Thanks Mod. I didn't really want to get into reading a bunch of legal crap on federal grazing laws, but here I am.
Heh - tell me about it. One jolt of curiosity later and I'm knee deep in it
Turns out, the fee actually went down, so I dunno what the issue is there - but I don't really care.
As near as I can tell - the main change was limiting grazing in certain areas to protect certain wildlife (ie., desert tortoise), limiting the amount of cattle to allow areas to recover from wildfire etc.
Bundy's attitude was of the sort of 'hey - my great grandparents have been grazing on these lands forever, so I have every right to continue grazing my cattle here - Federal regulations be damned.' So not only did he continue to graze in prohibited areas, but he also stopped paying the fees and so was also grazing without a permit.
I really don't care about the Bundy's in particular and have no interested in defending them.
Bundy in particular aside - the same reasoning seems to apply to the other ranchers in the area - including the terrorists.
That said - you have seen the title of the thread you are in, right? It does seem to be about Bundy and you've contributed directly to 5% of this topics posts and replies to your posts constitute 9% of this thread...
So some of the fee money is used on maintenance. Digging through the links in your link, I found some interesting information.
First off, the grazing fees are not the primary source for maintenance costs. Also, they spend about half their money on administrative costs.
Sounds similar to other situations where fees are applied, right?
First off, the grazing fees are not the primary source for maintenance costs.
Which means, from the ranchers point of view - they should be seen as a bargain, right? Though it is also probably also true that not all damage, wear and tear and so on is down to cattle grazing. There is talk in the same documents about off-road vehicles causing damage, for instance. Naturally some of this will be ranchers vehicles - but I expect there are also recreational vehicles causing damage too.
So it's a bit complicated
Who'd have thought government funding systems could be so complex?
For completeness we should probably also look to the Transit system funding. A cursory glance shows they generally lose money on a ticket vs costs look - and also rely on subsidies to avoid the loss making trips from being eliminated. But that's as much detail as I care to go into that can of worms
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?