Why I believe the Bundys’ fight is the wrong one.

Date: March 11, 2016

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Our personal experiences shape how we perceive news events. Pet peeves we have are often the result of those experiences, which is why I’ve no sympathy for rancher Cliven Bundy’s imagined cause.

If you can make it through the first half of this article, you’ll come to where I’ll explain why I feel our family had a legitimate gripe against the Department of Interior—suffered real financial losses—and yet, I don’t for a moment support either Bundy cause—and I don’t believe they have a tangible grievance.

Unless you’ve been following the recent news story of the takeover of the Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and of the subsequent arrests of the armed protesters, you may not remember the case of Cliven Bundy—the father of the group’s leaders—who some say set this news story in motion when he and his armed supporters kept agents of the federal government from confiscating his cattle back in 2014, at his Nevada ranch.

Why did the government want Cliven Bundy’s cattle? Well, cattle ranchers who haven’t enough of their own land to graze their cattle will pay grazing fees to use land belonging to someone else. Grazing fees on Federal land is considerably lower, compared to what ranchers pay to graze on private land. Yet, Bundy decided he didn’t want to pay his fees, and for some twenty years, he grazed his cattle on public lands, without compensating taxpayers and without adhering to environmental restrictions put in place to protect the land from overgrazing.

When the government finally tried to put a stop to his illegal use of public land, Cliven rounded up his armed militia friends and convinced the federal agencies—who didn’t want a blood bath—to back down. This didn’t mean the Feds had given up—they were just regrouping.

Cliven Bundy’s day of retribution has finally come—because he is now behind bars, facing a slew of charges, along with four of his sons, and dozens of his supporters—some facing charges for the 2014 Bundy Ranch incident, some for the Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover, and some for both.

In Oregon, the armed protesters initially demanded the immediate release of the Hammonds, two ranchers who were convicted of arson and required to return to prison to serve out their term. Supporters of their cause call it double jeopardy, yet that’s an inaccurate summation. The Hammonds weren’t tried twice for the same crime. It was instead some snafu, where one court allowed an early release and another cried foul. Were the Hammonds unjustly treated? Perhaps, but even the Hammonds didn’t support the armed takeover.

After the Hammonds quietly returned to prison, and failed to give support to the Oregon takeover, the Bundy’s cause shifted to a demand for the federal government to turn over the federal lands to the state.

That’s a rough summation of the events that led to the current situation, which is the arrest of dozens of their supporters, the death of one of them, and sympathizers moaning about the abuses the Bundy family has endured. This is where I cry bullshit.

If you want to feel outrage over abuses of the federal government, I don’t think the cause is a rancher who refused to pay grazing fees—fees much lower than he would have paid on private land.

I’ve written Havasu Palms, A Hostile Takeover to tell people what happened to our family. In this post, I’ll briefly touch on what happened to us.

Our family leased land from the federal government back in 1967 to develop a resort on Lake Havasu. The name of our corporation was Havasu Palms. My parents owned 51 percent, and they were the general managers, and my father, a general contractor, was the guy in the trenches, getting the work done—along with the help of mom, and throughout the years, me, my sister, and later, our spouses.

The original lease with the government guaranteed that at the end of the lease Havasu Palms would be financially compensated for any improvements made—or allowed to remove the improvement. The lease stipulated that that would be applicable to any subsequent lease. Sounds good, right?

We ended up building a new marina, restaurant, new store, and 131 space mobile home park. What we didn’t plan on, the feds added the lease land to the nearby Chemehuevi Indian Reservation, and our next lease was with the tribe—which didn’t allow for any compensation for improvements.

In the end, we lost everything—even private property, like my husband’s fork lift, a mobile home, a store full of inventory—and a water ski my sister is still bitching about.

Our lease with the tribe had an arbitration provision, which we took. We won the arbitration, but a federal judge later set aside the judgment, saying it was not in the best interest of the tribe.

That is actually just a snippet of what happened over the course of time—and if you are interested you can read the book, it’s available in paperback and eBook.

At the time our family lost Havasu Palms, my husband and I were its general managers. Mother was a widow by that time, and she foolishly spent all of her money attempting to recoup some of her losses through the courts. She lost everything—as we eventually did. It was a domino effect.

We suffered through rough, financially challenging years. Friends often ask us, how did you do it? Yet, never once—not once—did we consider taking up arms and threatening government employees. For one reason, the situation was—is—complicated, and I don’t believe the solution for this particular issue is armed insurgence. There are causes I would give my life for; this is not one of them.

Today—life is good. Those rough times got us to where we are today. Mom is 88 and lives with us. While her financial situation never improved after losing everything back then, she still has us, and we have managed to financially rebuild our lives. We live in a home I love, are blessed with an amazing family, and I’m doing what I always dreamed—I’m an author and actually making a good living doing it.

When I think of Cliven Bundy, throwing it all away because he thought it his right to graze his cows for free—I have to shake my head. I don’t get it. Our time here is short. Family is precious. And life is not always fair. But like Job, sometimes we have to deal with it and move forward.

Choose your battles carefully, because, as LaVoy Finicum discovered, sometimes they can kill you.

(Photo: Havasu Palms, California)

What I learned over at Twitter’s #OregonStandOff

Date: February 11, 2016

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Categories: Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

Comments: Leave a reply

Around noon Arizona time, the last of the four holdouts at the Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrendered to the FBI, with no shots fired. It was a little tense for a while, with David Fry—the last holdout—threatening to shoot himself after his three comrades surrendered.

I started following the story when it first broke—which I mentioned in my last blog post. Over the last few weeks I got hooked on Twitter, following hashtag “OregonStandOff.” While there wasn’t much about it on the national news, on Twitter there were tweets and links to videos posted—by the occupiers and others involved closely in the story.

It all came to a head last night, when FBI surrounded the camp occupied by the remaining four. Instead of negotiating directly with the FBI, the occupiers had self-proclaimed “liberty speaker” Gavin Seim on the phone. Seim live streamed the conversation for over four hours.

Nevada assemblywoman Michele Fiore jumped into the phone conversation and appointed herself as negotiator. Fiore is an interesting character—worth a quick Google. (As a three-times cancer survivor I tend to bristle at how she hawked her cancer cure which involved flushing the body with some salt water and sodium carbonate concoction.)

Afraid the FBI was going to gun them down upon surrender, they asked for Fiore and Franklin Graham to be present. (Graham had been negotiating for a peaceful solution for some time.) The FBI agreed.

The surrender was slated for this morning, and the first three went out as promised—but David Fry announced at the last minute he was not coming out. This did not come as any great surprise to many Twitter followers.

All of this was on live stream—as was the fiasco last night. There were a few times this morning, while the holdouts waited for Fiore and Graham to arrive, that I thought the folks on the live stream were going to get the group to do something stupid, resulting in deaths. At one point, Victoria Sharp—the young woman present during the arrests of the leaders of the group, when LaVoy Finicum was killed—called in with her mother. The women told the four holdouts not to trust the FBI and urged them to defy FBI orders. I think Seim realized their words could inflame the situation, and he eventually got them off the phone.

The first three left without incident, but when David Fry decided not to leave, self proclaimed Constitutional expert and teacher, Kriss Ann Hall, got on the phone and tried to talk him into surrendering.

By the comments on Twitter, most seemed to agree with me—Hall and Seim were not helping the situation, if anything, they were agitating poor David. After several tense hours, they finally stepped aside and let the FBI do their job—and within minutes, the FBI diffused the potentially lethal situation and convinced David to surrender peacefully.

People like to blame main stream media for misinformation. In this case, supporters of the group were upset that main stream media barely—if ever—mentioned the occupation. I doubt this was some great conspiracy to hush up the story, as some claimed. I think it had more to do with poor timing regarding news cycles. After all, with the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, and more important stories, like the Flint water crisis, there wasn’t much time left for other stories.

One thing I found interesting—the GOP candidates did not once mention the occupation during their debates. If they supported the cause, they all kept mum. It doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t come out against the group, after all, that would mean alienating some of their base. I know that at least one GOP candidate—Ted Cruz—has appeared in photo opts with several members of the group. Of course, this was before the occupation.

Bottom line, I didn’t form my opinions by listening to the news—main stream media or online news sources. I formed my opinions by listening to what the occupiers themselves had to say on the videos and live feeds they put out—and by reading their statements and written demands.

To say I didn’t support the occupation—which many (including myself) see as domestic terrorism—is an understatement.

If you ask me what they were fighting for, that would be difficult to nail down, as the message got muddled along the way. Initially, they claimed to be protesting on behalf of two ranchers who were called back to prison to serve out the remaining term of their sentence for arson on federal lands. As it turned out those ranchers didn’t welcome their “help.”

The cause then shifted to turning federal land over to the state. After the leaders were arrested, one of their wives claimed they were simply there to teach the people of Burns about their Constitutional rights.

At this point, I had a visual of a political cartoon—a classroom of nervous students listening to a cowboy—who stood by the blackboard—lecturing them on the Constitution, while armed cowboys stood guard around the room—making sure the students stayed in their seats.

By the time it all ended, it was impossible to pin down their actual grievance. Poor troubled David Fry had rambled on about how the FBI let Hillary run for president, how he didn’t want his tax dollars used to pay for abortion (no one bothered to tell him tax dollars that go to Planned Parenthood to NOT pay for abortions), he resented the fact pot wasn’t legal in his state, and then he sort of lost me when he started talking about aliens and DNA.

While David Fry vented—which went out to whoever bothered listening to the live stream—he explained how he used his phone to educate himself and had learned all about these injustices. It was pretty obvious to many listening, what David had been sucked into were the numerous tinfoil websites—those that promote conspiracies like Sandy Hook being faked and the Feds taking over Texas.

While Kriss Ann Hall’s efforts almost got David to put a bullet into his head, in my opinion (listen to the tape yourself)—it was the FBI negotiator that David finally listened to (after he’d had enough of Gavin and Kriss) who diffused the situation. In a matter of minutes, the FBI negotiator convinced David to peacefully surrender.

Listening to the spin now going on by the supporters of the takeover—I can only shake my head. I wonder, is their failure to address David’s bizarre ramblings an indication they are hoping they can re-spin the story in their favor—or do they see nothing wrong with David’s comments?

I do find one thing comforting—the majority of Twitter comments occurring during the live feeds—from others listening along with me—expressed what I was thinking.