The Ruckus in Oregon
Today was the first day that I spent more than a few minutes glancing over news about the ruckus in Oregon over the prison sentence of a father and son, Dwight and Steve Hammond, now about 75 and 46. They have been convicted of federal arson charges under anti-terrorism laws in relation to setting a fire that burned 139 acres of federal-controlled land. It was adjacent to ranch land that they owned. The fire was set intentionally as a back fire--probably so that burning on their own property did not accidentally race through a huge swath of public land, only a small portion on the margin of it. A group of armed citizens (many of them not from the immediate area) are staging a protracted protest on the site of a local National Wildlife Refuge office. The Hammonds have just begun to serve their sentence.
Today, after my friend Sharon Nisly posted this link to a speech by the US representative for the region in Oregon that is at the center of the current controversy, I listened to what Mr. Walden had to say and found it reasonable and compelling. He is a Republican.
If anyone doubts the effectiveness of simply telling stories to make a point, listening to Mr. Walden should remove all doubt. Not just any stories, of course, but stories that illustrate the soundness of the position being explained and defended. I especially liked how he "told it like it is" to be a resident of a sparsely populated area, and to have connections to the land of one's residence in a way that is hard for people to understand who have never experienced it--in short, to live in the culture of the Great American West. These are folks who love the land passionately and care for it painstakingly.
I liked too how he defended his constituents as decent people, freely acknowledging that the armed protest should stop now and people should go home (out of Oregon, in many cases), since their point has been made. By doing this he distanced himself--appropriately, in my opinion--from the Bundy men from Nevada who have been in armed conflict with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the past. They refused to pay the federal government for the privilege of grazing their livestock on government land as they were asked to do. They still have not paid up, and their cattle still graze those lands. The federal government backed down in that case.
Walden also traced the sequence of events that began in the Clinton administration when the federal government began to move toward designating the Steens Mountain area in Harney County, OR as a National Monument. A National Monument is similar to a National Park but can be created by presidential decree within any lands already owned by the federal government. This would have triggered a level of federal control that local residents were not happy with. Walden was able to persuade the Secretary of the Interior at the time that if he gave local people a chance to put together a plan that would preserve the natural beauty of Steens Mountain, they'd do a good job. They did it, by congressional legislation creating a history-making partnership between local citizens and the federal government. With local input, the Steens Mountain area became cow-free land, even though ranches surrounded it. The BLM within the Deptartment of the Interior approved--for a while.
Since the original agreement, many hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land have been burned in wildfires. The amount makes the 139 acres the Hammonds burned look like a pittance in comparison. In the course of fighting these fires, sometimes private land has intentionally been the site of backfires designed to stop the wildfires on public land. Burning of ranch fences were a result, and public servants had set those fires without permission from the landowners. Walden wisely acknowledges that fighting a fire is often chaotic, and unintended consequences sometimes result, but he is unhappy that the same generosity extended by residents to these public servants is not offered to the residents by government officials. I can understand why it seems unfair.
This is actually the second time that the Hammonds have gone to prison over a single incident. The first time the sentence was short, imposed by a judge who intentionally departed from sentencing guidelines because he believed that the guidelines called for a sentence out of proportion to their crime. Despite being a very highly respected judge, his ruling was challenged and the challenge prevailed (he actually had no leeway to depart from the guidelines) and the stiffer sentence was exacted. Now elderly Susie Hammonds is left to manage the arid 6,000-acre ranch alone, and the controversy near her home continues to fester. God bless her.
Today, after my friend Sharon Nisly posted this link to a speech by the US representative for the region in Oregon that is at the center of the current controversy, I listened to what Mr. Walden had to say and found it reasonable and compelling. He is a Republican.
If anyone doubts the effectiveness of simply telling stories to make a point, listening to Mr. Walden should remove all doubt. Not just any stories, of course, but stories that illustrate the soundness of the position being explained and defended. I especially liked how he "told it like it is" to be a resident of a sparsely populated area, and to have connections to the land of one's residence in a way that is hard for people to understand who have never experienced it--in short, to live in the culture of the Great American West. These are folks who love the land passionately and care for it painstakingly.
I liked too how he defended his constituents as decent people, freely acknowledging that the armed protest should stop now and people should go home (out of Oregon, in many cases), since their point has been made. By doing this he distanced himself--appropriately, in my opinion--from the Bundy men from Nevada who have been in armed conflict with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the past. They refused to pay the federal government for the privilege of grazing their livestock on government land as they were asked to do. They still have not paid up, and their cattle still graze those lands. The federal government backed down in that case.
Walden also traced the sequence of events that began in the Clinton administration when the federal government began to move toward designating the Steens Mountain area in Harney County, OR as a National Monument. A National Monument is similar to a National Park but can be created by presidential decree within any lands already owned by the federal government. This would have triggered a level of federal control that local residents were not happy with. Walden was able to persuade the Secretary of the Interior at the time that if he gave local people a chance to put together a plan that would preserve the natural beauty of Steens Mountain, they'd do a good job. They did it, by congressional legislation creating a history-making partnership between local citizens and the federal government. With local input, the Steens Mountain area became cow-free land, even though ranches surrounded it. The BLM within the Deptartment of the Interior approved--for a while.
Since the original agreement, many hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land have been burned in wildfires. The amount makes the 139 acres the Hammonds burned look like a pittance in comparison. In the course of fighting these fires, sometimes private land has intentionally been the site of backfires designed to stop the wildfires on public land. Burning of ranch fences were a result, and public servants had set those fires without permission from the landowners. Walden wisely acknowledges that fighting a fire is often chaotic, and unintended consequences sometimes result, but he is unhappy that the same generosity extended by residents to these public servants is not offered to the residents by government officials. I can understand why it seems unfair.
This is actually the second time that the Hammonds have gone to prison over a single incident. The first time the sentence was short, imposed by a judge who intentionally departed from sentencing guidelines because he believed that the guidelines called for a sentence out of proportion to their crime. Despite being a very highly respected judge, his ruling was challenged and the challenge prevailed (he actually had no leeway to depart from the guidelines) and the stiffer sentence was exacted. Now elderly Susie Hammonds is left to manage the arid 6,000-acre ranch alone, and the controversy near her home continues to fester. God bless her.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
3:06 PM
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