The cracks in American society grow wider and deeper daily, it seems.
[A clarification (thanks, Tom!) is added in the main body of this article. Please read below.]
Some States have it worse than others: consider Virginia or New Jersey, where elections are now an excuse for MORE disagreement, argument, and possibly even action by both sides. With less and less reason to restrain themselves, as the prizes to be seized by the victors (immediately and longterm) are more and more enticing.
But perhaps the poster child for 2021 for dysfunctional societies and government is Wyoming. I know that comes as a surprise for many who know a little bit about the Cowboy State. Sadly, it is only what some of us have been expecting. And of which we have seen warning signs for years.
[Clarification: Horowitz mentions two different bills HB1001 and HB1002. Neither of those passed. HB1001 had some very bad language that would have interfered with private businesses and meddled between businesses and employees by in essence prohibiting business owners and managers from deciding conditions of employment. Deplorable as businesses mandating masks and/or vaccines is, it is NOT a legitimate government function to prohibit a business making such decisions. HB1002 would have specifically authorized (and funded) Wyoming (independently or with other States) to fight against the Federal government mandates (like the recent OSHA “emergency temporary standard). And prohibited enforcement of federal mandates on businesses by state and local governments. (“No public entity shall enforce any mandate or standard of the federal government, whether emergency, temporary or permanent, that requires an employer to ensure or mandate that an employee shall receive a COVID‑19 vaccination.”) But it contained two wimpy (and wrong) caveats that in essence nullified the whole thing: it exempted entities that got federal money (in other words, if an entity lost federal funding if it refused to enforce the federal mandate, it COULD enforce the federal mandate). AND it said that the prohibition would not apply “after the federal law, regulation, rule, standard or order takes legal effect that requires Wyoming employers to comply with a federal COVID‑19 vaccine requirement or mandate.” To me, that is a complete caving into the Feds.]
At the end of this commentary, we reprint the entire story and opinion by Daniel Horowitz. (Yes, I know who and what he works for, but that should not distract from the truth of his words. And he’s a conservative! But even conservatives (just like liberals) can sometimes get things right.)
Simply put, Horowitz tells a sad tale of what happened recently in Cheyenne, capital of the great State of Wyoming. Things which make “great” seem rather ironic. The Wyoming legislature, called into special session to address the growing and looming federal tyranny under Uncle Joe to force vaccinations, and impose more draconian measures in a good many issues, has adjourned. During their session, they did worse than nothing. They did NOT block DC’s mandate on vaccines. Worse, they removed protections for Wyoming businesses and workers which had previously been established by the legislature. In this, they had Governor Gordon’s full support. And seemingly de facto endorsed Representative Liz Chaney for another term, despite how she has betrayed Wyoming’s people.
The article goes into the details. I want to talk about WHY this has happened. Horowitz blames it on “RINOS” but I see it as an endemic problem for MOST Republican power structures. It is not that they are gutless liberals in wolf’s clothing. It is not that most of the GOP members of Wyoming’s Senate and House betrayed their principles, much less Gordon.
First off, the principles of Republican politicians (not all, but most) are principles of power and control and greed – principles that they share with their Democratic counterparts. They TALK about liberty and freedom, but they do NOT ACT in the interests of liberty and freedom, or of the people of their State.
Second, we must consider the history of Wyoming and the current political state. A State which has given the nation Dick Cheney and his daughter: neo-cons who have, do, and will support big government. I do not doubt the sincerity of their beliefs: I say their beliefs are WRONG.
In Wyoming, there are only two counties in the State where a Democrat has much of any chance at all to win office: it is a deep, deep red state, we are told. (Those two counties, by the way? Albany County, home of Laramie and the University of Wyoming – a cesspool of political correctness like most Enormous State Universities, and far too close (distance and spiritually) to Colorado State University, University of Northern Colorado, and University of Colorado at Boulder. The second is Teton County, home of Jackson Hole, a playground of the rich and famous (and woke) and the people willing to lick their boots.)
So the only way for a Democrat by philosophy and belief to get elected to office and power in Wyoming? Register and run as a Republican. And be very careful about what issues you raise. As the article points out, these people are all for gun rights and crow about it, and for (if not ALL for) ending abortion, keeping CRT out of schools, and even support (careful, limited) local control of schools and a few other hot points for conservatives. And they are definitely patriotic, and in strong support for a strong military and keeping (or bringing back) jobs and industry at home – even mining and oil and gas and timber.
BUT… litmus tests just do not work. Single or “select” issue candidates do not work. Wyoming has not learned that it is the fundamental political philosophy that matters. Do you REALLY believe in liberty and equality before the law? Do you really believe in personal responsibility and free will? It is obvious that most powerful Republicans in Wyoming do NOT. And their history shows it. Especially the wishywashy response to the lockdown and the pandemic last year. More than a few spectacular “fails” of how local schools and agencies dealt with it happened in the last 20+ months. Gordon FAR overstepped his constitutional role, making health departments into COVID fascists, and the legislature whined and moaned but did not do what his actions fully justified: impeachment and removal from office for cause.
And so Wyoming is paying the price now. Wyoming’s state government has FAILED in its only legitimate function: protecting the people and their rights.
It was a wonderful land. And it can be again, but ONLY if the people of Wyoming do THEIR constitutional duty, as Horowitz writes about in the last few paragraphs below, from Section 1 of the Wyoming Declaration of Right:
All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
In the state of New Jersey, a truck driver was able to defeat the most powerful man in the legislature, running against COVID fascism with an ad shot on his iPhone. In Wyoming, on the other hand, with a 28-2 majority in the Senate and a 51-7 majority in the House, Republicans won’t even block Biden’s illegal mandate on our bodies. Worse, the former GOP speaker so emphatically opposed any effort to do so that he dropped an F-bomb on the legislator who sought to record the vote.
Last month, after much urging from conservative grassroots, Republicans voted to convene a special session to block the impending vaccine mandate. Now they have concluded their session without passing a single bill, not even a watered-down version. But on the way to watering down the bill, they cleverly placed a provision in the bill to cancel any state prohibition on employers requiring mandates once the federal government illegally mandates it. In other words, they oppose the mandate except if and when the feds actually mandate it!
Last Thursday, while debating HB 1001, RINO representatives in the House were watering down the bill all day without recorded votes. It got to the point that the bill essentially protected nobody from the mandate. Finally, Rep. Chuck Gray proposed an amendment to strike the language from the bill that neutered the prohibition on vaccine passports once the federal government mandates them. After Gray requested a recorded vote on this amendment, the only such recorded vote on the entire bill, Rep. Harshman, a former speaker who was participating on Zoom, was caught on a hot mic cursing out the conservative rep.
“Chuck Gray, f*** [inaudible],” Harshman was caught saying. “Little f****n’ [inaudible].”
Harshman was roundly condemned and forced to apologize, but most of the members of the body and the press missed the point. The issue wasn’t so much the profanity that he used. It was that a Wyoming Republican was so incensed about a fellow Republican’s attempt to record the GOP vote as siding with a deeply unpopular president that he was pushed to profanity. And indeed, out of 51 Republicans, just 18 of them supported Gray’s amendment. Thirty-one Republicans joined with the existing seven Democrats to keep the language in the bill crowning Biden supreme over Wyoming law and bodily autonomy. All but 11 House Republicans opposed an earlier version of HB 1002, which prohibited state and local governments from enforcing the mandate.
There’s an important lesson here that rings true in every supermajority red state. These seven Wyoming Democrats are likely now more powerful than Democrats in New Jersey. While New Jersey Democrats now have to worry about voters throwing them out if they get too radical, Wyoming’s seven representatives and two senators can have their vision actualized through RINOs without incurring any backlash. Who are the voters going to remove?
These Republicans campaign every season on being “pro-life and pro-gun,” but side with the left on every issue that matters. This is why it’s so important for them to quietly squelch any conservative legislation without a recorded vote. The last thing they want is sunlight, because then the voters would throw them out in primaries, the same way they did in Virginia and New Jersey legislative elections during the general election.
Now, in a state Trump carried by a 45-point margin, we can’t even oppose a deeply unpopular mandate by a senile and radical Democrat president. Isn’t it interesting how these same Republicans who believe it is wrong to “regulate” private business by telling them they can’t violate bodily autonomy rights suddenly have no problem when OSHA mandates a 500-page scheme of how to force employees to get the shots and a cumbersome reporting and documenting regime? These Republicans are frauds and need to be removed in the upcoming primaries. Every one of those 31 Wyoming representatives needs a primary challenge. Conservatives need to hammer the RINO red-state governors like Wyoming’s Mark Gordon with the same vigor as we would a blue-state tyrant like Phil Murphy or Gavin Newsome.
Wyoming’s state motto is “equal rights.” Yet the state is now obsequious to an illegal federal mandate that will create a medical apartheid built upon a dangerous shot that actually doesn’t stop the virus and likely makes it worse. All these phony Republicans want to do with their trifecta supermajority control of numerous state governments is to file lawsuits with a court system that is corrupt. They believe in bodily autonomy to murder babies but not against needle rape. They somehow think that whatever the federal government promulgates automatically supersedes a state. This is dangerously naive.
about:blank
Section 1 of the Wyoming Declaration of Rights makes it clear who is the final arbiter of constitutionality in the face of tyranny:
All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
Article 7 speaks directly to this era: “Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.”It’s time for Wyoming to return to its roots. If state legislators have no interest in doing their jobs and would like our country to run on executive fiat and judicial supremacism, they should quit their jobs and join the thousands of American workers now unemployed due to their support for mandated medical experiments.
It’s time for Wyoming to return to its roots. If state legislators have no interest in doing their jobs and would like our country to run on executive fiat and judicial supremacism, they should quit their jobs and join the thousands of American workers now unemployed due to their support for mandated medical experiments.
(By Daniel Horowitz)
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The Price of Liberty 
What is wrong in Wyoming? And why?
The cracks in American society grow wider and deeper daily, it seems.
[A clarification (thanks, Tom!) is added in the main body of this article. Please read below.]
Some States have it worse than others: consider Virginia or New Jersey, where elections are now an excuse for MORE disagreement, argument, and possibly even action by both sides. With less and less reason to restrain themselves, as the prizes to be seized by the victors (immediately and longterm) are more and more enticing.
But perhaps the poster child for 2021 for dysfunctional societies and government is Wyoming. I know that comes as a surprise for many who know a little bit about the Cowboy State. Sadly, it is only what some of us have been expecting. And of which we have seen warning signs for years.
[Clarification: Horowitz mentions two different bills HB1001 and HB1002. Neither of those passed. HB1001 had some very bad language that would have interfered with private businesses and meddled between businesses and employees by in essence prohibiting business owners and managers from deciding conditions of employment. Deplorable as businesses mandating masks and/or vaccines is, it is NOT a legitimate government function to prohibit a business making such decisions. HB1002 would have specifically authorized (and funded) Wyoming (independently or with other States) to fight against the Federal government mandates (like the recent OSHA “emergency temporary standard). And prohibited enforcement of federal mandates on businesses by state and local governments. (“No public entity shall enforce any mandate or standard of the federal government, whether emergency, temporary or permanent, that requires an employer to ensure or mandate that an employee shall receive a COVID‑19 vaccination.”) But it contained two wimpy (and wrong) caveats that in essence nullified the whole thing: it exempted entities that got federal money (in other words, if an entity lost federal funding if it refused to enforce the federal mandate, it COULD enforce the federal mandate). AND it said that the prohibition would not apply “after the federal law, regulation, rule, standard or order takes legal effect that requires Wyoming employers to comply with a federal COVID‑19 vaccine requirement or mandate.” To me, that is a complete caving into the Feds.]
At the end of this commentary, we reprint the entire story and opinion by Daniel Horowitz. (Yes, I know who and what he works for, but that should not distract from the truth of his words. And he’s a conservative! But even conservatives (just like liberals) can sometimes get things right.)
Simply put, Horowitz tells a sad tale of what happened recently in Cheyenne, capital of the great State of Wyoming. Things which make “great” seem rather ironic. The Wyoming legislature, called into special session to address the growing and looming federal tyranny under Uncle Joe to force vaccinations, and impose more draconian measures in a good many issues, has adjourned. During their session, they did worse than nothing. They did NOT block DC’s mandate on vaccines. Worse, they removed protections for Wyoming businesses and workers which had previously been established by the legislature. In this, they had Governor Gordon’s full support. And seemingly de facto endorsed Representative Liz Chaney for another term, despite how she has betrayed Wyoming’s people.
The article goes into the details. I want to talk about WHY this has happened. Horowitz blames it on “RINOS” but I see it as an endemic problem for MOST Republican power structures. It is not that they are gutless liberals in wolf’s clothing. It is not that most of the GOP members of Wyoming’s Senate and House betrayed their principles, much less Gordon.
First off, the principles of Republican politicians (not all, but most) are principles of power and control and greed – principles that they share with their Democratic counterparts. They TALK about liberty and freedom, but they do NOT ACT in the interests of liberty and freedom, or of the people of their State.
Second, we must consider the history of Wyoming and the current political state. A State which has given the nation Dick Cheney and his daughter: neo-cons who have, do, and will support big government. I do not doubt the sincerity of their beliefs: I say their beliefs are WRONG.
In Wyoming, there are only two counties in the State where a Democrat has much of any chance at all to win office: it is a deep, deep red state, we are told. (Those two counties, by the way? Albany County, home of Laramie and the University of Wyoming – a cesspool of political correctness like most Enormous State Universities, and far too close (distance and spiritually) to Colorado State University, University of Northern Colorado, and University of Colorado at Boulder. The second is Teton County, home of Jackson Hole, a playground of the rich and famous (and woke) and the people willing to lick their boots.)
So the only way for a Democrat by philosophy and belief to get elected to office and power in Wyoming? Register and run as a Republican. And be very careful about what issues you raise. As the article points out, these people are all for gun rights and crow about it, and for (if not ALL for) ending abortion, keeping CRT out of schools, and even support (careful, limited) local control of schools and a few other hot points for conservatives. And they are definitely patriotic, and in strong support for a strong military and keeping (or bringing back) jobs and industry at home – even mining and oil and gas and timber.
BUT… litmus tests just do not work. Single or “select” issue candidates do not work. Wyoming has not learned that it is the fundamental political philosophy that matters. Do you REALLY believe in liberty and equality before the law? Do you really believe in personal responsibility and free will? It is obvious that most powerful Republicans in Wyoming do NOT. And their history shows it. Especially the wishywashy response to the lockdown and the pandemic last year. More than a few spectacular “fails” of how local schools and agencies dealt with it happened in the last 20+ months. Gordon FAR overstepped his constitutional role, making health departments into COVID fascists, and the legislature whined and moaned but did not do what his actions fully justified: impeachment and removal from office for cause.
And so Wyoming is paying the price now. Wyoming’s state government has FAILED in its only legitimate function: protecting the people and their rights.
It was a wonderful land. And it can be again, but ONLY if the people of Wyoming do THEIR constitutional duty, as Horowitz writes about in the last few paragraphs below, from Section 1 of the Wyoming Declaration of Right:
All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
In the state of New Jersey, a truck driver was able to defeat the most powerful man in the legislature, running against COVID fascism with an ad shot on his iPhone. In Wyoming, on the other hand, with a 28-2 majority in the Senate and a 51-7 majority in the House, Republicans won’t even block Biden’s illegal mandate on our bodies. Worse, the former GOP speaker so emphatically opposed any effort to do so that he dropped an F-bomb on the legislator who sought to record the vote.
Last month, after much urging from conservative grassroots, Republicans voted to convene a special session to block the impending vaccine mandate. Now they have concluded their session without passing a single bill, not even a watered-down version. But on the way to watering down the bill, they cleverly placed a provision in the bill to cancel any state prohibition on employers requiring mandates once the federal government illegally mandates it. In other words, they oppose the mandate except if and when the feds actually mandate it!
Last Thursday, while debating HB 1001, RINO representatives in the House were watering down the bill all day without recorded votes. It got to the point that the bill essentially protected nobody from the mandate. Finally, Rep. Chuck Gray proposed an amendment to strike the language from the bill that neutered the prohibition on vaccine passports once the federal government mandates them. After Gray requested a recorded vote on this amendment, the only such recorded vote on the entire bill, Rep. Harshman, a former speaker who was participating on Zoom, was caught on a hot mic cursing out the conservative rep.
“Chuck Gray, f*** [inaudible],” Harshman was caught saying. “Little f****n’ [inaudible].”
Harshman was roundly condemned and forced to apologize, but most of the members of the body and the press missed the point. The issue wasn’t so much the profanity that he used. It was that a Wyoming Republican was so incensed about a fellow Republican’s attempt to record the GOP vote as siding with a deeply unpopular president that he was pushed to profanity. And indeed, out of 51 Republicans, just 18 of them supported Gray’s amendment. Thirty-one Republicans joined with the existing seven Democrats to keep the language in the bill crowning Biden supreme over Wyoming law and bodily autonomy. All but 11 House Republicans opposed an earlier version of HB 1002, which prohibited state and local governments from enforcing the mandate.
There’s an important lesson here that rings true in every supermajority red state. These seven Wyoming Democrats are likely now more powerful than Democrats in New Jersey. While New Jersey Democrats now have to worry about voters throwing them out if they get too radical, Wyoming’s seven representatives and two senators can have their vision actualized through RINOs without incurring any backlash. Who are the voters going to remove?
These Republicans campaign every season on being “pro-life and pro-gun,” but side with the left on every issue that matters. This is why it’s so important for them to quietly squelch any conservative legislation without a recorded vote. The last thing they want is sunlight, because then the voters would throw them out in primaries, the same way they did in Virginia and New Jersey legislative elections during the general election.
Now, in a state Trump carried by a 45-point margin, we can’t even oppose a deeply unpopular mandate by a senile and radical Democrat president. Isn’t it interesting how these same Republicans who believe it is wrong to “regulate” private business by telling them they can’t violate bodily autonomy rights suddenly have no problem when OSHA mandates a 500-page scheme of how to force employees to get the shots and a cumbersome reporting and documenting regime? These Republicans are frauds and need to be removed in the upcoming primaries. Every one of those 31 Wyoming representatives needs a primary challenge. Conservatives need to hammer the RINO red-state governors like Wyoming’s Mark Gordon with the same vigor as we would a blue-state tyrant like Phil Murphy or Gavin Newsome.
Wyoming’s state motto is “equal rights.” Yet the state is now obsequious to an illegal federal mandate that will create a medical apartheid built upon a dangerous shot that actually doesn’t stop the virus and likely makes it worse. All these phony Republicans want to do with their trifecta supermajority control of numerous state governments is to file lawsuits with a court system that is corrupt. They believe in bodily autonomy to murder babies but not against needle rape. They somehow think that whatever the federal government promulgates automatically supersedes a state. This is dangerously naive.
about:blank
Section 1 of the Wyoming Declaration of Rights makes it clear who is the final arbiter of constitutionality in the face of tyranny:
Article 7 speaks directly to this era: “Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.”It’s time for Wyoming to return to its roots. If state legislators have no interest in doing their jobs and would like our country to run on executive fiat and judicial supremacism, they should quit their jobs and join the thousands of American workers now unemployed due to their support for mandated medical experiments.
It’s time for Wyoming to return to its roots. If state legislators have no interest in doing their jobs and would like our country to run on executive fiat and judicial supremacism, they should quit their jobs and join the thousands of American workers now unemployed due to their support for mandated medical experiments.
(By Daniel Horowitz)
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About TPOL Nathan
Follower of Christ Jesus (a christian), Pahasapan (resident of the Black Hills), Westerner, Lover of Liberty, Free-Market Anarchist, Engineer, Army Officer, Husband, Father, Historian, Writer, Evangelist. Successor to Lady Susan (Mama Liberty) at TPOL.