Historical Records Show Cliven Bundy's Ancestral Claims Are Lies

By Randa Morris

At the beginning of April tea party terrorists began flocking the residence of a Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy. The stand off began after right wing media outlets like Fox News began pushing a narrative of the federal government encroaching on Bundy’s rights to graze cattle on land managed by  the federal Bureau of Land Management. Bundy claimed his family established the land in 1877, before the BLM ever existed. Property records show that the ranch was purchased by the Bundy family in 1948, several years after the creation of the BLM.

Bundy’s story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

In an interview with KLAS – TV, Las Vegas, Bundy said:

“I’ve lived my lifetime here. My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley here ever since 1877.  All these rights that I claim, have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and the water and the access and range improvements.”

While it may come as no surprise that Fox news, along with all of the other right wing media outlets that pushed Bundy’s narrative, never bothered to fact check these claims, local reporters from KLAS -TV decided to check the historical records. What they discovered is that the Bundy family purchased the land on which Cliven Bundy’s ranch is located in 1948, from Raoul and Ruth Levin. The record also shows that prior to 1948, the Bundy family resided in the state of Arizona.

Bundy’s claim that his rights predate the BLM also turned out to be bogus.

Bundy also claimed that his ‘ancestral rights’ predate the creation of the BLM. However, the BLM was created in 1946, 2 years before Cliven Bundy’s family moved to the Nevada ranch.

“My rights are before the BLM even existed, but my rights are created by beneficial use. Beneficial use means we created the forage and the water from the time the very first pioneers come here,”

Bundy told KLAS-TV.

Records show that the Bundy family was never granted water rights for land that borders the 160 acre ranch. The BLM also began managing the land in question two years before the Bundy’s moved from the state of Arizona to Nevada.

What’s more, the Bundy family didn’t begin to graze cattle on the federal land in question until 1954, a full ten years after the BLM was formed.

In an interview on the Pete Santilli Show, Bundy explained his real position. He simply denies the right of the federal government to own land. He believes he’s entitled to do whatever he wants and his ‘tea party patriot’ defenders were all too happy to be used as pawns in a phony, Koch backed war on the federal government.

How the oil and gas industry is using the tea party to further their agenda.

Far from being American patriots, the tea party militia members who flocked to Cliven Bundy’s ranch in April are nothing more than a group of pawns who are being used to further the agenda of the fossil fuel industry.

In the wake of the standoff between armed militia members and the federal government, Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, is calling on the Department of Interior to investigate the connection between ALEC and the incidents that took place at the Bundy ranch earlier this month.

Congressman Grajalva’s letter highlights the connection between ALEC backed legislation, which seeks to remove control of federal land from the US government, giving it to the states, and the Bundy standoff. The ALEC/Koch backed agenda seeks to remove the US government’s control of federal land. It would allow the fossil fuel industry to exploit land that is currently protected by the federal government. Grajalva is the ranking member of the House Resource Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.

“The ALEC vision of state sovereignty trumping long-standing federal government efforts to manage public lands has already had tangible effects on Bureau of Land Management and other agency employees’ efforts to do their jobs.”

Grajalva wrote in his letter to Acting Inspector General, Mary Kelly.

“Examining how severe that impact has been, and whether ALEC is exerting undue influence on federal land management efforts, is well within the scope of your office. I believe a timely examination of these issues would serve the public interest.”

While Cliven Bundy has never had the legal right to graze his cattle on land that he does not own, his fake plight has been hyped by conservative media outlets across the country. The single reason the right wing media jumped on this story is because it furthers the narrative of the big, bad evil government encroaching on the ‘little guy.’ As it turns out, everything Bundy has said about his ‘ancestral rights’ is just another bold faced lie, being told by another right wing ‘patriot’ con artist.

This time the lies perpetuated by the right wing put the lives of private citizens and law enforcement professionals at risk, including women and children. Bundy and his terrorist buddies have backed the federal government into a corner, creating a situation in which the feds will have to take action against both Bundy and the militia members that rushed to defend him. Doing anything less would be to encourage armed tea party fanatics to repeat the behavior in other areas of the country. Next stop Yellowstone? Why not? They’ve got guns and they are entitled to use them to take what they want from the evil government.

By the way, the US government is us. It’s we the people. Federal land is land that belongs to all citizens of the United States. It includes our national parks, national forests, national monuments, scenic highways, protected wetlands and wilderness, historic landmarks and many other areas of country that the fossil fuel industry is currently not able to plunder and destroy.

Most people understand why they aren’t supposed to let their dogs poop on the public beach. They understand why they can’t just cut down trees in a national forest. They get why their kids can’t throw their trash all over a public park. That’s because they understand that they aren’t the only people with rights.

In Bundy’s case the BLM never said that Bundy couldn’t let his cows trample the land, eat the grass or leave big old cow patties all over the place. They just asked that he contribute a small fee, to help ensure that the land is preserved for the rest of the American taxpayers. But the idea of simple, basic respect for the rights of others is beyond  the comprehension of most tea party members. The idea that a person who owns livestock should carry the burden of the cost of feeding that livestock, is ‘tyranny,’ to tea-publicans. How dare the evil government expect Bundy to contribute to the cost of caring for his own livestock?

Will the right wing media outlets that pushed Bundy as a conservative hero report on the historical facts, now that they’ve been made public? Can we assume that sources like Fox News and Breitbart just failed to fact check Bundy, but didn’t purposely set out to mislead anyone? I highly doubt it.

Remember the conservative mantra, the ends justify the means. If they can rile up enough tea party fanatics to provoke a violent confrontation with the government and ultimately start a civil war, they will accomplish what they set out to do a long time ago.

Here’s the full report on Bundy’s family history from KLAS-TV.

8 News NOW