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Originally Posted by LexusLover
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Fixed it fer ya!
And now for the latest Al errr Cliven Bundy update from Politico.
Cliven Bundy sounds like a character in a Coen brothers movie. But even that imaginative pair, who created the surreal worlds of No Country for Old Men and Fargo, could not have conjured a figure as comically tragic as Bundy. The Nevada rancher who is in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle-grazing rights has become a figure of mighty symbolic proportions—a hero to “domestic terrorists” and a leader of “patriots,” a brave states’ rights advocate channeling the Founding Fathers and a whining welfare cowboy, an avatar for the common man fighting big government and a crude racist who talks of “the Negro” and “colored” people being better off enslaved.
Bundy has been seen through the immutable prisms of ideology, even after his Tourettish effusions about race, with the fiction factory of the right concocting conspiracy theories and deifying Bundy and the see-no-evil left ignoring the incompetent behavior of a government agency that botched a cattle roundup and then went into a bunker after an aborted operation that reached all the way, I have learned, to the secretary of the Interior.
Add in plenty of Republican politicians spraying lighter fluid on the smoldering embers, with Nevada’s top two GOP officials initially mounting their horses to lead a revived Sagebrush Rebellion. Sen. Dean Heller even went so far as to call Bundy’s militia supporters “patriots,” as if the rancher’s home near Bunkerville, Nevada, were a latter-day Bunker Hill.
And let’s not forget the Man Without a Self-Editing Mechanism, a.k.a. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (oh, who would play him, Joel and Ethan?). Reid’s “domestic terrorists” epithet, which he planned to use to describe Bundy’s supporters and then affixed to the rancher himself, only emboldened a right-wing chorus stoking the flames and hoping to immolate the majority leader, too.
As Bundy has been exposed as a bigoted caricature, an anachronism who could have been played by Rod Steiger in his prime, the real issues surrounding the welfare cowboy are receding. But before they do, and thanks to exclusive information and interviews, it’s worth reviewing how one man’s two-decade flouting of federal law resulted in a tense standoff between government agents and what the local sheriff said was a horde of well-armed supporters ready to die for Bundy.
“I’ve been to a lot of functions,” Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, a law enforcement veteran of more than three decades, told me “I’ve never seen that many guns.”
Well, I’ve covered many political stories. And I’ve never heard so many loony conspiracy theories, or seen so many politicians pander to an obviously flawed lawbreaker despite the danger to civilians that they might be exacerbating and the awful precedent they might be enabling.
Cliven Bundy has been breaking the law for two decades.
He grazes his cattle on federal land near his ranch in a 600,000-acre area known as Gold Butte, claiming to have rights to the land dating back to the 1870s. (This ignores some recent research finding that Bundy’s family didn’t buy the property until after World War II, and that the Moapa Paiute Indians actually were there first.)
His battle with the federal government began after a late-1980s listing of the desert tortoise as endangered, forcing a reduction in his grazing allotment to 150 cattle. Bundy, unlike a couple of other Gold Butte landowners, refused to move his cows, recalled Alan O’Neill, an erstwhile superintendent of the Lake Mead Conservation Area and an expert in such issues.
Bundy’s grazing permit was revoked in 1994 for nonpayment, but for a few years the BLM did nothing, even as he expanded his herd. Then, in 1998, Bundy was served the first of several federal court orders, which he fought and lost at every level. Two years ago, the BLM tried to negotiate a deal with Bundy, hoping to take possession of the cattle, sell them and give him the proceeds. Bundy refused, so the BLM considered a raid to seize the cattle.
Bob Abbey, who was the head of the BLM at the time, told me he had agreed to be present at the Bundy ranch and talked to local and state officials to coordinate.
“At the last moment, the decision was made to not proceed with an impoundment but to pursue legal actions that would likely result in an updated court order directing Bundy to remove his livestock from public lands,” said Abbey, who has been critical of the agency’s efforts this month as heavy-handed and overly aggressive.
But Bundy had other ways out before the situation escalated a couple of weeks ago. He was advised that a water-rights claim might have the best chance to reverse the court order and he met with attorneys, including Mark Hutchison, a prominent constitutional lawyer now running for lieutenant governor.
Bundy, though, apparently wanted to assert state sovereignty claims—the progenitor to his “the federal government doesn’t exist” assertion—and did not get a taker.
“I met with Mr. Bundy almost two years ago and haven’t talked with him since,” Hutchison told me.
The federal government reasserted its rights to the land shortly afterward and won a judgment last July, which made it clear (again) that the land had never been in Nevada’s hands. Bundy appealed and lost in the Ninth Circuit in February.
By the beginning of this month, the BLM was ready to make its move, once again involving state and local authorities. In the run-up to what occurred on April 5, I have confirmed, Gov. Brian Sandoval and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto were kept apprised of the federal agency’s actions.
I’ve also confirmed that BLM head Neil Kornze, a former aide to Harry Reid, became personally involved, checking what was happening at the site and remaining in contact with law enforcement on the ground in Bunkerville. Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, also played a role, fully supporting the roundup on that Saturday morning, despite being warned about potential problems.
The BLM has said that both agencies “closely monitored the situation.” But Kornze and Jewell were not just watching from far away; they were actively involved, communicating with people on the ground. (Both BLM and the Interior Department refused to comment on their leaders’ involvement, referring me only to their public statements.)
By now, Bundy had anywhere from 500 (his estimate) to 900 (the government’s count) cattle trespassing on federal land, making the roundup no small endeavor. Although some news reports claimed the BLM had sent 200 men to do the job, one knowledgeable source said that there were in fact about 150 government officials, including some from the National Parks Service.
The BLM and NPS officers, who routinely are armed when rounding up cattle, immediately were met with resistance. On April 9, one of Bundy’s sons was Tasered after he kicked a police dog. All that was predictable, especially since officials knew that Bundy’s family had refused to recognize court orders for years.
One expert with knowledge of the events that week told me the BLM “didn’t even follow its own protocols” in the roundup, having too many law enforcement people there, and that the effect was to encourage confrontation and heighten the tension. As Abbey, the former BLM chief, put it, the large armed presence “was a recipe for disaster.” Abbey and others familiar with BLM procedures said local law enforcement should have been used, and that Bundy should have been arrested. The BLM also set up “First Amendment Zones,” which restricted where Bundy’s supporters and reporters could go, infuriating both the protesters and the media.
On Tuesday, April 8, Sandoval weighed in with criticism of the BLM, seemingly unaware that his comments would only embolden the Bundy supporters massing near Gold Butte. The governor said his office had received “numerous complaints of BLM misconduct, road closures and other disturbances” and said the establishment of First Amendment Zones “tramples upon Nevadans’ fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution.”
Dean Heller, the junior Nevada senator, soon followed suit. And indeed the criticism by Sandoval, Heller and others, with some in the right-wing echo chamber joining in, did cause more protesters to arrive, more conspiracy theories to float and a combustible situation to develop. By now, hundreds of protesters from across the West had set up camp, many of them very well armed.
By Friday, a few hundred cattle had been rounded up, but tensions were growing as YouTube videos were posted of the Taser incident. And, with violence in the air, Sandoval was changing his tune: “Today I am asking all individuals who are near the situation to act with restraint. Although tensions remain high, escalation of current events could have negative, long lasting consequences that can be avoided.”
Meanwhile, sources say, friction was growing between the local law enforcement officers, who became more and more worried about the armed Bundy supporters, and the federal agents, whose superiors in Washington wanted to finish the roundup. To try to tamp down tensions, the BLM once again proposed buying Bundy’s cattle and giving him the proceeds. But Bundy wouldn’t consider it—he was clearly spoiling for a fight as his supporters rallied to his side, with self-styled militia members alerted by web postings and calls to arms.
The next morning, Saturday, April 12, BLM chief Kornze ordered his team to proceed with the roundup, pulling off the table the deal to sell Bundy’s cattle. Bundy, with hundreds of followers in thrall, stood next to Sheriff Gillespie and told him to disarm the federal officers gathering near his ranch. Gillespie, who would not say much and who has quietly tried to de-escalate the showdown, just stared ahead.
The sheriff could sense the danger building, and soon the crowd was moving toward the 300 to 600 cattle that remained in Bundy’s possession. Gillespie called the governor, federal officials and others, warning of the potential for a bloodbath. Bundy and his backers had been whipped into a frenzy, encouraged by Fox News host Sean Hannity and others.
“We saw all the guns,” the sheriff told me. “We knew the potential. These militia guys were very well armed.”
Gillespie said he was worried about what would occur if there were an accidental discharge of a weapon with militia snipers pointing guns at federal agents and law enforcement officers. Reuters would later report that one of the snipers told his colleagues, “I’ve got a clear shot at four of them.”
So Las Vegas police closed down a section of the interstate, ushered the BLM officers out of there and avoided what could have been a disaster.
Sandoval put out a statement later that day saying safety had been paramount and that he was glad the BLM and DOI “were willing to listen to the people of Nevada.” Heller, in a statement, asked for calm and urged people to return home.
Neither Sandoval nor Heller had once said a critical word about Bundy. Now, after giving him aid and comfort with their initial criticism of the BLM, the state’s top two Republicans were calling for peace.
So, too was the BLM, which had helped make the situation much worse, Abbey and others say, by bringing so many men. If not for Gillespie, who notified state officials and the congressional delegation of the disaster in the making, it seems clear Jewell and Kornze would have tried to finish the roundup.
Mike Ford, a former Abbey aide, said the BLM made a mistake by refusing to talk to the media and allowing politicians to portray this as an armed posse sent to collect a past due bill.
“This was never about the money, and BLM has been stupid to let that dominate the discussion,” Ford told me. “Removing the cows and stopping cattle trespass is the issue, not the back fees and penalties, which I doubt BLM will ever collect. His cows are running wild and free on land he does not own, control or have any valid right to use. We are not living in the 1800s with Open Range.”
With Bundy and his backers declaring victory, he became a Fox News hero and a symbol for how one wronged man could fight an oppressive government. Even incipient presidential hopeful Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, came to Bundy’s defense. The rancher was, it seemed to the uninformed or willfully ignorant, a perfect symbol of the lone man standing up to an overreaching government.
Blogs lit up with conspiracy theories about how Reid was behind the BLM’s supposed depredations , which were said to include securing the land for the Family Reid to build a solar plant, claims that were easily debunked but that were given currency by Hannity and others on Fox, as well as politicians looking to tar the right’s bête noir. The fact that Kornze had been an aide to Reid only turned up the mob’s volume.
Reid waved away the nonsense, but he clearly was frustrated with the elevation of Bundy and his horde. So on April 17, before a question-and-answer session with Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius, Reid summed up the situation and called Bundy’s backers “domestic terrorists.”
That only inflamed the Foxites, especially Hannity. But that evening, at a progressive group’s event, Reid doubled down and called Bundy himself a “domestic terrorist.”
The next day Reid appeared with Heller on a Las Vegas television program. That’s when Heller deviated from talking points he had been given and disagreed with Reid: “What Senator Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots.”
Heller knew full well that Bundy was a serial lawbreaker—indeed, his talking points, which I have obtained, clearly laid out the history of the case. But he did not want to miss an opportunity to pander to the base.
One week later, after Bundy appeared on Hannity almost nightly and the conservative blogosphere teemed with conspiracy offal, his bizarre, ignorant racist rant, first reported by Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, caused the Paul-Hannity-Heller chorus to condemn and run.
No matter that Bundy’s folks already had been exposed in the Las Vegas Sun by an embedded reporter as way outside the mainstream. There he was in a national newspaper—and on video, too—exposing himself as a man out of time and out of touch.
And while Reid may be experiencing same exquisite schadenfreude right about now, let’s not forget that some of the militia folks are standing by their man. And Bundy is still breaking the law every day his remaining cattle graze on land he never owned, sending a terrible message to law-abiding ranchers in Nevada and elsewhere.
The BLM has remained mum since April 12, which has only exacerbated ongoing theories of why it acted as it did. “The fact that DOI and BLM have still said and done nothing is criminal because it continues to allow this issue to spin out of control,” said Ford, who believes the BLM still needs to clear up misconceptions about how it handles roundups, which usually are peaceful events.
And in once-peaceful Bunkerville, residents grow more and more restless and fearful of what could still happen. Rep. Steven Horsford, who has tried to bring all the parties together, has publicly urged the militia folks to leave and has said that the Bundy supporters have set up checkpoints in the 1,300-person town, with armed men forcing residents to explain their comings and goings.
One resident, Paula Wikan, told me that on Easter Sunday, armed militia members greeted her neighbors on their way to church. “I know of a few people that did not even enter for fear and disgust of having their church basically held captive,” she said. “All for one man that doesn’t want to pay his fees that are due to the government.”
Cliven Bundy clearly believes he is the star of his own movie, continuing to do news conferences at his ranch and all but inviting the Coen brothers to make their next film about a racist welfare cowboy and a small town overrun by armed outsiders, with the threat of violence still in the air.
I’m trying to remember how many of their movies have happy endings.
Jon Ralston has covered Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century. He has worked for both major Las Vegas newspapers and now has his own site, email newsletter and television program.
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