Straight Talk: Loving Bundy and Impeaching Nixon
If Cliven Bundy weren’t a real person, I think we would have
to make him up. He’s a figure right out
of a classic Western, a straight-shooting, straight-talking man, in a white
hat, peaceable, of course, but ready with a gun to protect his spread from
horse thieves and cattle rustlers and varmints.
What could be more genuinely
American than a Cliven Bundy?
Those types of images stir my Eastern city-slicker blood in
a way few other things do. I’ve never lost my love for movies like “She Wore a
Yellow Ribbon” or “My Darling Clementine” where virtue triumphs over evil, but
not without a few bumps in the road. Good
men die, and good women cry, and all endings are bitter sweet.
So, when Cliven Bundy rode out of the west on the thundering
hooves of his horse “Taker” he might have cut an admirable a figure. There was the delicate matter of him taking
his herds onto other people’s land and eating their grass, for free, but being
a carnivore myself and preferring grass-fed beef, and being an admirer of the
open range, I might have been inclined to cut the good fellow some slack. It’s just grass. If anything, Bundy was performing a public
service, because that was public land he was organically mowing, and asking him
to pay for it seems a monumental act of Government ingratitude.
So said Bundy. So
said any number of Republican politicians, including Governors Brian Sandoval
and Rick Perry, Senators Dean Heller, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and a gaggle of
lesser lights. And so said his
supporters at conservative media and blogosphere, particularly Sean Hannity,
who was about to nominate him to join Popes John the XXIII and John Paul II for
canonization. It got even better when
Bundy rounded up some of the local boys and met those nasty old government fee-collectors
with the straight-talking threat of lead.
Patriots all.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bundy is a little more Blazing Saddles than John Ford, and some
of that straight talk isn’t quite fit for the womenfolk. He’s not very fond of African Americans, and
while that might play really well as parody, he’s no Mel Brooks. Oddly enough, he does seem to admire
Mexicans “awful nice people” which, in a different context, might have helped
with the Latino vote in 2016. However,
he did appear to go a little too far in the embrace of slavery, and most of his
establishment supporters had to back away (while nevertheless lauding his
resistance to Obama-style jackbooted thuggery.)
From my perspective, the racial references were an
unfortunate distraction from the real issue.
Set aside the heroic mythmaking, and in plain English (without any
regional accent whatsoever) here’s what Cliven Bundy did: He walked into someone’s store, picked up a
case of beer, some nachos, a few cartons of smokes, and a fistful of beef
jerkies, and walked out without paying for it.
For twenty-odd years. And when
the owner of the store called him on it, Bundy brought armed men to show him
who is boss. I am astonished that
anyone, especially a conservative who ostensibly venerates property rights,
could possibly think that is OK. That
grass doesn’t belong to Bundy, and the fact that the public owns it does not
mean it's there for the taking. It is
already unbelievably cheap for ranchers.
Bureau of Land Management grazing fees are $1.35 per month, per
cow. The average price on private land
is $16.80. You might say that differential
a type of food stamps for cattleman. But
that’s the program, and that’s a separate discussion entirely. Not paying the fee at all—that’s stealing,
pure and simple, and any government-hating conservative who’s taxes go up by a
dollar to make up the difference in lost revenue ought to realize that he just
gave that buck to Cliven Bundy.
But, as we seem to be a little short on straight talk these
days out West (and wherever Fox is heard) let us return to Harry Truman’s home
state of Missouri.
In Missouri, Republicans have advanced three separate
charges of impeachment against Jay Nixon, the state’s Democratic Governor. Article VII, Section 1 of the Missouri
Constitution says “All
elective executive officials of the state, and judges of the supreme court,
courts of appeals and circuit courts shall be liable to impeachment for crimes,
misconduct, habitual drunkenness, willful neglect of duty, corruption in
office, incompetency, or any offense involving moral turpitude or oppression in
office.”
That Nixon fellow must have done some pretty bad stuff? When I first heard about this, I was
privately hoping for something salacious, like taking off for several days to
visit your mistress, or selling public offices. As State Representative Nick Marshall, a
Sponsor of the bill said, “I will seek
Articles of Impeachment against the Governor. He has openly disregarded the
laws and Constitution of the State of Missouri and allowed his administration
to do so on multiple occasions. If we are to live under the Rule of Law, he
cannot be allowed to remain in office.”
“If we are to live
under the Rule of Law.” I rather
like that. Give me details!!!!
Very disappointing. Missourians
are dull, dull, dull. Here are the grounds for impeaching Jay Nixon: 1) a
November 2013 Executive Order to the Missouri taxing authority directing them to
accept for filing same sex tax returns that had been accepted by the IRS, 2) a failure
to call a special election fast enough, and 3) a failure to adequately punish
officials at the state Department of Public Safety for releasing the names of Missourians
with concealed weapons permits to a Social Security Administration agent who requested them last
year.
That is every bit of crimes, misconduct, drunkenness, and
oppression they could gin up. That is what they are going to use to oust the elected Governor of their state. It’s the
same type of bizarre mentality that calls (pre-racist rant) Cliven Bundy a
hero. The law means what we say it
means.
To paraphrase Truman, that is a load of Horse Hockey.
Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)
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