From the CST:
Lummis hosts crypto roundtable with U.S. comptroller, Gordon
Wyomingites care nothing about this whatsoever.
Showing posts with label Cynthia Lummis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cynthia Lummis. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Sunday, February 22, 2026
The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 4. The Held Up Edition
February 16, 2026
TA Ranch.
The invaders arrived and confident of the success of their mission, as well as the mission itself, detrained and headed out, certain of victory.
And then the unexpected intervened. They didn't know the climate of where they were, and ran into delay. And soon they ran into diversion as well, thinking that with limited time they could still stop to act on detours.
The locals rallied, held them up, and started gunning them down.
Week two of the 2026 legislature commences, the carpetbaggers held up and besieged, as has happened before.
February 17, 2024
A warning about the stupidity of gutting the state's tax system:
Not that most of the Freedom Caucus, which has a "get off my lawn" type of attitude, and which lives in a Southern fantasyland, seems to really care, or so it seems. I guess we'll see.
I will note, however, that fire board lives out in the county and was put in place by rural voters who voted for Trump, and I'll bet most of them did as well. The Freedom Caucus is the same Dixiecrat type of voter that voted in the Freedom Caucus. So, they're getting just what they voted for.
And the scandal grows:
Years ago a very senior member of the legislature told me that the far right was now buying the legislature. What Bextel did was monumentally stupid, she has to be the most tone-deaf person in the state, but it likely was not illegal. The implications are serious, however. The "Wyoming" Freedom Caucus is heavy funded by out of state money or, in this case Carpetbagger Cash.
The item here, broken by the Jackson Hole News & Guide:
CHEYENNE—The Jackson man who wrote the campaign donation checks at the center of a growing controversy in the Wyoming Capitol says two were intended for the Speaker of the House and the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.Whether or not Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, or Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, received or accepted the checks could not be determined by press time. Neither lawmaker responded to requests for comment before publication.
And:
Freedom Caucus lawmaker Bear accepted controversial campaign check from activist; other legislators remain mum: Gillette Republican Rep. John Bear said he accepted a check from Bextel, but not on the House floor.
The truth of the matter is that when this sort of political thought came into the state, it came in from the outside and was backed by outside people. Some of the early proponents of the Freedom Caucus nonsense, like Secretary of State Chuck Gray, and Bear, are outsiders.
Bextel, originally from Arkansas (of course) has done the state a big favor by exposing this sort of behavior.
Former legislators reactions:
This adds a serious new wrinkle to the story:
Bextel has said publicly that she was distributing lawful campaign checks on behalf of a Teton County donor, and that she did so in person because she knew she’d be in Cheyenne.It also happened two days before the reported recipients on the House side, among others, voted in favor of introducing a bill Bextel has championed.
I still very much doubt that this meets the criteria necessary to be considered bribery, but there is a bit of smoke there. Added to that, some of the cash recipients are not campaigning this year.
So what was that bill that the cash donor had an interest in? That's discussed here:
Wyoming’s ‘Checkgate’ is all about the Freedom Caucus’ political games - WyoFile: GOP activist who handed out money to lawmakers on House floor claims she’s leveling the playing field for conservatives, writes columnist Kerry Drake.
As stated in the article:
The incident became a news story on Wednesday during debate on an anti-affordable housing bill that Bextel was lobbying lawmakers to support. Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, questioned voting on House Bill 141, “Fifth Amendment Defense Act,” when one of its prime supporters was seen distributing checks to lawmakers on the floor two days earlier. But he did not name Bextel or any legislators who received checks.
While I've abstained from posing the text of bills on these threads this year, this one deserves a look:
Fifth Amendment Protection Act.
Sponsored by: Representative(s) Bear, Haroldson, Heiner, Knapp, Locke and Neiman and Senator(s) Hicks, Hutchings, Ide, Kolb, McKeown, Pearson, Salazar and Steinmetz
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to cities, towns and counties; prohibiting cities, towns and counties from imposing fees or conditions related to housing on residential or commercial development as specified; specifying applicability; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 15‑1‑612 and 18‑5‑209 are created to read:
15‑1‑612. Prohibitions on fees and conditions related to housing on residential or commercial development.
No governing body of a city or town shall impose a monetary fee, nonmonetary condition or other concession related to the provision of workforce housing, unmet housing needs or affordable housing on residential or commercial development within the jurisdiction of the governing body.
18‑5‑209. Prohibitions on fees and conditions related to housing on residential or commercial development.
No board of county commissioners shall impose a monetary fee, nonmonetary condition or other concession related to the provision of workforce housing, unmet housing needs or affordable housing on residential or commercial development within the jurisdiction of the county.
Section 2.
(a) This act shall apply to all applications for permits submitted for residential or commercial development on or after July 1, 2026.
(b) Nothing in this act shall be construed to modify or impair existing contracts or obligations regarding residential or commercial development and the imposition of monetary fees, nonmonetary conditions or other concessions executed before July 1, 2026.
Section 3. This act is effective July 1, 2026.
So the money came from Teton County big bucks, which to at least some extent, must now want the servant class living in Teton County. Let them commute from Driggs, apparently.
Can't have that riff raff living in Jackson, now can we?
Every recipient of the cash donation should resign. . . but none of them will. The Legislature, for that matter, out to censure them by sidelining them for the remainder of the session. I.e., as they have to right to refuse to seat, they ought to send them to the benches and let them cool their jets at home this session.
And this does stink. A wealthy carpetbagger from Teton County gives checks to a carpetbagger from Teton County to pass out to certain favorites as a housing bill principally impacting Teton County (but also Natrona County) is debated.
I doubt the District Attorney from the 1st Judicial District will do anything with that. I don't think I would, but it looks pretty weird.
Speaking of Gray:
Senate panel advances bill to increase accountability for commercial registered agents: More than 830,000 LLC filings generated almost $60M for Wyoming last year, but secrecy raises concern about fraud, scams
That must keep his stamping fingers busy like crazy.
Speaking of buying votes, Lummis spoke at the legislature and spoke on Trumpbucks.
Lummis Announces Kraken Will Fund Trump Accounts For Every Wyoming Newborn In 2026
That's not buying votes, but Kraken is trying to buy good will.
Part of the problem is that data centers are driving up electrical demand like crazy. A sane country, that was doing this, would be building nuclear plants like crazy, but we're not sane right now. Instead, Trump is backing Dying Dirty Coal.
February 18, 2026
This is probably the first time that Carpetbagging Chuck has been silent on anything since he he showed up in Casper with luggage. Usually he'd be out blaming the left wing radicals he claims are lurking around every single corner in the state conspiring against decency, apple pie, and poor old Donny Trump.
Here he's shut his trap.
Hmmm. . . .
Well after all of his blathering if he doesn't condemn what happened, he's a hypocrite.
But then Bextel hosted a fundraiser for her fellow carpetbagger back in January. It was closed to the press. . .
February 20, 2026
Wyoming House Rejects Adding Extraterrestrials, Animals, To Sex Books Ban
"Check Gate" has really busted wide open, putting the WFC on the spot after they condemned accusations that proved to be true. Carbon County's GOP has called for the resignation of some members of their own party. Frankly Bear and Niemann, who haven't been asked to resign yet, should resign or be removed by the legislature.
Chuck Gray remains silent for the first time that he carried his carpetbag across the state line.
February 22, 2026
So we're ten days in to a 21 day session and the House is way behind on the budget, the one thing they have to actually accomplish.
The Confederate Caucus turns out not to be very effective at getting things done, in a budget session, and so things aren't for the most part, getting done. Meanwhile the drama of Freedom Caucus getting checks from Rebecca Bextel on behalf of some moneybucks guy goes on, with the thing excuse being a claim that nothing wrong was done and it isn't illegal.
It likely isn't illegal, but it doesn't look good.
And so ends week two.
Last edition:
The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 3. The Confederate Legislature Edition.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 117th Edition. Sen. Lummis wakes up from a long winter's nap.
I'm shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here!
Captain Renault, Casablanca.
Initially my reaction to all this was, I don’t care. I don’t see what the big deal is. But now I see what the big deal is. The members of Congress who were pushing this were not wrong!
Retiring Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis.
About fucking time.
It's frankly very difficult to credit this comment. A pack of rich men, and 30 members of the current Trump interregnum, are mentioned in the Epstein files, including Trump, and she didn't see what the big deal was? As if the rich and powerful buying underaged sex slaves on U.S. territory, pretty openly, isn't a big deal.
That would be the viewpoint of a complete moron.
Lummis isn't a moron.
She's also not running for office again either.
Either she's really checked out, which at age 71, and admittedly now too worn down to do her job, she may very well be. Maybe she just isn't paying any attention.
Or maybe her lifetime in politics has simply numbered her to stuff like this, which should worry us all, as that would suggest some pretty gross filth is pretty common.
Or, maybe retiring, and after having realized that a tsunami of filth is coming, she decided to get out of the water.
Now, if only we could draw some candidates for her replacement who never sipped the Koolaide.
And maybe now somebody will confront Barrasso whose only purpose seems to be to stand behind Trump and company and give stern looks.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 116th Edition. Dissing J.D., What's the point of the National Prayer Breakfast?, Drip.
Friday, November 14, 2025
And now they're losing Boebert. . .
I will be voting to repeal this ridiculous policy that allows 8 specific senators to use taxpayer dollars sue the DOJ. This garbage should have never been included in a clean government funding bill.
One of those Senators was Wyoming's own Cynthia Lummis.
Really makes a fellow proud, um, or well. . .
Saturday, October 18, 2025
A Wyoming Party, and some other thoughts. We're on our own.
Jane Banner: Shouldn't we wait for back up?Ben: This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.
In the film Wind River, set on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Tribal policeman Ben and FBI agent Jane Banner are confronted with gunfire while investigating a crime and have the exchange noted above.
Wyomingites love that quote, and there's a lot to it.*
Not only is there a lot to it, its very much the case regarding politics in this state. Our Congressional delegation doesn't support or represent us on many of the existential matters at play in the state. Not one darned bit.
And they're not going to. Just as in Wind River the two policemen, and an Animal Damage officer, were under assault by those that they were going to have to take on, on their own, so are the residents of this state.
The other day I saw a lifelong member of Wyoming's Republican Party, who once held positions within it, decried. Wyoming's Congressional Representation as "bought and paid for". This followed, by a period of a couple of years, a similar claim by a former significant Wyoming politicians that I somewhat know. Another person I know describe all three of Wyoming's Congressional delegation as "ass kissing sycophants".
There's something to all of that.
The vast bulk of their large campaign war chests comes from out of state money. Compared to it, the money from Wyomingites doesn't even amount to a drop in the bucket. It's more like a drop in a 55 gallon barrel. Wyoming public media, in a news story on the topic, reported:
JU: OpenSecrets reported that Rep. Harriet Hageman received $15,000 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Sen. John Barrasso has received over $70,000 from a private equity firm based in New York and California [from 2019 to 2024]. And Sen. Cynthia Lummis received over $100,000 from the Club for Growth, a conservative PAC [from 2019 to 2024]. In the face of more powerful organizations like those, how do individual or local donors in Wyoming make their voice more impactful? Or their donation more impactful?
Some group calling itself the Americans for Prosperity have been running non stop adds on social media thanking John Barrasso for his role in the Big Ugly.
Who are these people and organizations? Wyomingites?
Not hardly. Wikipedia says of them:
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the United States affiliated with brothers Charles Koch and the late David Koch.[6] As the Koch family's primary political advocacy group, it has been viewed as one of the most influential American conservative organizations.
Club for Growth is a radical right wing economic outfit as well.
American Israel Public Affairs Committee: What does have to do with the average Wyomingite?
Not freaking much.
In a couple of place around town, there are billboard featuring all three of our Congress people with the Tetons in the background thanking all three for standing with "American Energy", by which they no doubt mean petroleum and coal, not wind, solar and nuclear (as we've recently learned locally).
The bigger problem is that the Congressional delegation flat out ignores the views of Wyomingites on some major issues, public lands being one. Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to the Federal lands going to the states, and are opposed to public lands being sold. That well known fact hasn't done anything to keep our Congressional delegation from supporting those things, and it's done nothing whatsoever to keep the Wyoming GOP from backing land transfers.
Dr. John Barrasso, who after all is a East Coaster and looks like one, has his head so far up Trump's ass on a daily basis that he can examine Trump's tonsils from the backside. He has no use for Wyoming anymore. My guess is that he's in his last term as he knows that he's not going to be the Senate Majority Leader so being a fascist flunky will be his career achievement, and he's okay with that.
Who knows what's up with Lummis. She's always been a Cheshire cat in the first place, with a sort of snarky smile. She goes her own way, and that way isn't yours.
Harriet Hageman is the most honest of the bunch. Sure, she's stuck in the Powder River Campaign, but her views, while not the same as most of hours, re honestly and openly held.
Chuck Gray? Gray is just using Wyoming, that's about it. And his politics bend with the wind. He's a far right winger Greenpeacer if you can make sense of that, and he's hoping you can't and will yell at you until you are distracted.
Right now, the Wyoming GOP is the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is packed with people who are not from Wyoming, and how have brought their dumbass ideas with them and want to impose them on Wyoming.
They're succeeding in doing so. There's really no saving the GOP in the state. The old GOP, which was uniquely Wyoming in view, is dead, taking the path of the old Wyoming Democratic Party, which did as well, and which died first.
In its place we have the Dixiecrats and those whose one and only value is their pocket books.
They need to go.
But it would appear unlikely that they can be dislodged from the current GOP, put on plane, and shipped back to the their home states, like they should be.
The only two things the two failed parties agree on is that you should never vote for a third party. That's how we got into this mess.
So maybe it's time for some new parties not beholding to the crap these parties are.
And why not local parties?
Let's start with something that should be clear to all, but really seems not to be.
There's nothing American or Constitutional about a "two party system". The founders, while they rapidly fell into parties, didn't approve of them at all. A primary system, such as we and most other states have, is existentially anti democratic and existentially unconstitutional. They're nothing more than state funded party elections that are geared to conspire against any person from a third party, or just an independent running. Primary elections would make sense only if no party affiliation was noted on the ballot at all. Get 1,000 signatures to get you on, perhaps, and you are on.
Moreover, it's really time to allow for recalls of Congressional representation. If we had that, all three of our Congressional people would be facing a recall election right now. John Barrasso, who earnestly believes whatever you believe as you believe it, and even more than you do, would now be leading armed raids into Utah against Mike Lee if that was the case, rather than spending all of his time kissing Trump's ass.
Suffice it to say, we're not being served well.
What would a party that actually reflected Wyoming's values look like?
Well, of course, in stating something like that, I'm inevitably going to post what a party that reflected my values, mostly, would look like.
- It'd protect public lands.
- It'd have a land ethic.
- It'd protect democratic values, as in voting.
- It'd realize that science isn't a fib, and that some things have to adjust because of scientific reality.
- It would have a tax system that accepted that out of state imports with huge amounts of cash should be taxed.
Frankly, it'd look a lot like what the GOP here used to look like.
It's be overall conservative, without a doubt, but conservative in a Wyoming sort of Way, not in a Dixiecrat sort of way.
Most Wyomingites who are from Wyoming, save those who had drank the MAGA/Charlie Kirk Kool aide, would likely vote for it.
We're sure not going to be saved by the Democrats. They'll do anything they can to wreck their own chances at the ballot box. And we're not going to be saved by the Republicans either. The GOP has wiped out the real party and put in place a party that Nathan Bedford Forest would be proud of.
We're on our own.
Footnotes:
*I'll confess that I've done a lot of legal work on the Wind River Reservation, and it haunts me. This is a really good move, and I've watched it twice in the theatre, but I can't get through it again. May the perpetual light shine upon many there.
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Tone it down, senator. There is no fire in this theater.
Tone it down, senator. There is no fire in this theater.: Surely Sen. Lummis, an attorney who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, one whose congressional ancestors crafted the language she now seeks to unwind, understands the implications of greenlighting limitations of speech.
I didn't get a chance to read this essay until today.
It's excellent.
Cynthia Lummis has taken an oath to obey the Constitution more than once. At least one time for every time she's been elected to office, and upon becoming a member of the State Bar. She's violating that oath with her statements that following the assassination of Charlie Kirk 1st Amendment protections must be reduced.
And keep this in mind, MAGA members. If you support this, reducing rights under the 2nd Amendment is the obvious next step. If we're in some sort of crisis justifying limiting free speech, we're certainly in one justifying restricting firearms.
Lummis, by her statements, is no longer fit to be a U.S. Senator or a member of the Wyoming State Bar. She should resign from both. And if she doesn't resign as Senator, and of course she will not, Wyoming's voters ought to put her into retirement the next time she's up for reelection, by which time, we might note, political winds will have almost certainly changed.
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Tone it down, senator. There is no fire in this theater.
Tone it down, senator. There is no fire in this theater.: Surely Sen. Lummis, an attorney who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, one whose congressional ancestors crafted the language she now seeks to unwind, understands the implications of greenlighting limitations of speech.
Friday, September 19, 2025
Lummis on limiting free speech.
Kimmel’s suspension prompts free-speech Republicans to reconsider their boundaries
Pretty much what those supporting totalitarian states have said about freedoms throughout history.
Absolutely shameful.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)