The Tiny State of Nevada

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Nevada isn’t really that big of a state. Oh, sure, it appears large on the map.

But 81 percent of that land mass isn’t Nevada. It’s federal government property, run by various branches of the nation’s central government in Washington, D.C.

Much of the controversy surrounding the Cliven Bundy ranch, and the rustled cattle, and the standoff with the federales, has to do with federal government land.

From my reading of the Bundy family ranch affair, it appears that the legal question is not one of taxes, but of usage fees; not of endangered tortoises, but cattle. But mostly about land. My sympathies are with the Bundies. They seem to have a very old adverse possession case against the government.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that federal judges didn’t look very kindly to the Bundies’ customary rights. Federal judges prefer legislated law to common law. We’re a long way from our roots, folks.

But the issue lurking behind all other issues is the over-dominance of the federal government in twelve western states. Five of them have over half of their land titled to and run by the federal government: Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Utah and Nevada. This imbalance gives just too much power and purview to federal agencies, who are then tempted to run roughshod over locals. That is, state citizens.

Cliven Bundy may be dead wrong legally, but politically, he has a point.

The federal government should privatize all or most of its grazing lands and desert lands. Its forest lands should at least be “state-ized” — given back to the states.

This is a federal republic, right? Not an empire?

The states are not supposed to be mere conquered provinces.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags BLM, Cliven Bundy, Nevada, standoff

10 replies on “The Tiny State of Nevada”

nice perspective. i’ve been struggling to figure out where i come down on this issue.

I just wish i knew the whole history of how long his family has been there, when the gov’t took it over, etc. I grew up with westerns that always posed the free range cattle guys with the homesteaders and i tended to come down with the guys who actually bought the land and fenced it in. so if this is the beginning of a liberty movement of some sort, i wish they would pick a better place to take a stand.….unless i just really don’t understand all the facts.

.… too much power and purview to federal agencies, that then run roughshod over locals. Over “state citizens,” that is .…

“Citizens?”

Difficult to get any sense of sovereignty from “citizens.”

Much prefer Orgeonians, Alaskans, Nevadans etceteras. We, The People!

Those five states are all western states.

What gives?

Bundy’s wrong legally and ethically. He only made a political play after his repeated refusals to pay grazing fees resulted in actions to take his assets.

The federal government has charged grazing fees on much of its land for many decades. Ranchers in Nevada 20 years ago should not have been surprised when fees were imposed. Their choices were to pay the fees, stop ranching, or move somewhere else. Bundy opted for a fourth choice of not paying. I don’t have any pity for him.

I agree that the federal government should either sell most of its land or turn it over to the states. But Bundy wouldn’t have bought land himself, and it’s highly likely that Nevada also would charge grazing fees if it acquired the land. Then it would be Bundy vs. Nevada instead of Bundy vs. USA.

The issue here is bigger than the fate of rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle. The federal government continues to assert ownership not only of the land Bundy has been grazing his cattle on since 1877, but of 84.5 percent of all Nevada land. The federal government also owns 69 percent of Alaska, 57 percent of Utah, 53 percent of Oregon, 48 percent of Arizona, and 36 percent of Colorado. Indeed, the BLM alone owns 245,000,000 acres of land, an area half the size of Mexico and larger than 48 of our 50 states.

The narrow legal issue in the Bundy ranch controversy is his refusal to pay grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management over the past 21 years. There is a court order telling him he must pay the fees, and many conservative commentators say he has no legal leg to stand on in that defiance. In terms of “settled case law,” they are probably right. But, is that a good enough reason to abandon Cliven Bundy and his family?

Martin Luther King heard the same arguments when he protested segregated lunch counters in Birmingham, Ala. King chose to go to jail to challenge those “settled laws,” and those laws were overturned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Civil obedience to protest unjust laws has a long and honorable tradition in America. But if a Nevada rancher challenges a federal land management law he thinks is unconstitutional, it is called greed or extremist lawbreaking. But what law has Bundy broken except the one he believes is unconstitutional? He is not an anarchist.

The only anarchist here is President Obama in claiming the right to decide which laws to enforce and which ones to ignore – or change administratively, as he does every few months with immigration law. If Obama wanted to show some semblance of consistency in his use of administrative orders to rectify gaps or inequities in the law, he could use his executive-order pen to declare that this BLM regulation on grazing permits will not apply to families with a documented tenure on range land going back over 100 years. But don’t hold your breath.

There is a legislative remedy for the injustice being perpetrated against Cliven Bundy and his family. Federal law can be changed to recognize the property rights of ranching families whose presence on the land goes back over four generations. As for federal land ownership, the federal government should divest itself of most of its vast domain of western lands and turn the land over to the states.

For rancher Bundy, the issue is not the money, not the grazing fees, it is the validity of federal authority over the desert land his family has been grazing cattle on since 1877. Yes, federal case law says he is wrong and that he owes the money. But if the underlying law is itself unjust, we should join those who are calling for the law to be be changed – and for the BLM to put enforcement actions against Cliven Bundy on indefinite hold.

Until the law is changed, it is the height of arrogance for any federal agency to say this particular law on cattle grazing should be enforced at the point of a gun, while at the same time, our immigration laws are set aside and the Border Patrol is told to stand down. The rule of law is an endangered species more vital to our survival than the desert tortoise.

and now this:

It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.

More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil‑, timber ‑and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57836973 – 90/utah-lands-lawmakers-federal.html.csp

It the peoples land!

** Western lawmakers gather in Utah to talk federal land takeover
‘It’s time’ » Lawmakers from 9 states gather in Utah, discuss ways to take control of federal lands. **

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57836973 – 90/utah-lands-lawmakers-federal.html.csp

[…] one thing, we can’t give the land “back to the states,” as some people advocate, because it was never state land to begin with. With the exception […]

Republican Ronald Reagan had argued for the turnover of the control of such lands to the state and local authorities back in 1980. Clearly, the surrender of all claims to any land for statehood was illegal under the Constitution. This is no different from Russia seizing Crimea. The Supreme Court actually addressed this issue in Pollard’s Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 212 (1845) when Alabama became a state in 1845. The question presented was concerning a clause where it was stated “that all navigable waters within the said State shall forever remain public highways, free to the citizens of said State, and of the United States, without any tax, duty, impost, or toll therefor imposed by said State.” The Supreme Court held that this clause was constitutional because it “conveys no more power over the navigable waters of Alabama to the Government of the United States than it possesses over the navigable waters of other States under the provisions of the Constitution.”

The Pollard decision expressed a statement of constitutional law in dictum making it very clear that the Feds have no claim over the lands in Nevada. The Supreme Court states:

The United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama, or any of the new States, were formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the acts of the Virginia and Georgia legislatures, and the deeds of cession executed by them to the United States, and the trust created by the treaty of the 30th April, 1803, with the French Republic ceding Louisiana.

So in other words, once a territory becomes a state, the Fed must surrender all claims to the land as if it were still just a possession or territory.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014 – 04-20/martin-armstrong-asks-do-feds-really-own-land-nevada