Are you prepared to send taxpayer funded refund checks to all the other ranchers who have paid the fees? Make them whole for all the years they followed the law since Reagan extended the program through...gasp...executive order...in 1986?
All ranchers who follow the law are harmed by Bundy being allowed to freeload with zero consequences.
Since you are willing to let this guy slide, I assume the answer is yes.
"DOIs Bureau of Land Management (BLM)--which was created in 1946--administers 245 million acres of public land nationwide. This includes grazing rights on 155 million acres. The Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978 created the current system of charging rental fees for ranchers to use these acres to feed their private livestock, and was extended by President Ronald Reagan in a 1986 executive order.
In 1993, Bundy stopped paying grazing fees to the federal government, claiming he fired BLM. He admits that he would owe at minimum $300,000 for these fees, if he believed that he was legally obligated to pay at all. BLM spokesperson Kirsten Cannon says the amount is $1.1 million.
The Obama administration says it must act. For more than two decades, cattle have been grazed [sic] illegally on public lands in northeast Clark County, reads a BLM statement. It goes on to note that BLM has tried during those years to resolve this matter through the courts, but Bundy will not comply with court orders.
The acres in this dispute are owned by the federal government. Nonetheless, Bundy claims that (1) the Constitution does not permit the federal government to own land, (2) the United States is therefore trespassing by sending agents onto that land, (3) he has a public easement on the land entitling him to access, and (4) he pays state and local fees regarding the land, but is not legally required to pay anything to the federal government.
This matter has gone to federal court, which rejected all of Bundys arguments. Bundy insists that what he is doing is a statement for freedom and liberty and the Constitution.
While he is doubtless sincere in his beliefs, he is wrong. The same Constitution that Bundy claims to be fighting for is the one that authorizes federal statutes regarding these matters, and in Article III creates federal courts to decide such disputes.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada heard his case, and Judge Lloyd George--who is also Mormon--ruled against Bundy. In 2013, the court authorized federal agents to seize any of Bundys cattle that he refused to remove from these federal lands. In recent days BLM has seized at least 134 animals, and it is unclear whether they are being held, or have been destroyed (which might enable Bundy to bring an additional legal challenge).
Although it is easy to feel sympathy for the Bundy familys plight, they are wrong as a matter of law. Multiple provisions of the Constitution empower the federal government to own land, such as the provisions in Article I, Section 8, pertaining to building military bases, federal highways, and postal roads, and the land area for a federal capital (Washington, D.C.). Also the Fifth Amendment Taking Clause says the federal government cannot seize private property unless it does so for a public purpose and pays the previous owner fair market value, necessarily creating the result that the federal government henceforth owns that property.
People go to jail all the time for rejecting the federal governments lawful authority. For example, people are imprisoned for refusing to pay federal income taxes, offering outlandish legal theories, long rejected by the courts, that federal income taxes are unconstitutional. Some such people claim that the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution--which authorizes the income tax--was never actually ratified in 1913, and therefore that such laws are invalid.
Bundy expresses a similar mindset on federal authority. I abide by all state laws. But I abide by almost zero federal laws, he explained."
Source = Breitbart.com
It would seem that now would be the perfect time for him to negotiate a settlement with the USA for the back rental fees. Donald Trump alluded to this yesterday. Imagine him being a source of reason in this.
