"I'm a sovereign human being, I stand under common law only" - Thread of Freemen

Not to purposefully defend HOAs or anything stupidly restrictive, but there is a spectrum of safe tread and riser dimensions for stairs, with corresponding graphs for likelihood of injury if either measurement gets too out of sync. Iirc a lot of it has to do with the size of ppl's feet, the average length of strides, the amount of strain caused by level of incline, possible momentum built up in a hypothetical fall, and so on.

Like the same way that slow drivers are a danger on highways, somewhat counterintuitively, a too-shallow stair size might also cause ppl to trip more or try to take 2 at once, or some other behavioral quirk that increases risk.

I'm sorry, blame it on a lifetime of dinner conversations led by a mechanical engineer.

"Maritime law" = A good point, which gives me an idea.

Seems to me a shame that so many of these FreedomBoner (tm) dudes are into land-based pursuits (farming / hunting / ranching / mining / drilling), when their liberty-centric ideology would be very much more at home on the open seas. They'd be much more well-adjusted (and probably do less overall harm) if they took their shtick to international waters.

I would support redirecting all current initiatives intended to mollify and/or pacify the militia kooks of the montane west, and simply building them a half-dozen caravels or barquentines. Let them go privateering, fishing, oil-drilling, even getting mad piratical, if that's what they're into. Only one condition: they would need to wear eye-patches, pouffy blouses, and lots of pansy-asss scarves while they do it.

if ppl are really using the history of enclosure in england as a rationale, that's pretty 'maritime law'-ish

Libertarian tech bros have had the whole "international waters"/"private island libertarian utopia" thing sewn up for years. They're not gonna be mingling with a bunch of rednecks if they can help it.

imagine plenty of us English don't think enclosure was a civilization-enhancing event

I'll admit, I have in the past completely taken possession of someone else's front steps for hours at a time.

The maritime law ppl aren't into the high seas, they're just using any flimsy excuse to contravene federal authority and to argue that they should be exempt from the actual legal system.

"Maritime law" = A good point, which gives me an idea.

Seems to me a shame that so many of these FreedomBoner (tm) dudes are into land-based pursuits (farming / hunting / ranching / mining / drilling), when their liberty-centric ideology would be very much more at home on the open seas. They'd be much more well-adjusted (and probably do less overall harm) if they took their shtick to international waters.

― ineluctable modality of the chewable (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, January 6, 2016 5:13 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Would watch this film

Eli Roth will be right on it

they should do this in the open water but it seems their entire lives revolve around letting their cattle use public land, sadly no public land in the ocean

They'll have to become tuna ranchers.

Git along, little tunas. Yippee-yo-ki-yay.

one thing to be thankful for

http://factually.gizmodo.com/no-ammon-bundy-didnt-compare-his-militia-to-rosa-parks-1751353105

he said his militia would've shot Rosa Parks

thanks for the new username, Puffin!!

So, a key selling point Bundy tries to make is that rural areas are struggling financially because the feds keep placing undue burdens on the ranchers, and if the feds would only pack up and leave then everyone would be rolling in clover. This has a lot of appeal in rural towns surrounded by federal lands, because those places have always been full of poor people living on the edge, though often with a few wealthy folks who are basically the lords of the area.

The problem with this utopian vision is that the feds heavily subsidize those rural areas. They lease grazing rights for a fraction of their true value, build and maintain roads, create the best paid jobs in the local economy, and generally act like a sugar daddy, sucking money from cities and redistributing it to backwaters like Harney County.

From http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/grazing/pdfs/CostsAndConsequences_01-2015.pdf

Key Findings
1. Receipts from grazing fees were $125 million less than federal appropriations in 2014. Total federal appropriations for the USFS and BLM grazing programs in fiscal year 2014 were $143.6 million, while grazing receipts were only $18.5 million. Appropriations for the BLM and USFS grazing programs have exceeded grazing receipts by at least $120 million annually since 2002. Had the federal government charged the average private forage market rate for non-irrigated lands in the western states, grazing receipts would have been on average $261 million, greatly exceeding annual appropriations.

2. The gap between federal grazing fees and private land fees has widened considerably. The federal grazing fee in 2014 was set at the legal minimum of $1.35/AUM, or animal unit month, which is the amount of forage to feed a cow and calf for one month. The annual federal grazing fee has been set at the minimum required by law since 2007. In 2013, the federal grazing fees of $1.35/AUM were just 6.72 percent of fees charged for nonirrigated private grazing lands in the West, which averaged $20.10 per AUM. The gap has widened considerably since 1981, when the federal fee was 23.79 percent of fees charged on private rangelands. The federal grazing fee is generally also considerably lower than fees charged on state-owned public lands.

3. The federal grazing subsidy is even larger when all costs to the taxpayer are accounted for. Indirect costs for livestock grazing include portions of different federal agencies budgets, such as the USDA Wildlife Services, which expends money to kill thousands of native carnivores each year that may threaten livestock; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which expends part of its budget for listing species as threatened or endangered resulting from harm by livestock grazing; and other federal land management agencies that expend money on wildfire suppression caused by invasive cheat grass that is facilitated by livestock grazing. The full cost of the federal grazing program is long overdue for a complete analysis.

they really just want to be able to use federal land for zero dollars

I was thinking about that yesterday after reading that Bundy had a politician associate in Nevada that was going to try to get the land under state, rather than federal, control. At first I thought it would be to make the land available for sale, but I realized that these guys have no interest in owning it. They're just looking for more convenient ways to, once again, use land they don't own for whatever the hell they want for zero dollars.

to me these people are the very ideal of the "takers" they think they are fighting against. they just want free stuff.

they feel entitled to use land they don't maintain for whatever profit motive, just like their ancestors weren't allowed to do

Look into the history of settlement of the Mountain West to see why the "stay off my land" mindset was fairly prominent. Also, the fact that everything was constructed, from federal subsidies and the Army clearing out the previous inhabitants to mineral/extraction companies paying people to move there and artists to create the idea of "the Old West." They actually paid dudes to paint the legend, and sold people on relocating to the High Plains/Wastelands.

Colin Woodward has a good rundown of this in his American Nations book

Actually, the entire white settler history of the region after a certain point depended on federal support, in the form of railroads & the US Army.

So "grabbing shit you found laying around that someone else paid/fought/died for" has been a thing for quite a while

btw everyone should stop supporting the industry of fattening & murdering cattle altogether just saying

Bacon cheeseburgers > the environment, morality, whatever else you got

the funniest thing about this whole situation is these people who think they should be stewards of the land burned down 130 acres of it. not exactly the best way to make your case for responsible user of land.

The feds plan to freeze the Bundy militia out by cutting their power. The militia, which has occupied a federal building in an Oregon wildlife refuge since January 3, has said that it does not desire an armed confrontation with authorities, and it sounds like its wish will be granted. Rather than firing off tear gas canisters or kicking in doors and storming the building, authorities are instead planning to cut the Bundys’ electricity, then phone service, before shutting off roads to the refuge, according to The Guardian.

An unnamed federal official reportedly told The Guardian, “After [authorities] shut off the power, they’ll kill the phone service,” adding that “then they’ll block all the roads so that all those guys have a long, lonely winter to think about what they’ve done.”

In Harney County, Oregon, where the Bundy group is camped out, January temperatures hover around a 24 degree average, and winter typically brings plenty of snow. Nonetheless, the Bundys told The Guardian they are “ready and waiting” should their electricity be cut off.

xp ...A fire they allegedly set to cover up the illegal slaughter of a bunch of deer? Mmmm, stewardship.

hopefully more crazy militia people will join them and they can all sit in the middle of nowhere freezing for the rest of the winter.

The areas the Bundys/Hammonds have been embroiled in legal action over are the more verdant or, if you look at it another way, economically viable areas. A lot of the BLM areas are desolate, and in years with low rainfall, even some of the areas where they might graze cattle aren't useful for that purpose. Being able to lease rights for grazing in times when it's possible, and then just letting the federal government hold on to what is scrubland at the best of times is actually a pretty sweet deal!

In most of the country you can't even shoot at deer on your own property outside of a set season, and with the exception of some malcontents, that's mostly respected

I'm doubtful that even if they knew the subsidies given to their land-use and his everything else is paid for, they'd drop their protestations. It seems yet another situation where facts won't change shit, since we're into the realm of scared white dudes defending identity-based or tribal issues. Our brains have a habit of jumping to any other rationalization to undergird a tightly held belief.

BLM is directly responsible for a lot of damage too fwiw.

http://sandiegofreepress.org/2016/01/pinyon-juniper-forests-blms-false-claims-to-virtue/

kind of shocked the power was still on but i guess you don't want pipes freezing? these guys' only hope is a confrontation, and it's not going to happen. we should take bets on how long this lasts. i give it 10 days after the power goes out. 3 after the roads are blocked.

depends largely on if they have good internet on their phones

xp thought you were talking about black lives matter and clicked that link with the most confused look on my face

I think they imagine that, in lieu of a bloody confrontation and martyrdom, their epic heroism, continued over a period of months, will inspire an ever-growing movement of resistance to federal tyranny, sparking a revolution that renews and refreshes freedom and democracy nationwide. iow, they are just wanking, as was obvious from the start.

I have a friend who is an econ professor at a land grant state university in the rural western US and some portion of his workload involves outreach via each county's extension office.

Often this means that he meets with ranchers and farmers at town halls and such where they constantly vilify him and the federal government for their onerous taxes and regulations while utterly ignoring or being unable to comprehend that their entire existence is due to the largest water reclamation project in the country and the heavily subsidized irrigation that it provides. His predecessor was so pissed about having to do this sisyphean job for so long that after he retired he still goes to these meetings to yell back at these guys.

so are they still on the hook for going to jail for their fire? and if so, will that now have all this idiocy added to it? i hope they go away for a long time. they are a public danger.

yes, as far as I know they've already reported in for their jail time. the lower court didn't observe the mandatory minimum so they were in for two years, they're on the hook for the remainder of the time. that's all done and taken care of.

xp
the hammonds already reported back to federal prison a couple of days ago and are incarcerated. this wankery won't change that.

xxxp it still amazes me how people can be so blind to the basic facts that form the foundations of their lives.

who do you mean by "they"?

the Hammonds, father and son, reported to jail two days ago

http://abcnews.go.com/US/oregon-ranchers-expected-report-california-prison-amid-armed/story?id=36079385

the Bundy militia people are... different guys

xps ha

afaik, although there's no list of people, there are no Hammond family members (that were not supposed to be incarcerated) present according to reports. pretty sure that's been mentioned in the thread a few times.

these folks see their own day-to-day struggles and they listen to shitheads like Limbaugh who constantly teach them to resent the government and after a certain point, there is no room left in their heads for anything new. they're fully baked and from that point on they can only grow stale.

thanks goole.

yeah its the double standard that is so upsetting. weird there are two BLM's right now. one is protesting very real death and systemic abuse, the other making a violent stink about the right to ignore law and order.

I have a friend who is an econ professor at a land grant state university in the rural western US and some portion of his workload involves outreach via each county's extension office.

Often this means that he meets with ranchers and farmers at town halls and such where they constantly vilify him and the federal government for their onerous taxes and regulations while utterly ignoring or being unable to comprehend that their entire existence is due to the largest water reclamation project in the country and the heavily subsidized irrigation that it provides. His predecessor was so pissed about having to do this sisyphean job for so long that after he retired he still goes to these meetings to yell back at these guys.

― joygoat, Wednesday, January 6, 2016 12:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is... it's so bizarre. i think a big part of the problem is how the symbology and mythology of the west both enables the situation and is deeply contradictory / anathema to it. if you hold it close you're a deeply deluded fool who is going to be coddled enough to keep the illusion out there but mostly exploited in real terms. if you do see it and you still want to be a part of it you have to be cynical. there's a rot that happens as a result. imo the original sin is a genocide that has never been openly acknowledged / dealt with. i mean it's basically a colonial nightmare.

to me its scary these militia people are bringing this stuff across state lines. they want to create an interstate threat.

smh adam blm stands for bureau of land administration

adam can you take a nap and come back to this or something

Bureau of Land Management

this is old by a day or so but I love its ignorance

After Bundy defended his decision to lead a small militia to take over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, Kelly challenged him.

"You know the argument on the other side, which is, these ranchers — whom you support but are not directly involved — had their day in court. And they were found guilty, and it went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied their appeal. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work in our country when it comes to the rule of law?" she asked.

"Yeah, well let me ask you — and I’m sure you know the answer, but who was the plaintiff?" Bundy asked in response.

After a pause, Kelly told Bundy to "keep going."

And when Bundy asked the same question again, Kelly took another brief pause.

"I’m waiting for you to make your point. Generally I don’t answer the questions on my show; I ask them," she said.

"Oh, I mean, it was asked intending to be answered, but the plaintiff is the federal government," Bundy said in response, adding that there is no "proper redress" for the people in such situations.

NO REDRESS. except for multiple appeals all the way up to the fucking supreme court.