What you need to know about the Oregon standoff

[MajGenl.Meade]

Ah yes - the old "if one is like that" so are all the rest. Bigot

[Lord Jim]

LMAO!!!

Apparently rube does not know what the word "apocryphal" means...(either that, or once again he didn't bother to read what he posted before he posted it)

One apocryphal quote attributed to Watt is "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back", although the statement has not been confirmed. Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist magazine, erroneously attributed this remark to the 1981 testimony by Watt before Congress.[10] Journalist Bill Moyers, relying on the Grist article, also attributed the comment to Watt. After it was discovered that the quote was mistaken, Grist corrected the error, and Moyers apologized.[11] Watt denied the attribution, and protested such characterization of his policy.

Here's what the article you posted says about how Watt actually viewed the role of his religious faith in his approach:

Watt periodically mentioned his Dispensationalist Christian faith when discussing his method of environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

[Long Run]

Juror 4 vigorously defends the across-the-board acquittals of Ammon Bundy and his six co-defendants, calling the rulings a "statement'' about the prosecution's failure to prove the fundamental elements of a conspiracy charge.

The full-time Marylhurst University business administration student was the juror who had sent a note to the judge on the fourth day of the initial jury's deliberations in the case, questioning the impartiality of a fellow juror, No. 11, who the judge bounced from the jury a day later.

"It should be known that all 12 jurors felt that this verdict was a statement regarding the various failures of the prosecution to prove 'conspiracy' in the count itself – and not any form of affirmation of the defense's various beliefs, actions or aspirations,'' Juror 4 wrote Friday in a lengthy email to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

He expressed relief that he can now speak out freely, but he wasn't ready as of Friday morning to drop his anonymity. He said his studies have suffered since the trial started, and he's not ready for the attention revealing his identity would bring but felt it was important to defend the verdict. The judge withheld jurors' names during the jury selection process and trial, instead referring to each by number.

The jury closely followed U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown's instructions on how to apply the law to the evidence and testimony heard during the five-week trial, he said.

The jury returned unanimous verdicts of "not guilty'' to conspiracy charges against all seven defendants. Each was accused of conspiring to prevent employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management from carrying out their official work through intimidation, threat or force during the 41-day occupation.

Juror 4 noted the panel couldn't simply rely on the defendants' "defining actions'' to convict.

"All 12 agreed that impeding existed, even if as an effect of the occupation,'' he wrote.

"But we were not asked to judge on bullets and hurt feelings, rather to decide if any agreement was made with an illegal object in mind,'' the Marylhurst student wrote. "It seemed this basic, high standard of proof was lost upon the prosecution throughout.''

Prosecutors had argued that the case, at its core, was about the illegal taking of another's property. The heavily armed guards that manned the front gate and watchtower during the 41-day takeover, in and of itself, was "intimidating,'' and prevented officers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management from carrying out their work, they said.

They argued that the alleged conspiracy began Nov. 5, when Ammon Bundy and ally Ryan Payne met with Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward and promised there would be extreme civil unrest in the community if he didn't step in and block Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond. The Hammonds were slated to return to federal prison on Jan. 4 and serve out a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for arson on federal land.

Defense lawyers urged jurors in closing arguments not to mix-up the "effect'' of the occupation – which undoubtedly kept federal employees from doing their jobs - from the "intent'' of the occupiers.

Five of the seven defendants, including Ammon Bundy, testified. Many said that they were there to protest in support of the Hammonds and federal government overreach because they received absolutely no response from state or local government officials to their previous efforts to spur change.

The defense lawyers' arguments, coupled with the jury instructions on how to apply the law to the evidence, resonated with jurors, Juror 4 noted.

"Inference, while possibly compelling, proved to be insulting or inadequate to 12 diversely situated people as a means to convict,'' the juror wrote. "The air of triumphalism that the prosecution brought was not lost on any of us, nor was it warranted given their burden of proof.''

Here are some of the key issues covered in more than 30 pages of instructions that U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown read to jurors and what they used to reach their decision.

Juror 4 plainly stated that fellow Juror 11, during the initial round of deliberations, "had zero business being on this jury in the first place.''

Juror 11 had worked for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as a ranch tech and firefighter "more than 20 years ago,'' he had said during jury selection. Asked by the judge during voir dire if that experience would impede his ability to be a fair and impartial judge of the facts, he said, "Not really.''

Juror 4 explained why he didn't alert the court immediately after he had heard Juror 11, on day one of deliberations reportedly say, "I am very biased.''

It wasn't until the fourth day into deliberations that Juror 4 sent a note to the court, asking if a juror who had worked previously for the federal land management agency and outright told the panel he was "very biased'' could be an impartial judge. The court, flummoxed by the development, a day later dismissed Juror 11 for "good cause,'' after the prosecution and defense teams agreed to the dismissal. At the time, parties to the case weren't sure which way Juror 11's alleged bias fell.

Juror 4 said he "resisted the impulse'' to send the question sooner in an effort to give his fellow juror a chance to explain himself.

In his email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Juror 4, for the first time, also contended that Juror 11 "violated'' the judge's explicit orders "by hearkening to 'evidence' that was never admitted in this case, refused to consider the defendant's state of mind and used imaginative theories to explain key actions.'"

Juror 4 said, though, he wishes that he "had sent the letter on day one, since it would have alleviated much stress for all of us.''

The Maryville business student said he is "baffled'' by what he described as observers' "flippant sentiments'' in the wake of the jury's acquittals.

"Don't they know that 'not guilty' does not mean innocent?'' he wrote. "It was not lost on us that our verdict(s) might inspire future actions that are regrettable, but that sort of thinking was not permitted when considering the charges before us.''

The jury, he said, met with Judge Brown after the verdicts were announced and after the U.S. Marshals' physical confrontation and arrest of Bundy lawyer Marcus Mumford.

He said many of the jurors questioned the judge about why the federal government chose the "conspiracy charge.'' He said he learned that a potential alternate charge, such as criminal trespass, wouldn't have brought as significant a penalty.

The charge of conspiring to impede federal employees from carrying out their official work through intimidation, threat or force brings a maximum sentence of six years in prison.

"We all queried about alternative charges that could stick and were amazed that this 'conspiracy' charge seemed the best possible option,'' Juror 4 said.

[rubato]

Internal jury-rigging?

Interesting.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

LMAO!!!

Apparently rube does not know what the word "apocryphal" means...(either that, or once again he didn't bother to read what he posted before he posted it)

One apocryphal quote attributed to Watt is "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back", although the statement has not been confirmed. Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist magazine, erroneously attributed this remark to the 1981 testimony by Watt before Congress.[10] Journalist Bill Moyers, relying on the Grist article, also attributed the comment to Watt. After it was discovered that the quote was mistaken, Grist corrected the error, and Moyers apologized.[11] Watt denied the attribution, and protested such characterization of his policy.

Here's what the article you posted says about how Watt actually viewed the role of his religious faith in his approach:

Watt periodically mentioned his Dispensationalist Christian faith when discussing his method of environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

I read it and posted the complete text for reasons of honesty. I did not wish to condemn him for an apocryphal story (which the liberal Journalist Bill Boyer had acknowledged conservative 'journalists' have never done as honorably with the
Breitbart lie machine). Watts behavior speaks for itself and makes the point with greater than necessary force. His policy was to exploit resources to the greatest extent possible with the greatest benefit to the few and the highest costs to the environment and to the future.

Learn to think instead of moronic knee-jerk hatred. It makes you stupid. It is why you created Trump.


BTB Watt had grazing rights to tens of thousands of acres which he transferred to his son to avoid the appearance, but not the fact, of conflict of interest. Hillary has never done anything so nakedly corrupt.

Yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Sounds like the US Attorney's office screwed the pooch.

[rubato]

Ah yes - the old "if one is like that" so are all the rest. Bigot

What crap reasoning. The "one" was the secretary of the interior. Not some meaningless mook.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Later life

In 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury, accused of making false statements before the grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which he had lobbied in the 1980s.[24] On January 2, 1996, Watt pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor of withholding documents from the grand jury. On March 12, 1996, he was sentenced to five years' probation, and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000 and perform 500 hours of community service.[25]

In a 2001 interview, Watt applauded the energy policy of the Bush administration, stating that its preference of oil drilling and coal mining to conservation was just what he recommended in the early 1980s.[26]

facts facts facts

[rubato]

James Watt`s Fleeting Legacy
September 13, 1985

Whatever mark former Interior Secretary James Watt intended to make on the nation is rapidly and happily being eradicated by the courts, the Congress and his own Reagan administration successors. In the last reversal of government-by-Watt-fiat, a federal court in California has struck down as illegal his edict granting private ranchers authority to manage taxpayer-owned government lands.

In addition to their grazing rights, Mr. Watt had also given the ranchers control over the management of water, wildlife and recreation on federal land. Conservationists complained that grazing often was the ranchers` chief, if not only, consideration. The court ruled that Mr. Watt`s action was an unlawful abdication of his department`s responsibilities as the taxpayers` trustee.

Recently, Mr. Watt`s decision to turn over the California coastline to oil drilling was reversed, as was his order removing 1.5 million acres of wilderness from federal protection. His successors as interior secretary, William Clark and now Donald Hodel, have been changing the substance as well as the style of the department`s management.

One can only wonder what on earth Mr. Watt hoped to accomplish. Those giveaways of federal land were opposed not just by environmentalists but also by industry, which found them often impolitic and uneconomic. Mr. Watt`s legacy will not be the oil derricks and strip mines he pined for but the reaffirmed awareness that democracies don`t work the way he did. Not for long.

And on and on.

[rubato]

And something just for the addled Maj Genl.

How James Watt Survives

Reagan's secretary of the interior bedevils envirnmentalists, but he's the Moral Majority's patron saint
Interior Secretary James Watt, September 18th, 1981 Glen Martin/Denver Post/Getty
By William Greider
June 9, 1983


WASHINGTON D.C.

The good news about James Watt, I suppose, is that his spring offensive has failed. The bad news, of course, is that this twisted man remains in power as secretary of the interior, continuing his damage to the public good.

Two months ago, Watt launched a public-relations blitz to brighten his image. Mr. Motormouth appeared on all the TV news talk shows with his mendacious charts and gave soulful interviews to usually hostile organs like the Washington Post. Like his leader in the White House, he told lots of lies about himself and his programs.

Watt's political problem was obvious, even to his friends: the public-opinion polls, including those taken by the White House, show that he is both the best-known member of Ronald Reagan's cabinet and the most despised. Americans simply do not share his rip-and-ruin view of our natural resources, land, water, parks and wilderness. (Unless they are Moral Majority Christians, apparently)

Fortunately, Watt is the Earl Butz of the Reagan administration. He cannot speak without reminding us of his bizarre vision of American society. He likens environmentalists to Nazis. He describes Indian tribal rights as socialism. He confuses the Vegas sleaze of Wayne Newton with middle-class values. He compares his own "persecution" by the media with what Hitler did to the Jews. Watt's denunciation of the Beach Boys as the "wrong element" for Fourth of July concerts on the Mall was so loony that even the Reagan White House was compelled to dissent. The president's staff staged a clever mea culpa for the interior secretary, in which he appeared on the White House lawn and ate his own words. By May, Watt's standing in the polls had sunk lower than ever.

Yet he survives. How does he do it? Crass political logic, plus a decent regard for public opinion, would dictate the hook for Watt, especially if Reagan really intends to run for reelection next year. Watt is now an embarrassment, a perfect symbol of Reagan's own wrongheaded values: his desire to reward special interests like big oil at the public's expense, to gut any form of law enforcement that displeases the business managers. The White House staff, one assumes, would like to engineer his removal, just as they shuffled Anne Gorsuch Burford offstage from the scandal-ridden Environmental Protection Agency. Some do want Watt's resignation, but they dare not push for it.

As a practical matter, the only person who can fire James Watt is James Watt. The interior secretary has fashioned a clever form of job security for himself: the more audacious he is, the more he appeals to right-wingers whom the administration can ill afford to offend. The man may be twisted, but he's not dumb –– though if he is truly smart about politics, he will do the Gipper a favor and quit long before the election season begins.

The explanation behind this begins with Reagan himself. He loves what Watt is trying to do. They share the same retrograde instincts about the environment and the West, and no amount of carping from critics or public scandal will change that. Former senator Gaylord Nelson, who is now chairman of the Wilderness Society, puts it this way: "Watt only has two constituents – Reagan and the Lord. If you've got both of them on your side, you don't have to worry about anyone else."

Beyond that fundamental point, however, Watt's political status gets trickier than his environmental critics like to acknowledge. For starters, intense as anti-Watt sentiment is, it is not nearly as strong as many imagine. Polls consistently show that among those citizens who have an opinion about the man, he draws negative ratings of two to one, or worse. That's extraordinary hostility for a second-rung cabinet officer. But the same polls show that at least half of the population has no feeling about Watt one way or the other. Either they don't know who he is, or they don't care.

"It doesn't exactly put us in a death sweat," explains Rich Bond, director of political operations for the Republican National Committee. One explanation for this is that Watt, as controversial as he makes himself, is not directly associated with the life-and-death environmental issues that arouse the most public alarm –– toxic wastes, cancer-causing chemicals, air and water pollution. Behind the scenes, Watt has had a big hand in those issues, but his most visible turf is government land. His depredations do not seem as threatening.

Still, the political damage is real. White House analysts understand –– even if the president doesn't –– that those"environmental extremists" Reagan regularly denounces include a lot of suburban Republicans and independents who voted for Reagan and who loathe James Watt. Watt by himself might not push them into voting Democratic, but he gives them a strong nudge.

Furthermore, contrary to popular conceptions, Watt is most unpopular in the region he claims to represent –– the West, the essential base for any Reagan electoral strategy. A Washington Post/ ABC poll found, for instance, that Watt's nationwide disapproval rating is thirty-two percent (of the rest, ten percent approve, and fifty-eight percent have no opinion). In the West, including the Rocky Mountain states, the disapproval rating is much higher –– forty-one percent. "There's a real drag on the president, no question," says one White House strategist who hopes Watt will get the message.

But the White House can't move on Watt directly, much as some staffers would like to, without setting off an uproar on the right. In his continual speechmaking and political fundraising, Watt has made himself the darling of the hard-shell Christian conservatives and other elements of the New Right. His Holocaust allusion may have offended Jews, but his born-again rhetoric identifies him solidly with the Moral Majority fundamentalists who feel persecuted themselves. In the last two years, Watt has raised more money for the GOP than anyone else except Reagan and Vice President George Bush –– $3 million from more than 200 appearances.

If Watt were pushed over the side now, the right-wingers, who are already antsy, would revolt against the White House "pragmatists." And, if the right wing were to revolt, then Ronald Reagan would have little choice when it comes down to the really big question: does he really want to run again?

"If anybody is doing any leaning," says Bond of the RNC, "it's friends of the president urging him to stick with Watt because [not doing so] would cause another uprising on the right, which the president can't afford in his time of delicate decision making."

It's a complicated poker game, and Watt holds the best hole card.

ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERS DO NOT WISH to shout it from the rooftops, but most of them will acknowledge what is obvious to political Washington: they've won and Watt's lost. On nearly every grandiose scheme Watt has launched, every initiative to undo the landmark reforms of the last fifteen years, he has been stymied or reversed by outraged public reaction, by congressional veto or by court-ordered prohibitions.

"I would say we've sort of passed through the flames and come out even stronger," says Brock Evans, vice-president of the Audubon Society (which, incidentally, has added 100,000 new members since 1980, thanks to Watt)." We've won every public test of the administration's environmental policy, whether in Congress or the courts. They've done damage by cutting budgets and rewriting regulations, but by and large, they've lost."

Jonathan Lash, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, offers a more precise metaphor: "All in all, Watt has been more termite than tiger."

But termites do structural damage, usually not visible until years afterward, and that is exactly what Watt continues to do at the Department of the Interior. He has been checked on the major battlefronts, but now he's down in the bureaucratic trenches, gnawing away bit by bit, and it is much more difficult to fight him on that level. This is why environmentalists are not prepared to declare victory just yet.

First, let us savor his defeats. Watt's earlier forays included a declaration that he would open wilderness areas in the West to drillers and miners. Congress put a stop to it: the House voted 350 to 58 to withdraw wilderness lands from mineral development. Fifty-two senators cosponsored similar legislation. Watt also proposed a major dilution of the Endangered Species Act and asked Congress to hold off its review of the law. Congress ignored him and renewed the law without significant weakening amendments.

In 1982, Watt tried to gut the new federal strip-mining controls, enacted in 1977, by rewriting the regulations. A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit, but Watt's case was so weak that the Justice Department wouldn't defend him. Interior had to back off and keep the existing rules in place. Even so, Watt is doing a good job of not enforcing the strip-mine laws: he has failed to collect more than $40 million in fines from mining companies and to make them stop illegal practices. In a suit filed on this matter by a coalition of Southern environmentalists, a federal judge concluded that Watt was "flouting" the law by failing to enforce government regulations.

Most insidious, perhaps, was Watt's original proposal to offer all of America's offshore oil –– a billion acres of ocean oil fields –– for leasing within five years, providing a wonderful windfall to oil companies by flooding the glutted market and depressing prices. A series of lawsuits stopped the most egregious cases. Yet Watt is proceeding with offshore leasing, though at a slower pace;he's doing likewise with coal leases on federal lands in the West and the auctioning of public lands by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Lawsuits and political flack have slowed him down dramatically, but they haven't stopped him in his tracks.

There is a large public scandal brewing here, however. It involves the transfer of public assets to private interests "at fire-sale prices," as the environmentalists put it. The full story of who's been getting rich from James Watt's crusade will take months and probably years of careful investigation, so the general public may not wake up until long after Watt and Reagan have departed. "It's Teapot Dome in a more sophisticated guise," says Brock Evans.

The outlines of scandal are clear already. In April, the government offered 23 million acres of Atlantic-coast oil tracts for bids. The oil companies bid on only ten percent of the leases offered, and the government wound up taking in a paltry total of $87 million for oil leases that in 1982 were estimated to be worth $979 million. The bidders still made a killing. The beneficiaries of this windfall are familiar names: ARCO, Gulf, Texaco, Shell, Marathon, Sohio and other Reagan favorites too numerous to list.

On the coal front, Watt –– between Congress and the federal courts –– isn't going to get away with leasing all of the federally owned acreage, as he'd originally proposed, but he's doing the best he can. Last year, he auctioned off more than a billion tons of coal in the Powder River basin of Wyoming and Montana, and the bids fell $60 million short of what the government thought it would collect. Amax, a major coal conglomerate, acquired a tract for $7.4 million that an Interior team had assessed at $12 million. Shell Oil successfully bid $26 million for coal whose appraised value is $52 million.

Overall, Watt has been selling our coal for three and a half cents per ton, while privately owned coal has been fetching at least eighteen cents per ton. The resource sell-off, however, is the simplest element of the Watt scandal to analyze. In the long term, the more complicated and diffuse damage he is doing bureaucratically will be more grave, but environmental groups haven't yet found the easily understood outrages that would arouse public opinion and mobilize Congress. For example, land sales by the BLM (headed by Robert Burford, a Colorado rancher and husband of Anne Gorsuch) are so difficult to research that the lawsuit against them is stalled, awaiting hard evidence of anticipated environmental damage.

Incidentally, the Forest Service branch of the Department of Agriculture –– which originally proposed to sell more than 6 million acres of its holdings –– has targeted a 7400-acre tract in the Grand Mesa National Forest of Colorado, which is the watershed that protects the water supply of the city of Fruita, Colorado. The city actually donated this land to the Forest Service back when Theodore Roosevelt was president. Now the government wants to sell it to the highest bidder.

Originally, Watt proposed to sell 4.4 million acres of public land, but thanks to legal questions and public alarm, the figure has now been scaled back to 2.5 million acres. Even that includes at least 1 million acres whose sale would be clearly illegal because the Interior Department has not undertaken the land-use studies required by the 1976 reform law –– studies that would weigh the impact of sale and development upon wilderness, aesthetic values and other considerations. If Watt tries to go forward with those sales, the environmentalists are confident they can stop him.

Meanwhile, the BLM announces new tracts for sale in the Federal Register almost every week, and it's getting difficult to keep up with what's being lost. Interior proposes to sell 30,000 acres this fiscal year and 250,000 acres in 1984. This process, though, may come under unexpected pressure. In some Western states, the environmentalists have been joined by unlikely allies –– ranchers who are finally realizing that if their public grazing land is put up for "fire sale" auction, they might be outbid by oil companies and real-estate interests.

In sum, the struggle against Watt is a messy stalemate. He can still do damage, but he can't get Congress to pass the legislation that would permit the full devastation he has in mind. Environmentalists can stop him on the major outrages, but on a smaller scale, the termite keeps on munching.

IMPROBABLE AS IT SOUNDS, THIS struggle will most likely end when James Watt does indeed decide to fire himself. Of course, if Reagan decides not to run again, then there would be no political problem, and Watt would remain in office until the end of the term. But if Reagan is a candidate, then he needs to dump this damaging baggage.

Watt's friends and critics expect Watt himself to do it gracefully, without being shoved. One White House strategist hopes for that, at least. "Watt himself will probably step aside," he predicts. "Not from the heat he's taking. He likes the confrontations. But because he's that kind of guy, very loyal. If his own assessment is that he's probably hurting the president, he's such a loyalist that he'll take himself out, probably sometime in the next year."

Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail king of the New Right, doesn't disagree. "Jim is a team player, and he might feel he could help his leader more by leaving," Viguerie says. "If he decided that, fine." But there will be a serious uproar on the right, Viguerie warns, if Watt were pushed.

Environmental leaders have mistakenly predicted Watt's imminent demise for so long that they no longer like to make predictions. Their political instincts tell them that Watt makes a good target right where he is, a convenient reminder for voters of what's wrong with Reaganism. But the environmentalists are not so cynical that they secretly wish for Watt's survival. Just as he is now a symbol of mindless plunder, Watt's preelection resignation would be a powerful symbol too. His departure would declare, loud and clear, that Ronald Reagan was wrong about the environment, and that the political opposition from those he calls "extremists" has been far more in touch with the nation's feelings than their government has been.

Hatred makes you stupid. And it helps you to ignore evidence.

[Long Run]

Sounds like the US Attorney's office screwed the pooch.

It does seem that way based on the information we have right now.

[Sue U]

It's a shame the verdict form didn't give the jury an option to convict for criminal dumbassery, 'cause that's a charge that would have stuck, if I'm reading Juror #4 correctly.

[Econoline]

[Guinevere]

Shame on this country. Again.

[Econoline]

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