Sovrun Cattle - The Sagebrush Saga of Cliven Bundy

[JamesVincent]

The Dailey Show, starring Jon Stewart, skewered the Bundy case on its April 21st show:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/v4jh6e/apocalypse-cow

(Note: this video evidently can only be viewed inside the US. A Canadian friend was told she'd have to give up her free health care to see it.)

We are a bunch of armed thugs who are going to defend this land with our wive's lives. You try to attack us and she's gonna die on national TV. Everybody in the world will know that we mean what we say while they watch the women die.

Is it just me or is this asshat the exact opposite of a man? Even if everything else was in Bundy's favor, the world should shoot the dude, just for that asinine statement. If that's the kind of people that you have to defend you, you don't deserve to live.

[Paths of the Sea]

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One of Kent Hovind's supporters, Brandon Douglas, has made his appearance on one of my FaceBook pages and espoused his support for Bundy, his militia, and Hovind (see picture of him I posted from his FaceBook page).

Some here might have an interest in that exchange found at:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php? ... 8739517135

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[Demosthenes]

A quick update...

Cliven Bundy was born in Arizona in 1946.

In 1948, his parents David and Margaret moved from Arizona and purchased the 160-acre ranch in Bunkerville NV from a distant relative of his mother (she shared a great great grandfather with Raoul Leavitt, who sold the land to Bundy's parents.)

Bundy's father started grazing the federal allotment in 1954. He applied for the permit and started paying the grazing fees at that time.

[Kestrel]

It gets better.

Clark County records show that Bundy's father purchased water rights for the 160 acre ranch ONLY, not for the surrounding federal land. His parents didn't start running cattle on the ranch until 1954, six years after they bought it.

Furthermore, his mother's great-great-grandparents weren't ranching cattle either, and the 160 acre ranch his parents bought wasn't originally owned by them. The grandparents had a farm somewhere else in the area.

But who needs to worry about awkward facts when you have the militia on your perimeter?

http://wonkette.com/547315/hero-rancher ... least-1948
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/25302186/ ... ly-history

“I’ve lived my lifetime here. My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley here ever since 1877. All these rights that I claim, have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and the water and the access and range improvements,” Bundy said …

“My rights are before the BLM even existed, but my rights are created by beneficial use. Beneficial use means we created the forage and the water from the time the very first pioneers come here,” Bundy said.

Oh, really? Now he's claiming divine power?

ETA: Found this comment, too. It was too good not to re-post.
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/ ... ncher.html

Whether you agree with his position or not, the fact that he fudged his family history in order to create a certain western frontier mythology, should have people stepping back and reevaluating his motives.

Especially before they get shot trying to defend them.

Now if you want to talk about a group who have an actual case....



I wonder how many teabaggers and militia members would ride out and take their sniper positions to support THIS group?

[Demosthenes]

Bundy's father did purchase the water rights attached to his 160 acres but there are other vested water rights in play here.

I took a look through the water rights database. As best as I can tell, Cliven's neighbor Keith Nay either sold or gave 11 vested water rights to Cliven in October of 1997. Nay passed away less than a month later.

The BLM had already canceled Bundy's grazing permit in 1994.

[fortinbras]

It turns out that Bundy's stories of having used this land since his great-great-grandfather are a lie ....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024855829

I think the BLM would be justified shooting the cattle from a helicopter, Sarah Palin style. Bundy doesn't even get to claim the meat unless he can provide health certificates for every head of cattle, which he cannot.

[Kestrel]

Aren't cattle supposed to be branded by the owner? If they're not branded they belong to anyone - or no one.

Six animals died during the BLM roundup. Only two were branded. Bundy SAYS all six were his, but he had done nothing to secure his ownership rights on the other four. Many of the rest of what he says is his herd are also unbranded. If the cattle were to be hauled off the land, how could he prove the unbranded animals were his?

Admittedly, he's the only person claiming to be running cattle in the area. But his whole ownership argument rests on "It's my land, so those must be my cows." Except it isn't his land, so by that theory all unbranded animals must be the BLM's cows.

Where's a good cattle rustler when you need one?

[Demosthenes]

A little more detail.

I drew out the family tree (which is ridiculously difficult with polygamist families.)

1) Bundy and I related in about six ways, which is not surprising considering a branch of my family settled in St. George, Utah in the mid 1800s. It's only 45 miles from Bunkerville, NV.

2) Bundy's parents bought the current 160 acres from Bundy's mom's third cousin, so while remote, it's still family land, just not directly inherited. Some of the current news reports seem to forget that family includes maternal bloodlines.

3) Bundy's mother's mother's mother was named Mary Jane Leavitt, and she lived in the nearby town of Mesquite, NV. Mesquite is only about five miles from where Bundy currently lives which in farm terms is next door.

Mary was born in 1873 in Utah, and moved to Mesquite, NV in 1877 with her parents Dudley Leavitt (a Canadian) and Mary Huntsman (from Iowa). She married William Elias Abbott (Bundy's mother's mother's father), whose family had moved from Utah to Bunkerville in 1877 as well, in 1890 when she was 17 and he was 21.

Mary and WIlliam were not cattle ranchers, although it appears he had worked as a ranch hand when he was young. They raised melons (which Bundy does now on his 160 acres) and were extremely hard working people. Mary and William are considered the founders of the town of Mesquite and this a prominent statue in their honor. According to the historical marker on their statue:

[William] was on the town board, school board, board of directors of the grape farm, and chairman of the telephone committee. Will was involved in the building of a bridge between Mesquite and Bunkerville—and when completed—he was in charge of the Bridge Day. He was a judge, justice of the peace, farmer, delegate to the International Irrigation Congress, and amateur dentist, and with his wife, ran a hotel and café.

William championed the road-building cause He surveyed the original road between Las Vegas and Mesquite. He campaigned for and took charge of the construction of a road which was one hundred feet in width and a mile-and-a-half long.

4) Bundy's paternal side of the family moved from Illinois in 1916 to settle in Mt. Trumball, Arizona (better known as Bundyville.) Bundyville is about 50 miles from Bunkerville, and 55 miles to St. George, UT. They form a triangle. The Bundy's raised cattle in Arizona and grazed them on federal land until 1934 when the Taylor Grazing Act squeezed them out. They entire town collapsed in the 1940s, the Bundy family had to start over so they moved to Bunkerville and bought the current 160 acre lot in Bunkerville in 1948 from a distant relative. Bundyville (Mt. Trumball) became a ghost town.

Like any good sovereign, Cliven Bundy cherry-picked details from his family history, cobbled them together to make a pseudo legal argument out of them, combined them with standard Posse Comitatus and Sovereign theories, and then threatened violence when his fairy tale didn't work in court.

[LPC]

I've now seen two Bundy supporters/apologists make the claim that the problem is all the fault of the federal government, because the use of armed agents was not "proportionate."

So the Bundy gang would have let the federal officials seize the cattle if the officials had been unarmed?

And the number of federal officials involved seems to be exaggerated. There's talk of "hundreds" of armed federal agents and snipers. I haven't seen any definite numbers in any news reports, but it appears that most of the LEOs came to the scene came *after* the armed supporters showed up, and least some of the LEOs were not federal.

Finally, I find the repeated references to the "Bundy ranch" to be deviously misleading because the men rounding up the cattle and the federal officials were (I believe) all on federal land miles from any land owned by Bundy.

So the supporters/apologists talk about hundreds of armed agents showing up and pointing guns at Bundy friends and relatives, while what actually happened is that federal agents were carrying out a court order on federal land when hundreds of armed people showed up and started making threats, so more armed federal agents came to defend the operation.

Slightly different story.

[Demosthenes]

The various teaparty websites and news orgs have started using "land grab" over and over. It isn't a land grab if the federal gov already owns the land.

[JamesVincent]

The various teaparty websites and news orgs have started using "land grab" over and over. It isn't a land grab if the federal gov already owns the land.

Already tried that reasoning. It's a land grab since their taking public land from a private citizen. Especially since the government can't own land.

[Jeffrey]

Hypotheticals:

Can't BLM just go back to the same court that gave them the current court order and argue that by trying to block execution of that order he's in criminal contempt? Worked with Trudeau.

It's kind of scary that a month ago nobody knew who Bundy was but in what seemed like 24 hours Pete Santilli and the tinfoil crowd was able to migrate this into the mainstream based on nothing but lies.

[wserra]

Article on the front page of today's Times. Comments on African-Americans taken from when Bundy was pontificating to the brainless:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

The nice thing about quotes like this is that they only require a three-word comment:

What an asshole.

[Famspear]

...They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton......

As someone who was born and reared in the Deep South, as someone who actually picked cotton when I was a kid, in a field near the old farm house in which my mother was born, and which was my first home, I must say that I am -- momentarily -- at a loss for words.

[Famspear]

...They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.

Reading this account of Mr. Cliven Bundy's purported personal belief -- that the descendants of slaves in the United States today have less freedom than their enslaved ancestors had -- leads me to suspect that he may have spent too many long summers out there in the Nevada sun without wearing that cowboy hat for protection.

[Pantherphil]

If ever there was a need for Judge Roy Bean to break out his cattle prod, this is the case.

[wserra]

he may have spent too many long summers out there in the Nevada sun without wearing that cowboy hat for protection.

But you would expect the sheet and hood to give him some protection.

[Demosthenes]

The hypocrisy is strong in this one.

Government subsidies for white people good. Government subsidies for black people bad.

[The Observer]

Any evidence that the Bundy family was involved in any of the polygamous groups that broke off from the LDS church? I know some of these groups have extreme beliefs in regards to women and minorities.

[The Observer]

The hypocrisy is strong in this one.

Especially when you see him in those videos carrying the US flag on horseback. This is ironic, given the fact that he is carrying the official flag of the government he claims he doesn't exist.