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— Calvin Luther Martin, PhD, Editor

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The other day, something significant happened in American history.  This man stood up to the American government  — and the government backed down.  (The “American government” consisting of a small army of heavily armed cops.)

Before reading further, you must watch this video of the event.  It’s just a few minutes.  It’s breathtaking.  Resistance to tyranny is what Americans are made of.  In this instance, resisting tyranny at home, on American soil.  These 1000 cowboys and patriots understand that America is “We, the People.”

This is a story about a number of things:  (a) The renewable energy scam.  (b) A foreign energy company taking adverse possession of rangeland used by this rancher’s ancestors going back 150 years, give or take.  (c) An unseemly collusion between a powerful U.S. Senator, the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, and a Chinese energy company.

The bullying and sleaze of wind energy companies inevitably come to mind.

In this case, it’s not wind energy, but another non-starter:  solar energy.  Involving U.S. Senator Harry Reid (Nevada) negotiating with a Chinese energy mogul to build a huge solar energy plant on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administered rangeland — right smack where this rancher and his forebears have traditionally grazed their livestock.  The Chinese company being legally represented, incidentally, by Senator Reid’s son, a prominent Nevada attorney.

Basically, the Reid gang wants ranchers off this land, so it can be sold at pennies on the dollar to this Chinese energy czar.  To do that, they had to pressure the ranchers to remove their grazing cattle.  Easily enough done:  The Director of the BLM, Neil Kornze, is a former staffer for Senator Reid.

Neil Kornze, BLM Director

Part of the deal for the Chinese company getting approval from, I believe, the county, is that the solar energy produced must have a guaranteed buyer.  This means the big power company in Nevada would have to commit itself to high-priced, intermittent solar power.  (Meaning, that when the solar wasn’t available to the grid — which demands instant, “dispatchable” power — the state’s sucker power company would have to rapidly buy backup energy from, say, natural gas or coal or nuclear sources — at most unfavorable prices.  This is what happens with wind energy, by the way.  And you and I bear the astronomical costs.)

In any case, the Nevada power company, so far, has declined the shitty deal.

The Reid gang isn’t happy about it declining to lock itself into buying expensive solar power and, when unavailable, being forced to buy at exorbitant rates on the spot market.  But, then, the Reid gang doesn’t necessarily care about Nevada energy ratepayers.  (It also doesn’t care about the fact that solar arrays “cook” the landscape.  So much for preserving the “threatened” turtle — supposedly threatened by cattle grazing, despite the fact that turtles and cows have co-existed on this land for centuries.)

Cliven Bundy (pronounced “Kl-eye-vin”) is not the first rancher to be evicted from this land by the BLM.  The others caved in.  Cliven didn’t.  Despite repeated threats and legal notices and legal judgments, Mr. Bundy calmly responded, “Nope!  I’m not moving my herd, and I will not pay your exorbitant so-called rents.  I will pay them to the State of Nevada, but I have no contract and never had a contract with the federal govt., and I and my ancestors have been ranching this landscape since the 1870s.”

So, the BLM, under Senator Reid’s former staffer — the same BLM that’s famous for its bullying and tyranny throughout the American West — assembled a posse of Rangers and other law enforcement agents and descended on the Bundy ranch and started rounding up Bundy’s herd and impounding it.  Armed to the teeth and using, among other weapons, a helicopter and police dogs.   I believe there were somewhere in the vicinity of 200 of these cops — brandishing weapons fit for a military assault.

Remember those old John Wayne movies?  The “Duke”?  What would the Duke have done?  You know what he would have done.  Stayed calm and put out the word, “My fellow Americans, I appeal to you to come stand by me!”

Cliven Bundy did what the Duke would do.

Within days, over 1000 people showed up — from all over the West — to stand shoulder to shoulder with him and his family.  To stand toe to toe with the govt. thugs.  And, since the govt. thugs brought guns, so did these patriots who joined Cliven Bundy.  They exercised their Second Amendment right to bear arms.  Lots of them.

If you want the full flavor of what this was like, watch Robert Redford’s, “The Milagro Beanfield War.”  Nearly identical plot.  (My favorite movie of all-time, by the way; its message is hugely important — CLM.)

Suddenly, a sleazy, back-room caper between the Reid gang, BLM, and a Chinese plutocrat spun out of control into another Milagro Beanfield War.  The Bundy Cattle Ranch War.  A standoff.  Bundy supporters were tasered, thrown to the ground and threatened with fang-baring police dogs and drawn weapons, even as the Bundy supporters did not draw their weapons and assault the cops.

The Bundy patriots refused to budge, however.

(With thanks to cartoonist Glenn McCoy and the NY Times.)

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the BLM chief was sweating bullets.  “What the fuck!”  It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.  The county sheriff wisely brokered a truce — and got the BLM to back down just as tempers were about to explode.  The agreement was:  The BLM agreed to release the 300-400 cattle it had impounded and the Rangers would leave.  The Bundy supporters would likewise leave.

In short, everyone agreed to go home.

Except me.  I’m staying on that hallowed ground, savoring it.  I see a man saying “No!” to a renewable energy money-making hoax and its bullying attorneys and government enablers.  I see “people of the land” refusing to be fucked by people who intend to make windfall profits from electric ratepayers and taxpayers.

How nice it would be to see this same spirit — the Spirit of Cliven Bundy — in confrontations with the wind developer thugs.  Yeah, the guys in suits followed by the goons in hardhats.  (Talk to 5’, 100 lb. Esther Wrightman if you want an earful about the goons in hardhats who nearly ran her and her colleagues over!)

Wind energy.  Solar energy.  Same scam.  Same useless energy.  Same strategy to dispossess people from their land.

What would the Duke do?