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Titus answers

As we reported earlier, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois—whose state contains a half-dozen nuclear power plants—argued in an essay in a Capitol Hill newspaper that by shutting down the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project for power plant wastes in Nevada, President Obama is violating federal law that instructs the dump “shall” be built (“Nuke advocate attacks Obama,” RN&R, April 17).

Nevada’s U.S. Rep. Dina Titus came back in a subsequent edition of the Hill, charging that what should have been a scientific selection process for the dump was tainted by political interference.

“What started decades ago as a law authorizing the study and selection of two geological depositories suitable for the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel transformed into politics at its worst,” Titus wrote. “With the passage of the ‘Screw Nevada’ bill in 1987 ... the goal shifted from how to find the best site for storage to how to make the Yucca site adequate. As the years passed, billions of dollars were wasted, and the misguided Yucca project changed from being a geologic depository to a man-made structure with barriers erected to attempt to mitigate the tectonic fault lines that run directly under the mountain, threatening the geohydrology of the area with leaking radioactive waste. The original plan was ill-conceived, and studies conducted over the past few decades clearly illustrate the dangers and costs associated with the project.”

Titus also wrote that “Lake Mead, Red Rock National Conservation Area, Tule Springs archeological site, Desert Wildlife Refuge and numerous other attractions” could be threatened by the dump. She didn’t really address Shimkus’s assertion that the law is not being followed.

Nevada has no nuclear power plants. A detailed account of the “Screw Nevada” legislation can be found in “Screw Nevada,” RN&R, July 21, 2011.

Why give up a good story?

A claim spawned by the Cliven Bundy standoff has been bouncing around the internet. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be false.

The theory was that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid was behind the federal effort to get organic rancher Bundy to stop using swaths of public land for grazing so that it could be used for a Chinese solar energy project promoted by Reid and his son Rory to enrich themselves.

Fostered online, the claim spread like a virus. It made it onto a few mainstream news sites—usually hedged with phrases like “Bundy’s supporters believe.” But it was mostly spread on opinion sites, conservative news sites like World Net Daily and the Washington Times, or by opinion writers, including Brendan Trainor in this newspaper (“The battle of Bunkerville,” April 24). In common internet fashion, they tended to attribute it to each other. (Trainor attributed it to “news reports,” and his column included a link to a Fox News report.) One mainstream reporter checked out the claim—Karoun Demirjian of the Las Vegas Sun. In an April 17 report, she assembled an array of facts that discredited the China tale and another allegation involving a different solar project.

For one thing, she found that the China project site is near Laughlin. Bundy grazes his cattle around Bunkerville. The two communities are 114 miles apart or 177 miles by car. They are separated by the Las Vegas Valley and the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson, the largest and second largest cities in the state.

Snopes, the website that checks out rumors, has also rated the Reid/China claim “false.” A few websites that posted the story as fact without checking it have retracted, including Breitbart.com, but most have left it in place online.

On a different note, in one of his New Yorker “news” reports, comedian Andy Borowitz wrote, “Republican politicians blasted the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy on Thursday for making flagrantly racist remarks instead of employing the subtler racial code words the G.O.P. has been using for decades. ‘We Republicans have worked long and hard to develop insidious racial code words like ‘entitlement society’ and ‘personal responsibility,’ said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).”

—Dennis Myers

The Bundy case has helped publicize the low  grazing fees charged to ranchers.

Bundy’s example

Proposals and strategies sprout in wake of standoff

Even if Cliven Bundy ends up losing what he calls his “range war,” he can take by some satisfaction in knowing he is Dennis Myers influencing politics. After watching a small interest group get their way by using guns, some unlikely groups are emboldened to ask whether they, too, should start packing heat. And lobby groups are pushing to raise the very low grazing fees charged by the federal government that Bundy refuses to pay. Then there’s the new life Bundy’s example has given to secession as a concept in the United States, long thought quelled by the Civil War.

“The way the federal grazing system treats taxpayers is criminal.”

Ryan Alexander Taxpayers for Common Sense

Western welfare

In an essay in U.S. News & World Report, Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) president Ryan Alexander wrote, “Regardless of his convoluted read of the Nevada Constitution, Bundy owes all of us that tidy sum. And he should us owe much, much more.” She said that ranchers get an amazing deal on grazing from the federal government compared to fair market value.

“Supposedly, the Bureau of Land Management takes livestock prices, cost of cattle production and private grazing fees into account when setting the fee per head of cattle for grazing on public lands,” she wrote. “Government data pegs private grazing fees at roughly $18 per animal unit month (which represents the amount of forage [e.g. grass] a cow and her calf need for a month) throughout the West over the past two years. In Nevada, the average private land grazing fee was $15 per animal unit month. Yet this year, the fee for grazing on public land in Nevada and elsewhere is set at $1.35 per animal unit month. … Ranchers already graze cattle on public lands for a steal. Bundy is a crook, but the way the federal grazing system treats taxpayers is criminal as well.”

Alexander said if hearings on the Bundy standoff are held, as proposed by U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, it will be an opportunity to get the fee issue on the national radar. “The Bundy standoff is just another thing that should bring them [grazing fees] to the top of the agenda,” she told the RN&R.

Organizations like TCS and the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco—which has sued to get higher grazing fees—believe the fees are part of a web of corporate welfare in the west for ranchers, the lumber industry and mining.

Ranchers say such critics fail to consider the changes ranchers make on the land—pipelines and fences, for instance.

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama told the Reno News & Review his position on grazing fees: “We should work towards a reasonable compromise that protects federal land from overgrazing and recovers more of the cost of grazing programs, yet also takes into account the effects on small and medium-sized ranchers.”

As president, Obama did nothing during his first term, but finally proposed a small increase in grazing fees in 2013. His critics suggested his heart wasn’t in it. At the start of his second term, his budget included a $1 increase in grazing fees. “Even with the extra dollar, the fee fails to keep up with inflation,” the Wildlife News argued. Beef magazine, on the other hand, said, “[T]his budget proposal is further proof that this administration does not understand American agriculture.” (Interestingly, the industry publication defended the BLM, which Bundy’s followers demonize.)

The Obama proposal failed in Congress. Grazing fees have now been at the lowest level legally allowable for eight years straight. My way

The “win” scored by Bundy supporters may have been akin to the political strategy employed by a gunman in a liquor store, but it is spurring some odd discussions.

“Should guns at political demonstrations be monopolized by conservatives, or would it benefit leftwing movements to arm themselves, too?” Carl Gibson wrote at the liberal Reader Supported News. In Nevada, he wrote, “Fervent private property rights activists came heavily armed, with AR-15 rifles, plenty of ammunition, and even bullet-proof vests, ready and willing to pull the trigger on the BLM agents if push came to shove. ... [T]he BLM backed down and allowed Bundy’s cattle to graze on public land for Bundy’s own private profit.”

In Asheville, North Carolina, a resident wrote his local newspaper that armed liberals like himself “would like to invite these right wing pistol packing mommas and papas to join us in showing up with our heavy armor to stop the jackbooted guvmint agencies from shutting down Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics.”

But generally, the notion seems to be a non-starter. While Bundy’s supporters won with guns a victory they have never been able to win at the ballot box, liberals believe that box will take them further than guns.

“It’s romantic to think so, and a part of me wants to say we can match them gun for gun, but it’s just not a winning road to go down,” said Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada director Bob Fulkerson.

He said many of the people he is associated with have participated in protests supporting the Dann sisters— tribal members who assert ownership of much of Nevada land—that could easily have involved gunfire.

“That ended peacefully, but there could easily have been a different outcome and what would that have gotten us?” he asked, suggesting that violence would have set back the cause, not advanced it.

Cutting out

On March 23, the Republican caucus of Wisconsin’s 6th congressional district adopted, as a part of its platform, a call for “our right to secede, passing legislation affirming this to the U.S. Federal Government.” The secession plank will also be voted on at the Wisconsin Republican State Convention in May.

The Republican Party was founded in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854 and went on to win the presidency for the first time under Abraham Lincoln, whose election prompted the secession of southern states and the Civil War. According to Green Bay columnist Bill Lueders, when the resolution was discussed, Lincoln was attacked by one delegate and a state senator commented, “Who’d have ever thought you’d be at a Republican function and have to defend Abraham Lincoln?”

Political reporters had difficulty knowing what to make of the development. A column in the state’s Madison Capitol Times ran under the headline, “Secession? Really? Who’s running this GOP show?”

Washington Post political reporter Dana Milbank wrote, “Called the ‘state sovereignty’ resolution, it is driven by the same sentiment that drives Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to ignore federal law and court orders on grounds that they do not apply in the ‘sovereign state of Nevada’.”

Milbank suggested the development had been fostered by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Sen. Heller encouraging Bundy. He specifically mentioned Heller threatening the Bureau of Land Management for supposedly abusing a “law abiding” rancher who admits breaking the law.

There are two secession organizations operating in California and an Alaska petition calling for secession and reunification with Russia has gathered more than 40,000 signatures in that state. Ω

“It’sjustnotawinningroad togodown.”

Bob Fulkerson Progressive Leadership alliance of nevada.

Another raccoon candidate?

A few weeks ago, for our annual April Fool’s issue, we “reported” that a rabid raccoon named Patchy had entered the already crowded race to become Reno’s next mayor. Well, apparently Patchy flipped open the manhole cover of local raccoon political aspirations. On the northwest corner of Kietzke Lane and Virginia Street, there’s a campaign sign for Radcliffe Raccoon, yet another raccoon running for local office. One of Radcliffe’s key endorsements is local artist Michael Lucido, whose website is listed at the bottom of the sign. Both raccoons appear to be just as viable and serious as some of the other local candidates.