Oregon: what is your opinion?

Just curious what do you guys think about this whole situation? Was it worth a man's life to start this thing here in Cascadia?

The flavor of western film or "The Gold Rush" without Charlie Chaplin ...

At least, there's a post office ...

Look, when you dont give them any attention, no one would make a issue of it...

They're nutjobs who led an armed takeover of federal land - but they are not terrorists and LaVoy Finicum should not have been shot.

On a side note, politics is not usually allowed on the Numista forum so I have a feeling this thread will be gone soon.

Full disclosure, I live pretty close to this whole thing.

Several thoughts, if you look at a map of public land (here for example: http://www.usobserver.com/archive/oct-14/images/federal_land_map_large3.jpg ) you will see that most of the land is in the West. What the means is that a lot of people back East are rather abstracted from the whole situation.

Most people here in the West do not like the BLM at all. The ranchers, the landowners, the tribes, etc. Do some research on how they economically ruined the tribes that depended on the pine nuts. These trees take centuries to mature and the BLM systematically bulldozed these trees, right up into the 80's. Now where do our pine nuts come from? China. The took away a food source and the economic source for the tribes in the area.

The BLM also had a bad habit of flexing it's muscles on private land. They will declare an area <insert species name here> habitat. Then they will start going around to land owners and tell them they can't plant this or that, have to keep these plants off your land, have to submit to inspections, etc. Even if you do try to play nice, you are dealing with a huge bureaucracy and they want things done on their schedule, to hell with you planting or herding schedule.

Even when you do care about some endangered species, the BLM is probably killing it anyway. Take the sage grouse. We used to have a lot of them around, then the BLM started going out at night and spot lighting them on their nests. This causes the birds to break eggs and abandon nests. Now there are hardly any sage grouse in the area.

So there is very little love of the BLM in the West. But at the same time most people I know do not agree with what the people are doing. They know something has to change, but they do not think this is the way. At the same time the general feeling is that the man should have not been shot at all. And there is some suspicion on the way things played out.

Now here is a key thing that most people don't understand, and the media don't really get or report. The problem is not the government, people out West like the government. They support the military, the postal service, they know their roads are paid for by taxes. Most people are supportive of Public lands, were people can hunt, fish, camp, hike, go off roading, bird watching, what ever. Most people are proud that we have huge tracks of public land. The thing they have a problem with are a grab bag of issues they usually label "government overreach."

very well said JadeJackal! Thanks for your clear thoughts.

for a foreigner, not aware at all about BLM (Bureau of Land Management) behavior, what's the relationship with Cascadia?

Quote: "Frenchlover"​ for a foreigner, not aware at all about BLM (Bureau of Land Management) behavior, what's the relationship with Cascadia?

​
Cascadia is a term that people use for the area the Cascade Mountains are in. It covers parts of the U.S. states of Oregon (where the wild life refuge is) and Washington, and part of Canada in British Columbia. Basically the Pacific Northwest.

The BLM administrates a lot of area in those two states (Oregon and Washington). The tribes (Native Americans) have a lot of reservation land in the area, and there are also many ranchers and farmers.

I understand that it's related to the "Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge"
Some guys would like nothing has changed since the days of the wild west.

Quote: "Frenchlover"​I understand that it's related to the "Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge"
​Some guys would like nothing has changed since the days of the wild west.

It is a complex issue. For some people Cascadia doesn't mean the area Pacific Northwest, it means a proposed political nation that is to break away from the United States (and maybe Canada). Some people mean it as creating a new state, like a 51st state, in the United States.

Oregon is a good example, because there is a large urban population along the ocean coast. This urban population is viewed as being out of touch with the needs of the rest of the state. One recent example is that they want to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. This may be fine for an urban area, but most or Oregon (in area) is not urban. It will also have a huge impact on agriculture, which affects the rest of the nation as the Pacific Northwest is/used to be a huge bread basket the fed the U.S. Policies and legislation over the last few decades, along with water rights issues, etc., has pushed a lot of the farmers and ranchers out of business. A lot of the fertile farm land has been bought up and turned into building areas. People are asking, if you are just going to pave over it, why not pave over the bad land instead of the good fertile land?

The population in Portland has also been active at pushing out the lower class. It is called "Keep Portland Weird," which is a nice sounding name, but it is an anti-gentrification movement that has been very successful. Most of the lower class people have had to move out across the river or into other areas.

All of this is bound up in trying to manage separate areas as though the did not have differences. Most of us understand that different cities usually have different standards of living, and that rural and urban areas are not the same, but many of the law makers don't see it that way.

There has been a trend in the United States for taking discretion in government away from local governments. This is fine with things like murder, which we all agree on is bad. But when it comes to other things, not so good. In the United States we have concentric rings of government, Federal is at the top, then State, then county, and if it is an incorporated area a city government. Federal law (usually) trumps state law, and so on down the line. In the past there were many things the Federal government said, "This is not a federal issue, the states can decide." States have the same option, the can say, "Not a state issue, let the counties decide." Counties can do the same and let cities decide. These are things say along the line of taxation, speed limits, how land will be used, where to build roads, etc. But with the trench in recent decade of high levels of government dictating smaller and smaller issue, the high levels are intruding on and over riding the lower levels.

This is a good thing sometimes, say like with Jim Crow laws (laws against black people). The federal government came in and said, you can not discriminate against a person just because he is black. In retrospect most all of us agree that this was a bad thing (there are still racists around, but not as many as you might thing from the media). That was a check and balance in the system. But now we see a lot of abuses of the system, abuses that are bound up in politics and political favors and it is usually the working class that ends up bearing the brunt of it.

So some people are lashing out because they have been under tension and pressure for a long time. They are loosing their homes, their land, their business and their lively hoods. Remember what I said earlier, there are many people the agree with (many of) the grievances that the protesters had, but they don't agree with what they are doing or how the are going about it. Most importantly most people do not agree with the goals the protesters had. So they are frustrated with the BLM but they don't want armed rebellion, they just want the BLM fixed.

I should also mention here that the BLM owns over 1/4 of all the land in the United States. So any bad policies they follow, have an opportunity to harm a large number of people. Conversely they can also do a lot of good.

This is already getting long, and I understand most of it will not make sense to a non-American because it deals with a lot of oddities of the American government system.

You and l agree!

People might not understand it all, but everyone can relate to overreaching government.

It' probably a better summary than you would find in most newspapers, well done.

One of the key issues is whether the Federal government can own land. I don't fully understand the constitutional arguments but it seems to be along these lines - Originally the federal government was only able to own land in the capital. As land was stolen from the Indians out West by insincere treaties and even genocide it became the property of the government which neither wanted it or knew what to do with it. So much of it was sold to ranchers and mining companies and later, our most underrated President Teddy Roosevelt created the National Parks from much of the remainder. I find this to be a great use of Federal power to create a permanent recreational facility which gives access to everyone and protects these beautiful areas from harmful exploitation.

However events took a more sinister turn when Russian mining companies were given the rights to around 20% of America's uranium deposits by the Clinton State Department. In return a substantial payment was made to The Clinton Foundation. Unfortunately for their scheme much of the land was already used by ranchers who either own it outright or have permanent water or grazing rights. So they have been harassed and intimidated by the BLM and other agencies and in some cases their land has been simply seized and their cattle slaughtered. The situation in Nevada was a similar tale of big government corruption and judicial chicanery where Senator Reid wanted the Bundy family's ranch as his son was poised to make millions of dollars by brokering it's sale to a Chinese company. The resulting armed standoff between the feds and local militia was a humiliation for the government and destroyed Sen. Reid's political career. The stage was set for revenge.

I dislike the Federal Government very much and State Governments only slightly less. Even at the County and City level they are hotbeds of corruption and waste. I think most people know instinctively that the bigger it gets and the further it is removed from the people it's meant to serve the more dangerous and tyrannical it becomes. Any US citizen can have his entire life ruined by a faceless bureaucrat in Washington. You won't even get to know the name of the person making the decision without a FOIA case. Look at the Lois Lerner scandal for a perfect example where a long career spent in criminal acts resulted in no prosecution and the spectacle of the Government pleading the 5th Amendment! (the 5th Amendment gives citizens the right to avoid self incrimination by being forced to testify by the Government NOT the other way around). President Lincoln had a staff of six throughout the Civil War, now the 1st Lady (who isn't even a part of government) has 26 servants, some of whom have assistants of their own!

However I know every one of our City Councilmen personally and they live where I live. One is my chiropractor, another owns and runs our local steakhouse (we are going for lunch tomorrow - wifey's birthday) and another lives four doors down from me. Their children go to school with mine, we see each other at the beach, in the bar and church. They are accountable to me on a personal level. So it makes sense to keep the power of government at the most local level possible and the US Constitution actually requires it via the 10th Amendment. Since the Civil War which was largely fought over state's rights, the power has been slowly drawing away from the people and into the hands of a political class in DC. Since 2000 the process has accelerated sharply and our last two Presidents have been ruling by executive orders, pretty much like 18th century European monarchs.

So people are getting frustrated and are looking for ways to fight back - hence the standoff in Oregon which in turn stems from the Cliven Bundy standoff in 2014. (the current leader Aamon Bundy is the son of Cliven) Now it's ended in tragedy and the militias will retaliate and there will be an escalation. During the Clinton years a family were killed by the FBI in their Ruby Ridge home after the government lost control of a minor situation and allowed it to escalate into a major confrontation. This was followed by the massacre at Waco, where dozens of children were among those burned to death. The widespread revulsion gave Timothy McVeigh the impetus to blow up the Federal Offices in Oklahoma City. As we don't seem to have learned from these tragedies, I fear we are about to repeat them.

@jadejackal: I have to admit that I really enjoyed your summary and I have to say it's useful to discuss these important points with non-Americans who may be totally clueless about our unusual politics.

@Phil: our favorite libertarian strikes again! Since Numista rules prohibts political discussion, I won't comment on your points in detail (I want to make sure Ben doesn't touch this fascinating thread) but I'd be happy to take this out via PM. However, I'll discuss your love of local politics. Yes, local politics are nice and accountable. However, the Federal Government is actually pretty efficient for its size. So while I don't love it it's still pretty decent. Of course sometimes it creates idiotic policies but I don't think it's tyrannical or anything.

Thanks a lot guys (jadejackal and Phil) for your great insights and opinions! I wish I could read staff like this in the news ...

It looks like the story is not over yet...

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/03/oregon_standoff_fbi_lie_uncove.html#incart_maj-story-1

No. You have to follow the law. Elect officials who will change the laws; don't take up arms because you will lose in the end, one way or the other.

oookay...what is this?