BUNDY RANCH: The Harry Reid Connection

I wrote the following email to Greta Van Susterin

I’d watched her dismiss the potential connection between Harry Reid and the Gold Butte property with my mouth agape. She and Breitbart both dismissed the connection because the Gold Butte property was miles away from the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone site (a project that involved the Reids). The answer to their objection was simple… they missed the meaning of the term “offsite”. Here’s my letter:

RE: REID CONNECTION TO BUNDY – The missing BLM website page

Greta – You missed the connection because you ignored a common zoning term… “Offsite mitigation”.

Breitbart missed it too. I spent more than one term as a zoning commissioner, and I am shocked nobody’s catching this… it’s like seeing several credible sources dismiss a case because we all know 2+2=22. This one is just too easy.

Note the word OFFSITE
When you discussed the Bundy Ranch case last night you quickly dismissed as rumor the Reid connection implied on a page that disappeared from the BLM website. The page included the following bullet points (bold/color/italics added for clarity):

Examples of Restoration Funding and Viability Impacted

• A $400,000 matching grant to restore Southwest Willow Flycatcher habitat along the Virgin River from the Walton Family
  Foundation was withdrawn until the trespass cattle have been removed.
• A $160,000 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act project to restore Southwestern Willow Flycatcher has been delayed until trespass cattle are removed.
• Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.
  
• The Nevada State Department of Wildlife has built extensive fences to protect state and federal lands protected as the Overton Wildlife Refuge from the trespass cattle.

Both you and Breitbart dismissed this because Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone is miles away?
Of COURSE it is miles away. You can’t do OFFSITE mitigation ON-SITE. It is by definition at a different location.

What is OFFSITE MITIGATION?
If you are trying to get a project approved, and the project violates some regulation, one might seek a variance on grounds they will make up for whatever zoning regulatory sin they’re committing ON-site by dedicating land OFF-site where they make up for it.

So YES, there IS a connection
So thinking the Gold Butte property cannot be connected in to the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone project is incorrect. It is known that Reid’s son still represents the company in question, and this objection about the Bundy cattle conflicting with DLSEZ’s offsite mitigation is of record. It was found in the google cache… a snapshot of BLM’s site that showed what WAS on the page. If it wasn’t pertinent, why did some BLM tech go to the trouble of changing their robot.txt on the BLM site and manage to get that cache removed hours after the connection broke on social media.

Attached is a screenshot of the page that was in the BLM site’s Google cache
I had made comment on Facebook referencing the cache and provided a link. My comments are still available on my FB page. Hours later my link led to a 404 error. That means BLM worked to get the cache cleared. Fortunately some people DID take a screenshot before it disappeared. I am embarrassed to note I didn’t have the foresight to do a screengrab, but here is a link to the site of someone that did. I can attest to the screenshot being an accurate picture of what I saw on Google’s cache before BLM made it disappear: http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2014/04/15/here-is-the-notorious-missing-blm-page-connecting-to-harry-reid-not/

Please see the attachment, which includes reference material at the top to its location on the Google cache and the reference to the BLM page on which it resided.

The page would not have vanished so quickly if it didn’t have meaning.

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RJ FINAL NOTE:

I now have a copy of that page (I try not to make the same mistake twice. I’ll comment later on the events at the ranch itself. My objection to the whole thing doesn’t necessarily mean I support Bundy not paying grazing fees if they’re owed. My point can be made in the following observation:

In real estate… not paying your rent has legal consequences. But guess what has even WORSE legal consequences? That’d be the consequences a landlord faces if he makes heavy handed efforts against the renter that owes him money.

The feds were way the hell out of line sending an army of about 200 men in battle gear with ARs, choppers, snipers, and cattle rustlers. A judgment or a lien? Yes. Acting like you’re invading Grenada? No.

And what the hell was that bullshit “first amendment area”… 25×25 yards 3 miles away in the desert? Note to Federal government. You want to know where our first amendment zone is? It looks precisely like a map of the USA. Get used to it. I don’t care what law says otherwise… you cannot pass a law that violates the bill of rights, you morons.