In two Nevada courtrooms, the good guys get their say

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:24 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED FEB. 25, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
In two Nevada courtrooms, the good guys get their say

Land rights activists report the letters poured in to Chief U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben in the weeks before his Feb. 21 sentencing of Ruby Valley rancher Cliff Gardner.

(Gardner was convicted last November on charges of grazing his cattle from time to time on government land in northeast Nevada -- acreage his family has ranched for generations.)

One also wonders if His Honor didn't raise a finger and sense a change in the wind when the U.S. Forest Service -- now serving a very different master in the person of incoming Interior Secretary Gale Norton -- last week folded its tents entirely in the five-year struggle to close off the Jarbidge Canyon Road (also in northeast Nevada) to all human access.

("We received threats and intimidation from the government up until election time, and then they [federal officials] became cooperative," says Nolan Lloyd, chairman of the Elko County Commission.)

Finally, some 75 people -- mostly ranchers rooting for the defendant -- packed McKibben's courtroom Wednesday to see if the judge would make a sacrificial lamb of Gardner in the ongoing federal campaign to drive the West's small, family ranchers off the land.

And suddenly, the judge's demeanor began to change.

Where Gardner had previously been told he would not be allowed to stage his slide show in the courtroom, presenting his case that grazing cattle on the lands actually increases crop diversity and wildlife yields (while challenging federal jurisdiction over the lands in question), Judge McKibben announced at the last minute that Gardner would be given half an hour to speak his piece.

"He told him he'd only let him run it for half an hour, but I think it ran 45 minutes or an hour," says Gardner's son Charley, reached at the Slash-J ranch on Friday. "They let him do the whole slide show and it came off real well."

In the end, the judge imposed a $1,000 fine, suspended pending appeal -- a minimal penalty -- and ordered the Forest Service to sit down and work with Gardner. Another witness describes prosecutors and other government agents on hand looking "stunned -- and not in a happy way."

"He said they were supposed to work with my dad, they're supposed to sit down and have a talk, but he did order the cattle off the land," Charley continues. "What he said is that if they get out again the Forest Service has to notify us and then we have three days to get them off."

I asked the rodeo champion if the family's ranch can be operated at a profit without using those federal lands, as such small ranchers have been accustomed to do for more than a century.

"I don't think so."

So what's his father going to do?

"You'll have to get that from the horse's mouth," Charley said.

Cliff Gardner couldn't be reached for comment by deadline.

# # #

In one of the high points of the six-day Clutter vs. Transportation Services Authority trial in the Las Vegas courtroom of District Judge Ron Parraguirre -- which ended Wednesday -- attorneys for the limousine commission and the town's "intervening" major limousine companies actually went so far as to assert the reason more competition should not be allowed in the limousine industries is because new competitors might ... charge lower prices.

Oh, the horror.

The resulting lower profit margins could discourage operators from spending enough on safety and vehicle upkeep, claimed defenders of the existing protection racket.

Clark Neily, one of two attorneys for the Washington-based Institute for Justice (representing the would-be independent limo operators) responded by introducing voluminous evidence of accident and safety citations against vehicles of today's operators.

So much for the theory that firms enjoying a well-padded government monopoly will dutifully change out those old tires before they start to go bald.

"One of the other things that was really notable during this trial was how desperately the TSA plus the three intervening companies fought to keep out evidence on what's been going on in the TSA in the intervening three years" (since the plaintiffs had their limos impounded), explains Dana Berliner, the other Institute for Justice attorney representing the independents.

"What's been going on is that all the independent companies have had to cut deals with the intervenors in order to get their certificates," Berliner told me Thursday.

Since Nevada law allows license applications to be rejected if existing firms "intervene" to complain the new competition would hurt their bottom lines, "Basically, if you're an independent your fate is in the hands of these (existing) companies, because they either run you through the paper mill or use up all of your resources on legal fees so you're not financially fit anymore to get the license. ..."

I asked Ms. Berliner is she thought there's much chance Judge Parraguirre will order her clients reimbursed for their trouble and expense, as well as for the value of their seized vehicles.

"That'll never happen," she conceded. "Although it's within the power of the court to make monetary restitution, that's not what this suit was about. This is a due process constitutional case ... to get this arbitrary and really burdensome and abusive process changed for everybody."

Judge Parraguirre is expected to rule in about six weeks.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Previous Posts:
For once, bureaucratic nightmare has a happy ending
Busting the protection racket
Teachers unions won't say where tax loot would go
A victory in Elko
The hypocrisy of the morally anointed
Driving them off the land
The Last Food Fight
Drug war very effective
What did those 'B averages' really mean?
The questions that are never asked, Part II

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

In two Nevada courtrooms, the good guys get their say