Cliven Bundy Syndrome

[billvon 3,116]

>yes, there was the short lived trial at Yosemite. And it didn't go well. Nor the
>protest demonstration leading to a fatality.

Right. Hardly a "bureaucrat didn't like it."

>But Bridge Day has been a more recent example, and I'm not aware of
>complaints over it. And the climbers at the parks are hardly all angels. Basers
>weren't the problem; assholes were.

Bridge Day would have been shut down almost immediately had the first organizers behaved like the Flatbed Ten, and while all climbers aren't angels, enforcement of park rules is performed voluntarily by other climbers. (Just try to rap bolt a climb anywhere in Yosemite; you'd have climbers ripping the drill out of your hands within half an hour, and they'd have a ranger there in an hour.)

Imagine where we'd been today if just one person in that truck had refused to drive on the trails - and stopped the others who were trying.

[quade 4]

cloud9

As for political ideology look at the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups. The left sees little problem with that the right of course is outraged. The left has done little to assist in the investigation of the IRS. That is why pure political ideology is and should be unconstitutional. This should apply both right and left.

(emphasis mine)

And . . . which is exactly what happened. Both right AND left wing "non-profits" were investigated in an attempt to discover the truth behind the claims they were really non-profits. THAT, BTW, is precisely the job of the IRS.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/30/the-irs-scandal-that-wasn’t/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/irs-targeted-liberal-groups-for-scrutiny-too.html

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[cloud9 0]

Quote

Do you have any real issues with Federal agencies, apart from not being allowed to base jump in most National Parks?

Too funny Don I don't nor have I ever nor do I care about base jumping. It was an example people on here might actually relate too. However yes I have many instances, drop zones have been thrown off airports. We the people pay for our federal parks through taxes to charge us to use our own land is ridiculous. The reason we are charged is because our government does such a poor job as stewards of our tax dollars. The TSA screeners have gone wild, harassing children, and handicapped people in the name of our safety. You might say well you don't have to fly and that's true. However if you go to the airport unaware of what they are going to do such a s a physical search of your person. Then you decide you don't want to be touched by a stranger or you don't want your child frisked. You cannot just walk away, even if you decide not to get on the plane. At that time you have lost your constitutional rights and will be arrested if you try to leave. They can also hold you in an aircraft for hours on a runway or taxiway in an aircraft. If you try to leave you will be arrested. If anyone else held you like that they would be charged with false imprisonment.

Environmental regulations have been used by the left for years now. If an oil company kills birds it get fines. If they are killed by windmills or solar panels well thats ok. If you take a pine cone in Yosemite park it's a crime. If you have a metal detector its a crime.

The IRS was targeting conservative groups. BLM has recently claimed land in Texas that was bought and paid for by a private citizen and had taxes paid on it for years. They are now talking about claiming a bunch more land in Texas.

Federal law enforcement agencies are acquiring military weapons to use against it's citizens. The DOJ has decided laws passed by congress don't matter. They have decided not to enforce some of the immigration act, they have decided to let drug dealers go that were convicted and sentenced according to law. I mean this is an endless list.

As for the states getting what should be their land look at my earlier link, I'm not going to get to redundant with my post.

[rushmc 23]

Yes

Yes

and
Yes

As intended

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

quade

***As for political ideology look at the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups. The left sees little problem with that the right of course is outraged. The left has done little to assist in the investigation of the IRS. That is why pure political ideology is and should be unconstitutional. This should apply both right and left.

(emphasis mine)

And . . . which is exactly what happened. Both right AND left wing "non-profits" were investigated in an attempt to discover the truth behind the claims they were really non-profits. THAT, BTW, is precisely the job of the IRS.

http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/30/the-irs-scandal-that-wasn’t/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/irs-targeted-liberal-groups-for-scrutiny-too.html

Nope
that is a lie

The argument was blown out of the water months ago

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[cloud9 0]

Sorry Quade but you and I are just going to have to disagree on the IRS issue. Lois Lerner didn't take the 5th because she did everything on the up and up. She lied, she targeted conservatives illegally and the administration has withheld documents. Of course as I already said liberals are applauding the IRS look at the hate and I do mean hate for the tea party.

[wmw999 2,588]

Just as a by-the-by, I have a feeling the IRS brouhaha is a little more complex than evil-liberals-unfairly-scrutinize-kindly-conservatives.

Lois Lerner was appointed to her job during the Bush administration, after a career at the FEC (which she joined during the Reagan administration). If some improper scrutinizing was done, then as the head of the division it's her job to take the heat (just as it was Sebelius's over the website rollout). According to that same Constitution, you can't take Lerner's refusal to testify as a sign of guilt; it's part of that innocent-until-proven-guilty thing.

Dirty tricks are tacky. They're tacky when conservatives do them to liberals, liberals do them to conservatives, little boys do them to little girls, and little girls do them to little boys. It's why they're called dirty, and not funny.

If you (the rhetorical you) think it's funny when a southern redneck cop gives a hippy demonstrator a hard time because it's a hippy, then you approve of dirty tricks when they don't hurt someone you're invested in. Laws only count when they apply to everyone equally, and frankly the same applies to rules and other regulations (administrative or legislative ).

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[cloud9 0]

I agree with almost everything you said Wendy. However as a federal employee Lerner should be required to answer all questions in relation to her job. If she chooses not to then she should be fired and given no compensation from the government. I do believe she was acting on orders from above and she should say so. I work for an oil company and that is how we are treated.
As for her constitutional right to plead the 5th she lost that when she gave a statement about how innocent she was and then chose to plead the 5th. That's a no no you don't get to tell one side and then take the 5th, she waived her right.

We should all have equal protection under the law.

[GeorgiaDon 380]

Quote

We the people pay for our federal parks through taxes to charge us to use our own land is ridiculous. The reason we are charged is because our government does such a poor job as stewards of our tax dollars.

There are lots of government-administered things that are in part paid for by user fees. Almost exactly half of the annual budget of the Food and Drug Administration is covered by fees pharmaceutical companies pay to get their products examined and approved for use in human patients. Is it a bad thing that companies that seek to profit from selling pharmaceuticals must pay a portion of the cost of the oversight to make sure (to the extent possible) that those products are safe and effective? Of course the alternatives are that the whole bill is borne by the taxpayer, or we have no safety oversight at all. We also pay user fees, in the form of taxes on aviation fuel, to support the FAA and ATC. Personally, I think user fees are entirely reasonable.

Quote

The TSA screeners have gone wild, harassing children, and handicapped people in the name of our safety.

The TSA is obligated, by law, to avoid discriminating against any particular class of people. In this case the result is that, when people are selected at random for additional scrutiny, some of those people will be very low-risk subjects. What's your alternative? You would have to change the law to allow profiling, and that changed law would apply to all security/law enforcement types. "Driving while black" (and its various permutations, such as "walking while brown") would again become sufficient reason for up-close and personal attention from Deputy Bubba.

Quote

If you take a pine cone in Yosemite park it's a crime. If you have a metal detector its a crime.

Yosemite is a national park. The whole point of such a park is to preserve things in a natural state, so the all of us can experience a bit of what this country used to be like before people altered everything. A kid would never be prosecuted for picking up a pine cone or catching a butterfly, but they would be told to put it back. On the other hand, without such rules there would be no protection against people harvesting all manner of resources from the park, from sacks full of pine cones for Christmas ornaments to butterflies by the thousands to sell to collectors, on up to logging trees, digging up minerals, or hunting. It's hard to me to visualize what a "park" would mean if anybody could take whatever they wanted and cart it home or off to their store to sell.

Quote

The IRS was targeting conservative groups.

The IRS was examining applications for 501(c)(3) status from a very large number of groups, over 90% of them "conservative"/Tea Party affiliated. 501(c)(3) organizations must, by law, be organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.[reference here]. A different classification, without tax exempt status, applies to political lobbying groups. It is the job of the IRS to examine applications for 501(c)(3) status, to ensure any groups applying for tax-exempt status actually qualify. Tea party groups in particular have a history of attempting to mischaracterize "lobbying" activities as "educational".

Again, what is your alternative? Should every group that chooses to call itself a 501(c)(3) automatically be given tax-exempt status without any examination to make sure they actually qualify for that status as Congress defined it? Or should no-body be given 501(c)(3) status, even if their activities are completely apolitical, such as running homeless shelters?

Quote

Federal law enforcement agencies are acquiring military weapons to use against it's citizens.

Citizens are acquiring military weapons to use against Federal law enforcement. Many people here in Speaker's Corner have argued that the primary role of the 2nd amendment is to allow citizens the option of armed resistance against the government. When welfare ranchers choose to steal land they never paid for, then threaten to shoot anyone who shows up to enforce the law, I'd say the law has an obligation to protect itself.

Quote

As for the states getting what should be their land look at my earlier link, I'm not going to get to redundant with my post.

You linked to a blog written by someone who is as ignorant of actual history as you appear to be. If you think about it for a second, perhaps it will occur to you just why the federal government owns relatively little land in the original colonies, which existed as fairly independent entities before there was a US Federal Government, compared to territories the Federal Government bought from Mexico and Russia.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[kelpdiver 2]

wmw999

Just as a by-the-by, I have a feeling the IRS brouhaha is a little more complex than evil-liberals-unfairly-scrutinize-kindly-conservatives.

Lois Lerner was appointed to her job during the Bush administration, after a career at the FEC (which she joined during the Reagan administration). If some improper scrutinizing was done, then as the head of the division it's her job to take the heat (just as it was Sebelius's over the website rollout). According to that same Constitution, you can't take Lerner's refusal to testify as a sign of guilt; it's part of that innocent-until-proven-guilty thing.

for criminal affairs, yes. But in the political arena, that refusal to testify can fairly be translated to guilt by opponents of the Obama Administration. Someone has to explain the actions taken, or own responsibility for the failings.

[cloud9 0]

Don you can make excuses for everything but sorry it still doesn't make it right.

As for ignorance of history you seem to be very selective with it. What about the oklahoma land rush, you know the sooner state. Also the homestead act of 1862? There were many other homestead acts passed as well. The intent was for the people to own the land not the federal government. The government used to own most of Nebraska but Nebraska got their land back. So did many other mid-western states. The west seems to be treated differently though as the feds still own big pieces of Utah, Nevada, California and Co. and other states.

The TSA are a bunch of idiots, they have yet to stop a single act of terror. Oh but there have been numerous cases where people have accidently brought weapons on planes and what about the stowaways. The whole TSA thing is smoke and mirrors and has not nor will it ever protect us from terrorist.

The IRS was not legally targeting conservatives, in many cases they brought the weight of the entire government down on people. OSHA, IRS auditing, BATF auditing this is a big deal but again liberals don't really care because it was on conservative groups.

What would the National parks look like if not over regulated? Probably a lot like the thousands of acres of land owned by the many states that are doing just fine thank you.

I don't object to people paying to lease federal or state land to make a profit . However the government has so much land they can't possibly manage it. To charge the people to access the peoples land is just plain wrong. To keep the people out of the peoples land because of some so called form of endangered species is equally wrong.The government needs to shutdown all of the unconstitutional programs they're vested in and they would have more then enough money to run the country.

This is like trying to write a program for a commodore 64

[GeorgiaDon 380]

Is this you, by any chance?

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Quote

The TSA are a bunch of idiots, they have yet to stop a single act of terror. Oh but there have been numerous cases where people have accidently brought weapons on planes and what about the stowaways. The whole TSA thing is smoke and mirrors and has not nor will it ever protect us from terrorist.

Excellent. What do you suggest that is more effective and less expensive?

Quote

What would the National parks look like if not over regulated? Probably a lot like the thousands of acres of land owned by the many states that are doing just fine thank you.

State parks don't have regulations? There is not State Agency managing these parks? WOuld you suggest no oversight?

At least you have admitted that you want some regulations. Rush seems to think no government and no regulations is the best way to go. Yet, I don't see him travelling to Somalia any time soon.

[cloud9 0]

No Don but liberals have been trying for years to trivialize conservatives.

Just remember at one time it was the law and upheld by the supreme court that.
Slavery was legal.
Women did not have a right to vote.
Women only had limited property rights.
Women were only allowed to be educated in public schools if there was room after all the boys attended.
Blacks were not citizens.
Indians were not considered Americans.
Horse thieves were hung

If not for people like me that challenged the status quo and recognized that just because it is law doesn't make it right. Who knows where we would be today.

[cloud9 0]

Quote

Excellent. What do you suggest that is more effective and less expensive?

So with all the brilliant minds in government, we need an oil refinery worker to solve this problem? Ok arm the pilots and put armed agents on the plane. Use explosive sniffing dogs.

Look at the land around yellowstone park. It's absolutely beautiful with no real issues. It is regulated for things like hunting and fishing just like everywhere else. But not regulated anything like yellowstone is and it's free to roam around.

[cloud9 0]

We are just rehashing the same thing over and over so I guess I'm done for awhile.

I will leave you all with this though. For all of the liberal skydivers there will come a day you regret being liberal. The people you put in office will find a way to regulate you off of the airports. Either with taxes or fees but it will come to pass it you keep them in office.

[GeorgiaDon 380]

I don't believe a single one of those laws were changed because of "conservatives". Indeed, change was strongly resisted by the conservatives of the day.

Indeed, I get a sense that "conservative" may not be the best label for your political leanings. You seem to have somewhat of a libertarian slant. Libertarians might be characterized as really believing in small government, unlike conservatives who say they believe in small government but really want big government that forces everybody else to live according to their religious and social doctrines. Libertarians run a fair gamut, for sure, and at the extreme may be close to anarchists, but most are quite reasonable folks. We have several of the species who populate Speaker's Corner, and can generally be counted on to offer some interesting discussion.

Personally, I am much more sympathetic to the libertarian perspective than I am to conservatives. At least libertarians don't try to pass laws to tell me what to believe.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[kallend 2,148]

cloud9

I have conceded some delegation, even expressing that congress cannot possibly have the expertise to write everything. However I also expressed that agencies are acting with political ideology and that is unconstitutional. They are also acting without proper oversight and again that is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court clearly does not agree with you. It has rejected every challenge to delegation since the 1930s.

Unfortunately for you, THE JUSTICES decide what is Constitutional, not you, and not rushmc.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[cloud9 0]

Ok so you got me there I do lean more towards libertarian then your garden variety conservative.

However Republicans freed the slaves
Republicans passed the 14th amendment
Republicans had the first African American governor
The first women in congress
passed the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote
Granted citizenship to Native Americans
Passed the 1964 civil rights act

Democrats
Created the KKK

All facts

[cloud9 0]

While a will concede the majority of the supreme court does not agree with me. I will still say that doesn't make it right only law.

Look at the ACA a 5-4 supreme court decision. Legal scholars all over the country thought and still believe it is unconstitutional. Even the great legal minds of the U.S. supreme court couldn't agree. But we are stuck with it as law. Even though the majority of people don't want it. Nothing right about that nor should it be constitutional.

The justices also decided slavery was legal and that Africans were property. They also decided that women couldn't vote and made a host of other bad decisions. So I reject that it is the end all cure all. I will continue to protest and attempt to make changes to regain our true republic.

[billvon 3,116]

> But we are stuck with it as law. Even though the majority of people don't want it.
>Nothing right about that nor should it be constitutional.

But the majority of people want it kept on the books, even if there are parts of it they don't like. So why would you want to oppose the will of the people?

[Amazon 7]

cloud9

No Don but liberals have been trying for years to trivialize conservatives.

Just remember at one time it was the law and upheld by the supreme court that.
Slavery was legal.
Women did not have a right to vote.
Women only had limited property rights.
Women were only allowed to be educated in public schools if there was room after all the boys attended.
Blacks were not citizens.
Indians were not considered Americans.
Horse thieves were hung

If not for people like me that challenged the status quo and recognized that just because it is law doesn't make it right. Who knows where we would be today.

And CONSERVATIVES fought against every last one of those changes. Please do not try to modify history that the Party of Lincoln... is the same GOP of today. Revisionist history as Faux News and other conservative mouth pieces try to get people to buy.. is hogwash at its very worst.

[Andy9o8 2]

Quote

Democrats
Created the KKK

Seriously? Do you think you're addressing morons here? A cherry-picked half-fact, delivered entirely out of historical context, is not intellectually honest, and is easily rebutted:

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4517289;search_string=dixiecrat;#4517289

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4246930;search_string=dixiecrat;#4246930

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4097446;search_string=dixiecrat;#4097446

[cloud9 0]

Actually Bill I think people would like to see parts of the law remain. The majority don't want the majority of the law. The only way to fix that is to repeal it and start over. So with that said, it is the will of the people to get rid of the law and replace it with something that might actually help.

But this thread is about overreach of the government and that's the only reason It got an honorable mention.

[cloud9 0]

Sorry these are historical facts, cherry picked indeed but nonetheless facts. It was southern Democrats that fought against all of these things.

I also find it amazing how much liberals hate Fox. Nothing I have written in this entire thread has had a thing to do with
Fox. As for my belief well as one that votes conservative and one that supports what I have written. The proof would be yes apparently we do support these and others causes like them.