HB79 passed second reading in the Senate. This bill will allow employers to take away your vacation pay that you all earn, if you decide to quit or get fired. Contact your Senator and tell them to vote no. I did my best to kill this bill on the House side but now it's up to the senators.Find your senator's contact info at http://legisweb.state.wy.us
Facts, common sense, what’s good for the people — they all fly out the window when some conservative Wyoming politicians are determined to show how much they distrust the federal government.
It’s happened many times before, but never to the absurd level it did when Gov. Matt Mead and 22 state senators killed Medicaid expansion in Wyoming this session.
No matter how one looks at the issue, they blew it — far worse than most people realize.Read the entire sordid tale here. Progressive blogger Rodger McDaniel at Blowing in the Wyoming Wind has been writing about this issue for months. Check out his columns here.
GRAMMY Music Educator Award: In recognition of the significant role of teachers in shaping their students' musical experiences, the GRAMMY Foundation and The Recording Academy are partnering to present the first Music Educator Award. Open to current U.S. music teachers in grade kindergarten through college, the Music Educator Award will be given out during GRAMMY Week 2014. The nomination process opened Feb. 10 at www.grammymusicteacher.com. The deadline for submissions is April 15. See the awards announcement from last night's Grammies at http://www.grammy.com/news/neil-portnows-55th-grammy-awards-telecast-remarks.
Have an uncle or a sister or a cousin or a friend or a neighbor who works in Wyoming and always tells great stories about their job? Invite them -- no, BRING them -- to one of our "Working in Wyoming" workshops in February. We want all the great Wyoming storytellers to tell us what it means to work in Wyoming.
The writing workshops will be held in the conference room in the Laramie Plains Civic Center in Laramie. We hope to see you there!
Wednesday, February 20th from 6-7:30 PMSaturday, February 23rd from 2-3:30 PMWednesday, February 27th from 6-7:30 PM
Martin Luther King, Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Charles K. Steele founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. It became the driving force in the civil rights movement. Its principal tactic was non-violent civil disobedience. “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline”, said Dr. King.
I thought of that when I read Laramie County Republican Representative Lynn Hutchings’ crude, brutish, and ignorant comments about homosexuals in her testimony against the Domestic Partnership bill.
Rep. Hutchings is an African-American. It is always breathtaking to encounter raw, naked bigotry from someone whose race has endured so much of it.
Describing homosexuals as dirty, diseased and dangerous, Rep. Hutchings told the committee that sexuality has no genetic basis, and that sexual orientation is a choice that can be changed “through the help of others”.
She went on to express offense at comparing the struggle for full citizenship rights for homosexuals to the black struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
I sent Rep. Hutchings an email asking her some questions about her comments. I didn’t expect an answer, and didn’t get one.
I asked for her source for the statement “science does not have evidence of a genetic involvement in sexuality”.
I asked her about her understanding of sexuality as it relates to gender.
I asked her if her homophobia was religion based.
I asked her what her experience in civil rights activism was.
And I asked her this: were the principles and philosophy that fueled the civil rights movement limited to the movement or were they universal in scope?
When ten percent of a species shows a particular trait, as humans do with homosexuality, biologists want to know why. In 1993 Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay published scientific papers in which they offered evidence of a genetic trigger that they said was a biological basis for homosexuality. Other scientists over the next few years supported their findings. Still others have challenged them.
Debate among biologists and geneticists about the biological origins of homosexuality continues and the question is not scientifically settled.
Many, if not most, psychologists and psychiatrists assume that homosexuality has a biological basis, and is not a choice based on environment or nurture. Testimony from people subjected to the “help of others” cited by Rep. Hutchings has revealed an ugly form of psychological brutality, and has led to these practices being outlawed in California.
It was the denial of the civil rights comparison that interested me most.
Rep. Hutchings wasn’t around when the civil rights movement started and she was a little child when the great events of the movement unfolded. She is one of those lucky ones who never had to run the personal risk of fighting for her rights. Others did that for her.
That good fortune carries with it a responsibility, however, and that is to understand the nature of the freedom that was fought for, to forever nurture it, and to include everyone in its embrace.
When Rep. Hutchings denies full citizenship rights to homosexuals she betrays the sacrifices of those who preached and marched and were beaten and sometimes killed in the name of those rights.
She betrays the courage of the four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, whose lonely sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter became a national symbol of injustice.
She betrays the courage and the memory of the Freedom Riders, who endured insult and beatings as they rode their buses across the South to witness against racism.
She betrays the memory of the civil rights workers, black and white, murdered and buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi because they were registering blacks to vote.
She betrays the sacrifice of James Reeb of Casper, Wyoming, a Unitarian minister serving in Boston, who was beaten to death with steel pipes by racist thugs at the march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama.
She betrays the courage and conviction of all those, black and white, who linked arms and stood with each other as brothers and sisters and demanded justice from their country.
And she betrays Martin Luther King’s vision that all of us, no matter who we are, will know the dignity of the Free. That is what the civil rights movement was about for those of us who joined it, and it is what the movement for civil rights for our homosexual brothers and sisters is about.
Rep. Hutchings and others like her have won the day for now. But they are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the future and the wrong side of a vast moral question.
Just as racial discrimination was beaten, so this discrimination shall be beaten. The wall will be taken down, one brick at a time if necessary, but it will come down.
I wrote to my Representatives here in Wyoming about a concern I had with expanding carry laws in schools and about fracking. Here is the response I got from Rep. Hans Hunt:
Rev. Fulbright:
I’ll be blunt. If you don’t like the political atmosphere of Wyoming, then by all means, leave. We, who have been here a very long time (I am proudly 4th generation) are quite proud of our independent heritage. I don’t expect a “mass exodus” from our state just because we’re standing up for our rights. As to your comments on fracking, I would point out that you’re basing your statement on “dangers” that have not been scientifically founded or proved as of yet.
It offends me to no end when liberal out-of-staters such as yourself move into Wyoming, trying to get away from where they came from, and then pompously demand that Wyoming conform to their way of thinking. We are, and will continue to be, a state which stands a head above the rest in terms of economic security. Our ability to do that is, in large part, to our “live and let live” mentality when it comes to allowing economic development, and limiting government oversight.
So, to conclude, if you’re so worried about what our legislature is working on, then go back home.
Sincerely,
Hans HuntRepublican Rep. Hunt ran unopposed in the general election. A good illustration of the dangers of a one-party state.
Representative Hans Hunt, House District 02
Tina Hill, Historic Site Director for The Wyoming Frontier Prison, says that the production company made serious alterations to the historic site that still present problems to this day. One of which is a large hole that was made in the wall of the exercise yard. In the movie the hole was used to construct a second entrance for the prison, but after shooting wrapped the hole remained.
“We still have the hole in the exercise yard. Which allows people to get in when they’re not supposed to be, and so there’s vandalism on our exercise wall,” Hill says. ”It’s a security issue. You can’t really get spray paint off of concrete. And being that we’re a historic site, we can’t paint over the graffiti because the walls weren’t painted. It would be inaccurate to paint them.”
Hill also says that the historic site is currently repairing damages the production made to the prison’s A-Block walls. Plaster had been chipped off to expose the brick walls underneath to make the prison look older for the movie. Hill said that the plaster damage was being repaired at the time of the interview.
Despite the damages, Hill says there’s no sour-grapes about the production of Prison coming through the site. ”Now, we’re pretty much happy that [the production] happened. We wish that the people who were in charge of the prison at the time would have taken a little bit better care, and maybe have not let the production do the damage that they did.” Hill goes on to say the historic prison now has measures in place to prevent further damage from film and television productions.The "serious alternations" done to the prison caused locals to form a joint powers board that took over the facility and turned it into a museum. It now is on the National Registry of Historic Places. More than 15,000 visitors a year tour the place that's famous for its spooky Halloween tours.
HB 79 Collection of Unpaid Wages: This is an example of legislation that is worded to imply the opposite of what the law would actually do. The bill amends Wyoming statute to exclude any accrued vacation wages from owed wages at termination if the employer states in writing that is their policy. Representative Lee Filer spoke out against this legislation stating "I believe this is legislation that wages war on every employee in Wyoming." It's currently on General File in the Senate. The Wyoming Democratic Party strongly opposes this bill.
This week, the Wyoming House of Representatives passed the Food Freedom Act.
The sponsor of that House Bill 108, Rep. Sue Wallis, a Republican from Recluse, said the legislation will open up local commerce and help small business.
HB 108 would deregulate the sale of homemade foods at such things as farmers markets and in individual transactions between producers and consumers.
Wallis said if all 200,000 or so households in Wyoming spent just $20 a week on locally grown food, more than $200 million would be pumped into the Cowboy State economy. That money will turn over at least three or four times in the economies of cities, towns and counties, she said economic studies show.
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| Detroit's M.L. Liebler |
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| Wyoming's Jackalope |
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| This was on Facebook today: New map: US High Speed Rail System. This map is inspired by ideas from various agencies and advocacy groups including Amtrak, The Transport Politic, Wikimedia Commons, Florida High Speed Rail, SkyscraperPage Forums, Southern High Speed Rail, Southeast High Speed Rail, Ohio Department of Transportation, California High Speed Rail Authority, Midwest High Speed Rail Association, US DOT Federal Railroad Administration, Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp. Get PDFs and posters at https://sites.google.com/site/californiarailmap/us-high-speed-rail-system |
