While black people get killed by the police for the slightest challenge to authority, rancher Cliven Bundy is celebrating his one year anniversary of defying the government and grazing his cattle on federal land without paying fees and threatening to shoot any law enforcement officers that might come to arrest him.
I wonder why he is allowed to get away with throwing a big party for openly defying the authorities while so many people are gunned down by the police for little or no reason. It is a real puzzler, no?
There is no white answer to that question.
busterggi, Where do you want me to put this nice shiny new Internet?
To be fair, I think the responsible organisations are probably more afraid of another Ruby Ridge or Waco public relations disaster than anything else.
But the solution should be simple. Just block entry or exit to the property. No one and nothing goes in, anyone coming out gets arrested. A little patience, a little forethought, no one dies, no one gets hurt, and sooner or late the whole situation falls into place.
Cliven Bundy, for all his mindless stupidity, has been pretty smart as to how, and particularly where, he does his thing. His song and dance would be far less tolerated, old white guy or not, if he was in a more populated area. He has also played his cards right politically. Twenty years of claims that jack-booted thugs under a liberal president are coming for their guns has pretty well immunized rural teapartiers from direct action.
I think the government agencies leads have determined that the less violent methods are politically prudent and adequate for public safety. Cliven will eventually die and his estate will be charged for range fees, plus interest. Hard to say if it will ever be paid. As pointed out in other places OSHA fines, and other payments owed to the federal government in the millions routinely go unpaid.
In part this is a consequence of the left and Democrats getting our butts kicked politically over the last forty years. If Democrats ran things, and liberals had more power, and unions were in charge, and the supreme court wasn’t run by paleocons, and the media wasn’t a right-wing beast wrapped in liberal sheepskin, and … You might be able to make an effective case for a lack of fairness between how fines are handled comparing urban brown people to rural whites. As it is now, you can shake your tiny and ineffectual rhetorical fists but nothing is going to change.
It is not federal land. Anyone who says it is, is perpetuating the problem. Mr. Bundy stood up to federal authorities who were illegally intimidating free American citizens. He had the law and hundreds of American citizens behind him. If any citizen anywhere is getting killed like you say it does not matter what color is his skin, it is wrong and another indication of the bloated authority stance taken by our hired and elected public servants. There is no reason to tear down what Mr. Bundy did just because another citizens was not so lucky.
Except that the success of that plan is entirely dependent on a group of self-righteous gun fanatics deciding to sit back and chill, rather than trying to shoot their way through the barricade.
Strafe the cattle.
(I’m trying to figure out whether or not I’m being snarky.)
Well, I’ll certainly take your word for it, Mr. Random Person on the Internet.
How is that statement being fair? To whom are you now being fair when you point out that “responsible organizations” don’t consider killing black people to be a public relations disaster?
So this is the first time you heard about it, farmrdave? Been holed up at the Bundy ranch for some time now, have you?
Reply to sigurd jorsalfar,
I hear about people being killed occasionally. I think armed police kill many people that should live long lives instead. I do not know first hand of any racial problems that can be compared to the flagrant over reach of BLM and Harry Reids hired guns at Bunkerville Nevada. I am happy that it did not end like Ruby Ridge Idaho or Waco Texas. Near my home a old man called the police due to a prowler outside of his house. Then he picked up a 30/30 and went out to see what was going on. The police came, he walked toward the police car still carrying the rifle. Not menacing anyone or anything in his carrying of the rifle. The police told him to stop and drop the rifle. He did not have his hearing aids in. The police shot and killed him. No charges were brought against the police. I think there is a growing problem in our country and it is not one of race. It is of government bloat. Government employees above the law. Trying to make any of this into a problem of race does not help solve anything only throws fuel into the fire.