Burns, Oregon standoff in the SacBee Sunday. Remember the Wise Use Movement?

The Bee actually did a article that I thought was fair!  Amazing!  The reporters even discussed the State of Jefferson, the Sagebrush Rebellion, and interviewed both sides.  They had a sympathetic rancher and his daughter, they even had a rancher not so happy, all from Modoc County.

I really have not been following this story so I am relying on this article as the primary info piece for me at this time.  But I can tell you from personal experience this "insurrection" and "takeover" of a Federal government building will happen more and more as time goes by.  I predicted a lot of this 25 years ago.  I saw the overreach of the Federal bureaucracy into the lives of people that don't care for the intrusions.  They live in the hinterlands of America but the Feds are slinking their way and  disrupting  Western traditions.

Propaganda galore in the day.

I was actively doing my best back in the early days of CABPRO trying to alert the people using these so-called, Federal lands that they are coming for your lands and the use of those lands.  Many organizations got started in the west and even a few in the east where there is not much federal ownership (whatever that means) of the early states lands.  In the west there was the Blue Ribbon Coalition, and other groups that banded together.  I was part of all that.  Advising people how to organize peacefully to protest the overreach.  Most of the problems started with George H. W. Bush and his "wetlands" proclamation.  Then it spread faster as the Clinton Administration shut down logging in he west.  The "spotted owl" became the tool for all that.  Of course it is not endangered and is the favorite meal of a larger owl but that did not matter.  Sort of the same strategy they use on "global warming".  Faux science and "white papers" of knucklehead scientists on federal grant whore payroll.

So when these Owls were found in the Sunrise Mall's tower, no one listened from the powers that be.  The Owls only survived in "old growth" forests they said.  Old growth means the trees were older, DUH.  So the timber industry was decimated and many rural folks committed suicide as their lives were forever changed.  But wait!  Clinton and the Congress placed a welfare program and a re-eduction set of programs in place.  Wow, the old USSR had nothing on that!  So the people who supplied the labor to cut the trees supplying the money for local roads and schools were sent a little check in place of being a producer of wealth.  I protested that to no avail of course.  Slaves ready made by the Feds.

Along with all that a lawsuit was instigated by eco groups against all the state's (probably other state's too) Forest management plans.  They did the eco groups bidding and most existing  "plans" were booted and redone.  Of course the plans were now inundated with "comments" from eco groups and we on the other side were overwhelmed.  I recall the Sierra Club using millions of pre-made cards which they sent to their members to sign and send in to the Forest Service people doing the plans.  And when we attended the meetings for the plan the Forest Service would have the lists of commenter's.  A card from a little old man in Pennsylvania on the Tahoe Plan was given as much weight as the rancher grazing his cattle there.  So it worked and all these management plans got weighted towards eco preservation and away from resource management. See how good that works for fire?

Also along the way of these changes were the eco strategy of getting rid of biking trails, fire roads, motorized trails, mining and dredging and even equestrian trails.  I am sure there are other uses they tried to boot off these lands.  Did you know that the Feds use a exclusion from the Americans with Disabilities Act to disallow motorized wheelchairs in Wilderness areas?

So CABPRO came to be a thorn in the side of these radical eco extremists as we warned others of what was coming.  Some fellow even wrote me into his econut book claiming I was too effective in fighting their lunacy.  And a local eco group wrote a hit piece on me trying to claim I was making things up. Another econut group made a play with me as the bas guy.  All have come to pass of which I predicted so I suppose they should apologize?  Probably not.

I was even followed to a "Wise Use" conference in Sparks, Nevada back in the mid nineties.  The conference was a attempt to alert the Federal Government that we in the West want the use of these lands.  Turn them over to the States!  Did you know the Admission Papers of California into the Union have no reference to the Federal Government owning any lands here? Anyway, some eco spy later the next week wrote some article and claimed the Wise Us Movement was some radical extremist group and I was seen there. (I never joined)  It really cracked me up.  It is like the left now claiming the Tea Party is extremist when all they are about is the freedom we want back in the Constitution.  Real Saul Alinsky radical attacks.  All those little gray haired war veterans and their wives are scary to the nuts running the environmental and leftist movements in America.

So in Burns as I understand it, the people occupying the building want the Feds to give the land back to the states and go back to DC.  Peaceful and calm.  I imagine the students who used to protest and take over the colleges in the 60's and 70's are now the people scratching their heads.  You see those radicals are now running the federal departments!  What a conundrum eh?

I expect people will get tired and go home soon.  But the issues will not go away.  The feds are too powerful and the force of their power is destroying a way of life for thousands if not millions in our country.  The two men who were re-sentenced by the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals are the problem.  The Judge who originally sentence these men to light sentences knew what he was doing.  But the three judges in their Ivory Tower in San Francisco don't know what their ridiculous re-sentencing did.

I hope their is no violence and it can get resolved.  I would hope the Ninth Circus decision will go the the Supreme Court and be overturned with sanctions against those sanctimonious radical Judges in San Francisco.