According to OPB News, one of our favorite BundyBunch characters, LeVoy Finicum, perhaps best known as a blob with a gun beneath a blue tarp at the currently illegally occupied Malheur Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon, has reported that his four current foster children have been removed from his Arizona home.
Claiming to have fostered about 50 kids at his Chino Valley Ranch in Arizona, the children are apparently fostered through a care contract with Catholic Charities Community Services in Arizona.
Catholic Charities paid the family $115,343 to foster children in 2009. That year, foster parents were compensated between $22.31 and $37.49 per child, per day, meaning if the Finicums were paid at the maximum rate, they cared for, on average, eight children per day in 2009.
“That was my main source of income,” Finicum said. “My ranch, well, the cows just cover the costs of the ranch. If this means rice and beans for the next few years, so be it. We’re going to stay the course.” source
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Amid the drama, occupiers said they're concerned the federal government is targeting their families to punish them for their standoff at the refuge. Finicum, who runs a foster care program at his Arizona ranch, said state officials had removed four young boys from his care.
The governor's office "came down and ripped my boys out of my home," he said.
News that Child Protective Services workers had visited the home of at least one standoff participant spurred a "call to arms" for Bundy's supporters in Arizona to intervene should government workers attempt to take children from the home, said Jon Ritzheimer, a prominent member of the Bundy group. source
There are unsubstantiated reports that another member of the BundyBunch has also had their children taken and moved to the home of a relative. Blaine Cooper, also a member of the armed 2014 Cliven Bundy debacle, made the claim via a video posted on his Facebook page. The video makes an appeal for a pro bono attorney as well as referencing the apparent support for the Bundy Bunch standoff by presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Finicum, currently illegally occupying the Oregon wildlife refuge, was also a supporter at the Cliven Bundy debacle in Nevada in 2014. Like Cliven Bundy, he ranges his cattle on BLM land. Until recently, Finicum paid his grazing fees but stated he has now stopped (see his bio) paying the grazing fees.
On Friday, Finicum climbed a ladder outside a transformer station about six miles from the town of Burns, Oregon and removed a surveillance camera. Since that time, a number of other cameras have also been removed.
Asked if he was concerned about facing a criminal charge for removing the cameras, LaVoy said he's not the criminal.
"They're the lawbreakers, not me," he said. "Go back home and quit spying on us."
Go back home indeed, say the local residents of Burns to the interlopers. Twice.
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And for an interesting take on militias in general, this is a great read:
Irregular militias, paramilitaries, are worse than useless when it comes to defense of a nation.Literally worse than useless. They are untrained, undisciplined, undependable, and too often belligerently unaware of their own pitiful state. They take up resources and risk the security of real soldiers. Irregular militias are often indistinguishable from an armed mob. Like those currently occupying Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, militias are almost always composed of misfits and rejects, wannabe soldiers and pretend Marines puffed up with stolen valor, disaffected braggarts, belligerent drunkards, criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, conspiracy theorists, and angry losers of every stripe.