The Price of Liberty

Nathan: I had not (as I recall) heard of or read anything by Mr. Adamo until Mama Liberty forwarded this article to me, but a quick check of his writing shows an interesting character with an interesting view on  politics and current affairs, nationally and sometimes in his Wyoming home.

I have been a very interested observer of Wyoming politics for a decade or so, but not recently, doing a lot of environmental and civil engineering work in Wyoming (if anyone needs help in those areas, let me know!).  Although I’ve never been blessed with living in the Cowboy State, I enjoy its beauty and its people and society.  And I have seen its government in good times and bad.  So I thought it would be good to point out some things – both in agreement and some in disagreement with Mr. Adamo.

I also need to point out that, critical as this fight might be, it is over a doomed and evil system: so-called “public schools” that are government-run and tax (theft)-supported.  Like the pyramids and the Great Wall, the system of “free public tuition” (an oxymoron) is a grandiose attempt that has and will fail.  Situations like this point more and more to the desperate need for the separation of school and state – especially in conservative places like Wyoming and many of its neighbors.

A Looming Political Firestorm In Wyoming
By Christopher G. Adamo – While most of the U.S. continues to languish in the four straight years of Obama’s economic quagmire, and small businesses across America brace for the next debilitating phase of Obamacare to hit, the state of Wyoming has remained comparatively unscathed by the fiscal woes of the nation. The pace of Wyoming’s economy is slower than it was prior to 2009, but the job situation is certainly not as depressed as elsewhere in the country. The downside of the Cowboy State’s historical resistance to prevailing societal upheavals is that this has often given its citizenry the false sense of security that it might be completely immune to the maladies of modern America. This in turn creates a dangerous vulnerability to subtle encroachments.

Nathan: Indeed, Wyoming has been doing well enough to absorb some of those nasty, ugly, bigoted (and according to one source “fascist” Free States in the past five years.  But even Wyoming has felt the impact of the Crash of 2009.  That said, I think any observant Wyomingite is painfully aware of Wyoming’s vulnerability to modern American social diseases.  Just as in the 60’s and 70’s miniskirts arrived, and in the 80’s disco infected the honky-tonks of Gillette and Rawlins and Cody, so various political illnesses have been communicated to too many governments (and yes, Wyoming has too many governments).  I’ve seen this since the early 1990s, and it has just gotten worse.

Frequently touted as “the most Republican state in the nation,” it might be assumed that conservatism would be uncontested as the prevailing political force. Yet that is hardly the case. In truth, the enduring and near monopolistic dominance of the Republican Party in Wyoming politics has resulted in the inevitable pitfalls of one-party rule. Far from remaining conservative or advancing and agenda based on the concerns of the people, the Wyoming GOP long ago degenerated into a totally self-serving elitist “club,” growing increasingly corrupt and out of touch with its base. Beginning in 2010, and escalating during this past legislative session, these dynamics are now reaching critical mass.

Nathan: This “critical mass” could not have been reached without the work of a lot of Tranzi fellow-travelers and greedy elected and appointed officials for a quarter-century.  I’m actually surprised to see Wyoming described as the “most Republican” state but that may be because I am not as familiar with some of the other states I might consider in competition for that title.  But one thing I have to raise with Mr. Adamo is that he seems to equate “Republican” with “Conservative” too much; with the idea that liberal, statist, big-government Republicans are an aberration in the GOP, not its dominant faction. Wyoming is certainly one of the more fiscally-conservative states (in many ways) but at the same time, one of the more “liberal” socially, in the old sense of the word.  However, Wyoming’s history and geography show that the liberal, socialist, and now Tranzi trends are obvious.  Wyoming is dominated politically and economically by the railroads (first the UP and now the UP and BNSF) and the BIG mining operations.  Both of those bring those nasty little gangdoms called “unions” with them – and did, 120 years ago.  There is a LOT of Wyoming state and local government that originated with the unions, and the state’s tax system is skewed by them as well.  Wyoming has been plagued with absentee landowners for more than a century. The UP (based in Omaha and controlled by the lawyers and financiers of Chicago literally since the days of Lincoln), British “milords,” ranchers and stockmen who made their nut selling beef and mutton and wool to the Army, the BIA, and the Chicago Board of Trade and then retired to raise their sons and daughters Back East, the big minerals and mining companies (like CF&I and FMC and BHH and more), and of course, the BIGGEST absentee landlord in history, the US Government based in the District of Criminals. Again, Wyoming’s society, economy, government (including taxes) all were warped and corrupted by all these. Wyoming (like many other Western states) has long sucked on Uncle Sugar’s teat and brown-nosing the Feds has been the path to success for many a Casper and Laramie and Cheyenne politico. In recent years, the Hollywood colony in Jackson’s Hole (long the hideout of outlaws with a lot more morals than most of the Tinseltown types) have added a further corrupting influence which has grown (as Mr. Adamo infers) with little notice.

Geography is a key point beyond the paths of the railroads and today’s I-80, I-90, and I-25.  Cheyenne is the WRONG city for the Capitol and the complex of government growing up there.  It is too close to Denver (heart of Federal power in the West) and to the outliers: the People’s Socialist Republic of Boulder (University of Colorado), the Democratic Republic of Fort Collins (Colorado State University), and the Utopian Socialist Union Colony of Greeley (University of Northern Colorado and Horace Greeley’s Union Temperance Colony).  To make it worse, they put the University of Wyoming (Wyoming’s only real university) in Laramie: way too close to CU, CSU, and UNC. Thanks to the railroads and then interstates, the original Wyoming Anglo population of Texans and trappers and mountain men was quickly overwhelmed by unreconstructed Easterners – fortunately not many unconverted Scandinavians, but too many people who would (and perhaps should) have been buried along the trail in Nebraska.  Wyoming is cursed by not enough mountains.  Sadly, it was also both benefited and harmed by the ties to the Great Lakes (Rust Belt) in the past.  It was (and is) a colony in many ways: too much production of raw materials and not nearly enough industry.

In particular, the state education bureaucracy has over time been maliciously redirected from its original purpose, which was ostensibly the instruction of children, and has mutated into a big-money pipeline by which state funds are shuffled from one special interest to another. Consequently, exorbitant and unnecessary expenditures within the highest levels of the state government have gone largely unnoticed by the average citizen who is rightly concerned that the proper academic training of the next generation ensue, and therefore is willing to accept associated costs. The scheme has continued on this basis for years, and many entrenched politicians fully expected it to continue operating on that basis for the foreseeable future.

Nathan: This is, of course, the exact situation found in every state of our once united Union.  I love Mr. Adamo’s expressive description.  Wyoming, made a territory in 1869 and not admitted to the Union until 1890, got the full brunt of the great “reforms” (introduction of the Prussian school system) of the Lincoln-Grant era 48’ers (Socialist refugees of the failed revolutions in Europe in 1848.  Despite that, for years Wyoming maintained strong local control and weak state control of schools.  But that changed with the tax system and the rise of federal aid to education starting in the 1960s: and with the money came the strings and the corruption, including the teachers’ unions.  And Wyoming has been EXTREMELY generous over the years with local and state moneys, both to suck up as much federal money (especially PILT and impact aid) and because they mistakenly thought they were buying a good education.  It is that very wealth that made the state-level educrat bureaucracy such a plum to pick, leading to the present crisis.

To the dismay of these people, a competent and courageous individual did enter the political fray, for the specific purpose of addressing the misconduct in the Wyoming education system, and implementing workable fixes wherever possible. Cindy Hill, the current Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, ran for that office in 2010 with the sole intention of returning it to its proper function, and thereby refocusing state energies and resources on the proper recipients, the children. Yet from the start, she encountered scathing opposition from the highest levels of state government, including “Republican” Governor Matt Mead.

Nathan: From what I have seen, Cindy Hill has less than the usual ego and greed for power and position common even of Wyoming politicians, and of course, that alone made her hated by the Establishment GOP as well as the Democratic Wing of the GOP (as Mr. Adamo pointed out, there is a certain one-party aspect to Wyoming politics in many counties, which means that many people who would register as Democrats in other states are registered GOP to further their political success.  A similar situation exists in many counties in SD, NE, and even MT and ND.(Meanwhile, a fair number of Democrats on the state level have actually been quite conservative in order to get voters to cross over. Despite Mr. Adamo’s description of the whole State of Wyoming as a “one-party state,” the last ten governors of Wyoming are evenly split 5-5 GOP and Demo.)

Despite the opposition she persisted, implementing bold reforms and cutting costs in the process, while garnering significant improvements in standardized test scores. Having been elected by an enormous margin, her popularity with the people on Main Street has continued from the beginning of her tenure, and one might presume that she would easily sail through to a second term. Unfortunately, the prevailing political “machine” in Wyoming, though “Republican” in title, has once again proven itself to represent something far different from its facade of conservatism. In so doing, it fully revealed stronger ideological similarities to the abhorrent monstrosity of government in Washington than the defining principles of the American Heartland.

Nathan: Again, he treats this “Republican” in title as an aberration when indeed it is not.  And although State GOPs in the West are generally incompetent, they are very good at eating their own, especially those who are truly conservative.  (An example is Colorado, where the GOP Establishment masticated and then quickly spewed out its Tea Party movement elements in the last three or four elections, possibly losing the state permanently to the Democratic minority.) But I fully understand and agree with his assessment of its “similarities.”

During the recently adjourned Wyoming legislative session, the outrageous statute “Senate File 104” was rammed through the process, to be immediately signed by Governor Mead. Simply stated, SF 104 completely guts the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, and transfers those responsibilities to an appointee of the Governor. The occupant of that position, previously chosen at the ballot box, has now been supplanted by just another one of the Governor’s favored minions. In a manner completely analogous to Barack Obama’s installation of unvetted and unaccountable “Czars,” Mead and his collaborators in the Legislature engaged in a brazen power grab, by which they restored their control of the state’s 1.9 billion dollar “education” budget.

Nathan: In Wyoming, this SF104 was called “The Hill Bill” from before it was introduced.  It was obviously an assassination attempt – a coup against an elected official by all the people she ticked off by just breathing.  The bill’s progress can be likened to a massive cavalry charge, and many who oppose it call it a blatant power grab that the Legislature thought they could ram down the throats of the voters.  And given Wyoming’s crazy-high thresholds to get a law referred, they may be right.  To make matters even MORE distasteful, the governor appointed a long-term edu-crat as the interim appointee on the same day he signed the bill: no grace period at all. (And took a half-million dollars of stolen (tax) money to let the guy run wild with.)  But I should point out, the new Director of Education is not quite a Clintonian or Obamite “Czar” – the government must select the permanent one from a list of three names submitted by the State Board of Education and the permanent one must be confirmed by the Senate.  Of course, the SBE is itself appointed by the governor, and clearly, the Senate is completely in the Executive Branch’s pocket, at least until 2014.  Think about that, too: 1.9 billion bucks for K-12 education for a state with 576,000 people – almost as many as Denver.

Concerned citizens can expect to see their children’s academic wellbeing relegated to inconsequential status, while untold sums of tax money disappear once more down unspecified rat holes. This has been “business as usual” for many years, and its devotees and beneficiaries see no reason for things to change.

Nathan: Here, I fear that Mr. Adamo understates the problem.  A lot of us would argue that the academic wellbeing of the children of Wyoming is ALREADY inconsequential: this is a money fight, and the kids are pawns.  All this does is make the state of illness nearly permanent, because poor education has not (to my knowledge) ever led directly to a revolution. (But there is always a first time – and remember, revolutions do NOT have to be violent.)

However, the good people of Wyoming, who are indeed conservative at the grassroots level, are making it abundantly clear that they have no intention of accepting this situation. Having stridently voiced their disapproval during the brief period that SF 104 was whisked through the legislative process, they are now in the process of collecting signatures for an unprecedented referendum to annul the detestable statute. And throughout the state, citizens are gathering to discuss how, in the 2014 election cycle, they can properly hold accountable those responsible for it.

Nathan: Both the lawsuit (next paragraph) and the petition effort began the same day the governor signed the damnable act.  Indeed, based on some stories and comments, the petition drive started organizing before that, seeing it as forgone.  And that is wise, because it is extremely difficult to refer a legislative act to an election.  They have only 90 days in which to gather signatures of 15% of the voters in the last election, which is about 37,400 (remember, only 576,000 people), and which must include 15% from at least two-thirds of the 23 counties of the state.  It is an challenging effort indeed: the Wyoming legislature does not like competition.  (Again, there is history in this: the labor unions didn’t want to have to buy any more people than necessary, and they expected the state to be flooded by farmers who might not like the cozy relationship between the territorial or state legislature and the union bosses.) A referendum hasn’t been done for close to two decades, unlike nearby states where there is a referred law or two on almost every ballot.  And even if they get on the ballot, who has the money to fight the campaign?  You can already guess the terms of the campaign to squash the restoration of constitutional government.  Smelly places like the Huff Post already began the campaign of personal attacks on Hill, and on the entire concept of elected officials responsible to the voters in control of education.

Meanwhile, though Cindy Hill has been relieved of virtually all of her authority and responsibilities as education Superintendent, she is not passively accepting her fate. A lawsuit was filed to overturn SF 104 on the grounds that it is indeed unconstitutional, and she has announced her intentions of challenging Matt Mead for the governorship of Wyoming in 2014.

Nathan: This of course means that she must oppose a sitting governor in the same party.  And Wyoming is well-known for keeping governors (of both parties) in office for two or three terms.  It will be a uphill battle.  As a conservative (but NOT libertarian) Republican, Huff Post and Daily Kos have already tarred her with the evil Tea Party label.

If she succeeds in unseating him, she will be in a prime position to apply the manner of changes throughout the state that streamlined operations within the education bureaucracy so noticeably, despite the caterwauling from its entrenched occupants.

Nathan: It is this caterwauling (and, I’m sure, enough campaign contributions) that triggered this whole slimy deal.  But there is a LOT of entrenched bureaucracy in Wyoming, including such gems as its environmental quality operation, its development (or undevelopment) department, and even (Gasp!) its military and transportation departments.

That political maneuverings have degenerated to this level in state governments is reflective of the overall breakdown of the American system, from the White House down. The fact that in Wyoming such things have ensued wholly within the GOP is evidence of where the defining battle needs to be fought and won, if conservatism is to prevail.

Nathan: Once more, Mr. Adamo is hitting the nail on the head:  the whole nation is corrupt, and even those places with a ray of sunlight are being dragged down, not just into the gutter but into the catch basin and sewer.  (There is a reason I supported (and still do) Wyoming for the Free State Project.)  But this was clearly NOT “wholly within the GOP” – the germ-laden hands of Wyoming’s Democrats and the big-shot celebs and their minions in Jackson Hole – and the educrats of whatever political affiliation at UW in Laramie) are all over this.

Establishment Republicans, shocked by the intensity of public outrage over their chicanery, have gone into a fully defensive posture, desperately attempting to give SF 104 credibility by deeming it both “constitutional” and necessary. Though they continue to make vague claims of misconduct on the part of Superintendent Hill, they have completely failed in every past attempt to officially discredit her, or the stunning successes she has achieved. Now, with the general public thoroughly angered over this flagrant usurpation of power, Mead and his cohorts are again looking to dig up any manner of “dirt” they can on Hill. In what is clearly an act of defensiveness and desperation, yet another cabal of Mead’s choosing has been empanelled to investigate her office.

Nathan: The public smearing of Hill can be seen on the internet to have begun well before the legislative session ramped up, and continues at even higher levels of “concern” and outright alarm.  I saw last week in Wheatland (the only place I stopped on this trip through Wyoming) that the anger Mr. Adamo speaks of is real: petitions and local newspaper headlines both showed this.  What I do not understand is why more affiliated Libertarians and associated groups are not hot and heavy on this.  The Constitutionalist Party is spearheading the petition drive, and they have multi-partisan support (including both Dems and Reps), but a LOT of help is needed.  They will require at least 75,000 signatures in less than 90 days to get this on the ballot, and A LOT OF MONEY to fight the campaign between now and November 2014.  Plus all the media and governmental attacks.

It might seem surprising to those who have not lived in Wyoming, and whose primary impression of it is a land of majestic beauty and unspoiled wilderness, that this state may indeed become “ground zero” for the ultimate clash between the underhanded and self-serving tactics of the “Ruling Class” and legitimate governance, as desired by “We the People.” Yet that is exactly how the current situation is unfolding. And if Hill does prevail, her triumph could set the stage for a political sea change throughout the nation. It is therefore small wonder that her opponents are so strident and venomous in their efforts to avert such a scenario.

Nathan: I would not say “ultimate clash” but I understand his hyperbole here. And Wyoming is VERY important to the future of liberty and of America: it is possibly the keystone of the American Redoubt, and the more statist it becomes the less likely it will be able to fill that role.  There is at least one “bright spot” to this – I expect it to drive many more parents to homeschooling and private schools, away from the tyranny (even at the local level) of the educrats.  I fondly hope that Mr. Adamo is right and that a victory by Hill and her allies would be a major turning point – but if so, I don’t expect it to go beyond the West.  It is too late for the crony- and liberal-ridden systems of indoctrination and imprisonment (with their free hunting zones) found in places like California and Connecticut and DC.

Bravo, Mr. Adamo – I hope you write more about your home politics and future, and not just on a national level.  We need level-headed analysis on local issues as well as national and international.