Americans Against the Tea Party Because Fox News Lies
On June 04, 2013, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed Assembly Bill 227 into law. AB227 — also called the Public Lands Transfer Act — is an innocuous-sounding piece of legislation that goes by a number of different names elsewhere, tweaked slightly to match existing local laws. In Utah, it’s known as the Transfer of Public Lands Act.
How did Cliven Bundy go from being an obscure rancher to a household name over the course of a week? And how does it fit in with the Koch Brothers’ agenda?
The whole purpose of this act is to give the states carte blanche to carry out a land grab against the federal government. It’s just one of many ALEC-written pieces of so-called “model legislation” that serve a similar purpose: the Resolution Demanding that Congress Convey Title of Federal Public Lands to the States and the Eminent Domain Authority for Federal Lands Act all intend to strip or otherwise remove federal protection from land and hand that land over to the states. Several states already have laws like this in place.
With this in mind, we all remember Cliven Bundy. Bundy, over the course of a week, went from a no-name rancher fighting the federal government to a name on the lips of well-known conservatives, like Mike Huckabee. At the heart of the Bundy case is Bundy’s claim that he owns the land that his cattle graze on, which is federally owned land that has been set aside as part of the Endangered Species Act, to protect a species of desert tortoise. After battling with Bundy for over a decade, the feds finally came to remove his cattle, but the militia were out in force, and the BLM wisely decided to back down lest they end up with another Ruby Ridge. It looked like the right had won, and that individuals could chase the federal government off federal land, the right was crowing happily about this defeat of “big government.”
Then Bundy opened his mouth. The right wing media went into full reverse, abandoning him almost completely.
But what does Cliven Bundy have to do with ALEC and AB227?
How exactly does Bundy fit with ALEC and AB227, especially given AB227 is nearly a year old? It’s simple: Bundy was a test case for the conservative interests beholden to dirty energy regarding the federal land grab that the ALEC legislation represents.
To understand where this all begins, take a look at what Rand Paul said regarding the situation below:
Rand made these remarks in an April 25th interview with Eric Bolling on FOX News; his interview with Rand Paul begins at a 4:39 mark:
ALEC’s backers would love to frack on federal land and ignore environmental regulations.
Listening to Rand Paul and people who think like him leaves one with the impression that the federal government isn’t legally supposed to own land. And that’s just the impression that ALEC would like you to walk away with. Remember that ALEC has drafted a large amount of “model legislation” that strips the land from the feds and gives it to the states. AB227, the law signed into place by Brian Sandoval (who, recall, was a big supporter of Bundy) was drafted by ALEC, sets the stage to accomplish just that.
Similar to the above legislation is the ALEC “model legislation” that gives the states the ability to go around or ignore EPA regulations. Which means that it would make it easier to frack for oil or use other dirty energy, without having to worry about that “federal government gone amok” or those bats, fish, or turtles — or the EPA, which they consider a “regulatory train wreck.” Since a number of dirty energy companies are involved in ALEC — like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, which sit on the board. Combine the the right of the state to strip land from the federal government and the legislation that lets states reach around the EPA regulations and you have the states taking land from the feds and turning around and leasing it to dirty energy companies who aren’t beholden to EPA regulations since the states have their own regulations in place that go around the EPA. This is why Bundy quickly became the event for the for those who are beholden to the dirty energy companies to rally around; here was this rancher challenging the federal government for “his land” — a seemingly David v. Goliath struggle that Americans could empathize with. He became a way to “legitimately” challenge the federal government over land ownership.
So what went wrong?
Well, in addition to be racist, according to an Esquire piece, Bundy and his supports are also abject lunatics.
“The assumption is that the BLM is part of the federal government. But we need to check the facts on that one. The BLM doesn’t work for the government: they work for the United Nations. They might as well be wearing blue helmets. If we find out there’s money being exchanged between Harry Reid and the Chinese government, no one should be surprised.”
…
He reproaches the crowd for failing to follow the word of God – to the letter – which he says is being delivered through him. They failed, for example, to follow his instructions to tear down the toll booths at Lake Mead and disarm the Park Service.
“The message I gave to you all was a revelation that I received. And yet not one of you can seem to even quote it.”
Cliven continues, sermon-like: “The records of our bible — how long have they been kept? Thousands of years. They’ve been turned over generation after generation, buried, and all kinds of things happen to ‘em. And yet, here, something I felt was inspired [by God] and yet we haven’t even carried it forth for even a couple of days. Shame on us.” Smattering of clapping.
He goes on to explain that, although they managed to deter the BLM, they failed to do it “within one hour,” as the revelation had prophesied. So when an hour passes, he decides to get in his bulldozer and march on the BLM himself. The dozer gets stuck in the mud and he receives another revelation.
“It come to my mind real plain — the good Lord said, ‘Bundy, it’s not your job, it’s THEIR job.’ So we come back over here and heard that they had brought some cattle back. So I want you to understand,” addressing the crowd, “This is not my job, it’s YOUR job.
“This morning, I said a prayer, and this is what I received. I heard a voice say, ‘Sheriff Gillespie, your work is not done. Every sheriff across the United States, take the guns away from the United States bureaucrats.’” Lots of clapping for this.
This revelation almost certainly deflated their cause.
Bundy was shaping up to be the test case for the Kochs and for ALEC; their cause célèbre, as it were. That could explain why he was picked up so fast by the mainstream conservative media. He was their tool, handed to them likely by circumstance, to challenge the feds and gather everyone around their cause — after all, everyone loves a noble patriot. Unfortunately, it backfired; they didn’t vet their hero well enough, and the minute he revealed himself to be the racist cartoon character he is, everyone scattered. This was never about land rights for a man and his cows. This was about special interest groups using “states rights” as a tool to steal land from the American People for their own interest — and it blew up in their face in the process.
h/t PoliticusUSA
