SAL

Wave the flag, praise God, show your gun, stuff the Constitution in your back pocket, deny the federal government is even legitimate, and you can become a Great American folk hero for Fox News and the conservative media spinners.

That’s Cliven Bundy, the obstinate Nevada rancher who has violated numerous court orders to get his cattle off public lands for which he has no grazing rights and owes $1.2 million in fines built up over the last 20 years.

While Republican candidates and commentators are jumping on a bandwagon defending Bundy and his militia cohorts against what they call “overreaching government,” they omit a critical fact: Bundy doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, sponsored by a Colorado rancher congressman, established a system of grazing permits to better manage public lands.

Bundy began racking up his debt by continuing to graze his cattle without authorization in 1993 when the Bureau of Land Management began restricting permits in some areas to protect lands set aside for habitat protection. By 1995 he already owed $31,000.

Not only did he ignore U.S. District Court orders in 1998 and 1999 permanently enjoining him from grazing livestock without a permit, and authorizing the BLM to assess trespass damages, he moved his cattle to new territory.

In 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld regulations adopted in 1995, finding federal law established multiple purposes for public grazing lands, including “stopping injury to the public grazing lands by preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration.”

In 2012 the U.S. District Court authorized injunctive relief because Bundy had moved his cattle into a “broad swath” of other federal lands it called the “New Trespass Lands.”

This was a summary judgment, meaning there was no issue over the facts. Bundy has admitted trespass. His defense is that the U.S. doesn’t own the land.

When he tried that in 1998, the court declared the public lands in Nevada were the property of the U.S. because it has held title to them since 1848 when Mexico ceded them after the Mexican-American War.

In October 2013 the court reiterated its previous decisions, authorized seizure of the cattle and ordered Bundy to not physically interfere.

Bundy continually tells the media the lands are the state of Nevada’s and, “I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.”

This is where his self-designated patriot credentials and lack of knowledge of the Constitution are exposed as nothing more than a shield for violation of the law to line his own pocket.

The Nevada Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, says “... the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers ... and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States.”

There’s no gray area. No contested facts. The lands are public lands. Bundy has been trespassing for decades. While some 16,000 other ranchers using public lands comply with the law, Bundy flaunts his lawlessness.

It catches fire with some segments of the population angry over federal land ownership and management. In 1995 and 1996, several BLM and Forest Service offices were pipe-bombed. Bundy son’s says the “the war has just begun” — true patriots grab your guns and run down to Nevada to help out.

In some circles, willful violation of laws, denial of the government’s existence and praise for sedition, coupled with bombings, violence and talk of war, would lead to labels of treason and terrorism.

But in the conservative media, Bundy is a hero of liberty.

He’s no hero. He’s a deadbeat. A moocher, flouting laws and bilking the taxpayer while law-abiding citizens pay their bills.

If he were an inner-city beneficiary of social safety-net programs, he’d be a conservative narrative example of a “Welfare Queen.” It turns out their Great American cowboy is nothing more than a “Welfare Cowboy,” a “taker” who uses up precious public resources, flaunts violations of the law and makes money off it to boot.

Ron Eachus of Salem is a former legislator and a former chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. His column appears on Tuesdays. Send email to re4869@comcast.net.