The Nevada Standoff Has Nothing To Do With "Tyranny," "Sovereignty," "Freedom," or Cows. [View all]

[SunsetDreams]

It's about money for two Billionaires with whom we're all familiar.

Two affiliates of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity are helping conservative media promote the cause of a Nevada rancher who has made violent threats against the federal government.

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Legal scholars have largely concluded that these laws are unconstitutional. But with a fanatical, Federalist-society indoctrinated Supreme Court Majority bending over backwards to accommodate corporate interests in every conceivable manner, the Constitution has proved to be a flimsy protection against virulent greed. By milking and stoking the controversy, the Kochs seek to galvanize public opinion against the federal government, delegitimize the Bureau of Land Management that oversees public lands, and thereby impugn its stewardship of lands that Koch-run industries want to get their hands on. These include lands in Nevada, Utah and pretty much anywhere else they can dig, frack or mine. This isn't about some silly rancher's "grazing fees," to the Kochs and their business pals. It's about their desire to exploit, despoil and pollute lands that we, the public, own by virtue of our citizenship. That's not "freedom." It's greed.

In fact, it's almost tragic to see how the "militia groups" that pride themselves on their purported "independence" and "freedom" so willingly allow themselves to be duped by people whose only interest is to exploit the land for their own purposes. Whose self-serving greed wouldn't hesitate to gin up an armed confrontation in which people could conceivably die, simply for the purpose of lining their own pockets.

Did I sound like I feel sorry for the militia groups? I don't. If they were truly patriots I might feel sorry for them, but they aren't. Because true patriots would realize that the federal lands the Kochs, the oil, mining and energy industries are attempting to claim for themselves are:

Owned by every American – all 300-plus million of us. It is a peculiar property right we each have to this commons, as we acquire it simply by dint of citizenship, and what we own is spectacular. The marvel of the federal public-lands system is that it exists at all. During the 19th century and into the early 20th, much of the land was leased and sold off in a frenzy of corrupt dealings. Railroads, corporations, land speculators, mining interests, and livestock barons gorged on the public domain, helped along by the spectacularly pliable General Land Office, which from 1812 until its closure in 1946 privatized more than one billion acres, roughly half the landmass of the nation. The corruption was such that by 1885, The New York Times’ editorial page had denounced the “land pirates” whose “fraud and force” had excluded the citizen settler—the farmer, the homesteader, the cowboy—from “enormous areas of public domain” and “robb[ed] him of the heritage to which he was entitled.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/12/1291577/-The-Nevada-Standoff-Has-Nothing-To-Do-With-Tyranny-Sovereignty-Freedom-or-Cows

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"Feds Turn From Landlords To Warlords": Koch Groups Back Rancher Making Violent Threats Against Federal Gov't

In 1993, Bundy declined to pay government fees that are required in order to allow his cattle to graze on the public land. In 1998 a court order told Bundy to remove his cattle as part of an effort to protect an endangered desert tortoise in the area. He refused. In July 2013, a federal court order told Bundy to remove his cattle from the land or they would be confiscated. He disobeyed the order, and confiscation has begun. The government will auction the animals and use the proceeds to pay off the $1 million in fines that Bundy owes the government.

Bundy's ongoing refusal to obey the law and court orders has become a cause célèbre for the conservative media, which has compared the situation to deadly standoffs like Waco and Ruby Ridge.

In recent comments to a conspiracy theorist's radio show, Bundy said, "I haven't called no militia or anything like that, but hey it looks like that's where we're at." He added, "We got a strong army here, we have to fight." Previously Bundy told the Las Vegas Sun that "he keeps firearms at his ranch" and promised to "do whatever it takes" to defend his cattle being seized, adding, "I abide by almost zero federal laws."

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Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the conservative non-profit group, was founded by and has been largely funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch. The Center for Media and Democracy reported that in its previous incarnation as Citizens for a Sound Economy, AFP received $12 million of its $18 million in funding from the Koch Family Foundation.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/11/feds-turn-from-landlords-to-warlords-koch-group/198857