Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Idaho--Ammon Bundy 4 Governor

Now that the election is so close....
Bundy has been campaigning hard and will likely get more votes than we expect. He has a lot of people buffaloed as he talks a good talk until you look behind the words.

He wants the state to take over all the federal land in Idaho (35 million acres) and develop it for industry. Very nice, but it wasn't developed 100 years ago because there's no water. Most of the state drains down the Snake River and that's fully appropriated. What little's left flows down to keep the fish alive. The water table is slowly dropping from over pumping by farmers. So, all that land is only good for what it's used for now - grazing and recreation. It's worthless for industry without water.

So, what happens if Bundy did get elected and did manage to get state control of all that land? It can't be used for industry without water so it sits there until it burns down. A bad fire year would bankrupt the state. So now what? All Idaho state land is under the control of the Idaho Land Board...of which the governor (Bundy) is the chairman. By law, the board is required to manage the land for the greatest profit to the state. Since it has no water for development, managing it is a loss, not profit. The land board has the authority to sell it's land to the highest bidder so they'd be selling off parts of it to pay for the losses. Now, who is going to pay large amounts of money for unproductive land? The ultra-rich. Movie stars, athletes, corporate CEO's and the like who want their own private piece of Idaho's paradise. The wealthy who already own back country land here have shown what they'll do with it - they lock the gates. Bundy will give away our state and the people lose the use of what makes Idaho great.

Bundy has a plan to eliminate property and state income taxes, throwing it all into sales taxes. Since the state still needs so much to operate, sales taxes would have to be raised to maybe 10 to 12%. It's a tax shift, not a tax reduction. Somebody has to benefit from this and guess who that would be? Ammon Bundy. He owns a truck repair business. His net worth is said to be about $5 mill and much of it's tied up in the business. Eliminating property and incomes taxes would work nicely for Bundy. In addition, he lives only 30 miles from the Oregon border town of Ontario where there's no sales tax. Guess where the Bundy's would do all their shopping? His plan would effectively relieve him of almost all Idaho taxes.

It seems to me that Weyerhaeuser and a bunch of other paper/lumber companies own a bunch of forest. Unlike our public forests they’re well managed and are not a bunch of stumps. The private forest are not forest fire disasters in waiting or tens of thousands of acres of burned standing timber. The private forests are far from perfect but they’re way better managed than anything the US Forest Service touches. If a private forest does catch on fire you can count on it not having 50+ years of built up fuel on the ground. Afterwards the private forest will be salvage logged and replanted.

Personally I hope Bundy wins. Idaho is chocked full of Rino cucks so I doubt Bundy will have much of a chance but…

Dave, That was an unfortunate statement by me...too general. My son is a timberland manager here, they manage the hell out of their lands and timber for the long run. Also true, I worked for Weyerhaeuser in the 70's, Eastern Oregon Division. They cut it hard and heavy ( they did replant as the law says) laid off hundreds of workers, scrapped the largest pine mill in the world, and 2 other mills, decommissioned a railroad, sold the land and hauled ass. So the pendulum swings both ways. Privatizing western grazing lands COULD be a disaster, corporate interests possibly foreign, will abuse it for short term profit...family ranchers would manage it for the long term...just my unqualified opinion.

Bundy hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being elected