Militia seizes Federal Building: Campaign Opportunity

Republican Opportunity:  Get on board with a great new issue.  Militia seizes federal facility!

Militia seizes federal agency

There is an opportunity for one or more of the Republican candidates to jump into a issue that might help them win the Nevada primary, the seizure of a federal facility in Oregon.

It could go wrong.   It could look like a fight with law enforcement (bad--very bad.)   Or it could look like a defense of real people and common sense against federal government bureaucracy and tyranny (good--very good.)

A group of ranchers and rural militia supporters have seized a seasonally vacant federal building in a remote and sparsely populated part of Oregon--the part of Oregon that is full of sagebrush, thin grass, and no people.   (For readers from out of the area, do not picture vineyards and rainy forests because that is the western third of the state, where 85% of the people live.   This is east of there.  Picture empty vistas in Western movies, the flat dusty scenes, sagebrush and scrawny cattle.)

The video below articulates the position of the militia and rancher groups.    The two spokespersons make reference to "the people" multiple times.   "The people" here are the foundational center of our democracy, the people referenced in the first words of the Constitution, "We the people of the United States of America."  The government did not form itself, nor was it handed to us out of dim pre-history or some sacred text that predates us.  "We the people" in the Constitution pre-date and precede the government we formed and we are the ultimate sovereign.   So said the founders of our government.

The spokesmen of this federal seizure make a profoundly revolutionary statement, the one made by Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence;  "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed" and that when any form of government loses that consent "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

The video doesn't look like Mt. Rushmore or what people see and feel at the Jefferson Memorial.  It doesn't look majestic.  It shows scruffy looking people shot by a shaky camera in poor light.   This obscures the fact that they are making a profoundly political statement: that the United States Government no longer reflects the will of the people--or at least the people he knows in rural Harney County--as it relates to the administration of local land, and they are asserting the revolutionary principles asserted by the signers of the Declaration.

The seizure is led by Ammon Bundy, the son of Clive Bundy, who had led a protest against the Bureau of Land Management two years ago.   At the time Fox News had portrayed Clive Bundy as a hero, even as their cameras showed armed men with rifles and sniper scopes aiming at uniformed law enforcement officers.  They dropped the story when Clive Bundy  was found to have said anti-black racist statements.  It was the open racism, not armed insurrection, that caused politicians and Fox to drop support.  Clive went from hero to pariah in one day.  

(You can lead an armed insurrection against the government, but you cannot say that "the Negro" was better off as slaves.)

But these militia people are the next generation, much more media savvy.   They have already positioned themselves as defenders, not aggressors.  They are armed but say they are peaceful.  The battle lines are clear.  They assert that represent the legitimate voice of "the people", while the lawful agents of the lawfully elected representatives of the people of the United States (i.e. our government, with its checks and balances, and its lawfully created and lawfully accountable executive departments--the BLM and EPA--are illegitimate.

This is less dramatic than firing guns on federal Fort Sumpter in Charleston harbor, but it is a small version of the same thing--using arms against the United States.  They had arms but didn't need to fire a shot.  They now have military advantage of defending a position plus the moral advantage of requiring the lawful authority to use force first, which on TV will look like aggression.

Very clever, very media savvy.

What are the merits of the case???   I know a little something about this, having worked for a Congressman and having been a County Commissioner.   The federal government controls a great deal of land in Oregon, and being publicly owned by all the citizens of the US, not by some local landowner, it is managed toward that consensus of law and regulation that reflects the desires of all the American people.  This means folks who live thousands of miles away in Florida and Chicago and who don't give a second thought to Oregon's forest or ranch land, other than to than to sort of like "open space", at least when it is far away, have as much power to make the rules as do the people who actually know something and care a lot.  People who live close to this land and would like to use it to serve their own productive interests, manage the forests in western Oregon and run cattle on it to eat the grass in eastern Oregon, frequently think the federal rules are way too restrictive or that they flout common sense.  This is a classic problem worldwide of control by an absentee owner, and the conflict between the interests of that landowner (here the US government, representing all Americans) and the interests of the local tenant farmer or sharecropper or hunter-poacher seeing a resource (i.e. game) on the landlord's property.

I personally generally side with the landowner, which makes sense because I own some rural land, and generally side against rural people with guns seizing property.  But I understand that neighbors need to get along and cooperate, and the federal government is required to act according to laws not according to the "common sense" that would take place among rural neighbors.  So the militia people have grievances, seeing things from their interests and point of view, while the BLM managers of the federal land are required to be lawful, not cooperative.   Which is why problems erupt, and persist.

So Amman Bundy took action.

Which candidate will jump in on this???   It is risky and maybe no one will.   No Republican wants to be on the side that might have someone kill a cop, at least not a local cop.  Yet the enemy is "the federal government" and especially "federal bureaucrats"--the BLM and EPA, two agencies that candidates feel comfortable condemning along with the IRS.  

The militia people are voicing ideas parallel to the Tea Party ideas, that the government is out of touch with "the people".   Remember, there will be a key early primary in Nevada.   Rural Nevada people are overwhelmingly Republican, I am sure, and they widely share the view that the federal government owns way too much land and the federal government manages it for interests other than local ranchers.   

There will be a constituency in full support of this militia group.    Nevada voters will be watching to see who comes to their public defense.    At this very moment as I write no one has come forth in support.   Will someone???

Here is a 7 minute video, so you can hear them for yourselves.   You may not like what you hear, but Thomas Jefferson sounded like this, predicted this, and supported this.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/03/militia_occupies_malheur_national_wildlife_refuge_in_oregon.html