"Maidan" in US

[Walsingham]

Mor's made my first point so I'll make my second.

 

Again we come back to the idea that controlling your government using guns is the way to do it. I could control most things using guns. Using guns is not the best way to control things. It's the LAST way to control things. It's also far from reliable.

 

It seems to me that a nation which relies on shooting its elected representatives will fail to engender the healthy relationship between individual and state on which nations depend for prosperity.

 

I don't deny that this looks dodgy. But if it is provably dodgy then I'd turn to a court first. Not a colt.

[Valsuelm]

No one has suggested in this thread that guns be used as a primary means of influences over one's government. That's an argument I've never before seen or heard anywhere. You guys are reaching really far right now if you have to argue against that argument that has never been made here, and probably hasn't ever been made in a serious manner anywhere ever.

 

What has been suggested numerous times on these forums, as well as elsewhere is that guns are a means to influence or remove one's government if necessary. A means of last resort in the eyes of most that would ever think to use it. It is the primary and fundamental reason for the 2nd amendment in the US. Anyone deluding themselves otherwise has never read the federalist papers, anti-federalist papers, or the various essays written by the folks who wrote the U.S. Constitution which spells out in no uncertain terms why that amendment (as well as pretty much everything else in the Constitution) is there.

 

The Bundy situation is really interesting on many levels and serves as an excellent example to prove a number of points. That guns can be effectively used to influence government action, that using them as an effective way to influence government action doesn't mean that bloodshed need occur, that environmental issues are sometimes (I'd say more often than not) hijacked and used as an excuse to push some agenda that has little to nothing to do with those issues, that yet again mainstream media ignores corruption of those in the highest levels of U.S. government (Reid is as dirty as they come, and this is not the first time he's been implicated in abuse of power or corruption, in a better world he'd be in jail for past offenses already and impeached for the offense in regards to Bundy's situation), and that the number of people willing to put their lives on the line in the U.S. to defend freedom is significant (and I'm not talking of those in the military).

 

Of course, those who identify themselves as environmentalists or can't let go of the idea that guns have no place in the hands of the public (except maybe for sporting, if that), likely won't be able to see these solid examples for what they are, and will instead argue against imaginary arguments that have never been made by anyone ever anywhere (except maybe as a bad joke). They will also ignore the fact that it was the government who showed up armed to the teeth first.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Valsuelm

[Tale]

Mor's made my first point so I'll make my second.

 

Again we come back to the idea that controlling your government using guns is the way to do it. I could control most things using guns. Using guns is not the best way to control things. It's the LAST way to control things. It's also far from reliable.

 

It seems to me that a nation which relies on shooting its elected representatives will fail to engender the healthy relationship between individual and state on which nations depend for prosperity.

 

I don't deny that this looks dodgy. But if it is provably dodgy then I'd turn to a court first. Not a colt.

I want to agree with you. But it's kind of a two-way street, if you'll pardon the cliche.

[Walsingham]

 

Mor's made my first point so I'll make my second.

 

Again we come back to the idea that controlling your government using guns is the way to do it. I could control most things using guns. Using guns is not the best way to control things. It's the LAST way to control things. It's also far from reliable.

 

It seems to me that a nation which relies on shooting its elected representatives will fail to engender the healthy relationship between individual and state on which nations depend for prosperity.

 

I don't deny that this looks dodgy. But if it is provably dodgy then I'd turn to a court first. Not a colt.

I want to agree with you. But it's kind of a two-way street, if you'll pardon the cliche.

 

 

Yeah it is. But forgive me but GD seems pretty wedded to a notion that all government is bad m'kay?

 

It's only crystallised in my head this last week, but I feel as if GD treats government employees like some colonial stereotype treats 'natives'. "They're savages who only understand the gun".

[Enoch]

No one has suggested in this thread that guns be used as a primary means of influences over one's government. That's an argument I've never before seen or heard anywhere. You guys are reaching really far right now if you have to argue against that argument that has never been made here, and probably hasn't ever been made in a serious manner anywhere ever.

 

What has been suggested numerous times on these forums, as well as elsewhere is that guns are a means to influence or remove one's government if necessary. A means of last resort in the eyes of most that would ever think to use it. It is the primary and fundamental reason for the 2nd amendment in the US. Anyone deluding themselves otherwise has never read the federalist papers, anti-federalist papers, or the various essays written by the folks who wrote the U.S. Constitution which spells out in no uncertain terms why that amendment (as well as pretty much everything else in the Constitution) is there.

 

The Bundy situation is really interesting on many levels and serves as an excellent example to prove a number of points. That guns can be effectively used to influence government action, that using them as an effective way to influence government action doesn't mean that bloodshed need occur, that environmental issues are sometimes (I'd say more often than not) hijacked and used as an excuse to push some agenda that has little to nothing to do with those issues, that yet again mainstream media ignores corruption of those in the highest levels of U.S. government (Reid is as dirty as they come, and this is not the first time he's been implicated in abuse of power or corruption, in a better world he'd be in jail for past offenses already and impeached for the offense in regards to Bundy's situation), and that the number of people willing to put their lives on the line in the U.S. to defend freedom is significant (and I'm not talking of those in the military).

 

Of course, those who identify themselves as environmentalists or can't let go of the idea that guns have no place in the hands of the public (except maybe for sporting, if that), likely won't be able to see these solid examples for what they are, and will instead argue against imaginary arguments that have never been made by anyone ever anywhere (except maybe as a bad joke). They will also ignore the fact that it was the government who showed up armed to the teeth first.

 

Indeed, I don't think anybody is positing bullets as the primary means of communicating with one's government.  But the idea that it can make any difference at all is deeply troubling-- "I have a gun, therefore my government should/does treat me differently than it does its unarmed citizens."  That's not the kind of society I would want to live in.  And I'd argue that the 2nd Amendment has nothing at all to do with small-scale incidents like this kind of thing-- it was a societal-level check on tyrrany, not something that was at all relevant in individual land disputes and the like.  For the most part, the Founders had no problem with cracking down violently against folks with small-scale disputes with the government.  (Washington himself authorized conscription to build a force to supress a tax revolt, and even suppressed the riots that rose in resistance to that draft.)  A government that lacks a monopoly on the legitimate use of force is no government at all. 

 

Anyhow, people can often read what they want to into the writings of the Founders, because there were a lot of them and they didn't all agree on things.  What often gets lost, I find, is a sense of context.  As 18th-Century Englishmen, the primary frame of reference for envisioning the struggles of an emerging (tentative and fragile) representative government were the struggles between Parliament and the 17th-Century Stuart monarchs. 

 

England relied on civilian militias armed with small arms for its defense against any invasion that could get past its navy (as did most nations in those days), and these arms were generally kept at local magazines.  One of the tactics that the Royalist forces used in their intermittently violent struggles with Parliament was to disarm the magazines in areas of strong Parliamentary support.  The 2nd Amendment can be read quite cogenty as a pre-emptive strike against this kind of practice. 

 

In a world where loosely-drilled mass of infantrymen with small arms and a few cannon has a legitimate chance of overthrowing an oppressive government (as the 17th-Century English did a few times, and as the new USA had done just a decade earlier), this is a relevant thing for a Constitution-level document to protect.  Because standing armies were a 1-way ticket to despotism, in the view of many of the Founders, the 2nd Amendment could ensure that no policy so oppressive that one couldn't conscript a force of citizens sufficient to defend it could stand.  The presence of all those magazines and privately-owned weapons in Virginia, say, would be a serious threat that could overthrow a President from Massachusetts who "went too far," and therefore deter him from doing so in the first place.

 

But in a world where the best that a loosely-drilled mass of infantrymen with small arms can do is plunge a society into drawn-out failed-state guerilla warfare, and in a nation with a huge technologically advanced standing army, what does the 2nd Amendment get us?  In the event that the social order truly breaks down, we end up in a Syria-style bloody (and likely failed) revolution instead of a North-Korea-style quiet accession to tyrranical rule.  That's... something, I guess.  I can see having preferences about which of those we'd rather deal with should the worst come to pass.  But throw in America's 200+ year record of pretty stable rule-of-law and its very strong legal and social taboos against the use of the military in domestic politics, and the "we have guns, just in case" failsafe in the 2nd Amendment becomes about as relevant a check on tyrrany as the "you can't sleep here, Sergeant!" failsafe in the 3rd Amendment. 

 

 

As to this particular incident, I profess no real knowledge or insight, apart from that ascribing overbearing actions or other screwups by law enforcement folks to "the highest levels of U.S. government" is almost always a mistake.  Yes, folks in government do screw things up sometimes-- pointing this out is pretty much my day job.  But there is no "The Government" clawing for power in the abstract.  It's just people being people.  Government people are just as flawed as humans are anywhere else and are sometimes driven by venal or vindictive motivations. (But, at least as often by noble and charitable motivations, too.) 

[Wrath of Dagon]

For those as confused by the situation as I was, here's an explanation :http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/12/The-Saga-of-Bundy-Ranch

 

I guess when the government continually ignores and violates the law pretty soon citizens start to do the same.
 

Edited April 14, 2014 by Wrath of Dagon

[Enoch]

For those as confused by the situation as I was, here's an explanation :http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/12/The-Saga-of-Bundy-Ranch

 

I guess when the government continually ignores and violates the law pretty soon citizens start to do the same.

 

 

So, basically, the guy lost a court case back in '98, has had all his attempts to appeal laughed out of court, and he's been defying the court order ever since.  The feds haven't quite figured out an effective way to enforce the ruling, though, and when they tried recently, a BLM officer did something dumb and it went viral in wacko-militia circles. 

[Guard Dog]

I've been doing some reading on the details of this case. My biggest question is what standing does the BLM have to force cattle off state land? It turns out that the land Nevada sits on was ceded to the US government following the Mexican war and when Nevada became a state federal jurisdiction over state land was codified into the state constitution. So, in other words his cows are trespassing on federally controlled land after all and he should just move them or pay the damned range fees. 

 

However, if the US government needs to collect a debt it actually has standing to collect all it has to do is put a lien on the property and assets. The IRS does it every day. They don't need to send 200+ armed agents along with helicopters and armored vehicles and they certainly don't need to taser then beat the hell out of folks video recording the operation (which is legal). That little extra bit was some bonus big-government cruelty and oppression thrown in for no extra charge. 

[Guard Dog]

Government people are just as flawed as humans are anywhere else and are sometimes driven by venal or vindictive motivations. (But, at least as often by noble and charitable motivations, too.) 

 

 

Which is as good a reason as I have ever heard to keep their power and influence restricted to the barest minimum they need to have to do the jobs they are required to do.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Enoch, on 15 Apr 2014 - 2:34 PM, said:

 

Wrath of Dagon, on 14 Apr 2014 - 6:35 PM, said:

For those as confused by the situation as I was, here's an explanation :http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/12/The-Saga-of-Bundy-Ranch

 

I guess when the government continually ignores and violates the law pretty soon citizens start to do the same.

 

 

So, basically, the guy lost a court case back in '98, has had all his attempts to appeal laughed out of court, and he's been defying the court order ever since.  The feds haven't quite figured out an effective way to enforce the ruling, though, and when they tried recently, a BLM officer did something dumb and it went viral in wacko-militia circles. 

 

Yes, the government has the law on its side, but why is it doing everything possible to harm its own citizens? http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/why-you-should-be-sympathetic-toward-cliven-bundy.php

 

 

 

Over the last two or three decades, the Bureau has squeezed the ranchers in southern Nevada by limiting the acres on which their cattle can graze, reducing the number of cattle that can be on federal land, and charging grazing fees for the ever-diminishing privilege. The effect of these restrictions has been to drive the ranchers out of business. Formerly, there were dozens of ranches in the area where Bundy operates. Now, his ranch is the only one. When Bundy refused to pay grazing fees beginning in around 1993, he said something to the effect of, they are supposed to be charging me a fee for managing the land and all they are doing is trying to manage me out of business. Why should I pay them for that?

[Enoch]

I'm sure there's an answer to that question-- How does BLM decide how to set the volume and price point for the grazing rights it sells?  It'd make for a nice topic for an "explainer" type news column or a GAO report.  I don't know the answer, but I also don't have much time for columnists who just ask a question like that suggestively instead of doing the research.  It'd all be in publicly available sources. 

Edited April 16, 2014 by Enoch

[Valsuelm]

I've been doing some reading on the details of this case. My biggest question is what standing does the BLM have to force cattle off state land? It turns out that the land Nevada sits on was ceded to the US government following the Mexican war and when Nevada became a state federal jurisdiction over state land was codified into the state constitution. So, in other words his cows are trespassing on federally controlled land after all and he should just move them or pay the damned range fees. 

 

However, if the US government needs to collect a debt it actually has standing to collect all it has to do is put a lien on the property and assets. The IRS does it every day. They don't need to send 200+ armed agents along with helicopters and armored vehicles and they certainly don't need to taser then beat the hell out of folks video recording the operation (which is legal). That little extra bit was some bonus big-government cruelty and oppression thrown in for no extra charge. 

 

Saying federal jurisdiction over the state land was codified in the Nevada Constitution isn't really true and there's only one place that even begins to touch on this, and it's a very very long stretch to say that it says this even there. Read it.

 

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Const/NvConst.html#Art14

 

The state borders are clearly defined in the document, never is federal jurisdiction clearly defined, and it's Unconstitutional anyways by U.S. Constitution standards to cede land to federal jurisdiction outside of specific boundaries spelled out clearly in the US Constitution (I linked in a previous post).

 

It's an interesting read, especially if one takes into consideration the time and circumstances surrounding Nevada's addition to the Union, and compares it to the Constitution of the various states that preceded Nevada's joining the U.S.. Congress attempted to compel Nevada to do a number of things Congress has zero right to compel a new state to do, of course this was during the U.S. Civil War, aka The War of Northern Aggression when congress was doing all sorts of things it had zero right to be doing. The spelled out threat of federal force is amusing in the context of the times, and also disconcerting if one values self determination in the same context.

[Enoch]

Area Man Passionate Defender of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

 

 

The idea that the Constitutional language providing for the establishment of the District of Columbia would limit the federal government's power to take jurisdiction over any other land was such a hilariously dumb one that I had to look up whether it had actually been litigated before.  It had!  Collins v. Yosemite Park & Curry Co. (1938):  "[Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17] is not the sole authority for the acquisition of jurisdiction. There is no question about the power of the United States to exercise jurisdiction secured by cession, though this is not provided for by clause 17."

[Wrath of Dagon]

Enoch, on 15 Apr 2014 - 8:22 PM, said:

I'm sure there's an answer to that question-- How does BLM decide how to set the volume and price point for the grazing rights it sells?  It'd make for a nice topic for an "explainer" type news column or a GAO report.  I don't know the answer, but I also don't have much time for columnists who just ask a question like that suggestively instead of doing the research.  It'd all be in publicly available sources. 

I'm sure the well-being of the ranchers is at the top of their priorities.

[Enoch]

 

Enoch, on 15 Apr 2014 - 8:22 PM, said:

I'm sure there's an answer to that question-- How does BLM decide how to set the volume and price point for the grazing rights it sells?  It'd make for a nice topic for an "explainer" type news column or a GAO report.  I don't know the answer, but I also don't have much time for columnists who just ask a question like that suggestively instead of doing the research.  It'd all be in publicly available sources. 

I'm sure the well-being of the ranchers is at the top of their priorities.

 

 

Knee-jerk cynicism is no substitute for facts that are mdst likely freely available.  Anybody who writes like that is more interested in scoring ideological pionts than in informing their audience, and not to be trusted as a serious source of information.

[213374U]

It's just people being people.  Government people are just as flawed as humans are anywhere else and are sometimes driven by venal or vindictive motivations. (But, at least as often by noble and charitable motivations, too.) 

 

This got me thinking. The reason why some risky and delicate stuff such as say, flying an airliner, has a great track record of safety is because part of the extensive training includes learning procedures that pilots must adhere to systematically, to minimize the possibility of judgment errors and improvisation. The way I understand it, the idea is to reduce the room for human error as much as possible, within reason. This is basically to account for the fact that people will be people in a situation where it's unacceptable to make preventable mistakes.

 

You work in government. How closely is regulation observed? How is failure to act according to regulation punished? I live in a country with a huge problem of corruption and mismanagement, from the local up to the highest levels of government. The problem is accumulation: the few (high profile) public officials and servants that try to do the jobs they were appointed to as per the job description simply cannot turn the tide of incompetence, corruption, and sloth caused by a majority that is concerned only with getting their paycheck. What is the ability of government to police itself, and how effective is it at that?

[Valsuelm]

 

The idea that the Constitutional language providing for the establishment of the District of Columbia would limit the federal government's power to take jurisdiction over any other land was such a hilariously dumb one that I had to look up whether it had actually been litigated before.  It had!  Collins v. Yosemite Park & Curry Co. (1938):  "[Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17] is not the sole authority for the acquisition of jurisdiction. There is no question about the power of the United States to exercise jurisdiction secured by cession, though this is not provided for by clause 17."

 

 

I mentioned before that some things have been litigated in regards to Federal jurisdiction in state lands, and indeed many if not most of those cases involve 'National Parks'.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court is known to at times make things up as well as flat out ignore various aspects of the U.S. Constitution. The above case is a good example of them doing just that and pretending part of the Constitution isn't there. They don't even justify it well (they never do). The Hughes court is probably the most egregious offender in this regard. The 'New Deal', much of which was/is unconstitutional, and which some have argued more than anything else has sent the U.S. into the downward spiral towards a fascist communist state, was rubber stamped by the corrupt Hughes court.

 

As I mentioned elsewhere on this forum, corruption is and has been rampant in the judicial branch of the Federal government for quite some time. While what the SCOTUS rules can be legally binding and set precedent, it cannot change what the Constitution says, which is there for anyone who can read and comprehend. For those who can think for themselves they'll see obvious evidence of corruption in the ruling you link (especially if they research other rulings linked within your link and the players in the court for those rulings), for those who suffer from reading comprehension fail or prefer to let the SCOTUS do their thinking for them they'll imagine that A1 S6 C17 of the U.S. Constitution doesn't matter at all ever, because that's what the SCOTUS pretended with this ruling.

 

Now, in real terms, what the SCOTUS says does of course matter. However, despite their corruption, they have been known to change their minds (in particular when different people are on the bench), especially when great public pressure is on them (ie: Infamously in Brown vs. The Board of Education). Regardless of whether they change their minds or not the Constitution says what it says and there never has been a definitive ruling on A1 S6 C17, as no state has directly challenged the Federal government on those grounds over all the land it claims within state borders.

 

Note that no state legislation or Constitution can give the Federal Government more power than they already have, legally. Has this been done in practice? Yes, especially since the 17th Amendment was passed. And it's one of the reasons the U.S. is in the )*#$@ situation it's in these days.

 

Realistically I definitely do not see the modern Supreme Court siding with the states on this, even though to not do so is akin to saying 2 + 2 = 2. (Truly, some rulings, if read, are comical in their nonsensicality, even if they couldn't be more serious or tragic.) Every current member on it is generally largely what amounts to a federalist, a couple of them are arguably the most corrupt members the court has ever had on it, and one arguably it's most incompetent. Nevertheless the States have the right to challenge and there's a growing movement for this to occur (as I mentioned already, Utah is in the process of doing so). It's a fight more than worth fighting, and it's a fight that's part of a greater goal: to reign in the Federal government in a peaceful manner.

 

All that said, I very likely won't bother to respond to you again unless you can exhibit some more intelligent thought. Some of what you say is relatively well articulated and adds to the discussion, but it's interspersed with nonsensical crap a federalist politician or Bloomberg might say about what you think the 2nd amendment is and "The idea that the Constitutional language providing for the establishment of the District of Columbia would limit the federal government's power to take jurisdiction over any other land was such a hilariously dumb one that I had to look up whether it had actually been litigated before." ........ 'Hilariously dumb?'...  only if you're into an expansive federal government, and/or don't give a hoot about states rights/sovereignty which most of those who crafted the Constitution were not and did, same for the large majority of the original 13 states. You come off as a Tory, not as anyone who has a good understanding or appreciation of what made the U.S. what it was, still is to an extent (at least in terms relative to the rest of the world), and could be again: The land of the free.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Valsuelm

[Valsuelm]

A decent video that gives a pretty good synopsis of why what went down at the Bundy Ranch went down.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFiosLqjoQQ

 

In general, StormCloudsGathering videos are usually right on.

[Enoch]

 

It's just people being people.  Government people are just as flawed as humans are anywhere else and are sometimes driven by venal or vindictive motivations. (But, at least as often by noble and charitable motivations, too.) 

 

This got me thinking. The reason why some risky and delicate stuff such as say, flying an airliner, has a great track record of safety is because part of the extensive training includes learning procedures that pilots must adhere to systematically, to minimize the possibility of judgment errors and improvisation. The way I understand it, the idea is to reduce the room for human error as much as possible, within reason. This is basically to account for the fact that people will be people in a situation where it's unacceptable to make preventable mistakes.

 

You work in government. How closely is regulation observed? How is failure to act according to regulation punished? I live in a country with a huge problem of corruption and mismanagement, from the local up to the highest levels of government. The problem is accumulation: the few (high profile) public officials and servants that try to do the jobs they were appointed to as per the job description simply cannot turn the tide of incompetence, corruption, and sloth caused by a majority that is concerned only with getting their paycheck. What is the ability of government to police itself, and how effective is it at that?

 

 

Well, it's a big government (and a big country), so things of course vary a lot. 

 

If you're talking about preventing corruption and mismanagement, preventative controls are more important than punishment after the fact.  Federal entities are required to have a system of internal control over their operations, and are subject to significant external controls.  Internal controls are the internal (duh) policies, procedures, etc., that an entity puts in place to ensure that it is doing all the things that it is supposed to in a reasonably efficient and effective manner, and that upper management is kept informed of relevant performance information.  They include common-sense items like having written policies and following them, requiring supervisory review of decisions, creating and maintaining appropriate and accurate records, etc.  (See here.)  

 

Other controls include designated independent auditing entities (Inspectors General for each agency, and the Government Accountability Office for everybody), provisions allowing for public access to records and a free press that can feel safe in reporting on fraud/mismanagement/etc., a procurement system that requires competition and allows for disappointed bidders to have their complaints heard when they don't feel they were treated fairly, provisions protecting "whistleblowers" from retaliation, a legislature and judiciary that are structurally independent of the executive branch, and legal requirements for entity financial reporting (and audits thereof). 

 

No one of these things functions perfectly, but that's a large part of why there are so many somewhat-parallel accountability requirements.  The end result has its flaws, but in my experience, the level of corruption and mismanagement gets higher as you get to lower levels of the government (i.e., state and municipalities, rather than the Feds) which are subject to generally less oversight, particularly from the press.  When the feds screw up, it's all over the press and something is done about it.  Public interest and oversight is measurably less when you're talking about state legislatures or county councils.  The federal programs that regularly report the highest levels of waste and abuse tend to be the ones whose day-to-day administration is carried out by state officials (e.g., Medicaid).

 

On the other hand, all this planning, review, and auditing is one of the main reasons why stuff happens so slowly in government and tends to cost more than one would expect. 

 

 

 

As for Valsuelm, suffice it to say that his/her views are well outside the mainstream of thought among those who have spent their lifetimes studying and applying American history and legal/constitutional doctrine.  And the fact that he/she appears to dismiss anyone with a different view as either incompetent or corrupt is a huge red flag for thinking that never leaves its particular ideological echo-chamber.

 

I should probably apologize for the "hilariously dumb" bit, though.  That was an overstatement-- it gave me a chuckle for its complete impracticability, but I can see how a clever attorney might throw that type of argument in when he/she is clutching at straws.  It's an amusing hail-mary that has been shot down when it has been attempted (correctly, IMO).

Edited April 16, 2014 by Enoch

[Walsingham]

What I find particularly frustrating is that half-baked polarisation means alienation from exactly the normal measures of monitoring and causing a fuss that Enoch and I are talking about.

 

Functional government is dull and time consuming. Far more fun to run around pretending we're all just about to get stomped.

[Guard Dog]

What I find particularly frustrating is that half-baked polarisation means alienation from exactly the normal measures of monitoring and causing a fuss that Enoch and I are talking about.

 

Functional government is dull and time consuming. Far more fun to run around pretending we're all just about to get stomped.

Dull and time consuming would have been simply placing a lien on the ranch for the cost of the grazing fees. Instead this government chose armed agents, helicopters, armored vehicles, beatings, taserings, threats, arrests, and other fun dictatorship type stuff. They went in there like this to send a message and instead received one.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Enoch, on 16 Apr 2014 - 04:04 AM, said:

 

Wrath of Dagon, on 15 Apr 2014 - 10:01 PM, said:

 

Enoch, on 15 Apr 2014 - 8:22 PM, said:Enoch, on 15 Apr 2014 - 8:22 PM, said:

I'm sure there's an answer to that question-- How does BLM decide how to set the volume and price point for the grazing rights it sells?  It'd make for a nice topic for an "explainer" type news column or a GAO report.  I don't know the answer, but I also don't have much time for columnists who just ask a question like that suggestively instead of doing the research.  It'd all be in publicly available sources. 

I'm sure the well-being of the ranchers is at the top of their priorities.

 

 

Knee-jerk cynicism is no substitute for facts that are mdst likely freely available.  Anybody who writes like that is more interested in scoring ideological pionts than in informing their audience, and not to be trusted as a serious source of information.

 

Their putative reason has been stated several times already, including in that article, it was to protect the supposedly endangered turtle, because everyone knows turtles are the favorite food for cows. Of course you're right, the true motives are very easy to determine when dealing with the most transparent administration in history.

[Orogun01]

What I find particularly frustrating is that half-baked polarisation means alienation from exactly the normal measures of monitoring and causing a fuss that Enoch and I are talking about.

 

Functional government is dull and time consuming. Far more fun to run around pretending we're all just about to get stomped.

If what the video Valsuem posted checks out this isn't so much the government as corrupt officials utilizing the government to make their fortunes (although to be honest this isn't something new in the US) It seems that the levels of corruption and their blatant disregard for public opinion are beginning to anger people. Whether their fears jump to the irrational; and fear always does, its undeniable that the US government has been growing corrupt for a long time now and the public seem to be beginning to understand what this means.

[Enoch]

 

What I find particularly frustrating is that half-baked polarisation means alienation from exactly the normal measures of monitoring and causing a fuss that Enoch and I are talking about.

 

Functional government is dull and time consuming. Far more fun to run around pretending we're all just about to get stomped.

If what the video Valsuem posted checks out this isn't so much the government as corrupt officials utilizing the government to make their fortunes (although to be honest this isn't something new in the US) It seems that the levels of corruption and their blatant disregard for public opinion are beginning to anger people. Whether their fears jump to the irrational; and fear always does, its undeniable that the US government has been growing corrupt for a long time now and the public seem to be beginning to understand what this means.

 

The fact that it was posted by an account called "StormCloudsGathering" should give you some clue as to their biases.  As Wals put it, they're among those running around pretending that we're all just about to get stomped. 

Edited April 17, 2014 by Enoch

[Orogun01]

What will happen though is that every bit of freedom that erodes in the name of something isn't going to be given back. Terrorism may become a thing of the past but I doubt the NSA is going to stop spying on Americans. Eventually it will reach a point where no one in the world could argue that America isn't a plutocracy.