From the New York Times:
Their wish is to be left alone, and to graze their cattle freely on land they claim as their birthright.
The federal government’s wish is for the Danns to stop fattening their livestock at taxpayers’ expense.
This battle has gone on for 30 years, and the Danns have not given up yet, even though the government has seized hundreds of their cattle, sold the animals at auction, charged the sisters nearly $50,000 in fees and fined them $3 million for willful trespass.
And you thought the feds backed down today!
Well they did. See, this story is about another ranch, owned by the Danns, an pair of American Indian sisters living on the land their ancestors lived on long before the white man stepped foot in the new world.
And this story really isn’t breaking, unless we were in a time vortex and traveling back to 2002, when we had George Bush as President. It was the BML under his administration that decided to go ahead and seize 250 head of cattle and 1,000 horses over the next 2 years.
But the actual seizure is only one difference between then and now. The other is the outrage, or lack their off. See, back when this was going on no one really made a sound. Fox News didn’t cover it 24/7, talking about an oppressive government taking away our rights. Right wing nuts from around the country didn’t line up to protest the invasion of rights. None of that happened.
But why?
Why didn’t the right give a damn about the Dann sisters? Could it be that it was fine since we had a white, Republican in the White House? Or maybe it was because the Dann sisters are American Indians, and how dare they try to lay ancestral claim to land in this country, like the Mormon Bundy has done?
Whatever the reason it shows you that the outrage today over the Bundy ranch is based on pure political partisanship. The right didn’t give one damn about it happening under Bush’s term, but under Obama’s??? Look out!
Now if we can start spreading the word about this real hypocrisy going on and ask ourselves if the Mormon rancher is more entitled than the American Indian one.