Federal intervention in the ranching economy of the American West has a strong colonial bias. The only way to extract value from low-value lands is with cooperative action between government and private ranchers. Taxpayer money from coastal cities is used to pay for roads, services, and water in the West, so that hard-pressed ranchers don't have to. Still, even without direct ownership, the ranchers have effective control over the lands, and all without having to pay property taxes. It's a good deal for the country as a whole: the government gets taxpayers and ranchers get services. The system works best with dry, very-low-value lands (formerly known as Taylor lands) in the American Southwest.
In this Oregon case, though, these are comparatively-lush, higher-value lands that these ranchers own. The ranchers didn't have that many leased lands and apparently weren't as heavily dependent on the Feds as most ranchers. Over the years, the Malheur Wildlife Refuge was expanding, leading to conflict.
Security-state conservatives set the trap the Hammonds fell into. The sentences for arson the ranchers received are absurdly high - a misuse of new Federal powers granted since Oklahoma City and 9/11. Who did conservatives think these laws would be applied against anyway? Muslims? No, other conservatives!
Thus, I'm open to the Hammonds getting lenient treatment.
Ammon Bundy and his crew, however, need to be hammered. HARD! They've been spoiling for a fight for a while now (like 2013's Bundy ranch standoff and 2014's Recapture Canyon ATV riding stunt). If we appease them now, they'll be back for more later. Take them out, now!:
The critical thing to understand is that the same logic is what led to this Oregon situation. The leaders of this occupation — the Bundy brothers, Jon Ritzheimer, Blaine Cooper and Ryan Payne — are demanding that the government hand over a huge amount of wealth to a bunch of conservative white people, on the grounds that they want it. Ammon Bundy has a video on his own Facebook page, making it clear that a huge federal giveaway of lands to the people that live near them is what this is all about.
There’s no reason to embroider this. The Bundys and their supporters want the federal government to hand over federally held lands, free of charge, to the people in the area, so they can enrich themselves off those lands without paying the taxpayers back for what they use. Some of the folks want to graze animals for free, some want access to the minerals under the ground to sell without having to buy them first, and others want to cut down trees they didn’t buy and sell them at a profit. The common theme here is that the taxpayers should give them a bunch of stuff we own, because “freedom” and “constitution” and “the people” and whatever nonsense words they are flinging around to say they want free stuff.
What’s frustrating is that it’s not entirely unreasonable for citizens of the U.S. government to want access to federal lands, within reason. It does belong, as Bundy says, to “the people.” But the fact is they are already getting this. Ranchers in Nevada only pay the government $1.35 per cow per month to use federal lands for grazing, compared to the average $15-$18 that private land owners get. This difference amounts to a huge federal giveaway to ranchers. But getting $13 per cow per month in free cash isn’t enough for these greedy monsters. No, they want the federal government to cover the entire cost of their cattle grazing. Because “freedom” and “the constitution.”
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