Militia takes over wildlife refuge headquarters

[elkslayer100]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

 

[mtmuley]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

Headed for the uprising? mtmuley

 

[Gr8bawana]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

I guess we can see you side with the morons.

 

[hank4elk]

Grab your tin foil beenie if you do.....

FS bad for stopping every fire.
FS bad for just letting them burn.

Congress is Bad for not fully funding our Government agencies as required and Admin is Bad for not enforcing the laws equally.

 

[mtmiller]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

I think you should get some sleep and head on over in the morning. Gene pool is in need of chlorine.

 

[BuzzH]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

Wow...

 

[Nameless Range]

Interesting article on the connection between militia wingnut groups and legislators in the west who hate public lands.

http://westernpriorities.org/2015/08/10/going-to-extremes/

 

[DRAFTSTUD]

They Breed and vote.......John

 

[noharleyyet]

These amateurish rubes are doing it wrong....better to hire a disruptive pc pro if your gonna extort policy change.

 

[Oneye]

I guess it's alright for USFS to let fires burn out of control and then cost taxpayers millions of dollars. but a few rednecks burn up some grass and they go to prison. Hmmm . I have the weapons and ammo but too lazy to fight.

It's saddens me that Americans can be portrayed to the rest of the world in this way. We look like uncivilized, inbred hillbillys when events like this occur. As I've said, there is a way to protest, this BS is not protesting, this is conducting criminal activity and should be treated as such. A simple post like yours just shows you don't understand the complexity of the issues with the forest service nor these individuals. The Feds are damned if they do, damned if they don't. If the idiots choosing to strip agencies budgets weren't the same ones complaining about management I could see the other side a little. The problem is the same people complaining are the same individuals creating the problems and not fixing them.

 

[grizzly_]

It looks like Hammond has been convicted of harassing hunters on public land. It appears they felt the public land should be closed to hunting because the wildlife "temporarily wandered" onto it from the private Hammond ranch.

I'm not sure these guys are the ones hunters should be siding with....

"And in 1999, Steve Hammond confronted hunters on land bureau property near his ranch. The hunters said the next day "he fired several shots from his firearm that the hunting party heard about, but he said he was shooting at rabbits," Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Papagni Jr. said in court recently. Hammond was convicted later of interfering with use of public land.

An attorney for Steve Hammond said in a court filing that his actions "arose out of his belief that there was something wrong with a system that authorized commercial hunting of wildlife that temporarily wandered onto barren public land from private land lush with forage."

SOURCE: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...f/2015/12/ranchers_fight_with_feds_spark.html

 

[LazyV]

He's a nut job doing what nut jobs do...not surprising really

 

[jumpshooter]

I see a lot of common issues coming up again and again here and Randy did a good job of covering them in his recent podcast of land grabbing. I get both sides of the issue and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I understand that there would be issues with the states taking control over some of these federally managed lands.

This doesn't have to do with these agencies being under funded, they have plenty of resources to make income at their disposal, it has more to do with the current legal system that is in place. The current legal policy allows anyone to make a court case against the federal government. If a judge decides that the case has merit, then the federal government will pay the part to sue the federal government. This is how groups like Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club Foundation have raised so much money to continue suing everything that the Forest Circus and BLM propose to do.

Fair disclosure here, I am a forester. A group that I am a member of looked into some of this stuff a few years ago and CBD and TSCF made over $500 million dollars in suing the federal government on logging plans, ranching plans, general management plans and other crap. In California we have something like 19 million acres are managed by the Forest Circus. That amount of land should be able to be managed sustainably for all of our states needs (and I am not talking about clearcutting).

We need change in some of the public polices of how federal agencies run things and maybe that will help. California doesn't have the same issue with no hunting allowed on state controlled lands, so I still think that this state might be able to do a better job as our state lands are in pretty good shape and don't have the same issues as the forest circus does in getting things done. The other issue with the federal land managers is that they have lost through attrition most of the folks that knew how to do things like manage timber sales, layout logging jobs, build roads, and do good silviculture. Since the spotted owl shut down most of the management of our federal forests, those positions have been lost or filled with paper pushers.

The other thing that needs to happen is how the fed fight fire. Not fighting fire at night is crazy. That is usually the one time when a fire is fightable. There are too many of these guys living off of the tit instead of putting the fires out. We have had some catastrophic fires in the last few years out here and there are several cases where the feds decided to milk the clock instead of put thing out!

Change is needed, but this is not the answer and it is going to end badly if these idiots try anything.

 

[Hunting Wife]

I see a lot of common issues coming up again and again here and Randy did a good job of covering them in his recent podcast of land grabbing. I get both sides of the issue and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I understand that there would be issues with the states taking control over some of these federally managed lands.

This doesn't have to do with these agencies being under funded, they have plenty of resources to make income at their disposal, it has more to do with the current legal system that is in place. The current legal policy allows anyone to make a court case against the federal government. If a judge decides that the case has merit, then the federal government will pay the part to sue the federal government. This is how groups like Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club Foundation have raised so much money to continue suing everything that the Forest Circus and BLM propose to do.

Fair disclosure here, I am a forester. A group that I am a member of looked into some of this stuff a few years ago and CBD and TSCF made over $500 million dollars in suing the federal government on logging plans, ranching plans, general management plans and other crap. In California we have something like 19 million acres are managed by the Forest Circus. That amount of land should be able to be managed sustainably for all of our states needs (and I am not talking about clearcutting).

We need change in some of the public polices of how federal agencies run things and maybe that will help. California doesn't have the same issue with no hunting allowed on state controlled lands, so I still think that this state might be able to do a better job as our state lands are in pretty good shape and don't have the same issues as the forest circus does in getting things done. The other issue with the federal land managers is that they have lost through attrition most of the folks that knew how to do things like manage timber sales, layout logging jobs, build roads, and do good silviculture. Since the spotted owl shut down most of the management of our federal forests, those positions have been lost or filled with paper pushers.

The other thing that needs to happen is how the fed fight fire. Not fighting fire at night is crazy. That is usually the one time when a fire is fightable. There are too many of these guys living off of the tit instead of putting the fires out. We have had some catastrophic fires in the last few years out here and there are several cases where the feds decided to milk the clock instead of put thing out!

Change is needed, but this is not the answer and it is going to end badly if these idiots try anything.

Wow. Now we're going to armchair fire-fight? They don't go blindly fighting fires at night anymore because a) it's unsafe, though it's easy to discount safety when it's not your ass on the line and b) a significant proportion of the "fire-fighters" today aren't professional fire-fighters. Any biotech, biologist, manager, admin person with a heartbeat and that can pass a pack test gets put into rotation for fire because (wait for it) THERE ISN'T ENOUGH BUDGET to hire both. Not sure where this forest of money trees you apparently work under is...

Neither here nor there, this militia occupation issue is a farce. You have folks squawking that the feds aren't making enough money managing the land, yet they are the ones who would take the public land as their own and refuse to pay the public their due by dodging the bill for grazing on public lands. All the more frustrating because they can't even understand that they are making a circular argument.

 

[JohnCushman]

This must be being reported totally differently on the East Coast. I am currently in a couple of 'discussions' on FB with friends back east who are on the side of the militia and see them as heroes and patriots for standing up against an oppressive government. They say that it's wrong that the Feds own any land and it's somehow unconstitutional and it's just a way to force ranchers to pay rent and force them out of existence. So, it shouldn't be a big deal that the fire accidentally got on the BLM land because it should be illegal for the government to own it in the first place. They also say it's wrong that they got the sentence changed to a longer one after one had already been handed down. So far, none of the discussions have resorted to name calling...lol

 

[abqbw]

Ranchers are just pissed because finally the rest of the people, through the Feds, have decided to no longer give ranchers free reign on the western public lands that we all own. Anyone that hunts has seen the huge areas of public land and waterways that have been overgrazed and abused for decades by ranchers. Just because the abuse was allowed to continue for decades does not mean it shood continue forever. The argument that the land abuse is "traditional" so it became a right is ridiculous. Public land is to benefit all citizens, not a select few.

The govt should take whatever steps are necessary to kick these people out of the building in Oregon. If they think they can get away with this one, what is next? Closing a National Forest to anyone but themselves? It could be anything.

 

[dcopas78]

This must be being reported totally differently on the East Coast. I am currently in a couple of 'discussions' on FB with friends back east who are on the side of the militia and see them as heroes and patriots for standing up against an oppressive government. They say that it's wrong that the Feds own any land and it's somehow unconstitutional and it's just a way to force ranchers to pay rent and force them out of existence. So, it shouldn't be a big deal that the fire accidentally got on the BLM land because it should be illegal for the government to own it in the first place. They also say it's wrong that they got the sentence changed to a longer one after one had already been handed down. So far, none of the discussions have resorted to name calling...lol

Unfortunately John, I don't think it has donned on the lemmings back here to the east that it is actually their land too that these rancher thugs are trying to confiscate and abuse. They don't realize that federal ownership of land has prevented it from being hacked, mined, polluted and capitalized to death. It is very unfortunate that most of them have never been west of the Mississippi and know nothing about land or wildlife management. I may be wrong, but I believe the government "took ownership" of these lands because they were unsettled and they were worried about the exact things I mentioned happening to it way back in the 1800s if the land was privatized. Was this not why the BLM, USFS, etc. were created in the first place?

 

[abqbw]

*should. Not "shood". I know how to spell. My smartphone does not.

 

[JDH]

Now sounds like a good time to go confiscate Bundy's cattle.

 

[RobG]

Now sounds like a good time to go confiscate Bundy's cattle.

Improve the breed by hunting them I say! We need to set objectives!

By the way, some group had to sue the BLM to remove Bundy's cattle. Before the BLM were caving to local pressure, but the lawsuit forced their hand. Last I heard they were still caving, with Bundy still having his cattle on that land. Therefore, they may have to be sued again. The groups only get money if the feds weren't following the law, and even then they often get shorted based on the way it is settled. I'm guessing the real $$ for these groups come from the membership they attract with the tactics. The key to stopping these lawsuits is giving the Fed agencies enough money that they can properly run, and also some way to deal with the local pressure preventing them from making tough choices to stay within the law.

Not following this particular idiocy other than learning who my wack-job facebook friends are.