That Was The Week That Was In Wyoming

Oregon Buttes: Not worth protecting

Rough week for forward-thinking people here in Wyoming. Let me see if I can sum it up:

No "crown jewels" protection for our natural treasures

Check.

FMI: Wyoming fails to identify lands worth saving (KGWN) and BLM: No "crown jewels" worth saving (CST)

Drill, baby, drill -- and feel free to poison the air with ozone

Check.

Lungs of Sublette County residents: Not worth protecting

FMI: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PGLI3G0.htm (thanks to Mead Gruver at AP article via Business Week) and this media release from the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill attempts to make up her own personnel rules. On the "good news" side, the WY AG rules that she can't do that. More bad news: the fight isn't over

Check.

FMI: http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_fc22d342-a26c-5071-ab10-f0385ae6d876.html (Casper Star-Tribune)

Put all juvenile offenders into adult prisons and throw away the key

Check.

FMI: http://blowinginthewyomingwind.blogspot.com/2011/08/wyomings-tradtion-of-selling-out.html

(thanks to Rev. Rodger McDaniel, who's always on the case when it comes to healthcare and youth issues)

WY juvenile offenders: Not worth protecting (Getty Images)

Shoot all wolves on sight!

Check.

FMI: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_d17eccac-d641-11e0-af80-001cc4c002e0.html

Koch Brothers-sponsored Tea Party Express rolls into Cheyenne. WY Dr. Sen. John Barrasso is one of the speakers. He thanks Tea Partiers "for all that you're doing to reclaim America."

Check (and please stop laughing at our esteemed senator).

Get the lowdown (with many fine comments) at "Tea Party members attempt to clarify what they stand for" (neat header, WY Tribune-Eagle)

More fun next week...

Who's the "Bull Goose Loony" among Wyoming Congressional Republicans?

Congressional Republicans ponder the "Repeal Amendment" while waiting for their meds 

O.K.. "looniness" isn't a word, at least according to Webster's. You can be loony or looney. I can be loonier that thou, or even the looniest one in the bunch. I can imagine myself as the non-politically-correct "Bull Goose Loony" in an imaginary mental ward ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") or be a member of the "Looney Tunes" stable of animated characters -- Daffy Duck comes to mind.

But looniness is a good descriptor for the legislation issuing forth from Congressional Republicans these days. Wyoming's Congressional delegation was once known as a moderate bunch. Sure, they were all Republicans, but senators such as Al Simpson and Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi usually avoided siding with the Far Right on their looniest causes.

There were causes for concern. During his first term, Mike Enzi sided with Sen. Dr. Bill Frist on Terry Schiavo's right to live a long and healthy life in a vegetative state. Sen. Dr. Frist contended that he could diagnose Mrs. Frist via video and, apparently, that was good enough for Sen. Enzi. It was a tempest in a teapot, like so many of these Far Right causes. Education system not working? Blame unionized teachers and their fat paychecks. Don't like abortion? Force women to view ultrasounds of their fetus -- or charge them with murder after the fact. Budget deficits? Cut taxes for the wealthy and kill Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.

As I said, looniness.

Now Sen. Enzi and Sen. Dr. John Barrasso (we don't need no universal health care!) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (a.k.a. seventh-richest member of Congress) are touting the so-called "Repeal Amendment" which would allow states to get rid of federal rules and regulations they don't like. This is a favorite bugaboo of the Far Right. That damn federal gubment is out to get them with needless regulations about wolves and black-footed ferrets and guns and oil drilling and health care and Gays. Wyoming Tea Partiers, many of whom haver never seen a live wolf, call wolves terrorists and want to be able to shoot them on sight if they wander into their ranchette to munch on Fluffy. But that darn gubment keeps getting in their way.

Meanwhile, as rivers flood and tornadoes drop from the sky or rain refuses to fall, these same people holler for federal disaster relief and scream even louder if they don't get it immediately.

Wyoming is one of those states that pays in fewer taxes than it gets in federal funding. It also has a fair amount of federal land. We have two national parks, Yellowstone being the first in the U.S., and some national monuments, including the first in the U.S. in Devils Tower. We have the huge Wind River Indian Reservation and nuke central at F.E. Warren AFB -- I hear reveille sound every morning from the base's loudspeakers. We have the huge national training base at Camp Guernsey. We have national grasslands and reclamation projects and many millions of federal dollars in our interstate highway system and airports. Wyoming relies on energy and tourism, both heavily subsidized by government infrastructure.

Wyoming will wither up and blow away to Nebraska without federal funding from U.S. taxpayers.

All three members of the Wyoming Congressional delegation will be in Platte County this week. Check out the Platte County Democrats' blog to see the schedule. I am not sure if they also will be in Laramie County. Looked for Sen. Enzi's travel schedule on his web site and couldn't find anything up-to-date.

The Casper Star-Tribune had an excellent editorial today about the loony "Repeal Amendment." Here's the opening:

The last time a coalition of states decided it had the power to nullify federal laws was in 1860, when 11 Southern states objected to the ban on slavery and seceded from the union. We all know how that turned out.  Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who has decided to ignore history and steer the current states’ rights bandwagon, is sponsoring the so-called Repeal Amendment, the ultimate anti-federal measure. It has almost no value beyond scoring some political points with the tea party crowd and the far right fringe of the Republican Party.

Read the rest here

Are those predator wolves or trophy wolves flying jets over Wyoming?

"Wolves Flying Jets" is a song by Greenhorse. Are these predator wolves or trophy wolves? And can they be hunted while flying jets over Wyoming or Montana or Idaho?

Ask Greenhorse when the group (with Wyoming origins) performs tonight at the WYO Theater in Sheridan.

The song --



Wolves Flying Jets by Greenhorse

Tales about Heart Mountain -- and the "Octopus in the Freezer"

Photo shows the interpretive walk on the site of the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp between Cody and Powell. Photo taken by Lee Ann Roripaugh on her family's tour of the site yesterday before a presentation at the WWInc conference. (from Facebook)

Lee Ann and Bob Roripaugh presented a fantastic reading last night at the WWInc conference in Cody. They took turns reading poems from Lee Ann's book, Beyond Heart Mountain. Readings were accompanied by slides from the internment camp, provided by Dave Reetz of Heart Mountain Foundation. Very moving.

Lee Ann read the poetic monologues that were in women's voices. Bob, her father, read the men's voices.

Lee Ann is Bob's daughter. Bob is Wyoming Poet Laureate Emeritus and retired University of Wyoming professor. Lee Ann teaches in the creative writing program at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

Lee Ann talked about growing up in Laramie. Back then, the university town was very, very white -- still is. Life wasn't easy for a shy non-white kid. Her mother, Yoshiko, met Bob when he was serving with U.S. Army occupation forces in Japan.

Bob grew up in west Texas where WWII bomber crews trained at the air base outside town. Meanwhile, in Japan, Yoshiko was a school girl whose town was pounded regularly by those very bombers.

In Japan, they met and fell in love and married and moved to the U.S. Bob taught English and wrote about his experiences. Bob's story "Peach Boy" was published by the Atlantic Monthly in 1958. This led to enquiries by editors. According to Bob, one letter asked if he was working on a novel. "I told him I was, even though I was really working on a book of short stories."

This led to a published novel. It's also a useful tip for short story writers. If an editor or agent ever asks if you're working on a novel, say yes.

In Cody on June 4, 2010, Bob read about one of the internment camp's No-No Boy who refused to serve in the U.S. Army and was sent away from his family to another camp. He read about the Isei building a mini-internment camp for the horned toads he found around the camp.

Lee Ann read in the voice of the camp nurse. She read about a Nisei woman whose son interrogates Japanese prisoners of war. She read in the voice of a young girl who has to listen to the snores of the old lady on one side of her thin barrack's walls (they don't go all the way to the ceiling) and the couple on the other side who fight and then make strange noises like the hooting of owls.

Each of the writers then read samples of their own work. Bob read a part of "Peach Boy" and the poem "Yellow Willow," both based on his experience in Japan. Lee Ann read some poems about growing up in Laramie: "pearls," "Antelope Jerky" and "Octopus in the Freezer." I've heard Lee Ann read "Octopus" before. But it was good to hear again because it alternates between horrifying and hilarious. Lee Ann's mom had bought an octopus at a Denver market and it was stored in the freezer. Lee Ann heard bumps in the night and the clanging of a furnace and thought it was the octopus banging around in the freezer. Not sure which of Lee Ann's three books this is in, but buy them all and pay special attention to "Octopus." A new twist on childhood fears of a monster hiding under the bed.

Lee Ann, Bob, Max McCoy and two literary agents will be conducting workshops and presentations all day today. More info at http://www.wyowriters.org/

More wailing and gnashing of teeth over Wyoming's wolves

Jeremy Pelzer wrote about the ongoing wolf delisting controversy in today's Casper Star-Tribune:

Lawyers for the state told a federal judge today that Wyoming should be given control over wolves in the state, calling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's rejection of Wyoming's wolf management plan "arbitrary and capricious."

Federal attorneys responded that Wyoming's plan would put the state's wolf population at risk because it would allow the animals to be killed anywhere in the state besides national park lands.

Attorneys for Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Department of Justice faced off with lawyers from the state and Park County during oral arguments before U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson. Both sides now await a ruling from Johnson, which could take anywhere from a few days to several months to be released.

This is a big issue in Wyoming. It's not unusual to see bumper stickers advocating wolf hunting and even wolf elimination. Some Republican media stars have advocated hunting wolves from helicopters.

On my way to work this morning, I happened across a "Delist the wolf" rally on the State Capitol steps. About 30 people in attendance, some holding signs advocating delisting. One said "Delist the terrorists."

Wolves as terrorists? That's a new one. One speaker said that 96,000 elk could be killed by wolves in the next five years. I have no idea if this is true. But the man at the podium said so many wolf kills would take food out of the mouths of Wyomingites and cause hunters not to come to the state and spend tourist dollars.

It is a fact that a number of out-of-state hunters come to Wyoming in the fall. It's also true that there are many hunters in Wyoming who bring the meat home to their families. Some of those families depend on this as part of the yearly food budget. But not all.

Tourists come from all over the world to view Yellowstone wolves in their natural habitat. If you compared number of out-of-state hunters with number of out-of-state wolf peepers -- which would be the larger number? You'd obviously want to know how much money each type of tourist spends in the state. We already know that lodging numbers in 2009 are down quite a bit from 2008, even though visitation to national parks increased dramatically. But who spends more money -- hunters or tourists?

Something else I have to research...

Capturing our Christmas tree in the Snowies

The ceremonial capture of the Christmas tree in Wyoming's Snowy Range. Notice ravenous wolf in foreground attempting to take a bite out of daughter. Wife threw blue disk at wolf and scared it away.

Part II: Why I love my insurance company

This is the insurance company that (supposedly) insures Wyoming state employees. Don't know about you, but I am so happy that my premiums and your premiums and the Wyoming State Legislature's premium match have all gone to fund the very comfortable retirement of the CIGNA CEO. Nataline (see vid) wasn't alive to share in our happiness. Who's next for the CIGNA death panels?

Cheney to get another six months of gubment-funded Secret service protection

The New York Daily News Washington Bureau reports this:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's Secret Service protection has been extended for at least another six months, beginning Tuesday.

Normally, ex-veeps only get six months of protection at taxpayer expense. But Cheney asked for an extension, and President Obama - whom Cheney has excoriated in several interviews since leaving office - recently signed off.

If the Obama administration hadn't gone along with Cheney's request, he would have been forced to hire his own security agents - or go without.

Cheney's friends have said he has become more concerned about his privacy and personal safety in recent years. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/07/21/2009-07-21_cheney_keeps_protection_thanks_to_uncle_sam_bam.html#ixzz0LuILmETA

Enjoy, for a brief moment, the irony in gubment-basher Dick Cheney requesting more gubment expenditures on his behalf, and the fact that Cheney is a gajillionaire thanks to his decades of gubment service (and taxpayer-provided health care) and his ongoing ties to the war profiteers at Halliburton.

And don't forget to reply to the poll.

If credit cards were outlawed, only outlaws would have guns -- or something like that

The "Room for Debate" section in today's New York Times batted around the new law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges. A broad array of opinions were displayed on the question "Guns in Parks -- Safe, Scary or a Sideshow?"

Personally, I think it's a scary, unsafe sideshow. But nobody asked me. The NYT did ask Wyoming writer, hunter and dog lover Ted Kerasote. He's against loaded firearms in parks -- and he's a gun guy. He wrote this in "Pack pepper spray, not a pistol:"

... Living within Grand Teton National Park, I see this all the time: a deer gunned down by the side of the road, its antlers chopped off; a moose waylaid just inside the park boundary; a coyote shot as it watches a car go by. These killings are perennial, often remove spectacular, genetically fit individuals, and create one more enforcement burden for park rangers.

Allowing visitors to carry loaded firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges, as legislation just passed by Congress does, will only make such poaching worse while making a ranger’s job more risky. And I don’t say this as some bleeding-heart liberal with an anti-gun agenda. There’s a rack of rifles and shotguns in my shed and, during Wyoming’s hunting season, I shoot an elk, an antelope and a variety of game birds — food for me and mine during the ensuing year. I’d be the last person in the world to outlaw guns.

... pepper spray is a far better deterrent than a .44 magnum, especially in the hands of the inexperienced. I’ve now used it to turn a charging moose, dissuade a cantankerous bison and send a bear scurrying. The animals had a coughing fit, and I a scare, a far better outcome than guns often produce.

That wasn't the only Wyoming reference in the article. That's appropriate, since we have tons of guns and lots of national park land. The NYT article opens with a photo of a grazing bison with a picnicking family in the background. The bison does not appear to be armed, but you never can tell. The picnickers may be packing heat, but seem most interested in gnawing sandwiches.

As a counterpoint to Ted's article, David B. Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Colo., begins his article this way:

“What works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne,” the presidential candidate Barack Obama often said when discussing gun policy. President Obama has put his principle into practice, signing a bill which, besides changing the laws about credit cards, repeals an inappropriate federal regulation.

I'm not sure what gun laws are in Chicago. Much more restrictive, I expect, than they were in Dillinger's day. Cheyenne law stipulates that everyone, from a day-old infant to a 100-year-old granny, must carry a loaded firearm at all times. This was the Wild West, after all, and some of that tradition remains in our free-form gun laws and our petrified legislature. When Dick Cheney was a greenhorn state legislator, he inadvertently shot himself in the foot while proposing legislation to tar-and-feather all Wyoming Democrats -- if any could be found. On Inauguration Day 2009, did you see Cheney being carted out of D.C. in a wheelchair? Don't blame his short-circuiting electronic heart. It was his old foot wound acting up. That and his rheumatiz.

David B. Kopel also had this to say:

The old regulation had prohibited defensive gun possession or carrying in national parks. Thanks to the new law, the federal rules about guns in national parks and wildlife refuges will be the same as the laws of the host states. So in Manhattan, where handgun carry permits are reserved for diamond merchants, the political-social-celebrity elite and a few other favored groups, there will not be a mass of people carrying guns at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, on 20th Street. (This result might have appalled Teddy Roosevelt, a N.R.A. member who as president carried his own revolver for protection.)

Teddy Roosevelt, of course, hunted in Wyoming after he shot all the game in the Dakotas. It's a well-known fact that he shot the last jackelope in Converse County. There's a statue to that jackelope in downtown Douglas, but not a single statue of the old Rough Rider. Teddy would be appalled.

As a counterpoint to that p.o.v., Kristen Brengel, director of legislative and government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, offers this:

In about nine months, guns will be allowed to be carried loaded throughout national parks if the state they are in permits guns in that state. After the amendment takes effect, visitors to national parks such as Yellowstone in Wyoming will begin to see guns visibly displayed in vehicles or being carried. Visitors to monuments and battlefields including Gettysburg National Military Park and Mount Rushmore will also now also be able to carry guns if the site is within a state that permits them.

Hikers in the back country will have a different experience. I will probably be discouraged from many hikes if other visitors are walking around openly carrying guns. Frankly, it is threatening to see a person hiking with a gun when it isn’t hunting season.

Because Wyoming already mandates gun-toting, I'm on trails all the time with a well-armed and well-regulated citizenry and I don't mind. I have a gun, my wife has a gun, my kids have guns, my dog has a gun, my tomato plants have guns -- we're all happy gun owners. Nothing untoward is going to happen to us while we enjoy nature's bounty. We will face down any threat, be it animal, mineral or human.

Meanwhile, I ask again: what does all this have to do with lowering credit card interest rates?

Read the entire NYT story at http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/guns-in-parks-safe-scary-or-a-sideshow/

Cheney and Yellowstone wolves prowl Wyoming

Dear Democratic Party of the USA:

I understand that you are still trying to raise $202 to send former Veep and Unrepentant Scourge of Humanity Dick Cheney back to Wyoming.

How goes the fund-raising? I'm sure that Marylanders are excited, as it will rid them of Cheney. But Donald Rumsfeld will remain. How can you get rid of one scourge but leave the other one in the neighborhood? Your strategy is flawed.

Let's leave Cheney where we can keep an eye on him. Once he gets loose in Wyoming, there's no telling where he may end up. You know the story of the wolves released into Yellowstone. The National Park Service told the wolves two things: don't wander out of the park boundaries and don't kill any cows or Republicans. Did the wolves listen? No, they have wandered far and wide. There were reports last week that the carcass of a Yellowstone wolf was found in northwestern Colorado. Panic gripped Casper last week. A wolf pack had been spotted and alarums raised throughout Natrona County. One elderly resident of Casper swears that she saw a Yellowstone wolf sipping a pina colada at a downtown bar. His hair was perfect.

On the second count, the wolves have killed a number of cows. No Republicans -- human variety -- have fallen victim to wolf predation. It is, however, a matter of time.

See how difficult it is to corral a predator once it's let loose back into the wild? It's entirely possible that the former Veep will not stay put in his mountain redoubt but will prowl the territory, looking for fresh Democratic blood. He will have many choices in Jackson. But once he wanders outside Teton County into the Repub strongholds of Sublette and Lincoln counties, he may very well end up like the wolf that starved to death in Colorado.

Please, keep Cheney where he can be tagged and observed. You owe that to the citizenry of Wyoming, especially the Dems who worked so hard to elect Barack Obama.

Sincerely,

Fairly Frightened in WYO

Judge puts stop to wolf killing in Wyo.

This is big news from the wires:

A federal judge in Montana has restored endangered species protection for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, putting a halt to legal wolf killing in Wyoming and derailing plans by it and two other states to hold public wolf hunts in the fall.

Another great reason for Wyo. wolves

Chris Conway reports in the New York Times Science section Aug. 5 that wolves may be at the root of a resurgence of aspens in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley.

Elk eat aspen shoots. Wolves eat elk. The 6,500 elk in the park can't eat in peace with wolves around, ready to pounce. So many of the aspen shoots are surviving to grow in peace.

At least that's the theory posited by scientists at Oregon State University:

"...the study found that an 'ecology of fear' has helped to restore balance to the valley, protecting young aspen shoots from browsing elk for the first time in decades. William J. Ripple, a professor in the university’s College of Forestry and an author of the study, said aspens were recovering in areas where it would be difficult for elk to escape a wolf attack. 'We think these elk need to balance the risk of being killed versus eating in their favorite places. So it’s a trade-off between food and risk in an ecology of fear,' he said.