Just the Facts and Nothing But

Posted on Huffington Post by
Larry K. (elfish)



Cliven Bundy Facts:

I. He and his Family has never owned the Disputed Land.

1. Bundy Claims his family has owned the land since 1877, before the BLM existed and before grazing permits were required.

2. However, Clark County property records show Bundy bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 and included no rights to BLM land.

The Bundys didn't start grazing on the land until 1954.

3. The land is part of the Las Vegas Grazing District, established under the Taylor Grazing Act on Nov. 3, 1936. This was 10 years before the Bundys owned the land.

4. The BLM was founded in 1946, two years before they bought the land.

II. $16 Million Profits From Federal Land.

Why can't Bundy use his 160 acres for grazing?

Answer: money. Bundy is using Federal Land to graze cattle because he wants more cows and 160 acres isn't big enough to handle all the cows he wants. With Federal Land, he can have more cows and make more money.

Nevada land only supports one cow per 20 acres so he can only graze about 8 cows on his land. But using Federal Land, Bundy is grazing an extra 3,387 head of cattle. (We know this because Bundy owns $1.1 million in grazing fees over a 20 year period. So $1.35 per cow per month works out to 3,395 cows.)

Net Profit per cow is running about $250. That means Bundy is making an extra $848,765 a year by using Federal Land. Even if he paid the government grazing fee, his profit would still be $818,765.

Over the 20 years of the dispute, Bundy has made $16 million.

III. Ranch Welfare. Bundy has received $8.2 million in services from the Tax Payers.

1. Bundy Refuses to pay $1.35 per head, per month to graze his cattle on Federal Land saying the land belongs to the states.

2. If the land in question were state land, Nevada charges $15.50, so instead of owing $1.1 million to the Federal Government, Bundy would owe Nevada $12.6 million. Private land runs $14.50 and $20 per head, so private costs would be between $11.8 and $16.3 million.

3. Even if it was State Land, Bundy couldn't graze it, because the Nevada withdrew all grazing rights in the area in 1993.

4. The government spends millions maintaining the land and keeping it suitable for grazing. The Government routinely kills predators, removes trees to create more grazing land, drills wells, builds dams, controls weeds spread by cattle, fights fires and builds roads to access the land. The Government Accounting Office, it cost the government $8.10 per head to maintain the land. That means that, Bundy is receiving $8.2 million in services courtesy of the Tax Payers.

Larry please don't sue me. People need to see this.

The Root Cause

There is something that the Fool has been wondering about for quite some time. The fool wonders about a lot of shit as you're finding out and so do... I suspect a lot of Black people.

For instance. The love hate relationship between black and whites which takes center stage over the racial relationships between other races. What is it about the black/white relationship that elicits such strong emotions from both groups of people? Why is this not discussed in the black blogosphere?

You cannot get the blood flowing when discussing Mexicans, Hebrews, Orientals, American Indians, Jamaicans, and any other race, except maybe Muslims. And then they are given the benefit of a doubt. Yeah, I know about the genocide against the Native Americans and the Chinese got the shit kicked out of them for awhile there too.

But the fact is, all of these groups of people retreated into their own conclaves and communities and for the most part get along pretty well together.

I could extrapolate on any number of factors as to why there is such animosity between Whites and Blacks. Lord knows People waaay more smarter than the Fool already have. So saying that. I would like to throw out the following. Mind you, this comes completely out of left field and some of you might call this insanity, but the Fool has never claimed to be sane, hence the name Fool.

Stephen King wrote a novel, The Talisman (written with Peter Straub). In it was a creature called a billybopper ( I think I have right book here). The billybopper was semi intelligent and could speak rudimentary English and could understand what it was being told. It also had a good disposition and was loyal. (Hence, the terms monkeys and animals when Black people get "uppity" or refuse to play nice.)

Kinda like a slave. Black people were the perfect "billyboppers". After going insane on the Middle Passage, black people were literally dumped into a strange and alien environment where they were systematically deprived of their language, their culture, their religion and their very sense of self. To survive they submitted. They instilled in their children what was needed to survive, which was passed down from generation to generation, even into the twenty first century ( Driving While Black comes to mind).

To survive, one must submit. The First Law of being a slave. When the master comes for your wife. Submit. With submitting odds are pretty good you, as a man would get your wife back, but you had to give up your manhood in the process and your wife would never look at you the same way again. Because by submitting, you cannot protect her.

And one day the time would come when they would come for your family. Submit.
The odds on this little slice of slave life are pretty good also. Life being what it is, you just might run into them again or better still if the odds are real good, you might get bought but their master, all things being equal. All you have to do is submit. Things will get better. But like everything on this cosmic plane, submitting has consequences that reverberate down through the ages.

I tried to, in my foolish way, go into the animosity between Black women and Black men. Yes, I know I went all the way to New York and back through St. Louis to get to Arizona, which is not the place I wanted to start from anyway.

But you see, everything about us and between us and White people has its root in slavery. Its a tree that both sides keep watering and applying Miracle grow to to keep it fresh and green. Every so often some body will sneak in and apply a healthy dose of root killer. To no avail.

Black people need to stop bringing their pails to the party to water this tree. Human beings don't engage in this type of behavior. White people need to put down their pails. Again. Human beings do not engage in this type of behavior
Of course it doesn't help when other races start throwing water balloons at the tree as a just in case.

The Fool put down his pail long ago when he decided to try out this Human Being thing. What about you?