I tracked down some information that has been put forth in defense of Cliven Bundy’s claim that the government case against him is a conspiracy fomented by Harry Reid.  As I was about to put together some of what I found, I decided to follow the link to Snopes and the article Ranch Stash.

Claim:   Senator Harry Reid and a Chinese company building a solar plant are behind a standoff between federal agents and a Nevada rancher.

FALSE
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Some versions of this conspiracy theory mistake the proposed ENN Mojave Energy site with that of the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar project, but the latter’s 250MW solar power plant is already under construction (so there is no need to grab land for it), and, as noted in Wildlife News, the Moapa plant is being built near the Moapa Indian Reservation and not on public land disputed by Cliven Bundy:

A cursory search shows a sudden explosion of articles claiming Nevada’s senior senator, Harry Reid, wants Bundy’s land (all Bundy actually owns is a melon farm) to build a solar plant to enrich himself and his son.

Bundy has been trespassing over 750,000 acres of U.S. public land to the south of Mesquite and Bunkerville, Nevada. Bundy’s actual private property is his melon farm at Bunkerville, which looks like maybe 100 acres on Google Earth. There is a solar farm. But it is not on the huge swath of land Bundy is trespassing on. The solar facility is actually under construction near the Moapa Indian Reservation about ten miles closer to Las Vegas.

It turns out that I think the solar plant in question is more like 50 miles away from the Bundy ranch as near as I can tell.

The Bureau Of Land Management (BLM) report is Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone

Notice that the zone is at the intersection of route US93 and I15 on this map.  The distance from this intersection to the Bundy protest areas is shown on the Google map above.

What seems to have the right wing so upset is that Harry Reid, Barack Obama, some large corporations, and some billionaire investors may be making money from the program to foster solar energy.  They don’t seem to mind very much that some other billionaires and the oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil are making billions of dollars from the current oil and gas focused energy policy.  In fact, the right wing blocks any effort to cut the billions of dollars in subsidies to these companies that would be hugely profitable without the subsidies.

So what is the solution to politicians and private billionaire investors making huge profits from these government funded projects?  The problem seems to be that the way things are done now with the government contracting with and subsidizing private enterprise is that the workers get short shrift and the rich take huge profits.  Is there a solution other than the government hiring the workers directly and keeping the gains out of the hands of the already rich?  Is it true that only some form of socialism can solve the problem?

If the whole point of involving private enterprise is to make some people rich, then the only complaint of the Right Wing must be that their favorite billionaires aren’t getting as rich as someone else’s favorite billionaires.  This doesn’t seem to be a very principled stance unless I am just missing what the principle is.