Vin Suprynowicz

I see where 40 people have now died (with 5,700 homes destroyed) in wildfires along California’s central and north-central coast this month -– wildfires that are far hotter, more intense, more widespread, and harder to extinguish than would have been common 50 years ago.

Lots of news media are trying to convince you they’re allocating all kinds of resources to “cover” these fires -– all “for you, the public.”

But they just mean they’re taking colorful pictures with which they figure to win awards, and muttering some made-up nonsense about how it “must be the global warming” (of which there hasn’t been any for, what, 16 years now?)

You will pretty much look in vain for any of the mainstream media to make any effort to tell you who’s at fault.

Even though it’s no secret.

Cliven Bundy and a couple of his sons are now on trial or awaiting trial in Las Vegas, for the “crime” of doing precisely what the Founders said we were supposed to do when federal officials exceed their authority and attempt to take away our rights. The Founders who wrote the Federalist Papers told us we’d never have to worry about that happening, because if the federals ever tried to usurp more powers than they were being delegated, they’d be faced with a huge citizen “militia with arms in their hands.”

The Bundys called on the militia to come face down the federals when the federals tried to round up and steal the Bundys’ cattle. That’s why they’re now on trial — even though no one was so much as injured, because the federals backed down when they realized no one was going to sell them any feed, or allow them to ship rustled cattle to auction in Utah, and allowing all those rustled cattle to drop dead of starvation in their makeshift federal pens was not going to look real good on TV.

No, the federal government does not “own” the land on which the Bundys’ cattle graze. Since all states enter the union on an “equal footing,” promises of long-dead territorial aspirants not to challenge federal “control” of 85 percent of the new state’s lands can’t change the fact that these have been state-controlled public lands since Nevada entered the union in 1864 –- land on which the Bundys own a state-adjudicated grazing right, which is a property right.

The Constitution says the federals can own land within the several states only for “arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings,” and then only after they “purchase” said land “by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be.” Does this indicate the Founders ever intended their “small federal government, of limited powers” to own 70 percent of Idaho? 75 percent of Utah? 87 percent of Nevada? 95 percent of Alaska?

During the federal convention debates in September, 1787, Elbridge Gerry, who later went on to serve as vice president under Madison, argued federal purchase of land “might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience.”

So, in order to make certain the federal government did not abuse this power, the words “Consent of the Legislature of the State” were added.

In 1992, the Supreme Court issued an opinion on the framers’ reasoning behind the state consent requirement (New York v. U.S):

“The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities, or even for the benefit of the public officials governing the States. To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals. State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.”

The federals have no bill of sale from the Nevada state Legislature, because they’ve never bought a single acre of the land on which the Bundys’ cattle graze.

A federal judge who is famously ignorant of the law -– no, let’s be a little more precise: a largely witless and embarrassing Harry Reid appointee and tool named Johnnie Rawlinson, who smart Las Vegas attorneys tell me they were flabbergasted to realize is too dumb to UNDERSTAND the law even when they explain it to her -– says the federal government owns that land. I mean that literally. She just “says” so. And if known dimwit Johnnie Rawlinson says a dog’s tail is a leg, how many legs will that dog have?

No, the Bundys were not “in violation of their federal grazing permit.” Grazing permits are voluntary -– why else do they require a rancher’s signature? And the “fees” which the federals collect under those voluntary permits are supposed to go right back into range improvements like water tanks, anyway — so who but the rancher himself would be harmed if he withheld any fees he “owed”?

Yet the first thing the federals did when they invaded the Bundy ranch was to use torches to cut up his largest water tanks and haul them away! Why would they do that if they were upset he’d failed to pay them “fees” . . . which they’re required by law to use for purposes like building water tanks for Cliven Bundy?

Bundy stopped volunteering to take part in that scam decades ago, and no fees can be assessed based on a permit that doesn’t exist because it’s never been signed.

Why do I call it a scam? Back at the end of the Second World War there were 50 families grazing cattle in Clark County. Now the Bundys are the last family left, PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY REFUSED TO SIGN A “GRAZING PERMIT” which is the mechanism by which the BLM and the Forest Service forced EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE OTHER FAMILIES OFF THE LAND.

The federals simply kept reducing the number of cattle the ranchers were “permitted” to have on the land in the spring – the only time of the year you can fatten cattle on these arid desert acres — until they all went broke. Then the federals had outfits like the Nature Conservancy slither in and buy those (now worthless) grazing rights for pennies on the dollar, so the federals could report those ranchers “gave up their grazing rights voluntarily.”

So they’re not just thieves who vastly exceed their delegated authority, you see; they’re lying scum.

Cliven Bundy now correctly says he’s the last rancher left between the Utah border and the Pacific Ocean.

Because the federals – ponytailed “watermelons,” we call them: Environmental Green on the outside, Communist red on the inside — have run all the cattle off the land in most of California, as well.

Look up United Nations Agenda 21. It’s about packing us all into “sustainable” dog kennels. These “green” bureaucrats don’t LIKE IT when we spread out across the land. We get much harder to tax and control, we tend to carry guns, and we tend to vote for Donald Trump.

But guess what? Filling in the ecological niche once occupied by antelope, deer, sheep, elk, and even sometimes bison, cattle graze the brush and grass down close enough that new shoots come in close to the ground -– a great benefit to desert tortoise and other smaller creatures -– the very creatures the federals claim they’re trying to “protect” by forcing all the cattle off the land!

(How do you think the smaller, slower-moving critters are faring in these big wildfires? If you want to succeed with a lie, make it a really BIG lie, so people will figure “They wouldn’t dare tell THAT big a lie.” I forget if it was the late Soviet Premier or the late German Chancellor who taught them that.)

And by grazing that desert foliage down, cattle left free to roam these arid lands prevent the build-up of waist-high, tinder-dry dead brush and grasses, which feed historically unnatural extreme range fires like the ones we’re now seeing in California.

Where are the cattle? Where are the supposed “reporters” to ask what happened to the cattle? Nowhere near the land or the now-out-of-business ranchers, I can tell you. Instead, they sit in safe, air-conditioned offices, rewriting press releases from the BLM and the Forest Service about how hard they’re working (and how they’re going to need MUCH bigger budgets!) to try and put out the fires . . . that their policies caused in the first place.

Because you see, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest service aren’t just thieves and lying scum. They and the un-American, U.N.-endorsed “Green” policies of “getting the people off the land” -– ranchers, loggers, miners -– that they’ve been pursuing for decades are also primarily responsible for the deaths by incineration of those 40 Californians . . . so far.

What do you suppose we should call people who purposely, KNOWINGLY continue to enforce policies that cause that result? Does the criminal code have a word for that?

But your mainstream media -– who have worked so hard to demonize honest, hard-working, far-from-wealthy ranchers like Cliven Bundy, whose “commentators” and “analysts” and editors have meanwhile worked so hard for decades to cover up the predatory criminality of Harvey Weinstein ( https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nbc-harvey-weinstein_us_59de5688e4b0eb18af059685 ), of his cackling, paid-up, bribe-grabbing sluts the Clintons ( https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2016/08/24/hillarys-corruption-is-overwhelming-n2208983 . . . or http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187 ), and so many more (“no story here; move along”) -– don’t want to tell you that. Do they?

No, they just show you the pictures, and pretend no one can IMAGINE what’s causing these terrible fires. Must be “global warming,” or something.