Last month’s US Federal siege at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada tore open an old American wound.

FEDERAL BLM MERCENARIES: Pending financial deals in Washington may have motivated the BLM’s aggressive timetable.

As the federal government continues to feed off of the fat of the Union, the whole issue of states’ rights is one which sends chills down the thin spines of scoliotic technocrats in Washington DC. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment clearly deliniates political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government.

For decades, bureaucrats and their lawyers in Washington DC have manged to duck, dive and manipulate the US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment through a long series of legal patches, age-old statutes and civil war era deals that were struck by the federal government in order maintain the upper hand in terms eminent domain over the western United States. The Bureau of Land Management’s debacle in Bunkerville, Nevada has only accelerated the debate, as the states begin to fully realize the ramifications of allowing federal agencies to overrun state sovereignty.

Forbes correspondent Geoffery Lawrence explained:

“For those of us who call the American West our home, federal ownership of state land has riled people up for decades. Rural and city-dwelling citizens have joined with lawmakers of both parties in an ongoing effort to free up land that Congress deprived Western states in a bygone era.”

Lawrence continues:

“In Nevada, federal authorities control 87 percent of the land, leaving just 13 percent to private citizens. That might have been an easy trade for Nevadans to make back when the state constitution that allowed them into the Union was approved in a landslide with only about 10,000 votes.”

“Back in 1864, Nevada was rushed into the Union so its heavily Republican population could help ensure President Lincoln’s reelection. When Congress passed the enabling act for Nevada statehood, that act imposed a number of special conditions for entry into the union. Some of those conditions, like the provision requiring Nevada to outlaw slavery, have posed no problem. One important condition, however—requiring Nevadans to “disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory”—has long been twisted to justify burdening Nevada with challenges unknown to Eastern states, especially now that 2.7 million people call Nevada home.”

“Such enabling-act provisions — common to virtually every new state since the Northwest ordinance of 1785 – were originally intended simply to clear title to the territorial land so the federal government could quickly dispose of that land to private owners. However, by the latter half of the 19th Century, Congress increasingly began welshing on its obligations to appropriate Western lands and allow settlement akin to Eastern states”.

“Nevada citizens or lawmakers, united in opposition to this Congressional mistreatment, in 1979, 1993, 1995, and 1996 voted in favor of rejecting the now-hated disclaimer clause and removing it entirely from the state constitution.”

In reality, the federal government has no just standing, not even in Nevada. In the absence of any real authority, the activities of the BLM can only be described as a form of interstate racketeering. Despite cries of ‘domestic terrorism’ from federal bureaucrats whose own conflicts of interest have inflamed the Bundy Ranch crisis, namely US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV-D), the cat is already out of the bag, and cannot be put back in.

Runaway corruption and fiscal irresponsibility in Washington will only serve to empower the states in the long-run.

This issue is in its ascendancy now…

http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/05/02/restore-the-tenth-western-states-now-want-feds-blm-out/