Rule of Law Threatened in Nevada

[kevin_standlee]

If you haven't heard about it yet, there is an armed rebellion going on in southern Nevada. I'm furious about a right-wing freeloader and his gun-toting buddies who forced the BLM to back down lest their contractors get shot. I deeply hope that the BLM gets federal marshals out there to arrest this man for repeated violations of court orders. He claims he doesn't recognize the federal government. Well, you simply can't let people get away with this. If you do, you're inviting the kind of warlordism going on in northern Mexico.

Look, the BLM isn't necessarily the nicest of government agencies, and maybe the deal that let the federal government retain most of Nevada's land upon it granting statehood (unlike most states) wasn't particularly fair. But there are other ways to go about redressing grievances other than an armed rebellion. Heck, we're working it out here in Fernley, which is checkered with pockets of federal land. (That's a fallout of being along the original transcontinental railroad right of way, where alternate sections of land were ceded to the railroad while the others were retained by the federal government.) Fernley has been working with our elected officials to get a bill through Congress that would allow the city of Fernley to buy (and then resell for development) the pockets of federal land within the city boundary. We haven't engaged a private army to say, "We're taking this land and if the BLM shows up to say otherwise, we'll shoot 'em."

Comments

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

"maybe the deal that let the federal government retain most of Nevada's land upon it granting statehood (unlike most states) "

Citation needed. As far as I know the only lands transferred from the Feds to the states were the State Trust Lands which are usually used to benefit schools. Using the power of google I found that Nevada got 2.7 million acres of land from the federal government.
http://www.statetrustlands.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27:nevada
http://www.ti.org/statetrusts.html#RTFToC7

Apparently the formula from 1849 to 1896 was to give sections 16 and 32 from every township survey to the state as their school trust. After reading a couple pages I found a PDF that explained that the State of Nevada in 1864, three years after statehood, returned the initial grant of some 3.9 million acres to the Federal Government in exchange for 2 million acres in more desirable locations in the state which were then sold off. The reason Nevada got less is that it wanted higher quality land and then sold it all unlike nearly every other state. http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Session/76th2011/Exhibits/Senate/NR/SNR765D.pdf

[howeird]

It's not just a land issue, the guy has cattle - his livelihood - being stolen by the BLM. He has been grazing them on Federal land for 20 years - where has the BLM been all that time?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The BLM has been fairly patiently filing actions against him for twenty years, that's what. The guy refused to pay the federal grazing fees, and then changed the rules to reduce or prohibit open-range grazing in the area anyway. The BLM had court orders telling him to get that cattle off the federal land, and when the crazy rancher announced that he doesn't even recognize the federal government as existing, the BLM got another court order to get the cattle seized to both pay the unpaid grazing fees and remove the cattle from the public land to which he no longer has the right to use. Nobody has told him he can't graze cattle on his own land; he just can't use the public land willy-nilly just because he and his family used to do so.

[howeird]

20 years of "filing actions" is a crock.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

BLM, like its natural bureaucratic enemy US Forest Service (says this child of a USFS officer), isn't generally funded very well, and this wasn't likely their highest priority. But they had surely run out of patience with this nimrod and a federal court order had been obtained that the guy persisted in ignoring with a selective way of declaring his allegiance to one state while pretending he's not part of the USA. (It's amusing that the guy says he's only loyal to Nevada and doesn't recognize the US government as even existing when the Nevada state constitution explicitly declares that Nevada citizens owe allegiance to the US government — this is almost surely due to the conditions of how Nevada became a state during the US Civil War. Besides, Nevada isn't viable as an independent country; we'd starve!)

And again, while Nevada is often hamstrung by having three-fourths of its land owned by the US government, it's not impossible to get things done. Up here in Lyon County, Yerrington's congressman (who actually hails from North Las Vegas, which shows you how sparsely populated the place is) is working on a bill that will do a private-public land swap/sale that's related to reopening the copper mine in Yerrington. (I just wish the mine would fund a branch to the Mina Subdivision so that the ore would be removed by rail instead of by truck.) The process is slow, but it is preferable to trying to declare yourself independent of the "guv'mint."

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Yes, but 20 years of paperwork telling this guy to shape up is better than 20 minutes seeing who's the better shooter.

And it's not like the US government is going anywhere. I'm sure the BLM has more problems than budget, and this guy's case has been seeping up towards the surface of the to-do list for a long time now.

[howeird]

That's the same attitude which gave us 12 million illegals.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Well, no, having a country with a desirable standard of living and better opportunities gave us immigration.

But I'm unclear on how the BLM budget relates to immigration. That was an INS concern, until a bureaucratic reorg split it into ICE and CPB; the BLM really doesn't get consulted on that.

[howeird]

You are missing my point, which is a law which is not enforced in a timely manner is worthless.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If you're working up to a suggestion that the BLM and Forestry Service budgets should be increased, I certainly won't argue against you.