Friday Open Thread [4.25.14]

I haven’t really been following the traitor Cliven Bundy saga closely, because I don’t want to get too pissed off. To me, the issue is clear: this is federal land. The federal government as the owner of the land, allows ranchers to use the land as a grazing area for their livestock, for a price. The rancher has to pay a grazing fee for two reasons. One, if he doesn’t, then he is a criminal trespasser. Two, if the federal government doesn’t charge the fee and collect, or exercise some dominion and control over the land, then they are opening themselves up to claims of adverse possession, which is a fancy legal term for someone gaining legal title to your property after squatting on it in an open, continuous and hostile way for 21 years. So if the government allows Bundy and his band of armed traitors to possess this land without paying the grazing fee, the government could lose the land.

That Bundy is a racist is of no surprise and no real importance to me. I assumed he was. Of course he was. All these conservative militia types are racist. The surprise would have been if he wasn’t racist.

The more important issue to me is the property issue. The federal government should issue an order to Bundy. He and his livestock and his militia shall vacate the federal lands by a date certain, unless Bundy agrees to pay the grazing fees. If Bundy refuses to pay, then he must vacate. If he does not vacate, his livestock shall be confiscated and he and his militia will be forcibly removed from the property. If any person interferes during this process, they shall be arrested. If any of these persons fire at federal officials or law enforcement officers, they will be taken out by professionally trained snipers.

Done and done. Sure, it might lead to another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but who the fuck cares? Since when must traitors and cult leaders be coddled? Since when must we not offend law breakers? Since when does the federal government care if a crackpot doesn’t recognize its authority?

Josh Barro has an article in the NY Times’ new data section called Upshot, where he says Bundy has accidentally explained what is wrong with the Republican Party:

The Washington Post obtained video of his remarks and it quotes him: “Where is our colored brother? Where is our Mexican brother? Where is our Chinese? Where are they? They’re just as much American as we are, and they’re not with us. If they’re not with us, they’re going to be against us.”

Mr. Bundy, weirdly, is onto something here. The rush to stand with Mr. Bundy against the Bureau of Land Management is the latest incarnation of conservative antigovernment messaging. And nonwhites are not interested, because a gut-level aversion to the government is almost exclusively a white phenomenon.

A 2011 National Journal poll found that 42 percent of white respondents agreed with the statement, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” Just 17 percent of blacks, 16 percent of Asians and 25 percent of Hispanics agreed. In 2011 and 2012, the Pew Research Center found that 55 percent of Asian-Americans and fully 75 percent of Hispanic-Americans say they prefer a bigger government providing more services over a smaller one providing fewer services, compared with just 41 percent of the general population.

Conservatives often talk about Republican underperformance with minorities in economic terms: Minority voters with lower incomes tend to see themselves as benefiting from government programs. Or they blame the underperformance on loose-cannon Republican politicians who make offensive statements, as with Representative Don Young, of Alaska, talking about “wetbacks” or Representative Steve King, of Iowa, warning that the Dream Act would give citizenship to drug smugglers with “calves the sizes of cantaloupes.”

Those problems are real, but Republicans’ biggest problem with minorities runs even deeper than economic disparities and racist gaffes. Asian-American voters broke nearly 3-to-1 against Mitt Romney in 2012, even though they have higher median family incomes and higher average educational attainment than whites. Economic prosperity alone will not make racial minorities eager for antigovernment language.