Irony: Rancher rebels are product of ‘free stuff’ granted by feds to settlers

The rag-tag group of gunman who initiated the standoff in Oregon claim they represent a patriotic militia but their cause is so contrary to American history that they should be more accurately described as delusional rabble-rousers whose macho fantasies are just one step above a conspiracy theory.
These Nevada-based rancher rebels assert that they are protesting what they believe is illegal federal ownership of Harney County, Ore., land that should belong to the local ranching community.

What these “constitutionalists” fail to understand – to an embarrassing degree – is that federal management of U.S. land dates back to the colonial days, to the Founding Fathers, and is enshrined in the Constitution. Public lands are property that is collectively owned by the American people.

Worse yet, these militants seem to forget that the massive open areas in the American West were awarded – free of charge – to homesteaders (in many cases these rebels’ ancestors) by the federal government. Those who settled the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West between 1862 and 1934 received 160 acres each – in time, 640 acres for ranchers.

This land is your land …

Today, residential, agricultural and ranching property west of the Mississippi River that resulted from homesteading represents about 10 percent of all U.S. land. If Alaska is separated, the homestead properties on the continental U.S. probably exceed 20 percent of the total.
As for the grazing fees imposed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that these insurgents cite as an example of the “tyranny of the federal government,” well, they amount to less than $2 per month per cow or sheep that inhabit federal territory.  

Ammon Bundy

This right-wing group of approximately 150 is inspired by the infamous Cliven Bundy who engaged in a Nevada standoff with federal officers last year over grazing rights, and is led by his son, Ammon Bundy, and two younger Bundy brothers. They are certainly within their rights to protest the additional sentence handed down by a judge for Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, who were convicted of committing arson in 2012 on a federal grazing area adjacent to their property. But demonstrating against the resentencing at the county courthouse would certainly have made more sense rather than seizing control of a federal building at a remote bird sanctuary.

In rather amazing fashion, the Bundy’s disciples believe that, despite the free-land giveaways of the past, ranchers in the 21st Century should have the right to graze their cattle on acreage owned by all American taxpayers, free of charge.
According to fivethirtyeight.com, in 2012 the BLM’s fees for grazing were 93 percent cheaper than the average market rate in 16 Western states.  The bureau’s fees, despite the attempt to create a fair formula, remain much lower than the price charged by private-sector land owners. In essence, American taxpayers are subsidizing the federal grazing prices.  

"Those who settled the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West between 1862 and 1934 received 160 acres each – in time, 640 acres for ranchers."

 The Oregon “militia” has engaged in the latest of the short-lived “Sagebrush Rebellions” waged in the West for more than a century. Except, this group sits armed with military-style weapons and some of them seem to be itching for a fight (essentially a pitched battle) with federal authorities and the police. At the same time, they lack support from the Hammond family, the local sheriff and the community.

 

This land is my land …

Bruce Babbitt, former Secretary of the Interior who oversaw the BLM in the 1990s and battled with Oregon mavericks for years, said the romantic version of American individualism perpetuated by this clan actually amounts to a perverted view of history devised for their own means.
“Recall that it is we, the American people, who own the public lands that make up so much of our Western states. These great open spaces are the birthright of all of us, not just the residents of Nevada or Arizona or other Western states,” Babbitt wrote in a column for the publication High Country News.

Babbitt

“The question of ownership of the public lands was settled by the Founding Fathers, in favor of you and me, by the Maryland compromise reached in 1781, and carried forward in the property clause of Article IV in the United States Constitution.”

The property clause declares that Congress has the power to manage/regulate and dispose of federal lands, a job that largely became the BLM’s domain in 1946 as two prior federal agencies were consolidated.

So, the history of our vast federal lands is one that is far different than the simple-minded claims spouted by the posers in Oregon:

* The BLM's roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Other U.S. acquisitions -- especially the Louisiana Purchase -- from France, Spain and other countries opened up a massive expanse of new U.S. land that loomed larger than the geographic footprint of most countries across the globe. Federal laws provided for the surveying and settlement of these lands.

* In May 1862, the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Homestead Act, passed by a Republican Congress.  The Homestead Act was one of the most far-reaching and important pieces of legislation ever enacted in the United States as it allowed 160-acre allotments to each homesteader and, as amended in 1916, 640 acres for ranching, according to Jonathan Earle, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.
The free parcels of undeveloped land were not what 21^st Century conservatives would call a government “handout,” as a settler was required to file an application, improve the land by building fences and a structure and, after five years of residency and toil, file for a permanent deed of title. It’s also important to note that homesteads were made available to women, immigrants who intended to become citizens, and ex-slaves.

* In addition to the Constitution’s property clause, five federal laws, enacted under Republican and Democratic presidents, provided authority to the BLM to manage grazing and other commercial activities on federal lands. Grazing fees are calculated by using a formula originally set by Congress four decades ago and modified and extended by an Executive Order issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.


Cliven Bundy

According to a BLM fact sheet, the fee rises, falls or stays the same each year based on market conditions, with livestock operators paying more when conditions are better and less when conditions have declined.  Thus, the grazing fee is not a cost-recovery fee, but a market-driven cost. As a result, the government’s price is generally lower than the costs associated with private land offered for grazing.

* During the era of homesteading, the government granted 1.6 million pieces of property for private residences, farms and ranches, distributing 270 million acres (420,000 square miles) of federal land. Much of the property now overseen by the BLM consists of the "land nobody wanted" because homesteaders shunned the rugged conditions. Eventually, these public “rangelands” were often overgrazed because of policies designed to promote the settlement of the Mountain West and a lack of understanding of these arid ecosystems. In response to requests from Western ranchers, Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 that established a managed permitting process.

* The BLM currently administers about 245 million acres of public lands and manages livestock grazing on 155 million acres. The agency oversees early 18,000 permits and leases held by ranchers who graze their livestock, mostly cattle and sheep, at least part of the year on more than 21,000 property allotments. Whatever the current rancher rebellion consists of, it is certainly does not represent a majority of those who lease federal lands.

* Pristine public lands are managed by the sometimes-demonized BLM, but also by the National Park Service,  Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and, of course, the Department of Defense which, in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers, owns many thousands of square miles of property that is off-limits to the public.

The Owyhee Canyons, located near the rebel standoff
in rural Oregon, still lack federal protections
 against developers and oil drilling. 

Yet, it is the BLM which mostly handles balancing the space-sharing interests of oil and gas exploration, mining companies, grazing operations, hunters, environmentalists, campers and conservationists.

* The BLM is labeled a tyrannical arm of the government by the rebel ranchers in Oregon but the agency’s annual budget is $1.1 billion, little more than 1/100^th of the overall federal budget, thanks in part to 30,000 volunteers who work with the bureau. While Bureau of Land Management criticism has grown in volume over the past 20 years, for many years prior the agency was derided as a shill for business interests and derisively labeled the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining.”

* Finally, it’s important to recognize that wide swaths of land in the West, including the area where the armed rebels have taken a stand in southeastern Oregon, are so rural that the average resident living east of the Mississippi cannot fathom the barren atmosphere that prevails. These are not areas encroached by suburban sprawl or where farmers and ranchers are pressured by developers. Michiganders perhaps can relate best in this way: Harney County, where the standoff is taking place, is a massive county consisting of 10,226 square miles. That’s more than 10 times the size of Oakland County in southeast Michigan, which has a population of more than 1.2 million people. Harney County’s population? Some 7,146 people, less than one person per square mile.