The Real Story Behind The BundyRanch Harassment

By Dana Loesch

...The BLM asserts their power through the expressed desire to protect the endangered desert tortoise, a tortoise so “endangered” that their population can no longer be contained by the refuge constructed for them so the government is closing it and euthanizing over a thousand tortoises. The tortoises, the excuse that BLM has given for violating claims to easements and running all but one lone rancher out of southern Nevada, is doing fine. In fact, the tortoise has lived in harmony with cattle in the Gold Butte, Clark County Nevada for over a hundred years, or as long as Cliven Bundy’s family has lived on the land as ranchers. In fact, the real threat to it is urbanization, not cattle.

A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher. They want his land. The tortoise wasn’t of concern when Harry Reid worked BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore. Whittemore was convicted of illegal campaign contributions to Senator Reid. Reid’s former senior adviser is now the head of BLM. Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over 84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests. BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. Clearly these developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasi-homesteading grazing area. If only Clive Bundy were a big Reid donor.

BLM has also tried to argue that the rules have changed, long after Bundy claims he secured rights and paid his dues to Clark County, Nevada. BLM says they supersede whatever agreement Bundy had prior; they demanded that he reduce his living, his thousand-some-odd head of cattle down to a tiny herd of 150. It’s easy for the government to grant itself powers of overreach, but it doesn’t make it right. Many bad things are done in the name of unjust laws. Just look at Obamacare. This heavy-handed tactic has run the other ranchers from the area and now Bundy is the last one. He’s the last one because he stood up to the federal government.

So why does BLM want to run Bundy off this land and is Reid connected?

I discussed this on “Kelly File” tonight, video via Jim Hoft.

*UPDATE: Those who say Bundy is a “deadbeat” are making inaccurate claims. Bundy has in fact paid fees to Clark County, Nevada in an arrangement pre-dating the BLM. The BLM arrived much later, changed the details of the setup without consulting with Bundy — or any other rancher — and then began systematically driving out cattle and ranchers. Bundy refused to pay BLM, especially after they demanded he reduce his heard’s head count down to a level that would not sustain his ranch. Bundy OWNS the water and forage rights to this land. He paid for these rights. He built fences, established water ways, and constructed roads with his own money, with the approval of Nevada and BLM. When BLM started using his fees to run him off the land and harassing him, he ceased paying. So should BLM reimburse him for managing the land and for the confiscation of his water and forage rights?

Cliven Bundy’s problem isn’t that he didn’t pay — he did — or that his cattle bother tortoises — they don’t — it’s that he’s not a Reid donor.

Armed siege and cattle theft from Bundy ranch really about fracking leases

....But a Natural News investigation has found that BLM is actually in the business of raking in millions of dollars by leasing Nevada lands to energy companies that engage in fracking operations.
This document from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology(1) shows significant exploratory drilling being conducted in precisely the same area where the Bundy family has been running cattle since the 1870's. The "Gold Butte" area is indicated on the lower right corner of the document (see below), and it clearly shows numerous exploratory drilling operations have been conducted there.
What's also clear is that oil has been found in nearby areas and possibly even within the Gold Butte area itself.
It is, of course, customary for the U.S. government to bring armed soldiers to an oil dispute. (Operation "Iraqi Freedom" for starters...) Heavily armed snipers, helicopters and militarized soldiers have never been invoked over tortoises. (Anyone who thinks this siege is about reptiles is kidding themselves.)
Here's the map showing the oil exploration conducted on the land where Bundy runs his cattle (all the red crosshairs are oil and gas exploration drilling operations):

BLM collects $1.27 million in shale fracking leases

The Bureau of Land Management has just cashed in with $1.27 million in oil and gas leases in Nevada. This was just reported two weeks ago in ShaleReporter.com, which states:
U.S. Bureau of Land Management geologist Lorenzo Trimble tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the Elko County oil and gas leases sold Tuesday for $1.27 million to six different companies. The auction took place in Reno. The leases are near where Houston-based Noble Energy Inc. wants to drill for oil and natural gas on 40,000 acres of public and private land near the town of Wells. The Review-Journal reports the project would be the first in Nevada to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract oil and gas from shale deposits.
The way this works, of course, is that BLM runs land theft operations by claiming they are "managing" the land and thereby kicking everyone else off it. They then invoke a reptile, an owl, a bird, a snake or some other animal which they claim to be "saving," even while they are stealing and destroying hundreds of cattle belonging to a private rancher trying to make an honest living in a nation where productive Americans are increasingly branded "enemies of the state."
Once control of the land is established via court order or by bringing armed men with automatic weapons, BLM then turns around and leases the land to fracking companies who proceed to exploit the land using hydraulic fracturing techniques that inject toxic chemicals into groundwater supplies (and have been linked to earthquakes). The money collected by the BLM is then used to increase BLM salaries and bonuses.
In essence, the BLM is a criminal mafia racket, and Cliven Bundy just happened to be in the way of their next target, the Gold Butte area of Nevada. That is why they brought hundreds of heavily armed men to a "save the tortoise" operation.
"Endangered tortoises" is merely the government cover story for confiscating land to turn it over to fracking companies for millions of dollars in energy leases. In truth, the BLM was rapidly euthanizing these very same reptiles en masse last year.(2)

Sen. Harry Reid Behind BLM Land Grab of Bundy Ranch

BLM attempted cover-up of Sen. Reid/Chinese gov’t takeover of ranch for solar farm

By Kit Daniels
The Bureau of Land Management, whose director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser, has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wants Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations.

Corrupt Democratic Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) working with the Chinese gov’t to take land from hard-working Americans.

Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.”
“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.
The first segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

The first segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

Another BLM report entitled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone” (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.

The second segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area

“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”
Back in 2012, the New American reported that Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land in Laughlin, Nevada.
And journalist Marcus Stern with Reuters also reported that Sen. Reid was heavily involved in the deal as well.
“[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert,” he wrote. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada.”
“His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”
Although these reports are in plain view, the mainstream media has so far ignored this link.

Update: The Drudge Report, the #1 news aggregate site in the world, has now picked up this story. Unfortunately for the BLM, the documents they wanted to delete are now exposed for the world to see.
Update #2: ENN Energy Group describes itself as a “privately-owned clean energy distributor in China.” However, as the People’s Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, all large companies in China, one way or the other, are either controlled or are heavily influenced by the Chinese government.

BLM Action in Nevada is Unconstitutional, Here’s Why

By Kurt Nimmo

The establishment media is now paying attention to Cliven Bundy and his struggle with the Bureau of Land Management. Most of this coverage assumes Bundy is engaged in illegal cattle grazing on federal land.

“The U.S. government is rounding up Bundy’s cattle that it says have been grazing illegally on public lands in Clark County for more than 20 years, according to the land-management bureau and the National Park Service,” CNN reports today.

The BLM insists “Mr. Bundy has… failed to comply with multiple court orders to remove his cattle from the federal lands and to end the illegal trespass.”

It is the BLM, not Cliven Bundy, who is in violation of the law and the Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution.

The clause, known as the Enclave Clause, authorizes Congress to purchase, own and control land in a state under specific and limited conditions, namely “for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings,” and not, as the feds now insist, to protect an endangered tortoise.

The Founders were opposed to providing a centralized federal government with unlimited authority to purchase and, as is routinely the case today, seize state and private land.

During the federal convention debates in September, 1787, Elbridge Gerry, who later went on to serve as vice president under James Madison, contended federal purchase of land “might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience.”

In order to make certain the federal government did not abuse the Enclave Clause, the words “Consent of the Legislature of the State” were added.

Madison, Jefferson and the Founders were primarily interested in limited government and the diffusion of federal authority over the states for the protection of individual liberty. In 1992, the Supreme Court issued an opinion on the framers’ reasoning behind the state consent requirement (New York v. U.S):

“The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities, or even for the benefit of the public officials governing the States. To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals. State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.” (Emphasis added.)

Madison knew unlimited federal power inevitably results in unbridled tyranny. “I venture to declare it as my opinion that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America,” he wrote.

Despite the desire of the founders and the originating principles of the nation, conceived as a constitutional republic, the federal government has repeatedly and habitually exacted dictatorial authority in Nevada and throughout much of the West.

“The United States government owns and has broad authority to regulate federal lands in Nevada,” the BLM arrogantly insists. “In response to challenges of federal ownership of the lands in Nevada, the 9th circuit held that the federal government owned all federal lands in Nevada, and that those lands did not pass to the state upon statehood.”

This is in direct conflict with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution.

Cliven Bundy’s struggle with the BLM in Nevada is exactly the situation Madison and the founders tried to prevent. The federal government does not have the constitutional authority to own land, beyond what is stipulated in the Enclave Clause, and its seizure of land, under the obviously fallacious pretense of protecting a tortoise, is a serious violation of the Constitution.