Note: This was delayed due to our fixation on COVID-19, but is still timely. Especially since today is apparently “bash Wyoming” day, as the news reports how the State is being attacked for not taking sufficient action to destroy their economy under the guise of fighting the pandemic.

Six years ago, the Wyoming Highway Patrol (one of the worst things about Wyoming) stole $470,000 from a man traveling through the state from Nevada to his home in Illinois. That’s right. $470,000. SIX years ago.

Recently, Forbes reports that the Wyoming Supreme Court decided the State of Wyoming had to give the stolen money back. Every dime. The story didn’t say whether or not the State Attorney General (ie, the taxpayers) also had to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs to get his money back. Or whether the State had to pay interest on the money they kept and used for SIX years.

Why?

Not because the money had ANYTHING to do with ANY criminal acitivity. NOT because the man was never charged with a crime. NOT because the thug who found it and stole it did anything “wrong” in the eyes of the black robes or the so-called representatives of the people of Wyoming in the legislature.

NO, the State had to return the money because they didn’t follow the letter of the law. They didn’t file an official claim on the stolen money in a “timely manner.” They didn’t play the game right – got a technical foul. An expensive one from the point of view of the kleptomanic thugs who run Wyoming. (And are the counterpart of the governments of every State and Tribe in the Fifty States.) Indeed, that nearly half-million in stolen cash was more money than Wyoming had been able to steal from helpless travelers and residents for the previous three years.

Nor does it mean that Wyoming Highway Patrol, Wyoming sheriffs, and Wyoming town clowns won’t be able to continue to use forfeiture (steal) money and vehicles and houses from almost anyone accused of a sufficiently “serious” crime (like driving through the state). In fact, the thugs and their shyster nobles (state’s attorneys) can now do a BETTER job of ensuring that they can keep the money they steal.

Of course, seeing as how even Wyoming steals money daily through that legal robbery called taxation – with or without representatiion – I suppose this is small potatoes. Wyoming is spending 8.9 BILLION dollars this year – that is more than $15,000 per resident.

Now, not ALL of it is stolen: some are fees that pay for roads and other services provided by the State. Not that private free enterprise probably couldn’t provide those services on a voluntary basis at much lower cost.

Nor is all of it DIRECTLY stolen from taxpayers – whether residents or travelers or workers passing through the State. A lot of it is stolen by the bigger guns and more numerous thugs of the FedGov, from taxpayers all over the Fifty States, and given to the rulers of Wyoming to squander.

But you get my point.

I have to say that not ALL Wyoming agrees with this continued, literally at the point-of-a-gun stealing. In fact, as New America reported four years ago, the Wyoming legislature finally had the guts to “reform” the forfeiture (stealing) process. NOT prohibit it, NOT make an immoral act illegal. Just make it “harder” to get official blessing. Now a judge has to approve keeping the stolen money (or whatever) within 30 days. Oh, wow! And that was after the governor vetoed one attempt: the thug claimed that “abuse of the process was not a problem” in Wyoming. Maybe that is because the entire PROCESS is “an abuse.”

And actually IS illegal: a violation of Sections 4 and 33 of the Wyoming Declaration of Rights, part of the Constitution of the sovereign state. And you can learn about the violations of the federal constitution here.