Sooo… What Does Everyone Think Of This Oregon Ranch Business?

I admit, I didn’t really have a clue what all this was until last night. I’d seen Facebook posts here and there mentioning it, but I was still in semi-vacation mode (like most of the world does around Christmas and New Years). But my soon-to-be brother-in-law brought it up at Sunday dinner last night and I was kind of the go-to person for an opinion on the topic. My response?

There’s so much stupid in the world that I can’t keep track of it all – even as plugged-in to news and current events as I am..

But I did go home and start catching up on the topic. Basically, Cliven Bundy’s relatives are in Oregon protesting the federal Bureau of Land Management (commonly referred to as the BLM – and that’s waaaaay before #BlackLivesMatter became a thing) trying to push another ranch family off their own land so the BLM could buy it. The ranchers say the BLM deliberately re-routed water from the land so they wouldn’t be able to use it for grazing. Then there were the accusations of the ranchers setting fire to the area and it just escalated from there, to the point where a group of militiamen have taken over the offices of a nearby wildlife refuge (sort of like #BlackLivesMatter occupying a university president’s office because someone looked at them funny – but that’s okay, because that plays into the accepted liberal narrative that America is racist and bigoted). That’s the short version of the story, anyway (not getting into the nuttiness of the Bundy situation from back in 2014 – yeah, that was just crazy, plain and simple.)

Why ranchers would purposely set fire on valuable grazing land is beyond me. Controlled burns to clear dead underbrush so new growth can flourish is one thing. Deliberate arson? Yeah… nope. But I digress.

The Federalist has this interesting conversation between two conservatives – Tom Nichols and Kurt Schlichter – talking out their differing opinions on this situation. Tom is saying conservatives ought not to condone the actions of armed vigilantes, but rather we should find another solution to this mess (and it certainly is a mess). Kurt says that the government overreach has official gone off the rails and what other recourse do these people have? Beside – #BlackLivesMatter interfering with airport travel and Christmas shoppers is okay, but ranchers taking over an out-of-the-way wildlife refuge office is akin to terrorism?

Here’s where I’m coming from on this – I grew up on a cattle ranch. Our family deals with the BLM on a near-daily basis. At worse, they’re your typical pain-in-the-backside government regulatory organization. They issue grazing permits to ranchers and tell us that we can graze our cattle on BLM land for a certain amount of time and if there’s even one cow that wanders onto BLM property when it’s not supposed to be there, we’re in trouble. But we (like most ranchers who are just trying to follow the rules and make a living as best we can) have done this for so long that we know the drill. And we deal with it. In recent years, the closest my folks and their neighbors have gotten to having Actual Conflict with the BLM was a couple of years ago when the military wanted to take over parts of BLM land, which would have negatively affects my family’s BLM grazing permits that we’ve had for YEARS. This whole mess was compliments of Sen. Orrin Hatch, who should have retired back when woolly mammoths roamed the earth. If you’re interested, you can read about that situation here.

The good news is that the affected ranchers got in touch with county leadership as well as Sen. Mike Lee’s office and they all said “Wait just one second – you can’t just come in and take this land without considering who else uses it.” There were discussions and some back-and-forth, but eventually they came to a compromise and the BLM made sure that the existing grazing permits would be honored as written, while the military got the test range they needed. Of course, there’s still a need to keep the federal government honest about these things and make sure that what they say is going to happen, actually happens. But my point is that this is nothing new. Arguments over land between the federal government and ranchers has been going on since the first homesteaders established themselves out here in the west.

Back to the Oregon situation – there’s stupidity on both sides. The government shouldn’t be forcing these ranchers to sell their property (the government owns plenty of land out here as it is). The ranchers probably should have found another way to resolve this. Then again – they are in liberal-progressive Oregon. I’m not sure how much their local leaders are willing to help them (my folks and their neighbors were super-lucky to have a good conservative guy like Senator Lee to come in and bat for them). I honestly don’t know where the solution to this is – other than to stem the flow of big government over stepping its bounds (and with Obama threatening to use his pen and phone every chance he gets this year, that’s sadly not going to be the case anytime soon).

My thoughts are that this is symptomatic of a bigger problem that’s only going to get worse before Obama’s final year in office is over. Liberal policy is running unchecked all over the place and anyone who tries to reign it in is seen as some anti-government redneck hayseed idiot who’s no better than a terrorist. Not much room for discussion there.

What do you all think?