County resolution backs Bundy

Tonopah Town Board member Horace Carlyle blasted Nye County commissioners for supporting anarchy, after heated discussions from the audience endorsing Clark County rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with federal authorities attempting to round up his cattle and supporting board resolutions.

“I’m ashamed at what I’m hearing. I heard these people out there talking about putting women and children in front of them to create an incident, a massacre. How do you sit there as elected officials and say you support them, the laws of Nevada, the laws of the Constitution of the United States?” Carlyle asked. “This is rabble. This is anarchy. If they have agreements, most of the people in Nevada or nationwide are paying those due fees, their license fees. If they have a grievance they go to court.”

Carlyle said Nye County rancher the late Wayne Hage, who mounted a battle for years over his grazing rights in Monitor Valley in northern Nye County, took his case to court.

That came after Dean Brooks urged the public to show up en masse at the Bundy ranch in support.

“We don’t have enough military people, minutemen, oath keepers on the ground. There’s not enough of them. We need 1,000 to 2,000 people coming and going up there every day. If we have enough public eyes on this program then these guys are probably going to back off. But these people are coming in, they’re hired contractors, they’re hired guns, they’re hired killers. They will kill the Bundys and people we have on the ground over there,” Brooks said.

Herman Lewis, who said he moved here from California because he heard Sheriff Tony DeMeo was “a constitutional sheriff,” urged Nye County officials to make sure it doesn’t happen in Nye County.

“Don’t let this chance to protect the Bundys slip by or there will be a second American revolution, then blood will be spent and it will be too late,” he said.

Commissioner Frank Carbone made the trip to Bunkerville for the protest over the Bundy cattle roundup. Lewis urged more county officials to show up.

“When we have even one of you with us you give us tremendous credibility because we don’t look like a bunch of ragtag troublemakers or provocateurs,” Lewis said.

Commissioner Lorinda Wichman said Lewis was absolutely right and she agreed with him. But Wichman said according to the Nevada Open Meetings Law, three commissioners can’t be in the same room at the same time without posting an agenda.

Commissioners Tuesday approved a resolution requested by Commissioner Butch Borasky in support of the limited powers of the U.S. Constitution and Gov. Brian Sandoval’s support of the First Amendment.

Part of the resolution states: “neither the U.S. Constitution nor any laws of Congress provide for a general grant of law enforcement authority to the federal government, and whereas our national government was purposefully created by the founding fathers to be a government of limited powers and whereas world history has repeatedly proven that an overpowering and intrusive bureaucracy destroys a free society and whereas when federal bureaucracy assumes the role of a national police force that has no accountability to its citizens we step dangerously close to tyranny.”

The resolution states when state and county law enforcement is usurped by armed federal employees it places citizens in the difficult position of either submitting to an unlawful act or resisting under threat of bodily harm and or death. The only land on which the federal government has law enforcement authority are federal enclaves, it states, referring to places like the Nellis Air Force Range.

“In the recent federal action against rancher Cliven Bundy, armed federal bureaucrats are operating outside their lawful delegated authority and that this will continue across the west until they are required by county sheriffs to follow the law and cease their illegal encroachment on state jurisdiction,” the resolution states.

Borasky said he got help from a few people to help draft the resolution in short order after viewing what happened at the Bundy ranch on television. He blasted BLM “goon squads” that trained dogs on a woman and told citizens they had to exercise their First Amendment rights in a restricted place.

“I greatly resent Senator (Harry) Reid sending that goon squad down. It’s totally unprofessional and totally uncalled for and if that’s the way the federal government is treating its citizens, they need more than a resolution stuffed up their butt,” Borasky said in his occasional bluntness.

Another county resolution was passed in support of ranching in Nye County as essential to the pioneering of the continent, a vital part of the rural economy and providing stewardship of public lands through generations.

The resolution states: “Nye County recognizes the rights of historical ranches to continue grazing on public lands and should not be infringed on by federal regulations and Nye County reserves the right to regulate the use of public lands within its borders and Nye County encourages cooperation before confrontation on any issue regarding public land usage.”

Under the second public comment, Carlyle said, “I want to caution you all out there. I am an elected official, I took an oath to support all the laws not only in Nye County but the state and federal. As public officials here you could be construed to be supporting insurrection, rebellion and violation of law which could make this county liable based on any incident that happens out there in your name or your support.”

Wichman sought to distance the board from public comments made during the meeting.

“The actions taken by this board, none of those were against the law,” she said.