What I find puzzling is why so many feel personally aggrieved about this case. Bundy’s cattle grazed on public land. Law enforcement rightly decided not to make martyrs of anti-government folks, thereby not playing their assigned role in a self fulfilling prophecy.
What of it? Does it affect you? The world is chockablock with murderers, rapists, pimps and human traffickers. Some old guy with some cattle and the crowd from the local gun show are small potatoes.
You could say that about pretty much any property crime. I prefer to live where there’s law and order. racepug pretty much summed it up:
ISTM that the majority of people who are upset by Bundy and his crank friends are agrieved because some clowns with guns opposed the US government and didn’t get massacred. It’s the guns, not the cows that has most of them so pissed off. It is an article of faith among anti-gun rights people that citizens armed with rifles would get splatterkilled in any confrontation with the US government. That didn’t happen here and it is causing cognitive dissonance.
If the government had elected to turn their might on Bundy & Co., they absolutely would have killed the lot of them. There are ways for armed citizens to resist the government and what those yutzes were doing wasn’t one of the ways you do it right…Said yutzes owe their lives to the government not wanting to kill them, not to the government fearing their armed might, but it seems wrong to some foks that the yutzes weren’t killed.
I’m all for law and order, but I can’t get emotionally invested in this. And it has nothing to do with it being a property crime. I find the IRS’ over-zealous prosecution of people who violate the $10,000 dollar rule to be sickening.
Is it seeing folks from the other side of the spectrum have a small victory at the expense of the Hegalian state that has everybody in a tizzy?
Really, the examples of government overreach - PRISIM, asset forfeiture as part of the War on Drugs, Operation Choke Point - are so egregious, a little pushback is overdue.
Why don’t you quote of the posts in this thread, or in any thread on Cliven Bundy on the SDMB, and show us that anything you might have seen or read supports your view that “the majority of people” who want Cliven Bundy arrested actually want to see him “massacred”? :dubious: :rolleyes:
Again, who are you talking about here? Who are the “some folks” on the SDMB that you think want to see dead bodies?
I don’t see Bundy pushing back against any of those things. He appears to be fighting against the injustice of having to pay to graze his cattle on government land. And I notice that his courageous stand on principle also results in more money in his pocket. Funny how that works out sometimes.
I have to pay to get into a national park, and all I take from it are pictures. Bundy is consuming a shared resource, and presumably turning a profit from it. He should damn well pay for what he uses.
The one case may be small potatoes, but the issue is fundamental: is the United States government the government everywhere in the United States, or isn’t it?
If someone with a bunch of friends with a lot of guns can set himself up as outside of the law, and get away with it, you now have a template for other well-armed kooks to do the same. And that road ultimately leads to anarchy.
How the government chooses to enforce its sovereignty over Cliven Bundy and the BLM lands he’s not paying fees to use, doesn’t matter, so long as it does so.
If you or I didn’t pay the property taxes on our homes (assuming you own yours), at first there would be reminders from the county that the bill had gone unpaid. Let it go long enough, and there’ll be a letter in the mail telling me when the court date will be that they will seek a judgment against me. And if I ignore that and still don’t pay, eventually they’ll put my house up for auction, and men in uniforms with guns will appear at my doorstep to point out that these premises are no longer legally mine, and if I don’t leave voluntarily, they’re prepared to remove me.
If I had a bunch of friends with guns, they’d probably surround my 0.4 acres, turn off the water at the street, suggest to the neighbors that they make themselves scarce for a few days, and settle in to wait until we got thirsty enough that we threw in the towel. But they would damn sure back up their authority to collect taxes from me. They would not let me be a ‘sovereign citizen’ pretending to be his own government on his own property. Because if they let me pretend that indefinitely, it would be the new reality.
So I’m not sure what’s happening with Cliven Bundy. But if the Federal government doesn’t ultimately back up its authority to charge and collect grazing fees from Cliven Bundy, then it’s effectively saying it’s not really the government out there. And that’s a dangerous precedent to set.
It’s more a social attitude than anything, not a protest specifically against Prisim et. al. Like I said earlier, I’m all for law and order. But the law is something that should be openly debated and approved, clearly demarcated and fairly and uniformly enforced. The examples I gave in my previous post were none of those.
When government makes sweeping, unilateral decisions largely out of public view, it ceases to be law and becomes fiat. That puts the lie to the entire notion of ruling by consent of the governed.
Bundy and his friends are no heros, but at least they’re not rolling over. Would that more should do so.
They started the investigation a year ago. There have been no charges or arrests. I suppose it is possible that they are continuing to investigate and are just extremely slow and not very good at their job. Or much more likely the decision was made to not charge. Either they couldn’t prove that any guns were pointed directly at anyone or they decided to not charge for other reasons. The federal statute of limitations on most crimes is 5 years so they have time. But they have known for a while if they have any evidence and they still haven’t acted. That is not an oversight, it is deliberate.
The alternative being they were going to charge them, and just forgot? Or that, after a year, they’re still assembling a case against them? I’m comfortable assuming they chose not to.
(Underline added)
Have you ever considered objecting to the fact that you have to pay to get into national parks? You can, ya’ know. Why should you pay to use something that you already own? They’re national parks, not military bases.
It’s OK to object to government taxes and fees. Just because you pay up while muttering under your breath, doesn’t mean that others are willing to do the same.
I have no idea if Bundy’s parents were married but I’ll take your word for it.
It seems to me that laws and regulations regarding BLM fees and land management could be changed far easier, and definitely safer, than asking armed government agents to repeatedly collect and return cattle to the original owner.
Federal officers have better things to do than waste their time playing whatever game this issue has become.
First off, the fact that Bundy is enriching himself from this behavior casts some doubt on just how much this is all about principle.
Second, if he wants to protest something like Prisim, then let him protest something like Prisim, only then can we tell if he has some valid point to make. You say “social attitude”, I say self-interested crackpot. For all we know he’s pissed about the Treaty of Ghent.
Third, what part of this was done out of the public view? Is there some double-secret rate book about how much grazing fees on public land cost, no public comment period? Beyond that, it sounds like he’s had his day (and then some) in court to plead his case, all open to the public.
I don’t object (to paying to enter national parks), for two reasons.
And Bundy gets more. I leave with only pictures and memories; Bundy is getting something of tangible, commercial value from his use of BLM land. His cattle are fatter and more valuable after they graze.
Dropzone explained that to you in post #11.
The right to make a living can be a matter of principle.
You’re contention seems to be that Bundy, Prisim, etc, are discrete. I disagree. The tendency of government to exceed their rightful power is systemic. The social attitude to resist needs to be as wide spread.
I was referring to Prisim and the like being done in secret.
(post shortened)
OK, let me rephrase my previous post. Just because you pay up, doesn’t mean that others are willing, or happy, to do the same.
I’m glad you want to pay more taxes, and fees. I don’t. I feel I pay too much as it is.
I believe that the process by which those entry fees were put into place can also be used to remove those fees. Same process, and no injustice will have been committed.
Okay, so I didn’t miss some news; you were just making stuff up about the decision not to charge. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m not comfortable assuming things when there’s little or no evidence to back up an assertion. This is a website devoted to fighting ignorance, not fostering it. YMMV.
No, he didn’t. And you never have. Your posts have been direct replies to my posts a couple of times now, and your posts have been constructed to give the impression that you are refuting, at times, something that I have said, yet I’ve never made the outrageous demands or expressed desires even close to what you rail against. And then you come back and detail more things that no one in this thread is asking for. If you are railing against people not posting on this board, how about some cites to show us what your talking about? I certainly haven’t seen “most people” write or talk of wanting Cliven Bundy (and/or his supporters) dead, so where are you getting this impression? :dubious:
Regarding Cliven Bundy’s standoff a year ago, do you believe that “no injustice” was committed?