GeorgiaDon

Did your mother ever recover from giving birth to a full grown 30 year old (or whatever age qualifies as a human being in your eyes)? 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)

Stop putting them in contact with people, I suppose. But the bleeding hearts would consider that "cruel and unusual punishment" to deprive them of social contact with others. It's entirely possible to put someone in social contact without allowing physical contactAgreed. To me, being locked up forever, knowing I have 0 chance of any measure of control over my own life, knowing I'll never again enjoy any human contact, would be a punishment far worse than death. 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)

well they ain't makin it to difficult to hate emFor sure! You've just gotta hate them air traffic controllers for making you wait your turn to land, those CDC folks for interfering with your constitutional right to terminal diarrhea from eating shitty lettuce, those Dept of Agriculture inspectors for picking on those poor ranchers by keeping mad cow out of the food supply... 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)

Yes. Here is (in part) the order of the court, which you can read at the end of this article. IV. CONCLUSION IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the United States’ Motion for Summary Judgment (#18)is GRANTED. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that defendant Cliven Bundy’s Motion to Dismiss (#28) is DENIED as moot. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Bundy is permanently enjoined from trespassing onthe New Trespass Lands. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the United States is entitled to protect the NewTrespass Lands against this trespass, and all future trespasses by Bundy. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Bundy shall remove his livestock from the NewTrespass Lands within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle for any future trespasses, provided the United States has provided notice to Bundy under the governing regulations of the United States Department of the Interior. DATED this ____ day of July, 2013. Also from the article: "When asked in deposition what reaction the Bundy family would have should an impoundment occur, Cliven said he’d do “whatever it takes” to include physical force to stop such action." 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)

I don't disagree with what you wrote. However I'm curious about what you would advise a client who won a judgement against someone in court, and the losing party refused to comply with the court order and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to enforce the order. Would you tell your client to just forget about it and move on? 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)

Well, all I can say is I hope it all works out for you. Seriously. 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)

I don't remember ordering the hail, but you're welcome for the rain . 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)

I don't know enough about the issue to have an opinion one way or the other right now. If I get time I'll do some reading. Let me ask you this question, though. As a matter of your personal perspective, do you agree that any habitat at all should be preserved in a natural condition (as much as is possible), or is it your opinion that all land should be accessible to motorized off-road vehicles, even if that renders that land uninhabitable for some species? I'm just trying to get a sense of whether or not any compromise is even possible in this situation. 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)

Sounds like a wonderful neighborhood. My wife does _NOT_ allow me to use power tools. She's worried about innocent bystanders... Does that include sharp objects? ChuckI'm guessing chain saws are right out. 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)

I don't know where you got your info from, but it seems most people who qualify for a subsidy will have a choice to have the credit applied directly to the premium (so they pay less each month), or to pay the full premium and receive a tax credit when they file. I obviously have no way of knowing about your particular situation. From here: "If you qualify for Advance Premium Tax Credits, you use them immediately to lower your monthly premium expense. You pick how much advance tax credits that will apply each month towards your premium payment up to a maximum amount. If you choose an amount that is less than your total Advance Premium Tax Credit, you get the difference when you file your income taxes as a tax refund. But, if the total of your advance premium payments is greater than the amount of your credit, you must pay it back with your tax filing. In general, you may be eligible for the credit if you meet all of the following: buy health insurance through the Marketplace; are ineligible for coverage through an employer or government plan; are within certain income limits; file a joint return, if married; and cannot be claimed as a dependent by another person. If you are eligible for the credit, you can choose to: Get It Now: have some or all of the estimated credit paid in advance directly to your insurance company to lower what you pay out-of-pocket for your monthly premiums during 2014; or Get It Later: wait to get all of the credit when you file your 2014 tax return in 2015." 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)

Great read, thanks! I was trained as a lifeguard by the Red Cross almost 40 years ago. We were not given this information then, we were told to watch for people who seems to be having trouble keeping their head above water but nothing this specific. The video is really enlightening! I'm going to pass this link on to some other people. My family has a cottage on a lake and on summer weekends there are often many people swimming around the dock and out in the lake. Everyone should be familiar with this. 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)

Thanks Chuck. I've learned some things about this as well. The info about tortoises eating poop was quite thought provoking. I have to agree that government policy may often be unduely influenced by one side or the other, and once policies are in place they seem to become fossilized and are impervious to reassessment in the light of new data. Hope you get rain soon. We had a drought here for three years and it killed a lot of trees on my property. Pastures dried up, and the price of hay went from $2.50/bale to $5-6/bale. Even though the rain came back the last 2 years, the price of hay has stayed up. Drought sucks. 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)

In general, people take better care of property when they own it. People do better when they can benefit from their own efforts. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" could never work, because there is no incentive for anybody to work harder than just "phoning it in", or to take any risks. These things seem obvious to me. On the other hand, I would not like to live in a society that was entirely without compassion or empathy, and that placed no limit on far people could fall before being offered a helping hand. There are such places, where many people live in true extreme poverty and kids are sent out to forage garbage dumps to find discarded food that is not too spoiled to be consumed. On the other hand, in those places people with any wealth have to live in virtual compounds, with fences, guards, bars on the windows, take a different route to work every day to deter kidnappers, etc. It seems to me there is an optimum balance in there somewhere, and that neither extreme (government does everything for you, or government does nothing for you) works well. I'd prefer 50, or even 51 (including some federal) experiments. As it happens, every state does have land under its control (perhaps excepting Texas). I don't know much about the differences between management of state vs BLM/national forest land, so I can't say anything about the outcome of the "experiment". It's possible that many states don't control enough land to make the comparisons useful. At this point in time, there is an enormous amount of history that has happened, a substantial amount of which has been beyond the scope of our Founding Fathers, IMO. True. The Founding Fathers were remarkably prescient, but of course they could not anticipate every circumstance that would arise in the future. They set guiding principles in the Constitution, and they set up a mechanism for passing laws and even modifying the Constitution, so they clearly recognized that the body of law that existed in 1776 would not be sufficient for all future time. New laws are passed in response to new situations that arise. At the time of the Founding Fathers, the US was an agrarian country with a total population of about 2.5 million, less than San Diego County today. With no heavy industry, and few "large" population centers, there was essentially no pollution, so it's hardly a surprise that the Founders did not create an EPA. The germ theory of disease was still a century in the future, so no CDC in 1776. The country was vast and essentially unpopulated, except for native peoples who were not recognized as having rights at the time (so they could be pushed aside, herded onto reservations, or exterminated). Anyone who chaffed at the bounds of "society" was free to head West, find a plot of land, and homestead it. So it's true that much modern law is "outside the scope of our Founding Fathers", but that has been a natural consequence of situations that arose as populations grew, the land filled up, and opportunities for conflicting interests between people increased exponentially. Also as the land filled up, the need to set aside certain particularly iconic locations as national parks, for the use and enjoyment of all citizens, became apparent. Another consequence of history follows from the way the country has grown throughout its history. Outside of the original colonies, territory has been acquired by war in a few cases, and by purchase (Louisiana Purchase, Mexican Cession of 1848, Gadsen Purchase, Alaska purchase) from France, Mexico, and Russia. Those purchases were done with US taxpayer dollars, and so the property became US federal property. The intent was to acquire those lands so their natural resources could be used for the benefit of the whole country. I suppose a modern day question would be, how can that goal best be met today? Would giving the land to the states, or selling it off at fire sale prices, be consistent with the "original intent"? I agree with this. However you mention that capitalism can be unstable over time. In part, this is because in an unregulated winner-take-all environment the inevitable result will be monopolies. So, I believe one of the legitimate roles of government is to regulate business to prevent anti-competitive practices and the emergence of monopolies. While I agree that problems would be minimized if people behaved responsibly, I don't think just trusting everyone to be "responsible" all the time is sufficient. For one thing, definitions of "responsible" can vary. Some people will say their only responsibility is to look out for themselves, and everybody else can take care of their own needs. The result of this is that no care need be taken to avoid harming others as long as you yourself can benefit. If your only responsibility is to maximize your own wealth, there is no impediment to taking things by force, killing people who get in your way, etc. We have laws against these things because we recognize that not everyone will behave "responsibly". Here are two examples, from my experience working in public health, of conflicts between private property rights and the "greater good": 1. At one time rabies was very common in this country. In the late 1800s there were several hundred deaths every year, and you have to remember that the population of the country was less than 40 million. Virtually all of these cases were due to people being bitten by rabid dogs. Today, in most years there are no human rabies cases, even though we have 10 times the population. The difference is entirely because we require, by law, that dog owners have their pets vaccinated against rabies. Trusting that dog owners would always voluntarily vaccinate their dogs obviously would not work, as many people are ticketed and fined for failing to do it. Dogs are (from a legal point of view) private property, and the purpose of the law is to reduce risk to humans; that dogs are protected too is a fortunate serendipity. Does the government have a legitimate interest in protecting people from rabies? Are laws requiring vaccination of dogs (which is in effect telling people what to do with their private property) a legitimate exercise of government power, or should we trust to education and "people acing responsibly"? 2. Discarded tires are notorious for catching water and breeding huge amounts of mosquitoes. Some properties have huge dumps of discarded tires, which breed mosquitoes that transmit a wide variety of diseases throughout the surrounding area. Anyone living nearby will be at increased risk of diseases such as West Nile, not to mention being deprived of the use and enjoyment of their property due to being attacked by hordes of mosquitoes. Again, is it reasonable to have laws that require people to clean up tire dumps on their property? Or should the neighbors just have to sell and move somewhere else? To me, examples such as these demonstrate that people should not be permitted to create serious health hazards for people living nearby. What constitutes a "serious health hazard", and where the balance between property rights and rights of people to not be unnecessarily exposed to health hazards, is something that could be debated. What is of interest here is, does the state have any legitimate interest in protecting people from such risks to their health? I think that's enough for one post. Thanks for the interesting discussion. 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)

One comment on the article, though: the insinuation that desert tortoises are dependent on dung for food, and are unable to masticate sufficient non-dung food to survive, is incorrect. Tortoises do very well on a diet of native grasses, wildflowers, and occasional fruits including cactus fruits. This diet is used for captive tortoises and produces healthy tortoises with normal reproduction and lifespan. Facilities such as the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum do not feed their tortoises cow pies. That being said, it would not surprise me that tortoises eat and can do well on cow dung. The content of nutrients remaining in the dung is high (which is why it's favored for manure), and as it's already partly pre-digested those nutrients may be easier for the tortoise to absorb and use. 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)

Interesting, indeed! 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)

That's beautiful country, in my eyes. I've found that a combination of horses and goats works fairly well to maintain a pasture. Goats will eat grass, but really prefer broad-leaved plants as they are browsers. Horses prefer the grass. Goats keep the weeds from taking over when horses keep the grass cropped low. There's no question, though, that goats can be very destructive if they overpopulate an area. No question about that. While I can respect his perseverance, I disagree strongly with his tactics. I see several distinct, though related, problems. First, he fought the grazing fee (which I understand him doing) but when he lost in court (twice) he resorted to an argument that the entire United States is illegitimate. This is pissing on the head of every person who has ever fought or sacrificed in defense of this country. Then, he threatened anyone who tried to enforce the court order to remove his cattle from lands where he was trespassing. I find it telling that he has only been able to continue ranching by spreading his herd over land that is 5-6 fold larger than his families original lease. This is land that his family never had any permit to use, and in fact the land is so marginal that it has never been under a grazing permit to anybody. How viable can his operation be if he needs to "occupy" so much land that was never in his families grazing permit? Do you think he would be able to sustain his operation if he confined his cattle to the land originally permitted to his family? If I pastured my animals on my neighbor's land, without their permission and against their explicit wishes, and refused to remove them even in the face of a court order, could I really then claim to be a good farmer wisely using the land as my grandparents did? Perhaps. Certainly there are fewer ranches than they were in the past. If an operation is barely scraping by, adding a grazing fee or reducing the number of cattle/acre could push a farm to the point where it isn't worth running. I haven't seen anything about the actual amount of the fees. As far as I can tell, though, there are a lot of factors that are squeezing small farm operations. Profit margins are tiny, so the only way to make a living is to do things on a sufficiently large scale. Small ranchers are competing with giant feedlots and factory farms. In the past it may have been possible to scrape by with a small herd, but today the return per cow is too small, due to competition. No doubt regulation, such as cradle to grave tracking of animals (which resulted from scares about mad cow disease), adds to the economic stress. Most people do not appreciate how high-tech farm operations have to be these days. I suspect that, in many cases, it's convenient to blame the government, when grazing fees are just one of several factors that pile up to make a farming operation unprofitable. It is possible, of course, that in some cases the grazing fees would be the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't have experience in your area, so I'm happy to take your word. When I worked at the University of Arizona, I saw study sites where some plots were fenced to exclude cattle, so on one side of the fence there was normal grazing pressure and on the other vegetation had not been grazed for a decade or more. The difference was really quite remarkable. Biodiversity and total biomass was higher by orders of magnitude in the ungrazed plots. Grazed land was dominated by a few grass species (mostly non-native) and cacti, which thrive because the cattle leave them alone but eat competing species. If you stand in the middle of a grazed area it looks OK, not stripped bare or devastated. It's only when you can directly compare grazed and ungrazed areas that the effect of grazing is obvious. I would not argue that every place should be protected from grazing, that would be stupid. If an area is biologically productive enough to sustain an economically viable ranching operation, then generally it should be used. I'd only suggest that some areas here and there be set aside as refuges so the native species are not lost entirely. I really do respect that. 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)

You might be right he left out a zero, but that's not immediately obvious to me. If he signed up through an ACA affiliated plan he may well have been eligible for a subsidy, as opposed to paying full freight because he missed the deadline. Don When do you think those subsidies happen? You think you'll get a check from your uncle every month?My understanding is that subsidized people pay a reduced premium, and the government pays the balance. Just as I pay part of my insurance premium, and my employer pays the rest. I don't have to pay the entire amount, and then wait to be reimbursed for my employer's share. Of course, I have no personal experience with ACA subsidies. If you know the system works differently from what I described, why don't you enlighten us? 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)

I'd assume they're taking their sweet time with a politically problematic decision. 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)

The BLM isn't a "conservation group", and I haven't seen anyone here imply that farmers are "a bunch of dumb hicks". I certainly would never say or even think such a thing. You will no doubt be surprised to learn that my wife and I run (on the side, admittedly) a small farm where we produce and sell goats, peacocks, and chicken eggs, plus we have horses. We live in an agricultural community and get along very well with our full time farmer neighbors. I'm curious about what you disagree with in my post. The matters of history, the encroachment of the Bundy ranch onto land they were never permitted to graze, and the economic impact of the Lake Mead Recreation Area are all easily verified facts. Perhaps you dispute my description of the impact of grazing on desert lands? If so, I'd assume you are fortunate enough to be living in an area that is actually suitable for large animal agriculture. I'd encourage you to check out photos of the Nevada landscape. Not every plot of land is equally appropriate for cattle ranching. If you need tens of thousands of acres to maintain only 700 head of cattle, you should question the viability of the enterprise. Or at least pay the landowner for the privilege of using the land. On my drive from home to work, I pass a good dozen dairy and beef farms. Every one is on land the farmers actually own and manage. Not a single acre is government land. But around here farmers are also scrupulous about paying their debts, as I am sure is true where you live as well. 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)

Did the White House actually say they were delaying the decision until "after the next election", or is that Fox news spin? You didn't bother to link the source of your quote. 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)

Tell you what. I'll concede that "women and children" is subtly different from "wife and daughters", and does tend to convey an image of women holding babies. To me, the idea of using one's wife and daughters as a human shield is not any better than the idea of using women and children. Perhaps there is a difference to others. I don't think there is any requirement for the unpaid, volunteer moderators of this forum to refrain from expressing an opinion. Their only "job" is to make sure the forum rules (no jokes about pedophilia, no personal attacks) are respected. On the latter point they cut some slack, but (IMHO) they are on the receiving end of many obvious direct personal attacks that they generally let slide as well. I'd be interested in your opinion of the more germain issues associated with this topic. Cheers, 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)

Quote from Sheriff Mack: “I would have put my own wife or daughters there..." "Daughters" doesn't specify an age, and they are (I presume) his children. Perhaps you would have been happier had BV quoted something along the lines of "I would have put my own oppositely gendered legal spouse and XX-chromosome bearing F1 progeny, aged n1 and n2 years, there..." After all, one can never be too precise! Or, perhaps, we can agree that a willingness to sacrifice your own family, or to deliberately put them in harms way, to make a political point is despicable. 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)

Well, I would suggest we would need to start with a beer. After that, we might consider whether or not we can find common ground on some bigger picture principles (leaving the specific Bundy situation aside for the moment). For example, we might ask: Who would do a better job of managing public land with the best interests of the owners (which would be the citizenry at large) in mind, the federal government or state governments? State governments would likely be more responsive to local issues, but they also might be more in the pocket of local "big men". It's a common complaint that politicians are only responsive to wealthy donors, how might that change if states had control of the land? Following on this discussion, one might ask if federal land should be transferred to state control. Would that be only BLM land, or national forest, national parks, etc as well? Should there even be such a thing as "public land" at all, or should all such land be sold or otherwise put into private ownership? Texas did this when it was a republic, as I recall; the constitution forbade the government from owning land. As a result, to create parks such as Big Bend it was necessary to purchase and/or condemn land from owners (almost all ranchers). Of course, what happened was mostly that well-connected people ended up with plots of land as large as some European countries, and paid very little or nothing for the privilege. Should we just hand control of the land over to those with the deepest pockets, with the rest of us fenced out? Where is a reasonable line to draw for environmental protection? Most people (maybe not all) would agree it should not be OK to pee in (or otherwise contaminate) shared resources such as water and air, even if those resources passed through private land. On the other hand, few people want the EPA to regulate mud puddles. There is a lot of territory in between. Wetlands, for example, remove a lot of toxins from water, recharge the water table that feeds wells, and is necessary habitat for wildlife such as ducks. In the past landowners could fill in wetlands as they wished, and as a result wetlands now are less than 5% of what they were originally (i.e. a couple of hundred years ago). At what point (if any) do such resources become so scarce, and the functions they provide so valuable, that society is justified in protected them at the expense of property owners right to do as they wish with their land? How much ecological disruption should a landowner be allowed to do? Suppose a productive trout stream runs through several properties, and one landowner wants to develop to stream in a way that renders it unfit for trout downstream, even though the water still flows. Should the interests of downstream property owners, who may enjoy trout fishing (and who may even have bought the property for that purpose) take precedence over the property owner who wished to develop the stream? Are species other than humans entitled to any legal consideration or protection? Let's say you have the last remaining individuals of some plant species on your property, right where you want to build a house. Past attempts have shown that the plant doesn't survive transplanting to a new location. Is it reasonable to protect the last individuals of the species at the expense of the land owner being able to build a house? Does the situation change if they want to build a factory and employ 100 people? How about if there are 2 places where the plant grows? There are probably many such issues to consider. This is what we (through the government) should do when we pass laws. Sometimes that may happen, but it seems often the legislative process is a knee-jerk response to crisis situations, poorly thought out. Eventually we would come back to the Bundys and ask how these principles apply to them. Some other things to consider would be: The Bundys never owned (i.e. paid for) any of the land in question. For a long time they were permitted to use some land, apparently without charge. In 1993 the land owner, the federal government (through the manager, the BLM) started to charge grazing fees and imposed restrictions to protect tortoise habitat. One question might be, if a landowner establishes one set of conditions at one point in time, does that mean those conditions can never change? If I let you stay at my house rent free for a while, can I never at any point start to ask for rent, or do I have to let you live there for free forever? Now the Bundys have expanded their operation onto land that was not part of the original lease, and into a state park and national recreation area. Even if you (the "royal you", not you specifically) feel the original lease should be honored in perpetuity, do the Bundys have a right to just move in to and start using more land, outside of the original lease, just because they feel entitled to do so? If you have a nice swimming pool, and your neighbor decides they can make money by growing fish in it, can they just move in on the argument that you weren't using the pool in an economically productive sense? I suspect many cases of beer would be consumed while resolving (or at least discussing) these and other questions. 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)

I did read your linked article. To help others to do so, here it is in clickable form (as opposed to having to copy and paste into the browser bar): http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/why-you-should-be-sympathetic-toward-cliven-bundy.php I agree that it would be good to have a discussion on broad issues, such as whether or not the federal government or individual states would do a better job of managing such lands, or what the priorities should be when decisions are made about what activities to permit. Unfortunately, the article in question doesn't do that either, it just pushes a political agenda. That is made clear by the concluding paragraph: "And their way of life is one that, frankly, is on the outs. They don’t develop apps. They don’t ask for food stamps. It probably has never occurred to them to bribe a politician. They don’t subsist by virtue of government subsidies or regulations that hamstring competitors. They aren’t illegal immigrants. They have never even gone to law school. So what possible place is there for the Bundys in the Age of Obama?" Back in the 1870s, when the Bundy family was first granted grazing rights in the area, the entire West was considered to be wasteland. Any development of any kind was welcomed. It didn't matter to anyone, then, that the land was quite unsuited to ranching, with vegetation so sparse that dozens of acres are required to support one cow. The entire population of the US was less than 40 million, virtually all living east of the Mississippi. No-one thought anything was improper about displacing indigenous people, ideally by using them for target practice. No-one gave any thought to the environment, to some extent because most economic activity was agricultural, there were few big factories and no cars, and the population was so dispersed that air and water pollution rarely had an impact on people, especially non-working-class people. Just one other factoid that illustrates how different the 1870s were from today: the leading cause of disease and death throughout the South was malaria. We can't even imagine that from today's perspective. Today the population has grown 10-fold. Activities that had little impact on people in 1870 are huge issues today. It is no longer acceptable to dump our wastes directly into the water or air, because that waste will go pretty directly into someone else. As we became more aware of the environmental impact of our activities, we also developed certain ethical principles, such as the idea that it is a bad thing to cause the extinction of species. The BLM manages a huge amount of land, mostly in Western states. This situation exists for historical reasons. For example, the land that is now Nevada was purchased from Mexico, by the United States government in the Mexican Cession of 1848. This is why the Bundy's claim that the land belongs to the state of Nevada is incorrect, it is the US government that paid for that land. The BLM has to manage the land in accordance with all federal laws, including environmental laws, and considering the interests of all stakeholders. Some sorts of potential development of BLM land will have a large environmental impact, others less so. Some potential developments benefit a few people, others lots of people. This is why permits require extensive documentation of environmental and economic impacts. In the case of the Bundy family, they have had to expand the land used for grazing far beyond the original boundaries, into areas that have never been leased to any rancher, into a state park, and into the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. This huge area is needed because the land is so marginal for cattle production. Cattle destroy vegetation, increase erosion, and profoundly alter the habitat. It's easy to tell at a glance land that is being used for grazing from land that is not. Other species, including tortoises, end up being excluded because of the removal of vegetation, which results in less food, increased ground temperatures due to lack of shade, further drying out of the land due to increased ground temperatures and loss of roots/organic matter in the soil, and increased erosion. All of this is done to provide wealth to one family, the Bundys. On the other hand, other sorts of development such as wind farms and solar farms also have an impact, though that is very different. Some land is occupied by windmills/solar panels, and vegetation is removed to put those things in place. Once in place, they don't move around and continue to destroy vegetation. They do alter the local environment, though, and the BLM is required to assess that, and weigh it against other uses for the land. The BLM also has to consider economic benefits of proposed development. Which is likely to benefit the most people, and do the most to stimulate the local economy: cheap and renewable energy to support local economic growth, or using a dozen or so acres to grow one cow? What do you think brings more money into the local economy: a tourist magnet such as the Lake Mead National Recreational Area, which had over 6,000,000 visitors in 2011, or one ranch with about 700 cows? [We'll leave aside for now the fact that the consiracy theory that Harry Reid wants the Bundys out so he can sell the land to the Chinese has been completely debunked.] I suppose it kind of sucks in some ways that the country has changed in so many ways in the last 150 years. There are a lot more of us, and so it's inevitable that we step on each other's toes more than we used to. There's the old saying "your right to swing your fist stops at my nose", but how does that apply to your right to piss in the river that other people drink from, for example? It's inevitable that increasing populations mean that certain activities are more likely to impact people (so to speak), just as swinging your fist by yourself out in the middle of nowhere is different from swinging your fist in the middle of a crowded room. So the result is laws that regulate things that weren't regulated before, and people feel their freedom is being attacked. More specifically, because it is government that passes and enforces laws, people feel that it is the government that is restricting their freedom. There is, I think, a lot that should be discussed. It doesn't help that situations such as the Bundy's immediately are seized on by those with an anti-government agenda, and immediately conflated with all sorts of untrue conspiracy stories and threats (starting with the Bundys) of violence. 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)

You might be right he left out a zero, but that's not immediately obvious to me. If he signed up through an ACA affiliated plan he may well have been eligible for a subsidy, as opposed to paying full freight because he missed the deadline. 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)