Jim Klein said...
You're hopeless on the big issue until you offer a full retraction, but maybe you'll share with your readers a more accurate rendition of the legal aspects of the land.
Ever hear of the Statute of Frauds? It's more than 300 years old. Because of that, we KNOW that Bundy was not a tenant as you wrote. You cannot produce a clear document spelling out that tenancy; therefore according to Law, it does not exist.
With regard to the title of the physical land, it belongs to either the US or Nevada. I don't know and it doesn't matter. Bundy had an estate in the grazing rights superior to either. How do we know this? Because nobody had claimed those rights prior to his ancestors and nobody made a timely claim that those rights are anyone's but his.
This is what it MEANS to create an estate in something; it's what property IS. Absent a State statute to the contrary, an estate is created just like that...one takes something without value and creates something of value. The created value is the creator's property. The fact that there is no specific statute addressing estates in grazing rights, doesn't mean that they can't exist. That would be like saying computers don't exist because the government never explicitly granted their existence. And in the case at hand, no statute to the contrary exists.
So the grazing rights WERE his and his family's all along. Now that may render the charging of fees and so forth an illegal taking in the first place, but that's a rather separate issue.
In fairness, if the fed offered value as compensation for the SPECIFIC taking of those grazing rights, then at least they'd be in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, with the question of whether or not that compensation was "just," a matter for civil procedures. I don't know and I doubt you do either, and the compensation would have to CLEARLY note that the money was compensation for the exact property of the grazing rights in the land. Otherwise, the Statute of Frauds applies and the compensation was for something else.
And even if every single element of the Law were against him--which they're not, since they're for him--it still wouldn't justify strafing and napalming. I'll let you figure out why, and maybe that two minutes of thinking will motivate you to do the right thing, and fully retract.
Sorry Jim, but the big issue IS the legal aspects of the land.
That is what makes Bundy a thief, in the same aspect the difference between teller and bank robber is which end of the gun you're standing on.
The land is where Bundy was never more than a tenant, having leased the land in question for grazing without a peep for decades himself, exactly as his father did beginning in 1954, long after that land first belonged to the U.S. government, up through 1992. One pays for that which is not his, and Bundy and his ancestors paid for federal leases on land they never purchased outright, because they never even lived there before 1948, and the BLM had jurisdiction over it since 1946. Whoops.
They did this under the auspices of the Bureau of Land Management in 1946, successor to the US Grazing Service in 1939, which arose out of the General Land Office going back to 1812, 36 years before the land in question was acquired by the United States Government. So clearly, the value of the land and the rights to graze on it were not valueless, and seen as having value by the US government some great number of decades before Bundy was in the picture, in fact before he was even born. Looking no farther than Wikipedia:
The Bundy family purchased their farm outside of Bunkerville in 1948; the farm would serve as headquarters and base property for their ranching operation, which began in 1954, on federal land. They had moved to the area from Bundyville, Arizona (near Mount Trumbull). Cliven Bundy's father, David Bundy, was born in Bundyville in 1922.[90] David Bundy had married Margaret Bodel Jensen of Bunkerville, and after starting a family in Arizona, they purchased their property outside of Bunkerville in 1948.[44]
Cliven had argued in court that his "Mormon ancestors began working the land in the 1880s".[91][92] This argument has basis in Cliven's maternal grandmother's ancestral line, but not among his paternal or other maternal lines. Cliven's mother's father, John Jensen, was born in Utah, but her mother, Abigail Christina Abbott, was born in the Bunkerville/Mesquite area. Abigail Christina Abbott's parents, both born in Utah, were among early settlers of Bunkerville/Mesquite in the 1880s; this includes lines from the Leavitt and Abbott families. These early families moved in and out of the area on several occasions, and polygamous marriages meant some wives and their families were kept in different towns. As such, there is no continuous line of family births and habitation in Bunkerville/Mesquite from Cliven Bundy to the few ancestors who settled the area.[44]
In 1993, he ceased paying to renew his grazing lease, but without removing his cattle, making him a trespasser. He continued to do so, and admitted all of this in sworn depositions, despite losing two cases in federal district court in Las Vegas, under the insane contention that somehow a non-existant Nevada had title to lands that belonged to the federal government in perpetuity since Mexico signed it over in the Treaty Of Hidalgo in 1848. The Territory of Utah was formed shortly afterwards, and the Territory of Nevada was formed out of that some years later. QED.
Now, did you want to actually talk about the land's history of ownership or were you just making chitchat?
Since you admit to agnosticism on this point, perhaps you should spend the four seconds it would take to look it up, since repeating seventh grade social studies, this time with a passing grade, is probably too much to ask. It's all readily available facts in the public domain.
The thing about creating an estate is that you actually have to have the title to the property in question. Bundy has nothing but chutzpah; the feds repeatedly demonstrated his claims to be nothing but tinfoil-hattery, and lacking any substance or standing, he lost both cases in about as long as they took the clerk of the court to type them up.
Notably, he had no problem paying the money for leases until 1993, when the owners of the land, the federal government, changed the conditions under which they would allow him to use it. The nerve of the actual owners trying to tell lessees what they may and may not do on property they don't own, and never have! Because they didn't tell him what he could do on his ranch, they told what he couldn't do on their land, and that was when Bundy decided to stop renewing his lease. This isn't government expansion, it's mere stinginess on Bundy's part that they were squeezing off the government teat he and his family have sucked on since at least 1954. Boo frickin' hoo.
Had you the wit to have read the ruling, the second case further demonstrated that Bundy's herd had now grown and spread out over not only the lands he ceased to lease, but onto new trespass lands upon which he'd never grazed, because he'd never leased them, nor had his family, ever, period.
This is all public record, so you're either illiterate, lazy, or deliberately being stupid. I could give odds upon which is most likely...
As for all that, you're right, it wouldn't legally justify strafing and napalming him.
Fortunately, I never argued that it did.
I also didn't argue that the multiple criminal counts against him including taking up arms in opposition to court orders would justify it in law either.
But that's what makes dealing with people like you so much fun. You don't read, you spew.
I did type that "in my humble opinion" the feds would be so justified, but you can't discern a private opinion from force of law, as evidenced by your own ramblings against common sense contrary to the law, which correspond exactly to Bundy's.
But the reality is, the feds are neither going to strafe Bundy's herd nor napalm his home with him in it. More's the pity.
But what they are likely to do is thrown a net over him in the very near future, so that he can continue his lunatic cries from somewhere inside a deep dark federal hole, while they round up his cows and sell them for Big Macs. And if he decides the lemon is worth the squeeze, he'll get killed resisting. Just like Dillinger, or Bonnie and Clyde. If not, he'll die broke and in prison. And either way, they'll probably seize the small ranch and whatever other real and personal property he does actually own, and then credit his bill against a generous fair market price, removing him and his heirs from that land in perpetuity.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
And during Round Two, I hope they similarly apprehend anyone who shows up to help him obstruct justice, and if they offer resistance, I hope they kill them too - mainly to save court costs and time.
You and the Lunatic Fringe can't tell the difference between thieving lunatics, and people with actual grievances and a legal leg to stand on. So when one of the latter comes along, other people won't be able to tell the difference between principled resistance to actual government tyranny, and a mob. People like you are the reason John Adams defended the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre, and got them acquitted.
You're arguing against reality. Good luck with that tack."Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams, 1770 Boston Massacre trial
And as you aren't even putting your ass on the line in the desert, you aren't even willing to back up your lunatic assertions with any risk to your own skin.
THAT is why I wish the feds would napalm Bundy and strafe his herd, because cases like this give idiot anarchists an excuse to agitate for a war. And we need more of that like we need a dose of the clap. It's the lunacy of Timothy McVeigh, except without even the semblance of personal commitment.
Like most of your ilk, you're content to chivvy others onwards, in this case a senile old thief, and the Headless Chicken Posse, but without having the personal honor to back it up with anything but your own desire to foment a riot.
There's a word for people like that, it rhymes with "Howard".
Some people have feds pointing guns at them because they're just terminal fuckwits.
That's Bundy to a "t". One doesn't suck at the federal teat every day of their life, and then have a coincidental epiphany on Big Government when the feds change the deal. Bundy's just a crook upset at his slice of the loot.
Call back when you find someone who isn't a multi-decade thief from the taxpayers, to the tune of millions of dollars, before you prop another lunatic up as some imaginary folk hero of the would-be revolution. And recognize that not everything the government does is absolutely evil, and not everyone who opposes them is worthy of even moral support, let alone fifteen minutes of notoriety.
Until then, you should probably get back under your bridge, before the feds drop a house on you.
Or at least stay where your sophistry passes for brilliance.
But hey, thanks for helping make my point about people who spew without knowing what they're talking about.
I'm sure the administration minions are really broken up about getting the 147 active members of the Lunatard Army frothing to support a crook like Bundy, and marginalizing and parodying themselves, for anyone with a brain, and all the world to watch. You're doing their job for them too.
Maybe spend your Sunday catching up on old news, cupcake.
And have a nice day.
