Sagebrush Rebellion Returns
By Fearing for their safety as armed protesters gathered in the Nevada back country, federal officials on Saturday suddenly ended a controversial effort to seize hundreds of cattle that a rancher has kept illegally on public land.
The cattle ranch’s owner, Cliven Bundy, and hundreds of armed supporters had threatened to forcefully keep Bureau of Land Management employees from rounding up the approximately 900 cattle. Nearly 400 of the cattle had been seized during the past week. They were being held nearby and could be sent to Utah, authorities said.
In a meeting Saturday, Bundy urged Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie to seize the federal officials’ weapons and bring them back to the rancher. The demand coincided with the sheriff, who’s sought to avoid bloodshed, reading a news release from the BLM to a jubilant crowd gathered near Bundy’s ranch.
Of course, the problem here is quite simple. This guy won’t pay his grazing fees. He owes $1 million but refused to recognize the Bureau of Land Management as a legitimate government agency. Creating a version of western history Jim DeMint would be proud to own if he cared about the West, Bundy claims his family’s claims existed before the BLM or the Endangered Species Act (part of the issue here is the desert tortoise). Well, sure, but it’s not like the land wasn’t still owned by the federal government before the BLM’s creation! And it’s not like environmental legislation only gets applied to land not used by ranchers before 1970.
The Sagebrush Rebellion, for those of you not familiar with western land management history, was an astroturf roots movement of rich western ranchers, mine owners, and timber operators in the late 1970s and early 1980s against a federal government enforcing the environmental legislation passed by Congress. Western resource interests have never much cared for democracy and so revolted by engaging in some stupid actions like blocking Forest Service roads and the like. They had a champion in the Reagan Administration, especially the era of James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. Getting Carter out of office kind of ended the organized “movement,” but occasionally this sentiment pops up like it has this weekend. In the overheated right-wing rhetoric of today, what with the Muslim black president and all, morons have come out to support the rancher, leading to real fear among the government officials enforcing the law.
But we all know that law is for the brown people to follow. Old white conservatives, they dictate to the law, which is after all represented by jackbooted government thugs in black helicopters directed by Obama from his personal terrorist cell in Yemen.
High Country News typically provides some of the best work on this issue.