Category Archives: The State

UPDATED: Land, Liberty And The Federal Occupier (Naturally, Positive Law Understates Natural-Law Violations)

Individual Rights, Law, libertarianism, Media, Natural Law, Private Property, Regulation, Taxation, The State

Other than Fox New, which probably staved off a Waco-style massacre in its vigilant reporting, US presstitutes have been silent about Cliven Bundy’s heroic confrontation with the federal occupier. Before him came the Hage family, another family of great Americans, whose travails were featured on “Fox News Reporting: Enemies of the State.” What inspiring individualists.

Kudos to Canada Press for “shining truth on government ranch invaders,” and thus broadcasting from the rooftops about one of the most monumental confrontations against federal tyranny to have taken place since Edward Snowden and before him:

Coming clearly through the throbbing of helicopters and the roar of the SUVS of the feds harassing the Cliven Bundy Ranch, patriots there for Bundy should “tell it to the judge”.

There is mainstream media-suppressed case history in Nevada the feds are desperately trying to keep under wraps.

Chief Judge Robert C. Jones of the Federal District Court of Nevada smacked down high-handed, abusive feds, sending the pretend cowboys riding roughshod over Western ranchers and property owners back to their cobweb-laced offices in 2013.

In spite of their 200 armed snipers with boy toys in tow, those Stetson-wearing feds hunkering down on Cliven Bundy’s Ranch are nothing more than a bunch of cowardly ‘cobweb cowboys’ doing duty for radical environmentalists.

In the upheaval of Bureau of Land Management bureaucrats caving in fear to the radical environmentalists of the day, the Rule of Law still works in court, and everyone of those feds brandishing weapons knows it down at heart.

“The court case, U.S. v. Hage, has been keenly watched by legal analysts and constitutional scholars—but has been completely ignored by the major media.”
(New American, June 3, 2013)

“As we reported last November (”Judge Blasts Federal Conspiracy; Ranch Family Vindicated — Again!”), in June 2012, Judge Jones had issued a scorching preliminary bench ruling that charged federal officials of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with an ongoing series of illegal actions against Nevada rancher E. Wayne Hage that the judge described as “abhorrent” and a literal, criminal conspiracy.??“Judge Jones said he found that “the government and the agents of the government in that locale, sometime in the ’70s and ’80s, entered into a conspiracy, a literal, intentional conspiracy, to deprive the Hages of not only their permit grazing rights, for whatever reason, but also to deprive them of their vested property rights under the takings clause, and I find that that’s a sufficient basis to hold that there is irreparable harm if I don’t … restrain the government from continuing in that conduct.”

No cowpoke cuss could ever transcend what Judge Jones openly called feds invading ranch land.??“In fact, Judge Jones accused the federal bureaucrats of racketeering under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations) statute, and accused them as well of extortion, mail fraud, and fraud, in an effort “to kill the business of Mr. Hage.”

Judge Jones bottom-lined what the government is doing to ranchers and property owners—end of chapter!

He, and likely other federal court black robes, know that the mainstream media goes into overdrive in trying to keep the truth from the masses.

Tragically, Fed-harassed rancher Wayne Hage was vindicated three years after he died. (Capital Press, Dec. 8, 2009).

While no one (mercifully) has died on the Bundy ranch—yet—the stories of Bundy,—-Hage, Wally Klump and others are a disturbing match.

“In a previous court decision, Senior Judge Loren Smith referred to the well-publicized Hage lawsuit as “a drama worthy of a tragic opera with heroic characters.”

“A federal judge has added $150,000 to the original $4.22 million judgment won by the estate of rancher Wayne Hage in a years-long battle over property rights.

“The federal government had asked Senior Judge Loren Smith to throw out the judgment. Instead, he increased it.

“Hage, a leader of the “Sagebrush Rebellion” against federal control of land, was the husband of former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho. They both died in 2006.

“The order is the most recent victory in a legal dispute that stretches back to 1991, when Hage filed suit against the government for taking his private property without just compensation.

“Hage’s 7,000-acre ranch in Nye County, Nev., bordered several allotments in the Toiyabe National Forest on which he built fences, corrals, water facilities and other rangeland improvements for cattle grazing.

“Tensions began to mount between the rancher and the U.S. Forest Service in the late 1970s, when the agency permitted the introduction of elk to the national forest, resulting in damaged fences and scattered cattle, according to court records.

“Over the next decade, other incidents aggravated the strain and eventually led to the lawsuit.

“According to court documents, the Forest Service excluded Hage’s cattle from forage and water in certain allotments, impounded animals that entered those allotments and prevented him from maintaining ditches needed to exercise his water rights.

“In his legal complaint, Hage claimed the agency had breached its contractual obligations and violated his constitutional rights.

“During the course of litigation, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims decided the Forest Service could legally prohibit grazing on the allotments without compensating Hage, since grazing permits are licenses and not contracts.

“As such, the impoundment of cattle was not an unconstitutional taking because the cattle had trespassed on government land, the court said.

“However, the court ruled that the agency had taken Hage’s water rights, ditch rights-of-way, roads, water facilities and other structures without just compensation and in 2008 ordered the government to pay him $4.22 million.

“The federal government asked the court to change or set aside the financial compensation, alleging there’s no evidence Hage actually built hundreds of miles of fences, trails, ditches and pipelines on the allotments.

“Under the law, Hage would qualify for compensation only if he had built the structures, the government said.

“Because his grazing permits only authorized Hage to maintain the structures, he was not entitled to their full value, the government said.

“The judge disagreed.

“In the context of the grazing permits, “maintenance” included placing or construction, he said in the most recent ruling.

“The government’s argument “cannot be squared with the language of the statute and the reality of range work and construction,” Smith said.

“In adding more than $150,000 to the award, the judge ruled that his previous decision had mistakenly omitted the value of ditches and pipelines taken by the government.” …

READ ON.

UPDATE (4/14): NATURALLY, POSITIVE LAW UNDERSTATES NATURAL-LAW VIOLATIONS. Of course Judge Andrew Napolitao is understating the violation of homesteader Cliven Bundy’s rights by the Bureau of Land Grabs. That’s because the Judge’s analysis is not from natural law, “the body of laws derived from nature and reason,” but from the positive law, which is “statutory man-made law, created through the state.” Still, Nap is better than most:

Napolitano characterized the resistance shown by Bundy supporters as a clear example of how Americans feel, “enough is enough with the federal government, we’re drawing a line in the sand right here – and it drew people from all around the country who basically said ‘quit your heavy handed theft of property and act like you’re a normal litigant and not God almighty’.”

MORE Nap.

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Politics And Its Perp-e-traitors

Crime, Government, Politics, Republicans, Taxation, The State

By all means, make former IRS official Lois Lerner do the perp walk, publicly. Please. She’s but one among many state-employed scum, but getting one is better than none. Freedom lovers must get their kicks where they can.

The Republican-dominated House Ways and Means Committee has voted today, Wednesday, to seek a criminal investigation as to whether Lerner misled investigators and released private taxpayer information. The same committee wants to hold this despicable woman in contempt of Congress for her failure to “comply with various subpoenas.”

Filled with bravado, JOHN BOEHNER (R-OHIO) told Megyn Kelly: “… I don’t care who is gonna be fired. I wanna know who is going to jail. The fact is that the IRS — there are specific laws that protect taxpayers and force the IRS to comply with the law. Somebody at the IRS violated the law.”

If it takes place, this unlikely prosecution will punish one perp when there are hundreds (maybe thousands) like Lerner walking around free. It will be late in the game, and it will be “political,” as that stupid saying goes (as if any other considerations are ever made by politicians).

Why “political”? Ask yourself why it is that Republicans have refrained form moving against the Transportation Security Administration attack dogs (TSA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), who violate American bodies and their privacy daily? Because the NSA and TSA are not Republican issues.

Republicans like the pervs of the Surveillance- and Security State; the taxwoman not so much.

Killer Government

Government, Private Property, The State

The stories of government reckless indifference are unchanging. We saw it during super-storms Katrina and Sandy, to name two natural disasters.

Simply knowing the incentives at work in government makes predictions about the inaction of officials foolproof. Thus, borne out is my “premature” contention that local officials had procrastinated after the Snohomish County hillside landslide, in which “[a]t least 25 people are believed dead in the massive mudslide above the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, although only 16 bodies have been identified. Dozens have been reported missing.”

Via The Seattle Times:

The commander of the Washington National Guard said Wednesday that he offered his help to county emergency-management officials last Saturday and Sunday but was rebuffed until midday Monday. A spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said its help was requested around noon on Monday.
The National Guard has a 50-person search-and-extraction team with experience and specialized equipment. FEMA has a nationally recognized 65-person urban search-and-rescue team.
Both teams arrived to help Tuesday, long after any sign of survivors was reported in the debris. …

Where have we heard this before? The answer is during every other rescue mounted by government.

Via Salon.com comes a belated report—it’s too late for the victims of the landslide in Snohomish County—that the officials failed to forewarn residents who built homes on the hill of a foreseeable lethal landslide.

One likely reason for the tragedy in our state is the failure of the state’s Department of Natural Resources to properly monitor clear-cutting nine years ago.

A Seattle Times analysis of government geographical data and maps suggests that logging company Grandy Lake Forest cut as much as 350 feet past a state boundary that was created because of landslide risks.
The state Department of Natural Resources is supposed to verify a timber company’s proposed cut on the ground and then reinspect the site after the harvest has been taken.
State Forester Aaron Everett reviewed records on the issue Wednesday afternoon and said it appears that a portion of the clear-cut’s footprint extended into the sensitive zone. He said his agency was trying to locate records to show whether it inspected the site after it was logged.
“I was surprised,” Everett said. He will investigate further before concluding whether Grandy Lake went beyond the borders.
Grandy Lake officials have not returned calls seeking comment.

Had the resource been privately owned, the owners would be legally liable and would have had all the incentives in the world to manage the land responsible. But I repeat myself.

UPDATED: We’re From The Government & We’re Here To Rescue You. NOT (How About Saving People In Unsafe Circumstances?)

Government, Private Property, The State

“We have people who are yelling for our help … We suspect that people are out there, but it’s far too dangerous to get responders out there on that mudflow.” So said Travis Hots, Chief of the Snohomish County Fire District, in a news briefing about the “massive mudslide in rural northwest Washington State.”

The rescuers who’d lined-up behind Hots for a photo-op nodded vigorously as their chief described the dangers to themselves, dangers that might preclude them from heeding the cries for help of the residents still buried beneath a “135 feet wide and 180 feet deep landslide, near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle.”

This is not to say that “local rescue units, plus units of the Washington State Patrol and US Army Corps of Engineers” are not trying. But they’re probably not trying as hard as they would had they been in the employ of a private rescue company.

In the case that residents or neighborhood associations had contracted with a private rescue company, company employees unwilling to risk their lives to save their clients would soon be out of a job. If residents felt they’d been failed by Rescue Inc., they’d seek out a new contractor, staffed with daredevils (like retired special-forces soldiers) who’d do anything to save their charges, while being paid handsomely for doing what they love doing and what they do so well.

“Rescue me. Not now”: That’s the reply these poor mudslide victims are getting from their government. They’ll perish before it’s “sufficiently safe” for a state-employed rescuer to risk his neck for another.

The incentives for a state-employed rescuer to risk his life for others are simply not there. Failure is not punished; its costs socialized. Should the country be sued by relatives, the taxpayer will shoulder the financial settlement, and not the likely extra-cautious rescuers.

UPDATE (3/24): More devastating news. The bold text below goes to the point of the blog post. Isn’t the idea of rescue to send in individuals who are prepared to save people in unsafe circumstances?

“Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.”

“108 people may be missing in Washington state mudslide”:

Authorities are searching for more bodies after a massive mudslide in a rural part of Washington state killed at least eight and possibly left more than 100 missing, while crews battle uneven ground and rising waters.

A 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 several homes. Eight bodies have been pulled from the scene and authorities described the search for additional survivors to be “grim.”

John Pennington, emergency response managing director, said there are reports of up to 108 people missing in the mudslide but noted that number is unconfirmed.

“This is a large scale disaster event,” Pennington said. “We have 108 individual names, or likeness … It’s a soft 108.”

“It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day,” he said of the victims during a press conference Monday. Pennington said it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.