property rights
Behind the Oregon Standoff

Behind the Oregon Standoff

Decades of persecution by the federal government has led Western farmers and ranchers to a breaking point. ...
William F. Jasper

On January 4, Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond and his son Steven began their second prison sentence, entering the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles Harbor. They were prosecuted as “terrorists” under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 for controlled burns on their own property in 2001 and 2006 that got out of control and spread to around 150 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management land (on which the Hammonds own/have grazing rights). The fires caused no real damage and no threat to lives, homes, or property of other citizens. In fact, the BLM acknowledged that the 2001 fire for which the Hammonds were prosecuted had actually “improved range conditions” on the public lands.

In their first trial, the federal judge ruled that sentencing the Hammonds as terrorists to the five-year sentence demanded by federal prosecutors would “shock the conscience” of the court. It shocked the conscience of many other observers as well. But the federal Department of Justice was relentless in this case, appealing the Federal District Court’s more lenient sentences. It demanded that these dangerous “terrorists” serve the full five-year prison term.

In stark contrast, the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and other federal agencies are notorious for starting “prescribed burns” that regularly rage out of control over many thousands of acres, often destroying public buildings and facilities, as well as private homes, ranches, and livestock — not to mention forests, grasslands, and wildlife habitat — and gravely endangering human life. In fact, as we report in our companion story, in December, shortly before the Hammonds reported to prison, the federal government reversed itself on compensating farmers and ranchers in North and South Dakota who lost tens of millions of dollars in property and livestock destroyed by the 2013 Pautre Fire, a “controlled burn” started by the Forest Service. After initially promising to expedite remuneration to the struggling farmers and ranchers victimized by the federal arsonists, the federal government first delayed all recompense procedures, and then, ultimately, refused compensation altogether, forcing their victims to spend their own money on lawyers to sue in court for redress and compensation.

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