It seems like the best way to celebrate the one year anniversary of the Bundy Ranch Seige: a big Teabag protest where a tax-dodging, bigoted Mormon garnered the sympathy of fellow ammosexual anarchists. In Carson City, tomorrow, the Nevada Assembly will vote on a few controversial bills, one being AB408.
Outspoken Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy told the Desert Valley Times Wednesday he plans to be at the front of a contingent of Nevadans planning to rally at the Capitol in Carson City Tuesday to show support for AB408, a bill that "reclaims" rights to Nevada land from the federal government.
The Legislative Counsel says section 3 of AB408, which was sponsored by GOP Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, "prohibits the federal government from owning or administrating any land or resources in the state that it has not acquired with the consent of the Nevada Legislature and upon which it has not erected forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards or other needful buildings."
Bundy said one of his sons, Ammon Bundy, has been in Carson City working in concert with bill sponsors to design and amend AB408, although Ammon's a resident of Arizona, not Nevada.
"He is a Bundy, though," Cliven laughed during an interview Wednesday.
"We've got 15 legislative co-sponsors in the Assembly," Ammon said via phone from Carson City. "Eight of the 12 members of the Natural Resources Committee are also co-sponsors of the bill."
The Bundys have reserved 80 rooms in the Holiday Inn in Carson City for people who want to join their rally at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. The Legislative committee has scheduled a hearing at 1 p.m.
In addition to these pro-Second Amendment protesters, there will be a number of teachers also at the legislative session, some of them new and unaware of the danger these trigger happy, anti-government (except when they need it) "patriots" present. AB408 is the Nevada version of a Congressional proposal. The original bill, the brainchild of ALEC, was proposed by Congressman Crescent Hardy and a Republican from Ohio. It seeks to usurp federal land for private ownership AT THE TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE.
From Let's Talk Nevada:
On March 18, 2015, Congressman Cresent Hardy, R-NEV-04. supported by Congressman Steve Stivers, R-OH-15, introduced HR 2014 into the House. It then went to the Committee on Natural Resources and the Committee on Agriculture.
The Hardy and Stivers legislation is intended to use federal land acquisition policies to drive a balanced budget and encourages land transfer to the states eventually for private profit gains at public expense.
The agencies targeted include the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the Bureau of Land Management and the Departments of Agriculture (DOA). They omit the Department of Defense, one of the largest land acquiring agencies, from the legislation.
Hardy told the House that the legislation allowed The Department of Interior (DOI) and the DOA to acquire land for species’ conservation, recreation and the preservation of culture. The legislation, he said, prohibited agencies from increasing their “net” holdings of “unnecessary lands” unless the Federal Budget was balanced in the acquisition year. The two Congressmen also want “unnecessary land” transferred to the states. Hardy told the House that the states “are best able to manage” those lands.
HR 2014 is a dangerous, unworkable, and unconstitutional piece of legislation. Hardy and Stivers are simply aligning themselves with Tea Party and Koch Brother efforts to force the federal government to turn millions of acres of public lands over to the states for eventual exploitation for private profits.
Hardy, in particular, tied the announcement of HR 2014 to coincide with Tuesday, March 31, 2015 efforts by his friend and neighbor Cliven Bundy and Nevada State Republican Assemblywoman Michele Fiore to swarm the Nevada Legislature in support of a Nevada legislative bill (AB 408). That bill seeks to transfer public land to the state for eventual exploitation by the private investors.
Privatizing the BLM is perhaps as bad an idea as Michele Fiore's bill to allow concealed carry on school campuses and childcare facilities. Let's hope things don't lead to another tragedy that gets innocent people killed.
