Cliven Bundy is the new hero for the Far Right.
Cliven is a rancher and the story goes that the mean old environmentalists were insisting that he can't graze cattle on land he's been grazing them on for YEARS because 'it might hurt a tortoise'.
He 'stood strong' and defied the bad old government and thousands of armed citizens held a tense stand-off, all to defend HIS right to graze HIS cattle on HIS land.
Except that's not what happened.
It's not his land. It's federal land.
And he hasn't been paying his $1.35 per cow/calf lease fees for TWENTY ONE FUCKING YEARS. He owes the American taxpayers, including the idiots who were defending him, over a million dollars.
Meanwhile, the Keystone pipeline has been laid over land seized by eminent domain...PRIVATE land seized by eminent domain that is now used to bisect our nation over aquifers that supply millions of people with water and millions of acres of farmland with irrigation with a pipeline that is already leaking some of the dirtiest, foulest sludge imaginable and piping it (mostly) down to the international port of Houston.
It has to get to Houston for processing (taking billions more gallons of fresh water- something drought and fire-ridden Texas can CLEARLY spare)because it's not staying here. 100% of it is being sold overseas. Oh. And the pipeline itself is owned by a foreign corporation.
Where the FUCK were the thousands of armed citizens when THAT happened???
Nowhere. Families took the corporation to court and little old lady landowners handcuffed themselves to bulldozers and protesters were arrested and hauled away and all were berated and belittled and it was labeled some sort of ridiculous granola-crunching falderal by the far right ignorant, belligerent, incessantly yammering honking heads.
This was THEIR land. Not federal land. Taken. By a foreign entity. With the help of our government.
And yet...even here in gun-totin' gubment-hatin' Texas...NOTHING.
Just to the north of here- land that'd been in a family for generations, huge trees, pecan orchards (do you know how long it takes for a pecan tree to get to production age? A SHITLOAD longer than for a cow and calf to get eaten, Cliven)...all ripped out and replaced with that pipeline.
But where were the thousands of armed citizens to protect great-grandmother Eleanor Fairchild, who got hauled off to jail for trying to defend her property and her orchard? WHERE???
Guess she just wasn't 'cowboy' enough to warrant their attention.
Rather they make a big fucking deal out of an old criminal in a cowboy hat who cheated them out of one million tax dollars.
Way to pick your battles, assholes.
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