# The federal government made a serious mistake by caving in to Cliven Bundy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 13, 2014, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993 "2014-04-13T05:03:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/81 "2014-04-14T16:16:51Z")
BTW, [according to Kos](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/12/1291577/-The-Nevada-Standoff-Has-Nothing-To-Do-With-Tyranny-Sovereignty-Freedom-or-Cows#), what this story is really about is not cattle but oil, and in particular the business interests of the Koch Brothers, whose organizations twittered up the story into national news. > [@](#): > > To appreciate how churning the media wurlitzer on this suddenly “newsworthy” controversy benefits the Kochs, one only has to go back to 2012 when the Utah legislature passed something called the Transfer of Public Lands Act, legislation vetted and inspired by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose chief funders include–you guessed it–David and Charles Koch. > > > [@](#): > > > > The Transfer of Public Lands Act (TPLA), passed in 2012 and signed by Gov. Gary Herbert, an enthusiastic backer, mandates that the Forest Service, with 15 percent of Utah land, and the Bureau of Land Management, with about 42 percent, relinquish their domain to the statehouse no later than 2015. > > “Relinquish their domain to the statehouse” means that the lands would go from Federal to state stewardship. As pointed out by David Garbett, a lawyer with the nonprofit Southern Utah Western Alliance: > > > [@](#): > > > > “The only way the Utah legislature can generate money from the public lands is to ramp up development and hold a fire sale to clear inventory. That means that the places the public has come to know and love will be sold to the highest bidder and barricaded with ‘No Trespassing’ signs.” Similar bills are proliferating in other Western states where most of the land is managed by a federal agency. > > The “Transfer of Public Lands” bills produced by ALEC are then hawked by industry-friendly local politicians and sold to the public as providing additional funding for non-industry purposes such as funding education, health and infrastructure improvements through “unleashing the energy” of public lands. > > In other words, by selling them to mining, shale and oil interests, run by (among others) Charles and David Koch. > > \ > > Nevada has followed a similar course. > > > [@](#): > > > > On June 4, 2013, Governor Brian Sandoval signed into law AB227 Nevada Land Management Task Force, making Nevada the fifth western state to actively explore the transfer of public lands to western states. > > Legal scholars have largely concluded that these laws are unconstitutional. But with a fanatical, Federalist-society indoctrinated Supreme Court Majority bending over backwards to accommodate corporate interests in every conceivable manner, the Constitution has proved to be a flimsy protection against virulent greed. By milking and stoking the controversy, the Kochs seek to galvanize public opinion against the federal government, delegitimize the Bureau of Land Management that oversees public lands, and thereby impugn its stewardship of lands that Koch-run industries want to get their hands on. These include lands in Nevada, Utah and pretty much anywhere else they can dig, frack or mine. This isn’t about some silly rancher’s “grazing fees,” to the Kochs and their business pals. It’s about their desire to exploit, despoil and pollute lands that we, the public, own by virtue of our citizenship. That’s not “freedom.” It’s greed. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/82 "2014-04-14T16:17:21Z")
If Bundy wasn’t a freeloading jackass hiding behind half-baked conspiracy theories this wouldn’t be a story. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/83 "2014-04-14T16:23:55Z")
Check out the right wing pages on Facebook, these guys are becoming the darlings of the Tea Party types. I don’t doubt that the Kochs are looking for this and any other excuse to make it easier for them to wrest some federal lands for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/84 "2014-04-14T16:26:32Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > How did the government treat the Bundys like “criminal scum”, exactly? By corralling them into a tiny fenced in “free speech zone” area in the middle of nowhere? By tasing protestors and sicking police dogs on them? By threatening to use tear gas on the protestors? This is not how enlightened governments should treat people, regardless of their citizenship or criminal “potential”. Unless someone threatened violence, the government should not respond with violence. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/85 "2014-04-14T16:27:49Z")
Nobody wants another Ruby Ridge or Waco during an election year. Let Bundy have his temporary “win” place a lien on his cattle and his real property and then collect it when he either dies or tries to sell or lease it. Either way, he’ll have to pay something to make this matter “go away.” As for the ding-dongs out there protesting: Wait a few days (or a week) and they’ll go home. Arrest the ones who violate the law and the remainder will simply fade away when the television cameras do. Being from Nevada, I can tell you that standing outside in the desert is extremely unpleasant and most people aren’t willing to do it for more than a week or so. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/86 "2014-04-14T16:29:11Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > By corralling them into a tiny fenced in “free speech zone” area in the middle of nowhere? By tasing protestors and sicking police dogs on them? By threatening to use tear gas on the protestors? The ranch and disputed lands are in the middle of nowhere. Where the hell else where they going to go? 😕 As for the rest, I asked for a citation earlier about any mistreatment of the protestors or the Bundys and didn’t get one. Maybe you can do better. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/87 "2014-04-14T16:32:50Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > By corralling them into a tiny fenced in “free speech zone” area in the middle of nowhere? By tasing protestors and sicking police dogs on them? By threatening to use tear gas on the protestors? Cite? ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/88 "2014-04-14T16:40:31Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The ranch and disputed lands are in the middle of nowhere. Where the hell else where they going to go? 😕 As for the rest, I asked for a citation earlier about any mistreatment of the protestors or the Bundys and didn’t get one. Maybe you can do better. It was right there in the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff). I have no dog in this fight. I’m just calling it like I see it. Certainly the BLM here acted with more restraint than the FBI at Waco, for example. I just see no reason to provoke a bunch of armed protestors over some grass. Send Bundy a bill and let everyone go home. Or better yet, send him a bill before all this got started. I don’t understand. When/if I owe the government some money, they don’t bring out armed men with helicopters to take my stuff. What made _this_ bill so damned important that they had to go to all this trouble? If it was money – garnish Bundy’s checks. If it was that they wanted to use the land for other purposes now – put up a fence. Why provoke a riot? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/89 "2014-04-14T16:43:26Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I should think that libertarians would be the first to condemn the armed mob for using force to steal from others. The property is the government’s, and I thought since property is The Most Important Thing In The Universe to libertarians, that they would come down on the side of the property owners, we the people. > > If we allow armed fanatics to disobey whatever laws they don’t feel like obeying, then civilization ceases to exist. Nevada has turned into Somalia. This is more a case that an ever encroaching government, combined with a rather soft view of the role of government, has created a problem: all people have to do is put up minimal resistance and they’ll win. There are two ways to handle that problem: recognize that the government is encroaching on too much and roll it back, or start killing a lot more people. Of course, since some other common property trespassers are illegal immigrants, we’ll have to start shooting them too. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/90 "2014-04-14T16:43:59Z")
From Wiki: > [@](#): > > Bundy’s daughter was thrown down to the ground by a BLM agent. Bundy’s son drove an ATV into the path of a bureau dump truck driven by a civilian driver. The truck struck the ATV and came to a halt, prompting several officers protecting the truck driver to converge with Tasers and police dogs. They told Bundy’s son to move his vehicle. He did not comply and confronted one officer. Another officer commanded his police dog toward him, who defended himself by kicking the dog. The officers then tasered him, and he continued to confront the officers, who repeatedly told the protesters to back up or be bitten. The other protesters, including a pregnant woman, considered this a threat and converged towards the officers. An officer seized the ATV, and Bundy’s son reached forward and was tasered at least two more times. > [@](#): > > On April 12, as a crowd converged on the gate to Gold Butte, BLM rangers warned over loudspeakers that they were prepared to use tear gas. > [@](#): > > Designated ‘First Amendment areas,’ where protesters could safely congregate or exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble were marked with signs and orange plastic fences adjacent to the road. On April 8, 2014, Nevada Governor, Brian Sandoval issued a statement, calling for the removal of the “offensive” First Amendment restrictions. After the roundup was suspended, protesters were allowed to go anywhere on the public land as long as they were peaceful. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/91 "2014-04-14T16:47:13Z")
You can’t be serious. Law enforcement officials who defended themselves from aggressive protestors with minimal force were treating them as “criminal scum”? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/92 "2014-04-14T16:47:32Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > It was right there in the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff). Yeah-[Here’s the _rest_ of the story.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Confrontations_and_protests_in_April_2014)Not as cut and dried as you make it out to be, is it? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/93 "2014-04-14T16:48:42Z")
BTW, I wasn’t totally clear about what I meant by a soft view of the roll of government: libertarians have what could be called a “hard” view. Law is force, and for any law to have meaning, the government must enforce it, by killing people if necessary. For crimes like murder, rape, burglary, etc., this is justified. For not paying grazing fees on federal land it’s just not. The mistake advocates of activist government have made is to forget that law is force, and assume compliance because they are just so darn well-meaning. Or they find ingenious ways ot make compliance something you have to go out of your way to avoid(see: payroll deduction of taxes). So when people do make a choice to not comply, a choice has to be made about how far you’re willing to to go see them brought to heel. Since in the past such confrontations were rare, the government could survive the PR damage of being heavyhanded. But as the movement of resisting this kind of thing becomes bigger and bigger, the government is going to basically have to go to war with its citizens to enforce these rather arcane laws. So you have a choice to make. How many people are you willing to kill over issues like these? Amnd are you willing to live with the consequences of a 50-50 nation divided over ideas now seeing that one side is willing to use the government to kill the other side? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/94 "2014-04-14T16:50:13Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Where the _hell_ are you getting this “willing to kill” crap from what I said? I never brought up killing, blood shedding, deadly force or any other juvenile violet fantasy scenario running through your mind. Law enforcement was there because laws were being broken, and law enforcement personnel carry weapons-deal with it, because they aren’t about to drop off their weapons at the station before heading out just to stop hissy fits like yours. Ah, the guns are just for show? If the government wasn’t contemplating deadly force, why did they send an army of armed agents? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/95 "2014-04-14T16:50:48Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > This is more a case that an ever encroaching government, combined with a rather soft view of the role of government, has created a problem: all people have to do is put up minimal resistance and they’ll win. There are two ways to handle that problem: recognize that the government is encroaching on too much and roll it back, or start killing a lot more people. > > Of course, since some other common property trespassers are illegal immigrants, we’ll have to start shooting them too. The concept of government land is hardly new. Having ranchers pay fees for the right to graze on government land so that the land can be maintained and rights revoked in times of drought seems to me a good idea. Because one guy thinks he gets to have his cattle eat government property for free, all the whack-a-doodles are up in arms to defend him. Screw that- he hasn’t paid his bills, garnish his property. By contrast, most immigrants simply want to pass over the government land in search for a better life. Their enviromental footprint is neglible. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/96 "2014-04-14T16:51:07Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Send Bundy a bill and let everyone go home. Or better yet, send him a bill before all this got started. They _did_. > [@DrCube](#): > > I don’t understand. When/if I owe the government some money, they don’t bring out armed men with helicopters to take my stuff. What made _this_ bill so damned important that they had to go to all this trouble? I’m not sure if you’re misunderstanding the geography or what. The cows were on public land, the gov’t had a legal court order to seize the cows. Elsewhere, a bunch of armed protesters blocked a highway by driving an ATV in front of a civilian dump truck. BLM agents moved in to protect the civilian driver of the impeded dump truck from the mob. They were acting 100% defensively. The goddamn dump trucks weren’t even involved in the cattle seizing, they supposedly had irrigation parts in them. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/97 "2014-04-14T16:51:46Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Yeah-[Here’s the _rest_ of the story.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Confrontations_and_protests_in_April_2014)Not as cut and dried as you make it out to be, is it? So temporarily blocking a convoy in order to ask a question is worth throwing people on the ground, sicking police dogs on pregnant women, driving a dump truck into a privately owned ATV, and tasing people repeatedly? _That’s_ the ideal response in this situation? ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/98 "2014-04-14T16:53:18Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Ah, the guns are just for show? If the government wasn’t contemplating deadly force, why did they send an army of armed agents? To protect themselves from the armed mob that was already there. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/99 "2014-04-14T16:56:16Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > So temporarily blocking a convoy in order to ask a question is worth throwing people on the ground, sicking police dogs on pregnant women, driving a dump truck into a privately owned ATV, and tasing people repeatedly? > > _That’s_ the ideal response in this situation? About this dog you don’t have? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993/100 "2014-04-14T16:57:56Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > BTW, I wasn’t totally clear about what I meant by a soft view of the roll of government: libertarians have what could be called a “hard” view. Law is force, and for any law to have meaning, the government must enforce it, by killing people if necessary. For crimes like murder, rape, burglary, etc., this is justified. For not paying grazing fees on federal land it’s just not. > > The mistake advocates of activist government have made is to forget that law is force, and assume compliance because they are just so darn well-meaning. Or they find ingenious ways ot make compliance something you have to go out of your way to avoid(see: payroll deduction of taxes). So when people do make a choice to not comply, a choice has to be made about how far you’re willing to to go see them brought to heel. Since in the past such confrontations were rare, the government could survive the PR damage of being heavyhanded. But as the movement of resisting this kind of thing becomes bigger and bigger, the government is going to basically have to go to war with its citizens to enforce these rather arcane laws. > > So you have a choice to make. How many people are you willing to kill over issues like these? Amnd are you willing to live with the consequences of a 50-50 nation divided over ideas now seeing that one side is willing to use the government to kill the other side? Civilian agents of the government don’t get to kill in order to enforce criminal statutes, be they murder, burglary, or illegal cattle grazing. Outside of imposition of the death penalty (which is limited by SCOTUS to crimes against the state, and crimes where the victim died), agents of the government can only use deadly force in response to an immediate threat, not to enforce statutes. That’s what the courts are for. You’re describing something more like Judge Dredd’s universe, where the police shoot burglars for being burglars, rapists for being rapists, and so forth. That’s not how it works in the U.S. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-federal-government-made-a-serious-mistake-by-caving-in-to-cliven-bundy/685993.md?page=6)