear Bundy as a "racist" as a diversion.
This is a very big problem. The pressure groups -- from the Sierra Club to Audubon to the Center for Biological Diversity (which is responsible for the attack on the Nevada ranchers) and many more -- have a lot of money, political connections, and PR and legal expertise, and the rural people have little means to fight back against their statist aggression.
The New York Times doesn't care about the abuse of minorities (let alone the rights of the individual), and support of agendas like affirmative action illustrate how progressives don't oppose racism, which is for them is exploited as a means to smear the enemies and victims of their statist agenda so no one will listen to them.
http://www.infowars.com/judas-goat-glenn...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014...
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/a...
They have also positioned their own anti-tea party Republican establishment opponents to take the dishonest 'I told you so line':
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014...
All they had to do was tell the truth and take the offensive against a smear campaign and it would have exposed the leftist tactics for what they are. Instead they have helped the left create a much larger diversion and misrepresentation of an issue they don't want people talking and thinking about.
More on this whole issue in the previous day's posts on Bundy: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/76...
Same story with a local radio host, Levon Yuille: http://www.joshuastrail.org/
He just had Allen West on his show this morning, listening to these two men talk was incredible.
Here's a possible Dream Team:
Pres: JC Watts
VP: Condy Rice
Sec of Treas: Walter Williams
Sec State: Alan Keyes
Att Gen: Dale Wainright
Sec Def: Allen West
Sec Ed: Michael Williams (with the instruction of eliminating the agency)
Sec Commerce/Labor: Herman Cain
Sec HHS: Ben Carson
I don't know how well they'd perform, but I like them all. His jovial demeanor, Georgia accent and southern speech patterns disguise the fact that Cain's actually a fairly smart cat; BS mathematics, MS computer science. They're all smart and accomplished and they'd get my vote.
p.s. not a reference to a jib crane, but a jib sail, and luffing is oscillating in the wind ... things are just so complicorny!
I cannot see how Bundy is a clown and stealing, he is not well educated but he is productive.
As for 'a great White Hope', as an outsider I would like to see more of Condo Rice, Ben Carson,
Herman Cain, Allen West, Thomas Sowell especially, and many others of this type of 'white' who
have been mentioned on this site with approval and admiration. .
To liken us here to stormfront is well, ..
Yes, it is too easy to find some common characteristic in those who have sunk into permanent welfare without intention or hope of improvement.
What most on this site are against is the policy of the governing class of making themselves feel good but not helping and making it worse. Blacks whites pinks get caught.
Well done - to those who have pulled themselves out.