But it probably doesn’t, right? Schools and hospitals are pretty different than offices. If armed (but not actively violent) men had taken over the building I work in over the holidays when no one was there, I’d be staying in contact with my manager to see what was expected of me and whether we had an alternate work location but I wouldn’t be nearly as upset as I would if armed men took over a hospital even though it would directly affect me. I’m sure it would be in the news, but mostly life would simply go on. If armed men came in during a work day I’d be a lot more concerned, but again, if they simply made us leave I still wouldn’t compare that to taking over a school.
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From a UK point of view this would be exactly the same, i.e. taking over a visitor centre in a national park. However, we would immediately have something serious to charge them with and they would be most unlikely to get kid glove treatment, more likely an armed response unit or two.
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Last I read (yesterday), the Hammonds were turning themselves in and ostensibly had/wanted nothing to do with Bundy. So I’m not sure what there is to negotiate nor with whom.
Yeah, but we’re the Land of the Free™, so public-anything is constantly fought over with the goal of making it as private and wealth-producing as possible.
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The model they want for land use is that the public is responsible for maintaining the land (so that they don’t have to pay real estate taxes, for example) but then they get to use it for their own financial gain whenever they want.
That’s really the fundamental issue here.
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I have no problem with people staging protests against what they perceive as an unfair government action. But imagine for a moment that a bunch of angry, heavily armed Muslim-Americans staged a “protest” like this on behalf of a peer they felt had been unfairly sentenced.
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FTFY
And I’m sure we can agree that either response would go BANG.
They already pay 93 percent less for grazing rights than they would on privately-owned land. The idea that they are getting screwed over by the Bureau of Land Management is all kinds of insane.
(source: fivethirtyeight.com)
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Wait, it costs $1.35 to graze a cow for a month? Like, one dollar and thirty-five cents? A buck thirty-five? That’s the units? Am I reading this wrong?
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That’s for a cow AND a calf. I don’t think I could feed a pair of goldfish for that little.
Basically their entire business model is based on getting huge handouts from the Federal Government. If the government actually granted their wish and GAVE them that land, FOR FREE, they’d end up paying far more in property taxes and other expenses than they currently pay for grazing rights.
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Yup. (still out of likes)
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To be fair, if they government gave them the land for free they would end up not paying more in property taxes and then having an armed standoff if anyone tried to collect their property taxes.
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True. I should have written “they’d end up OWING far more in property taxes and other expenses than they are currently SUPPOSED TO PAY for grazing rights.”
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Well, yeah, but it’s $1.35 gouged out of you at gunpoint by bureaucrats and state force, so it hurts more than $20 to the private sector.
Or, um, something like that.
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On the other hand Popehat seems to have written something properly unreadable, and the length of the appeal seems to have excluded both expediency and fairness of a trial. There doesn’t seem to be a review of the case other than to wash arsonists as liars (and mention that sure, prosecutors can appeal too, not least while Federal.)
Not looking forward to the Everybody In The Appeals Pool rules at this point, not with collections attorneys filing against vacated cases on a rolling basis. Better explainers welcome.
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What a bunch of lame-ass whiners. If they can’t turn a profit in those circumstances they should do something else.
Christ what a bunch of pathetic babies. Suckling the government teat just ain’t sweet enough for them.
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Can you imagine how these patriots feel about food stamps?
I imagine they feel one of two ways, depending on whether they themselves are using food stamps.
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That only explains how they feel about food stamps for THEMSELVES. Food stamps for lazy welfare cheats, on the other hand…
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