BUNKERVILLE,
Nev. — Cliven Bundy stood by the Virgin River up the road from the
armed checkpoint at the driveway of his ranch, signing autographs and
posing for pictures. For 55 minutes, Mr. Bundy held forth to a clutch of
supporters about his views on the troubled state of America — the
overreaching federal government, the harassment of Western ranchers, the
societal upheaval caused by abortion, even musing about whether slavery
was so bad.
Most
of all, Mr. Bundy, 67, who was wearing a broad-brimmed white cowboy hat
against the hot afternoon sun, recounted the success of “we the people”
— gesturing to the 50 supporters, some armed with handguns and rifles,
standing in a semicircle before him — at chasing away Bureau of Land
Management rangers who, acting on a court order, tried to confiscate 500
cattle owned by Mr. Bundy, who has been illegally grazing his herd on
public land since 1993.
“They don’t have the guts enough to try to start that again for a few years,” Mr. Bundy said in an interview.
Mr.
Bundy’s standoff with federal rangers — propelled into the national
spotlight in part by steady coverage by Fox News — has highlighted sharp
divisions over the power of the federal government and the rights of
landowners in places like this desert stretch of Nevada, where
resentment of Washington and its sprawling ownership of Western land has
long run deep.
His
cause has won support from Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian
Republican from Kentucky who is likely to run for president. Senator
Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican, referred to Mr. Bundy’s supporters as
“patriots.” Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is the Senate
majority leader and has a long history of pushing for protection of
public lands, denounced the rancher’s supporters as “domestic
terrorists.”
The
dispute spilled over this week into Texas, where Greg Abbott, the
attorney general and a Republican running for governor, challenged the
Bureau of Land Management on reports that it was looking to claim
thousands of acres along the Red River.
For
now, Mr. Bundy appears to have won, forcing the government to back down
after its rangers were met with armed Bundy supporters this month.
“The
gather is now over,” said Craig Leff, a deputy assistant director with
the Bureau of Land Management. “Our focus is pursuing this matter
administratively and judicially.”
But if the federal government has moved on, Mr. Bundy — a father of 14 and a registered Republican — has not.
He
said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it
drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to
officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters,
discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the
abuses of welfare and his views on race.
“I
want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr.
Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas,
“and in front of that government house the door was usually open and
the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a
dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They
didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for
their young girls to do.
“And
because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they
do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young
men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve
often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having
a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government
subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
A
spokesman for Mr. Paul, informed of Mr. Bundy’s remarks, said the
senator was not available for immediate comment. Chandler Smith, a
spokesman for Mr. Heller, said that the senator “completely disagrees
with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in
the most strenuous way.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott, Laura Bean, said
that the letter he wrote “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no
way related to the dispute in Nevada.”
The
crowds may be beginning to dwindle, but for much of the past two weeks,
here at Mr. Bundy’s ranch in Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las
Vegas, the rancher has been a celebrity, drawing hundreds of supporters,
including dozens of militia members, many carrying sidearms, and
members of Oath Keepers, a militia group, who have embraced him as a
symbol of their anger and a bulwark against federal abuse.
He
was honored at a celebratory party on Friday night attended by 1,500
people, who wore “domestic terrorist” name tags, listened to cowboy
poetry and ate hamburgers, hot dogs and Bundy beef. “This is the
beginning of taking America back,” said Shawna Cox, who had come from
Kanab, Utah, to support him.
Mr.
Bundy, whose family has grazed cattle here since they homesteaded in
the 1870s, owes the government more than $1 million in grazing fees. He
stopped paying after the bureau ordered him to restrict the periods when
his herd roamed the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area as part of an effort
to protect the endangered desert tortoise.
Mr.
Bundy’s case happened to heat up around the time that Mr. Paul,
building the foundation for a presidential campaign, struck a chord with
some members of the Republican Party with warnings about governmental
overreach. Mr. Paul’s latest book is titled “Government Bullies: How
Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused and Imprisoned by the
Feds.” In the Bundy standoff, Mr. Paul has criticized the federal
government as overreaching with its use of regulations, but cautioned
against any violence or lawbreaking.
Rob
Mrowka, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity,
which has been battling to get Mr. Bundy to move his cattle in deference
to the tortoises, said the standoff had come to symbolize divisions
across the country about the role of government, particularly here in
the West.
“It’s
symbolic of the polarization and divide within the country that we saw
starting with the Obama election,” he said. “This is merely a surrogate
for bigger issue and topic in America today — it’s the whole idea of
federalism versus states.”
The
federal government owns 85 percent of the land in Nevada, a statistic
repeatedly noted by Mr. Bundy’s supporters as they denounced the actions
of the government. Six cattle, including two that had Bundy brands,
died during the attempt to collect the animals.
Mr.
Bundy’s case is clearly divisive. About 16,000 ranchers across the
country pay relatively modest fees for their herds to use public land.
The Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, while expressing sympathy with some
of Mr. Bundy’s complaints, pointedly did not endorse his methods.
“This should not be confused with civil disobedience,” Mr. Mrowka said. “This is outright anarchy going on here.”
Mr.
Bundy disputes the legitimacy of both the bureau and the courts that
have ruled against him. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to honor a federal
court that has no jurisdiction or authority or arresting power over we
the people,” he said.
Still,
as Mr. Bundy surveyed the dusty landscape last weekend, the only sign
of law enforcement was Brad Rogers, the sheriff of Elkhart County, Ind.,
who had flown 1,800 miles to stand in solidarity with the embattled
rancher.
With
the rangers gone, “I don’t feel any threat — that’s a big change,” Mr.
Bundy said. At the same time, he said he saw no reason for his
supporters to leave. “As long as we are getting together as a group and
as long as we feel good about being here, we are going to be here,” he
said.
One
of Mr. Bundy’s sons, Ammon, 38, a car fleet manager from Phoenix, said
his father had taught the federal government a lesson. “We ran them out
of here,” he said, sitting in a trailer set up near one of the
protesters’ camp sites. “We were serious. We weren’t playing around.”
But
Alan O’Neill, who had a similar struggle with Mr. Bundy when he was
superintendent of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, expressed
concern that the government had backed down.
“He
calls himself a patriot, and says he loves America,” Mr. O’Neill said.
“And yet he says he won’t follow any federal laws. You just can’t let
this go by, or everybody is going to be like, ‘If Bundy can break the
law, why can’t I?’ ”
[sidebar: We Americans were sold down the river by the Federal Reserve BANK, a foreign system literally sold us down the river as the Africans were also sold down the river, and on the backs of the BLACKS and the CHINESE, and all the immigrants as well as the pilgrims, entrepreneurs, slaves, Et Al, build the place called America.
WRONG. America was built by those that own slaves and have forever and have no intention of releasing slavery.
Begin with POTUS#44, he is a slave and worse, he is a poly addicted drug addict that is made to do what he is doing and the guy can't get that he has destroyed his children, wife and self.
Gotta feel real sorry for the BLACKs, why ISRAEL and the JEWS got the entire U.S.A. into supporting the First Black Jewish President and indeed, the Jews have their very own religious state, too. Americans are stuck with being the worst of the species Homo Sapiens. The Indian was made genocide so the grand apartheid can be what we have here.
Mr. Bundy and the PAUL family have been operating under the misconception of REPUBLICAN CHRISTIAN. Now you want to know how endangered a species we are here in the United States of America, those that would like to keep practicing the ART of ENLIGHTENMENT, ah hem, children the FRAMERS' OF THE CONSTITUTION were supposedly of a higher thinking, too.
Anyway, ROCKEFELLERS purchased the FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN MA, where the first BAR of lawyers was also made into a contract arrangement with the people of America. Well, we have the so called law and then religion.
Law doesn't get practiced in the rule, letter or the spirit, no due process and that started with the WHITE MAN, and the family of the REPUBLICAN FAKE CHRISTIAN, BUSH.
But, we're America and so the denial is a river of bleeding idiots, and the sea to shining sea is a contaminated mess that POTUS#44 just dined in Japan to prove how not smart he really is.
Yes, we're in trouble here in America and the division is about the unenlightened and the enlightened. Guess what is winning.]
Feral Governments don't act other than what IT has proven to be, and the criminally insane aren't improving their conditions, the FED is the FED and the FED gets to make up digits to kill all the patriots just because they can
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