For all of you that are keeping up with this "range war showdown" in Nevada, take a minute to read this article.
I am normally all for the farmer/rancher, until they do ridiculously stupid shit and bring problems on themselves. Really, I am. I am a huge proponent of agriculture and the producers who work to feed us. They very rarely receive the credit that they deserve, and are constantly under attack from "greenies" that believe organic farming/ranching is how we should be feeding the world.
Ranching in the West depends largely on grazing public lands. That includes National Forest lands, BLM lands, and State lands. Depending on the carrying capacity of the land, the ranchers are given a number of cattle they are allowed to run on a particular section of land, and have to pay a grazing fee set by the BLM/NF/State/etc. This is just a general over-view of how it works, but that's the meat and potatoes of it.
Most ranches have a small amount of actual deeded land(land they actually own), but have huge grazing allotments on these public lands. Lands that are owned by you, I, and everyone else that pays taxes. These lands are used for hunting, fishing, hiking, ATV riding, and many other types of outdoor recreation.
When Bundy(Nevada rancher) was asked to lower the number of cattle on his allotment due to an endangered species issue on his allotment(public land), he didn't. When they canceled his grazing allotment, he grazed anyway. He's been grazing on public land for free since 93-94. That's no better than the welfare people that everyone bitches about on a daily basis. He's making money off of public land, for free. There's no other way around it. The BLM was trying to manage an endangered species while allowing him to still run cattle on PUBLIC LAND. This isn't his personally owned land that this whole deal started over. He has approximately 150 DEEDED acres. That's it. That's all he actually owns.
Now granted, the gov't is handling this about as terrible as they possibly could, but that's nothing new. All they had to do was trap his illegally grazing cattle and sell them off to cut into the over $300,000 he owes for back grazing fees. Or if they wanted to "bully" him, just go arrest the guy months/years ago. I don't condone any of how they are handling this now, but they have practically put themselves in a corner, and it doesn't look like it's going to be pretty when they decide to come out, because unfortunately the gov't isn't going to allow itself to show any weakness to the people(which is a whole nother arguement for a different day...there's a quote about watering a liberty tree somewhere that fits that topic).
How many of these people that are on the rancher's side would protest about Tom Millionaire owing over $300,000 in back taxes, but nothing being done about it? Buying into the whole emotional arguement of, "Poor rancher getting bullied by the government" crap is no different than the way liberals argue.
Now granted, the gov't is handling this about as terrible as they possibly could, but that's nothing new. All they had to do was trap his illegally grazing cattle and sell them off to cut into the over $300,000 he owes for back grazing fees. Or if they wanted to "bully" him, just go arrest the guy months/years ago. I don't condone any of how they are handling this now, but they have practically put themselves in a corner, and it doesn't look like it's going to be pretty when they decide to come out, because unfortunately the gov't isn't going to allow itself to show any weakness to the people(which is a whole nother arguement for a different day...there's a quote about watering a liberty tree somewhere that fits that topic).
How many of these people that are on the rancher's side would protest about Tom Millionaire owing over $300,000 in back taxes, but nothing being done about it? Buying into the whole emotional arguement of, "Poor rancher getting bullied by the government" crap is no different than the way liberals argue.
There's a brain between your ears...use it before "siding" because of emotion.
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