Bundy's, go home and go away.

The last thing ranchers need, and residents of the West need, is some ill thought out occupation of Federal property anywhere.

It's going to hurt us.

And it is hurting us.

Okay, for those living in a cave (probably on public land), the Bundy's I'm referring to to are the ranchers in Nevada who were involved with a standoff down there regarding their use of the public domain without compensation to the Federal Government.  One member of that family now figures prominently in a standoff on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in unwanted support to some ranchers in that locality who got into trouble with the law due to a fire.

I'm not going to go into the background on the underlying incidents, but the thought that some have that occupying Federal property is going to end up with it being "given back" to the states is delusional.  On the contrary, the far more likely result is to bolster those who would kick ranchers off the Federal domain entirely.

Now, there are a lot of ranchers who rely on the Federal domain, and I've gone into the ill thought out nature of this movement before, including just about one year ago.    The entire "take back" the Federal domain movement is a phenomenally bad idea.  And tossing ranchers off the domain would also be a terrible idea, and very unjust.  

But acts like those by the Bundy's serve to boost that sort of idea.

Indeed, it's getting the fires burning again on an idea that seemed to have died down a bit recently, as the economy in the West starts to collapse due to the collapse of coal, gas and oil prices.  That the big bad Federal government isn't stopping oil production and exploration, and that the Saudis are, is now pretty evident.  Also evident is that we here in this state have a budget we can't afford now, and ironically only government spending, in part Federal, is keeping us from having an economic collapse. We weren't hearing much about this movement recently.  Indeed, local sportsmen, who vastly outnumber ranchers, tend to be quite unhappy about this movement in general, and one Wyoming legislator who backed a bill to study it kept that fact out of his annual "this is what I did in the legislature" newsletter.  That legislator is now running for Congress now, I'd note.

And so is one Rex Rammell, a veterinarian who recently relocated from Idaho who is on the "take back" side of things and proclaiming it.  Chances are that he's vastly overestimated his chances of success in a Wyoming election, but the fact that this is now being interjected into a Wyoming campaign is both interesting and bad.  For one thing, if this gets rolling again it'll tend to revive the split in the GOP that was so evident in the last general election, which they don't need, and the state doesn't need either, given that the GOP is effectively the only party here in the state right now (although the split in the GOP has lead to a tiny, but real, slow revival in the Democratic Party).

With the state sliding into an economic crisis and not having any money to spare anyone who believes that "ownership" doesn't turn into "let's sell a few things" is deluding themselves.  Indeed, it's a short step from budget deficit to sale.

It's also a short step from "we're being abused" to looking like spoiled children.  The overwhelming majority of ranchers who lease land from the Federal Government do so without complaint or problem.  But it is public land.  Occupying it goes over as well with most people as occupying an apartment building over a rent dispute would.  I.e., that doesn't engender love from the landlord.

Bundy's.  Go home.  And go away.