Guess which Wyo. Rep. voted against The Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights?

Trick question.

There's only one U.S. House member from the State of Wyoming. That's right. Cynthia Lummis, looking after the state's citizens by voting against a bill that would put the brakes on predatory practices of the credit card industry.

She was one of only 70 House naysayers, all Republicans but one. She was joined by the likes of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who thinks that Matthew Shepard's murder had nothing to do with him being gay. Other free-thinkers voting against this consumer-protection bill were Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), who once called for an "anti-American" investigation into Democratic Party members of Congress, and Ted Poe (R-Texas), who believes that waterboarding prisoners is a fine idea. What great company Ms. Lummis keeps.

Here are excerpts from an AP story by Marcy Gordon about the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights:

Riding a crest of populist anger, the House on Thursday approved a bill to restrict credit card practices and eliminate sudden increases in interest rates and late fees that have entangled millions of consumers.

The legislation passed by a bipartisan vote of 357-70 following lobbying by President Barack Obama and members of his administration.

The measure would prohibit so-called double-cycle billing and retroactive rate hikes and would prevent companies from giving credit cards to anyone under 18.

If they become law, the new measures won't take effect for a year, except for a requirement that customers get 45 days' notice before their interest rates are increased. That would take effect in 90 days.Similar legislation is before the Senate, where its prospects appear promising.

Consumer advocates and some Democrats have unsuccessfully sought for years to
bring new rules to the industry. "A big vote in the House will create an even bigger momentum as it goes to the Senate," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Before approving the bill, dubbed the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights, the House adopted a series of amendments -- some of which were pushed by the White House -- that amplified the restrictions on industry practices.

The House measure incorporates Federal Reserve regulations due to take effect in July 2010 but goes further by adding restrictions for credit cards for college students. Double-cycle billing eliminates the interest-free period for consumers who move from paying the full balance monthly to carrying a balance.

Dear Democrats: Please rethink Cheney one-way bus ticket campaign

I have a bone to pick with my Democratic Party. It is raising money to buy Dick Cheney a one-way bus ticket back to Wyoming.

This must stop!

For one thing, we don't want him amongst us. He has proven to be a negative influence on the population of the U.S. and the planet. He also has undue influence in Wyoming. He's received at some of the best houses, in Jackson and elsewhere. When he addressed the Wyoming legislature a few years ago, he was cheered lustily by both houses, while the citizenry stood outside in the cold, unable to come into its "House of the People" to hear the assistant leader of the free world deliver his platitudes.

He could have a damaging effect on a state that is only now emerging from the 19th entury. Besides, he or his wife might run for office. If Dick Cheney were to elected governor, a huge wall would be built around the state, and all Wyomingites with liberal leanings would be thrown into re-education camps where Lynne Cheney would torture us by reading her super-patriotic children's books over and over and over again. Can you say "Ronald Reagan Is God?" I thought you could.

Second, your humorous travel map at https://www.democrats.org/page/contribute/cheneybus?source=20090425_JOC_ND1 is all wrong. The red dot at the end of the bus route is in the incorrect place. If the former Veep were to disembark at this spot, he would be in the windswept fringe of the Red Desert and not Jackson.

As you may know, Jackson is a village of quaint restaurants and a lively art scene. The views are spectacular. While some of its denizens are Democrats, Cheney's rich Republican pals would scoop him into their collective arms and whisk him to safety at his mountain redoubt.


The scenery around Jackson (Teton Lake)

If he gets off in the Red Desert, no telling what would happen. He could be ripped to shreds by packs of escaped Yellowstone wolves or shot by some vision-impaired hunter. He could perish of thirst while he waits for helicoper pickup.

Wyoming's Red Desert (note pack of wolves in background)

Wait just a doggone minute! That spot that you D.C. Dems marked on the map really is Jackson and not the Red Desert. I was mistaken. That's a great place to drop him off. I've never been good at geography.

But, as I said, this campaign has to stop. Yes, we're terminally a red state and the place where Cheney grew up and entered politics. But he was born in Nebraska. Send him there. Or what about Utah? Or Iraq? Families of dead Iraqis would stage a grand welcoming party at the Baghdad bus station that Cheney would not soon forget.

Or maybe he would.

These guys made a billion dollars for running their companies into the ground

Here's a New York Times article that will make you sick. Go to http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/07/business/20080929-payout-graphic.html to read the stats on a group of a dozen Wall Street CEOs that raked in more than $1 billion in pay from their companies. One of the champs is Richard S. Fuld, Jr., of Lehman Brothers, who made a tidy $256,411,839 in take home pay from 2003-2007. Here's what the NYT said about Fuld:

As recently as June 2008, Richard S. Fuld Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers, said he was confident that Lehman was sound even as the bank posted a second-quarter loss of $2.8 billion, caused by bad mortgage investments. But on Sept. 16, Lehman filed for bankruptcy and began sliding toward an eventual liquidation.

These greedheads should be locked up.

Fuld testified today before the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee. At one point in his life, Fuld was worth $1 billion and now has come on such hard times that he and his wife have had to sell some of their prized art collection, which includes three rare works by abtract-expressionist Willem de Kooning.

Again from the New York Times:

Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who heads the panel, began the hearing with an assault on Mr. Fuld’s pay, bringing out a chart showing that the Lehman chief executive received nearly $500 million in salary and bonus payments in the last eight years.

“That’s difficult to comprehend for a lot of people,” Mr. Waxman said. “I have a very basic question for you, is that fair?”

Wyoming Year in Review: 2007

While it’s tough to predict the coming year, it’s easy to crack wise about events of the previous 365-or-so days. Esquire Magazine once cornered the market with its "Dubious Achievements of (insert year here)." It stopped offering dubious achievements in 2001 but resumed in 2003 due to popular demand. It usually features a photo of the late Dick Nixon with the caption, "Why is this man laughing?" In 2007, his laughter was caused by a poll showing that Dubya (and not Tricky Dick) was "the worst president ever." Thus Nixon is off the hook, posterity-wise.

Esquire taught me how to write headlines. Some of the worst transgressions against America featured in DA carried this headline: "The Thanks of a Grateful Nation." So, you could feature any of Dubya’s incomprehensible quotes under this headline. How about this one from April 2003: "You’re free. And freedom is beautiful. And you know, it will take time to restore chaos and order – order out of chaos. But we will." For this, Bush receives the thanks of a grateful nation. And how about this from April 2005: "I’m going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it’s the mother in me."

Before you accuse me of poking fun at a man who rose from humble beginnings to be the leader of the free world, remember that Dubya was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and experienced many of life’s advantages, including an Ivy league education. So why can’t he speak in complete sentences? Is it an affectation, designed to appeal to the Bubbas in the Republican Party? Is he just dumb, as many suspect? Or is it his dyslexia at work, which was talked about in the early days of his presidency but dropped post-9-11?

But let’s get back to the year in review. The major problem with 2007 is that Bush is still president. That will change with the 2008 elections, which truly will earn the thanks of a grateful nation. The Iraq War continues to rage, with 2007 becoming the worst year for American combat deaths. Democrats, with a majority in the House and senate, attempted to end the war several times but kept running into lunkhead Republicans standing shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of Bush’s lunkhead policies. The Dems – except for the crusty Christopher Dodd – forget how to play politics and filibuster and hold their breath until they turned blue to get their way. The Democratic Majority was a big disappointment in 2007.

What about Wyoming? The Associated Press’s top stories for the state were also political ones. They include the death of U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas and his replacement by John Barrasso, a celebrity-physician from Casper who might yet become a free-thinking Republican from Wyoming if he could quit his addiction to voting with the Know-Nothing bloc of his party on issues such as stem-cell research and health insurance for poor children.

Another big political story: Barbara Cubin decided to retire from her U.S. House seat. This would seem like good news for Democrats except that Cubin was a big target, losing many voters in her own party to Gary Trauner in the 2006 election. Trauner is running again, but no big-name Repubs have entered the fray. State Sen. Colin Simpson, son of former U.S. Sen "Big Al" Simpson, says he will not run. We’ll have to wait and see what 2008 brings.

The state’s Repubs also made news with their decision to move up their presidential delegate selection to Jan. 5, making the Wyo. event among the first in the nation. The Republican Party has severely disciplined their high-plains brethren and sistren, withholding any signed photos of Dick Cheney until they change their ways.

Wildlife issues entered the fray. Ranchers and other big guys with big guns want to shoot wolves and grizzly bears. The feds have entered the fray and I can’t figure out all the ins and outs of their decisions. Suffice to say that with Bush and Cheney’s hand-selected wildlife conservators in control, the wildlife will lose. I have a practical question. While the loss of stock is a blow to ranchers, how many cows and sheep are killed annually by wolves? What does it add up to in dollars? Now, balance that against the tourist dollars spent annually to see (or attempt to see) the wolves and bears in Yellowstone National Park. Tourism is our largest economic generator along with energy development (oil, gas and coal). Agriculture and ranching are a distant third or fourth, depending on whose statistics you accept. You’d think those staunch bottom-line members of the state Republican Party would be allies in protecting wolves. But many legislators continue to be ranchers or those beholden to the ranching lobby. They are living in the last century or maybe the one before that.

One of the best things about Wyoming in 2007? The Governor’s first annual Arts Summit in Casper. Wyomingites convened from across the state in October to listen to some common-sense advice about how the arts can help Wyoming prepare for the future. Gov. Freudenthal has convened his own summit conference for Jan. 10-11, 2008, focusing on "Building the Wyoming We Want."

The University of Wyoming’s energy institute has added a school to study wind power. There is a gradual awakening in the state that global warming will also affect us. Strange but true. We produce tons of low-sulphur coal each day and ship it around the country, only to have it come back to haunt us in drought and acid rain and higher temps and the ravages of the pine bark beatle. On the plus side: a millennium from now, we’ll have some bitchin’ surf in Cheyenne.

Wyoming’s economy continues to hum along. Population is increasing, but at a measured pace. Baby Boomers are discovering Wyoming as a retirement haven (see preceding post), which could be good news or bad, depending on your P.O.V.

We face 2008 with angst and hope. I’ll offer some predictions in upcoming posts. They will be wildly unpredictable.

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.

When the big cats own all the hilltops

Writer Barbara Ehrenreich grew up in Montana and now lives in Florida. In her books such as Nickled and Dimed, she tracks the inequities in an economy where the rich get richer and then filthy rich and then obscenely rich, etc. And most of the rest of us don’t exactly get poor, we just lose our dignity, our houses, and – gradually – our views.

"You can’t eat the scenery" is a phrase heard often in Wyoming, more often in bust times than in booms. Scenery is nice, but it’s tough to admire the view when you’re unemployed and the kids are hungry. You may like the idea of living in Jackson or Santa Fe or Red Lodge, but you and your spouse can’t work enough jobs to afford it. So you find jobs in a less scenic place and, at night, dream about the Tetons.

Turns out, you can eat the scenery if you’re rich. Ehrenreich discussed this strange fact in a June 30 column for Alternet, "The Rich Have Priced the Outdoors out of Everyone Else’s Hands."

Here’s the opening paragraphs:

I took a micro-vacation last week -- nine hours in Sun Valley before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multi-star restaurant, and "opera house." What luck -- the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale!

But things started to get a little sinister -- maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet? -- because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in place since sometime in the '90s: If a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there. All right, I'm sure there are still exceptions -- a few scenic spots not yet eaten up by mansions. But they're going fast.

Ehrenreich relates how she and a friend rented an inexpensive house in Driggs, Idaho, ten years ago. Located just over Teton Pass from Jackson, Driggs was an affordable alternative for those who worked The Hole’s restaurants and hotels. But now, gazillionaires such as Microsoft’s Paul Allen brewing magnate Augustus Busch III, have discovered Driggs, forcing up land values and prices and taxes. Where will the Driggsians go now? The rich buy up great gobs of land, forcing the have-nots away from the scenery they love so much they keep plugging away so they can stay.

I know people who moved to Jackson and Aspen in the sixties and seventies. Not all were hippies or back-to-the-land folks. Some were ski bums and entrepreneurial drug dealers. But it didn’t seem to matter. Some stayed in Jackson to make a home, finding a way to survive. A writer I know worked a series of service jobs for two decades before he could (kind of) support himself in Jackson. A woman friend founded a little bistro that thrived with the influx of trust-fund babies and telecommuters. Others just gave up and moved on, back to their hometowns in Maryland or Texas. They found jobs and spouses and, eventually, discovered ways to get back to the mountains, if only for one week each summer.

When I was hitchhiking around the West in 1972, I was tempted by Jackson and Driggs. My girlfriend Sharon from the Boston burbs was skeptical. She knew that two college drop-outs couldn’t make a living in tiny Driggs. Jackson would be better. Missoula even more so. But still we moved on, wending our way through Seattle, Portland, and Berkeley and through the deserts and mountains back to Denver. I had relatives and friends in Denver. We could have landed jobs the first day, work our way through the service industry and college to an affordable fixer-upper on Capitol Hill or Washington Park and then have a few kids and then visit Driggs and Yellowstone on summer vacation. That was the only way we could get a piece of the scenery. Some people back in Boston might say we had a nice view right there in Denver.

That’s not the way it worked out. We left Denver and moved to Boston. After six months in that dreary city, I quit it and the relationship and returned to Daytona Beach, Florida, where Sharon and I first met. Beach town, you say, the big blue Atlantic right at your doorstep, surf and sand and wahines. But by then I had mountains on my mind and didn’t care about the view from the beach. So a couple years later, after graduating from college on the seven-year plan, I met a beautiful woman and we moved to Denver. I’ve been Out West ever since, always within sight of the Rocky Mountains. Not bad, really, when you consider the alternatives.

It addresses a key facet of life – the need to be attached in some way to the landscape. Here’s how Ehrenreich describes it:

I take this personally. I need to see vast expanses of water, 360 degree horizons, and mountains piercing the sky -- at least for a week or two of the year. According to evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff, we all do, and the need is hard-wired into us. "People like to be on a hill, where they can see a landscape. And they like somewhere to go where they can not be seen themselves," told Harvard Magazine earlier this year. "That's a place desirable to a predator who wants to avoid becoming prey." We also like to be able to see water (for drinking), low-canopy trees (for shade), and animals (whose presence signals that the place is habitable.)

Something basic about our need to be part of the outdoors. You don’t have to be a mountain climber or a long-distance sailor to be part of it. Sometimes you just have to be able to see it. As we keep getting moved back from the scenic places, maybe that will incite a fear in us that we are more prey than predator. The big cats now control the high places. They can look out from their perches in the Rockies and see the prey spread out below. That's the way they like it.