Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
In rural Oregon, wariness of extremists – and government overreach
While many don't agree with the the militant tactics used in the Ammon Bundy-led standoff, his arrest, along with other protesters is unlikely to shift local perceptions out West that the federal government has an ever-tightening grip on public lands.
https://s1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/1...m_logo_115.jpg By Mark Trumbull 13 hours ago
The arrest of protesters who occupied federal land in central Oregon this month is just a chapter in persistent story of tension over the use public lands in the American West.
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Rancher Ammon Bundy and a handful of his supporters were arrested Tuesday, leaving an unknown number of followers without leadership in their occupation of a building in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
In central Oregon and beyond, many residents of America’s inland West disagree with Mr. Bundy’s defiant tactics – occupying a federal building to protest the prison terms that two Oregon ranchers face for land-use infractions. And many don’t rally around Bundy’s view that vast Western lands really belong to states instead of the federal government.
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Yet the Oregon stand-off, which gained national attention in recent weeks, is the latest symbol of deep and ongoing tension in the West over the right management and use of federal lands – which often account for the majority of acreage in rural counties.
In rural Prineville, Ore., a common refrain among residents is that federal agencies should pay more heed to local interests. In particular, they worry that environmental restrictions have overly constrained the legitimate economic uses of the lands.
"If there's empty land that could be grazed, why not use it?" says Randy Jorgensen, a resident of Prineville, as he does an errand run with toddler in tow.
"We don't have enough wildlife to eat all the grassland" and reduce the fire risks created when the foliage grows too uncontrolled, echoes Shane Quimby, who runs a mobile butchering business in the community.
A lifelong Prineville resident, Mr. Quimby sees a pattern of ever greater restrictions on public lands.
"I think the government's kind of dipping in where they shouldn't," he says, recalling a time when he enjoyed winter recreational access to the Ochoco Mountains without a permit. But now, he says, "you have to pay that $25 snow park permit just to take your kids sledding."
The concerns voiced here, in this community of 9,000-plus residents nestled in the Crooked River basin, echo similar ones held in many western regions where the economy has long hinged on activities like ranching, logging, and farming, but where efforts to protect wildlife habitat and to promote wilderness as a tourist attraction have gained growing prominence in recent decades.
The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres in the United States, or about 28 percent of the nation’s land, according to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service. But in eastern states the percentage is fairly low, while the share exceeds 50 percent in states like Oregon, Utah, Idaho, and Alaska, and nears that percentage in California. In Nevada, the share of lands under agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, and Defense Department is a nation-leading 85 percent.
For many of these lands, multiple uses coexist – from fish hatcheries and forestry to paths traversed by cattle or all-terrain vehicles. But the phrase Sagebrush Rebellion emerged in the 1970s and 1980s to describe residents’ desire for a greater say on land use – and less designation of land as off-limits wilderness. To the perceptions of some rural westerners, the controversies over land use are being worked out over time, balancing the various interests. Others feel the conflicts have intensified in the new millennium. But in any case, the battles over land use aren’t over.
In Prineville, differing views of how federal lands should be managed flared into the open recently because of a proposal, backed by the environmental group Oregon Wild, to set up a new 312,000 acre national recreational area within the Ochoco National Forest. The plan, according to news reports, would designate some of the land as wilderness and also thwart rival plans to expand a system of trails for motorized vehicles.
"That's not going over well at all," says Jerry Crafton, who runs a Prineville business that includes tax-preparation services.
He says he doesn't agree with the occupation tactics taken by Bundy and his colleagues, but he worries about environmental interests running roughshod over the views of locals about how to use the land.
"I understand they have to do some managing of it," he says, but "blocking the land off, that's also not right."
He recalls how local lumber mills shut down years ago, costing many jobs in the area, in efforts to protect the endangered spotted owl.
Jason Ahlman, another resident who works for a local manufacturer, says Prineville used to be known for its wood products, but that now many residents need to commute elsewhere for jobs unless they are ranchers.
He worries about the impact on his community of "the attitude [that] the environment is more important than trying to support your family."
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Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Armed Oregon occupation: Is it really about white poverty in the West? http://www.csmonitor.com/extension/c...logo_65x45.png Latest News
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Ammon Bundy says that federal land management practices are pushing more people into poverty, highlighting a serious rural economic problem.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer January 9, 2016
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Atlanta — If you thought the armed occupation of a federal bird refuge in Oregon was simply a battle over land rights, think again.
This week, Ammon Bundy, the leader of the group, complained that Westerners are helpless against a federal foe that is “literally putting [people] into poverty.”
To be sure, since their take-over of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last weekend, Mr. Bundy and his group have struggled to elicit sympathy and support. But by reframing the issue, Bundy may find a wider audience. And he's right: Poverty in the American West is rising even as it has fallen in the Deep South.
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By raising the plight of poor, mostly white Americans languishing under the thumb of federal land managers provides a poignant insight into recent economic trends as well as a centuries-old fight over land use in the west, one which could, some say, provide these Western range riders common cause with other groups of marginalized Americans.
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After all, America’s unresolved debate over federal management of nearly half the land in Western states – some quarter billion acres, in all, including 87 percent of Nevada – has increasingly come to focus on one stark fact of federal stewardship: As leaders in Washington – including President Obama – have taken a harder line on protecting public lands from loggers, miners, ranchers and others who wish to use it for profit, poverty in the rural West has intensified even as poverty has lifted in the Deep South.
Bundy’s comments are “really the first time [since the Great Depression] where rural people are talking about their fear of poverty and their experience of poverty,” says Catherine McNicol Stock, a Connecticut College historian and author of “Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain.” “White people don’t want to talk about being poor or a small town in Kansas being a white ghetto – nobody’s going to use those terms. What’s remarkable is that these guys are actually saying ‘impoverishment’ and blaming it on government, as opposed to broader structures in society.”
The Bundys, however, may be imperfect messengers.
After all, a big piece of their beef with the federal government is personal, stemming from allegations that Cliven Bundy, the family’s patriarch back in Utah, has refused to pay the federal government over a million dollars in grazing fees. That conflict led to an armed 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, Utah, from which federal agents backed off.
What spurred the current standoff is the sentencing of two members of the Hammond ranching family to five years in prison, even after a state judge deemed such a sentence cruel and “unconscionable.” Like much of Burns, the Hammonds have distanced themselves from the Malheur takeover, complaining about what one columnist dubbed “imported rebels.”
On Thursday, Bundy met with Harney County Sheriff David Ward, who asked Bundy to heed the will of locals and leave. Bundy declined.
Yet the decision by the protesters in Oregon to attempt to redefine the terms of the land debate to one of civil rights – Mr. Bundy invoked Rosa Parks before saying that “we realize we have to act if we want to have anything left to pass down to our children” – is rooted, at least in part, in economic and demographic trends.
Fifty years ago, half of the poor in America lived in the Deep South, a figure that dropped to 41 percent in 2010. Over the same time frame, the West’s share of the nation’s low-income population climbed from 11 percent to 23 percent – remarkable, given that more counties in the West today have fewer than two people per square mile than in 1890.
“Rebellion does seem in order,” writes Joseph Taylor III, for Reuters. “It’s just not Ammon Bundy’s version.” But, he adds, more “Bundy-like spectacles” are likely, given that “they have been occurring for two centuries, and nothing to date has resolved the underlying grievances, many of which are real, legitimate, and fundamental to any lasting resolution.”
As the group on Saturday once again vowed to stay until the feds cede local grazing lands back to the state, there’s evidence that political support for their cause - if not their methods - is growing.
Western legislatures filed 37 bills in 11 states in 2015 pushing for transfer of much of the federal land back to states, as Bundy has demanded in Harney County. A recent report by the Center for Western Priorities shows how a coalition of right-wing extremists, timber companies, and conservative lawmakers have invoked the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s to push for more local regulatory control of valuable land.
Complaints are often localized, but tie into a common refrain.
Oregon resident Joseph Fine told the Wall Street Journal that his parents were forced to quit ranching in the 1980s because federal officials curtailed access to critical grazing lands. "They want to turn it all over for birds instead of cattle," he told the paper.
According to polls, that's fine with most Westerners. Nine out of 10 Westerners surveyed in 2013 by Colorado College said national parks and wildlife preserves are boons to the economy, while only 35 percent said public lands should be made available for "responsible energy development.
Moreover, federal subsidies and government jobs help keep many towns afloat, and low grazing fees have helped make many ranchers wealthy.
And federal land managers say that, with exceptions, they have managed to reach compromise with local stake holders on difficult issues.
“Our employees have been members of this community for over 100 years,” Jason Holm, the spokesman for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages Malheur, told the Wall Street Journal. “We may not always agree, but we’ve worked directly with ranchers and landowners for mutually beneficial goals.”
Yet there’s no doubt that the American West is facing an existential quandary – one which directly contradicts what many see here as the pioneer spirit that, for generations, defined the nation.
As Ammon Bundy pointed out, Harney County, the site of the protest, has gone from Oregon’s wealthiest to its poorest since federal land management tightened in the 1970s. Its timber industry has been decimated under federal land use management.
“When 60, 70 or 80 percent of a county is federally controlled, and the federal policies prevent active management and use of those lands, the result is you have depressed economies, impoverished people, and a lack of hope,” says Rep. Greg Walden (R) of Oregon, who represents Harney County.
San Juan County, Utah, sees 40 percent of its children born into families in persistent poverty – meaning that their conditions haven’t changed for more than three decades. Ninety-two percent of the county is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
“This is not about the Bundys, it’s not about the Hammond family, or about Burns, Ore. – they’re not creating the problem,” says Phil Lyman, a San Juan County, Utah, county commissioner who was convicted last year on charges related to a protest ATV ride through Recapture Canyon, closed in 2007 to protect the remains of an archaeological excavation. “The problem is what’s being created by these agencies that have no political accountability and no knowledge about the areas they’re affecting so dramatically. They have 100 percent control and zero responsibility. That’s a recipe for disaster. And that’s what’s happening.”
The big question for many is whether continued federal control of vast unpopulated regions is a stopgap measure or a final solution for the West. Many Westerners look at the former frontier states of Illinois and Missouri, which both lobbied for decades before Congress agreed to cede the land to the state government.
But instead of being rapidly populating states close to the East Coast, the Western states with majority federal land ownership are part of a larger emptying-out of the American heartland. Without a growing tax base, it’s questionable, critics say, whether states can even afford to manage the lands, or stem over-exploitation of some of the nation’s grandest natural treasures
Even some of those who sympathize with the Oregon [occupiers' demands] downplay the Transfer of Public Lands (TPL) movement. The percentage of federally-managed land “is not really the issue here,” Rep. Walden tells the Monitor. “The issue is better management, and more active local collaboration.”
“We are moving from economies that are based on resource extraction to economies based on knowledge and service, so that is providing a lot of growing pains as the region changes,” says Jessica Goad, whose progressive organization, the Center for Western Priorities, has started taking a closer look at the impact of federal management on poverty rates. “But we really need to consider more deeply: What does a just transition for rural America look like?”
Francine Kiefer contributed to this article from Washington, D.C.
http://assets.newsinc.com/inform_75x27.png?t=1452038040Support Dwindles Among Oregon Occupiers
Four days into their occupation, the anti-government activists who took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon hinted on Tuesday that their days there might be numbered. Ringleader Ammon Bundy insisted they "have a plan" to help ranchers in Harney County avoid the fate of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven. The pair are now in federal prison for setting fires on their ranch that spread to government land. Bundy said that when the community is "strong enough to defend" their rights, they will go home. LaVoy Finicum is one of the gunmen who seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. He made it clear, however, that he wanted to get back to his Nevada ranch. He told NBC News that he needs to get home, as he has cows that are scattered and lost.
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http://assets.newsinc.com/inform_75x27.png?t=1452038040Support Dwindles Among Oregon Occupiers
Four days into their occupation, the anti-government activists who took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon hinted on Tuesday that their days there might be numbered. Ringleader Ammon Bundy insisted they "have a plan" to help ranchers in Harney County avoid the fate of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven. The pair are now in federal prison for setting fires on their ranch that spread to government land. Bundy said that when the community is "strong enough to defend" their rights, they will go home. LaVoy Finicum is one of the gunmen who seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. He made it clear, however, that he wanted to get back to his Nevada ranch. He told NBC News that he needs to get home, as he has cows that are scattered and lost.
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http://assets.newsinc.com/inform_75x27.png?t=1452038040Support Dwindles Among Oregon Occupiers
Four days into their occupation, the anti-government activists who took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon hinted on Tuesday that their days there might be numbered. Ringleader Ammon Bundy insisted they "have a plan" to help ranchers in Harney County avoid the fate of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven. The pair are now in federal prison for setting fires on their ranch that spread to government land. Bundy said that when the community is "strong enough to defend" their rights, they will go home. LaVoy Finicum is one of the gunmen who seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. He made it clear, however, that he wanted to get back to his Nevada ranch. He told NBC News that he needs to get home, as he has cows that are scattered and lost.
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Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Mel Bundy after speaking with his brother confirms that LaVoy was murdered by the FBI.
https://www.facebook.com/DMLdaily/vi...09945/?fref=nf
You DO NOT need a facebook account to listen to or view the video.
Matches the story of the woman that I previously posted in the thread.
Posting it again in case anyone missed it and doesn't want to search through the thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJkBNY-yC6s
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJkBNY-yC6s
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PatColo
I'm most interested to see your source for saying the 13%-ers were there only "for a few hours"
Ok Mr. Passive Agressive Guy. Post proof that the 3 Percenters stayed longer.
:rolleyes:
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JohnQPublic
The Bundy name is one of the 13 Illuminati blood lines. I knew this was a false flag and Bundy would escape with the true people being killed Gordon Kahl style.
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JohnQPublic
Talent release is so that another news organization, or someone can have use of the live feed that was being recorded.
:rolleyes:
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hillbilly
The Bundy name is one of the 13 Illuminati blood lines. I knew this was a false flag and Bundy would escape with the true people being killed Gordon Kahl style.
Another member of the NWO Elite Illuminaughty families:
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20140703025340
:rolleyes:
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shami-Amourae
Talent release is so that another news organization, or someone can have use of the live feed that was being recorded.
:rolleyes:
Why would someone rush to kill the camera feed?
Re: 150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters
KrisAnne Hall reveals information which she has personal knowledge
http://youtu.be/JA9VfIDi4Y4
Youtube link: http://youtu.be/JA9VfIDi4Y4
