Secure Property Rights: Hold Government To The Law

Cliven Bundy marched into my life one Friday morning in January 1992 in a protest bound for a federal courthouse in Las Vegas. He held up one side of a street-width banner that asked, “Has the West been won or has the fight just begun?”

To my great relief, just as Bundy promised, nearly 200 ranchers from all over the state marched behind him, yelling “Property rights!” Nearly a mile later, the marchers fell silent and filed into the courtroom where Wayne Hage of Pine Creek Ranch faced arraignment for the felony of cleaning brush out of his ditches without a U.S. Forest Service permit.

The Forest Service had already confiscated Hage’s cattle and left him bankrupt, just as the Bureau of Land Management would try with Bundy 22 years later.

Hage had already filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in the U.S. Court of Claims, just as Bundy now has cause to do against the BLM – last week, during their failed attempt to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, agents wantonly bulldozed his water supply into oblivion without court authority.

Wayne Hage did not stand in that courtroom alone because I was honor bound to prevent it – I had published his 1989 book, Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands, which unleashed the federal fury.

     The message terrified abusive bureaucrats: There are private rights in federal        
     lands – vested rights, not privileges.

His book, the product of three intensive, grueling years consulting with dozens of experts and sifting through many archives, found the dirty little secret that could destroy the abusive power of all federal Western land agencies – by making them obey their own laws.

It was so stunning that a sitting Supreme Court justice secretly sent Wayne a message marveling at his shining intellect – burnished with a masters degree in animal science and honed by academic colloquies as a trustee of the University of Nevada Foundation – and warning of the titanic battle to come.


More at:

Standoff In Nevada: Another Federal Siege Against The Innocent

With the memory of Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, still very vivid in the collective memory of the American people comes another example of a federal government run amuck. A rancher in Nevada is watching the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) seize his cattle and arrest his son for simply taking pictures of the events. BLM has also placed several federal snipers around his home with their high-powered rifles trained on his family. The last report I read said more than 200 federal agents are now surrounding the homestead complete with attack helicopters. All that seems to be missing are tanks.

Did the family do anything violent? No. Did they do anything immoral? No. Did they even do anything wrong? No. Did they do anything illegal? Well, that’s where the story gets interesting.

Cliven Bundy’s family has been grazing cattle on their ranchland since the 1880s. But in 1993, the federal government reclassified 600,000 acres of land, including the land that the Bundy cattle have been grazing on forever. The pretext used by the feds for seizing the land was to protect some “endangered” tortoise. However, the feds would allow Cliven to continue to graze his cattle on the land--if he pays the federal government for the privilege. The rancher refuses to pay.

“Federal snipers with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) trained guns on members of a family yesterday after they dared to stop and take video footage of cattle outside the bounds of a designated ‘First Amendment Area,’ before arresting one of the men for non-compliance.

“The cattle were being rounded up by BLM officers as part of a crackdown on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who has refused to pay ‘grazing fees’ demanded by the feds as a result of a re-classification of 600,000 acres of federal land in northeastern Clark County which Bundy claims has been in his family for generations.”

The report continues: “The feds have now started rounding up Bundy’s cattle in the name of protecting a supposedly endangered species, the desert tortoise, forbidding Bundy from interfering or even entering the vast area. The case is quickly turning into another iconic battle between big government and a besieged family.

“Fears that the confrontation may turn violent and concerns that Bundy is drawing increased support from liberty activists and the local community prompted the feds to tape off two ridiculous ‘First Amendment Areas,’ outside of which free speech in support of Bundy is banned. A sign placed inside the area reads ‘Welcome to Amerika--Wake Up’ alongside a hammer and sickle logo.

“When Bundy’s family members violated that rule yesterday in an attempt to peacefully document the cattle roundup, they were met with a barrage of loudspeaker warnings and four BLM snipers with their guns trained on the dissenters.”

The report goes on saying, “None of the family members were armed, but as soon as Dave Bundy began filming the cattle in the distance, 11 BLM vehicles each with two agents arrived and surrounded him.

“‘They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area,’ said Ryan Bundy.


More at: