How about a Republican idea: We privatize the collection of fees for the BLM

[RB TexLa]

A private, for profit company run the access to grazing and collection of the fees. Being paid of course as by percentage of fees they collect.

[The Magistrate]

1. That, Friend, Is Cold As Ice....

I kind of like it.

[11 Bravo]

4. I hear Academi (formerly Xe, formerly Blackwater) is looking for work.

I'm sure that, for a price, Erik Prince would be happy to send a few of his employees to have a little chat with Mr. Bundy.

[The Magistrate]

5. Fun Times, Sir, Eh?

Government would be nowhere near the thing....

[catnhatnh]

7. Don't you mean...

...the artist formerly known as "Blackwater"?

[RB TexLa]

13. Excatly. They want to scream about "jack booted thugs" how about some black polo wearing thugs

LOL

[pscot]

2. It worked for Louis XIV

but not very well. His tax "farmers" skimmed so much he had keep raising the rates. Of course Louis escaped blame, which was laid off on his collectors.

[pinboy3niner]

3. "Hello Mr. Bundy, I'm calling from Acme Debt Collection Agency...

...this is Peggy..."

[Turbineguy]

6. Oh, that's just

below the belt!

[Crunchy Frog]

8. Let's hire Blackwater to to do the job.

Or some comparable organization. No mollycoddling there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Would you like to just go ahead and privatize everything?

[RB TexLa]

12. No

[Sunlei]

10. writing a check 1.35 X AU (animal unit)X months is the easy part. The BLM is tasked to manage

our public lands. They go out and check the grasses to make sure the livestock is not stripping the grass to bare sand.They maintain the roads, fences, cattle guards, BLM corrals, re-grade trampled natural water and keep an eye on our native wildlife that has to share our public land with a lot of livestock.

They also have a lot of ancient Indian sites out there that they are supposed to check as recently people have stolen a lot of those items. Someone last year even took a rock saw and several ancient rock art went missing.

The fees collected have not been raised in decades. The fees do not even come close to the federal funds we spend to maintain our, public land. Would be even worse if some private business was raking in a huge cut for profit. BLM has plenty of desk clerks who can accept a check and log a payment in.

[RB TexLa]

11. This would be for the collections of the fees. A private company would be paid on commission

of what they collect and have all the power to sue users who are past due and seek judgments and levys on property.

[Sunlei]

16. yes, I think I understand what you mean. The Federal Gov has a system of fee collection, fines, levy

property seizure and can sue the heck out of people. I disagree that it would be decent or good to have a 'for profit' middleman also in that mix. It is already awful when the Federal Gov. like the IRS goes after people. We do not need to spend more of our Federal money on 'for profit' tax collectors who are ,given that kind of power over Americans. Not more red tape and costs.

The BLM already has very well paid 'private' contractors.

For example, the helicopter round-up crew who got Mr. Bundys cattle into the corrals were paid by the animal.

I know for wild horses that same private contractor is paid about $700. per animal. Even if the animals are released or die that day in the round-up corrals, we pay them out of our Federal funds.

[struggle4progress]

14. I'd really prefer to nationalize the Bundy ranch: that's what we did with Bob E Lee's ranch

back when he was organizin his pals to shoot at Federal employees

[jmowreader]

15. Only on one condition:

The US Government must receive no less than $2/month per animal unit.