Thursday, May 20, 1943. New Fleet started, old court ended.

Admiral King, head of the 10th Fleet.

Today in World War II History—May 20, 1943: US Tenth Fleet is established to control shore-based antisubmarine operations in the Atlantic. US War Ration Book Three is distributed by mail.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The United States Court for China, a US Federal and Civil court based in Shanghai, ceased operations. The extraterritorial court had been in existence since 1906 but was no longer needed, if it ever really was, following the January 11 abandonment of extraterritorial rights in the country.

Roosevelt, via courier, proposed to meet with Stalin, keeping his proposal secret from Churchill.

Tuesday, May 18, 1943. Reaching out.

The Allies commenced bombing Pantelleria, 100 miles from Tunis and 60 miles off of Sicily.  

On a clear day, Tunisia is actually visible from Pantelleria.  The island, while it has had some occasional human residences since pre historic times, has been continually occupied since taken by the Carthaginians at the beginning of the 7th Century, B.C.

Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII appealed to Franklin Roosevelt to spare Rome from bombing.

Sunday, May 2, 1943. The Coal Crisis.

British wartime conservation poster.  I wish I could do something patriotic just by going to bed early.

Franklin Roosevelt addressed the coal strike in a Fireside Chat, stating:

My fellow Americans:

I am speaking tonight to the American people, and in particular to those of our citizens who are coal miners.

Tonight this country faces a serious crisis. We are engaged in a war on the successful outcome of which will depend the whole future of our country.

This war has reached a new critical phase. After the years that we have spent in preparation, we have moved into active and continuing battle with our enemies. We are pouring into the worldwide conflict everything that we have -- our young men, and the vast resources of our nation.

I have just returned from a two weeks' tour of inspection on which I saw our men being trained and our war materials made. My trip took me through twenty states. I saw thousands of workers on the production line, making airplanes, and guns and ammunition.

Everywhere I found great eagerness to get on with the war. Men and women are working long hours at difficult jobs and living under difficult conditions without complaint.

Along thousands of miles of track I saw countless acres of newly ploughed fields. The farmers of this country are planting the crops that are needed to feed our armed forces, our civilian population and our Allies. Those crops will be harvested.

On my trip, I saw hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Young men who were green recruits last autumn have matured into self-assured and hardened fighting men. They are in splendid physical condition. They are mastering the superior weapons that we are pouring out of our factories.

The American people have accomplished a miracle.

However, all of our massed effort is none too great to meet the demands of this war. We shall need everything that we have and everything that our Allies have to defeat the Nazis and the Fascists in the coming battles on the Continent of Europe, and the Japanese on the Continent of Asia and in the Islands of the Pacific.

This tremendous forward movement of the United States and the United Nations cannot be stopped by our enemies.

And equally, it must not be hampered by any one individual or by the leaders of any one group here back home.

I want to make it clear that every American coal miner who has stopped mining coal -- no matter how sincere his motives, no matter how legitimate he may believe his grievances to be -- every idle miner directly and individually is obstructing our war effort. We have not yet won this war. We will win this war only as we produce and deliver our total American effort on the high seas and on the battlefronts. And that requires unrelenting, uninterrupted effort here on the home front.

A stopping of the coal supply, even for a short time, would involve a gamble with the lives of American soldiers and sailors and the future security of our whole people. It would involve an unwarranted, unnecessary and terribly dangerous gamble with our chances for victory.

Therefore, I say to all miners -- and to all Americans everywhere, at home and abroad -- the production of coal will not be stopped.

Tonight, I am speaking to the essential patriotism of the miners, and to the patriotism of their wives and children. And I am going to state the true facts of this case as simply and as plainly as I know how.

After the attack at Pearl Harbor, the three great labor organizations -- the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the Railroad Brotherhoods -- gave the positive assurance that there would be no strikes as long as the war lasted. And the President of the United Mine workers of America was a party to that assurance.

That pledge was applauded throughout the country. It was a forcible means of telling the world that we Americans -- 135,000,000 of us -- are united in our determination to fight this total war with our total will and our total power.

At the request of employers and of organized labor - including the United Mine Workers -- the War Labor Board was set up for settling any disputes which could not be adjusted through collective bargaining. The War Labor Board is a tribunal on which workers, employers and the general public are equally represented.

In the present coal crisis, conciliation and mediation were tried unsuccessfully.

In accordance with the law, the case was then certified to the War Labor Board, the agency created for this express purpose with the approval of organized labor. The members of the Board followed the usual practice, which has proved successful in other disputes. Acting promptly, they undertook to get all the facts of this (the) case from both the miners and the operators.

The national officers of the United Mine Workers, however, declined to have anything to do with the fact-finding of the War Labor Board. The only excuse that they offer is that the War Labor Board is prejudiced.

The War Labor Board has been and is ready to give this (the) case a fair and impartial hearing. And I have given my assurance that if any adjustment of wages is made by the Board, it will be made retroactive to April first. But the national officers Of the United Mine Workers refused to participate in the hearing, when asked to do so last Monday.

On Wednesday of this past week, while the Board was proceeding with the case, stoppages began to occur in some mines. On Thursday morning I telegraphed to the officers of the United Mine Workers asking that the miners continue mining coal on Saturday morning. However, a general strike throughout the industry became effective on Friday night.

The responsibility for the crisis that we now face rests squarely on these national officers of the United Mine Workers, and not on the Government of the United States. But the consequences of this arbitrary action threaten all of us everywhere.

At ten o'clock, yesterday morning -- Saturday -- the Government took over the mines. I called upon the miners to return to work for their Government. The Government needs their services just as surely as it needs the services of our soldiers, and sailors, and marines -- and the services of the millions who are turning out the munitions of war.

You miners have sons in the Army and Navy and Marine Corps. You have sons who at this very minute -- this split second -- may be fighting in New Guinea, or in the Aleutian Islands, or Guadalcanal, or Tunisia, or China, or protecting troop ships and supplies against submarines on the high seas. We have already received telegrams from some of our fighting men overseas, and I only wish they could tell you what they think of the stoppage of work in the coal mines.

Some of your own sons have come back from the fighting fronts, wounded. A number of them, for example, are now here in an Army hospital in Washington. Several of them have been decorated by their Government.

I could tell you of one from Pennsylvania. He was a coal miner before his induction, and his father is a coal miner. He was seriously wounded by Nazi machine gun bullets while he was on a bombing mission over Europe in a Flying Fortress.

Another boy, from Kentucky, the son of a coal miner, was wounded when our troops first landed in North Africa six months ago.

There is (still) another, from Illinois. He was a coal miner -- his father and two brothers are coal miners. He was seriously wounded in Tunisia while attempting to rescue two comrades whose jeep had been blown up by a Nazi mine.

These men do not consider themselves heroes. They would probably be embarrassed if I mentioned their names over the air. They were wounded in the line of duty. They know how essential it is to the tens of thousands -- hundreds of thousands --and ultimately millions of other young Americans to get the best of arms and equipment into the hands of our fighting forces -- and get them there quickly.

The fathers and mothers of our fighting men, their brothers and sisters and friends -- and that includes all of us -- are also in the line of duty -- the production line. Any failure in production may well result in costly defeat on the field of battle.

There can be no one among us -- no one faction powerful enough to interrupt the forward march of our people to victory.

You miners have ample reason to know that there are certain basic rights for which this country stands, and that those rights are worth fighting for and worth dying for. That is why you have sent your sons and brothers from every mining town in the nation to join in the great struggle overseas. That is why you have contributed so generously, so willingly, to the purchase of war bonds and to the many funds for the relief of war victims in foreign lands. That is why, since this war was started in 1939, you have increased the annual production of coal by almost two hundred million tons a year.

The toughness of your sons in our armed forces is not surprising. They come of fine, rugged stock. Men who work in the mines are not unaccustomed to hardship. It has been the objective of this Government to reduce that hardship, to obtain for miners and for all who do the nation's work a better standard of living.

I know only too well that the cost of living is troubling the miners' families, and troubling the families of millions of other workers throughout the country as well.

A year ago it became evident to all of us that something had to be done about living costs. Your Government determined not to let the cost of living continue to go up as it did in the first World War.

Your Government has been determined to maintain stability of both prices and wages -- so that a dollar would buy, so far as possible, the same amount of the necessities of life. And by necessities I mean just that -- not the luxuries, not the (and) fancy goods that we have learned to do without in wartime.

So far, we have not been able to keep the prices of some necessities as low as we should have liked to keep them. That is true not only in coal towns but in many other places.

Wherever we find that prices of essentials have risen too high, they will be brought down. Wherever we find that price ceilings are being violated, the violators will be punished.

Rents have been fixed in most parts of the country. In many cities they have been cut to below where they were before we entered the war. Clothing prices have generally remained stable.

These two items make up more than a third of the total budget of the worker's family.

As for food, which today accounts for about another (a) third of the family expenditure on the average, I want to repeat again: your Government will continue to take all necessary measures to eliminate unjustified and avoidable price increases. And we are today (now) taking measures to " roll back" the prices of meats.

The war is going to go on. Coal will be mined no matter what any individual thinks about it. The operation of our factories, our power plants, our railroads will not be stopped. Our munitions must move to our troops.

And so, under these circumstances, it is inconceivable that any patriotic miner can choose any course other than going back to work and mining coal.

The nation cannot afford violence of any kind at the coal mines or in coal towns. I have placed authority for the resumption of coal mining in the hands of a civilian, the Secretary of the Interior. If it becomes necessary to protect any miner who seeks patriotically to go back and work, then that miner must have and his family must have -- and will have -- complete and adequate protection. If it becomes necessary to have troops at the mine mouths or in coal towns for the protection of working miners and their families, those troops will be doing police duty for the sake of the nation as a whole, and particularly for the sake of the fighting men in the Army, the Navy and the Marines -- your sons and mine -- who are fighting our common enemies all over the world.

I understand the devotion of the coal miners to their union. I know of the sacrifices they have made to build it up. I believe now, as I have all my life, in the right of workers to join unions and to protect their unions. I want to make it absolutely clear that this Government is not going to do anything now to weaken those rights in the coalfields.

Every improvement in the conditions of the coal miners of this country has had my hearty support, and I do not mean to desert them now. But I also do not mean to desert my obligations and responsibilities as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.

The first necessity is the resumption of coal mining. The terms of the old contract will be followed by the Secretary of the Interior. If an adjustment in wages results from a decision of the War Labor Board, or from any new agreement between the operators and miners, which is approved by the War Labor Board, that adjustment will be made retroactive to April first.

In the message that I delivered to the Congress four months ago, I expressed my conviction that the spirit of this nation is good.

Since then, I have seen our troops in the Caribbean area, in bases on the coasts of our ally, Brazil, and in North Africa. Recently I have again seen great numbers of our fellow countrymen -- soldiers and civilians -- from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Mexican border and to the Rocky Mountains.

Tonight, in the fact of a crisis of serious proportions in the coal industry, I say again that the spirit or this nation is good. I know that the American people will not tolerate any threat offered to their Government by anyone. I believe the coal miners will not continue the strike against their (the) Government. I believe that the coal miners (themselves) as Americans will not fail to heed the clear call to duty. Like all other good Americans, they will march shoulder to shoulder with their armed forces to victory.

Tomorrow the Stars and Stripes will fly over the coal mines, and I hope that every miner will be at work under that flag.

The Japanese conducted a major air raid on Darwin, Australia.  It was the 54th Japanese air raid on Australia and provided ineffective in real terms, but greatly disturbed the Australian public.  The attacking force consisted of 25 bombers and 27 fighter escorts.  The Royal Australian Air Force engaged the attackers after the raid, and lost fourteen Spitfires.  The Japanese lost six to ten aircraft.

April 25, 1943. Easter

Easter occurred on the latest possible calendar date of the year in 1943, the last time it had done so being April 25, 1886.  This will next occur on April 25, 2038, which I probably won't be around to see in my temporal form.

President Roosevelt attended Easter services at Ft. Riley, Kansas.  His wife Edith was in Los Angeles.

My parents would have attended Easter Mass, assuming they had not the night prior, and likely have enjoyed a celebratory midday Easter meal.

Polish American children in Buffalo, New York, waiting to have Easter baskets of food blessed at their local parish on Easter Saturday. The food was for Easter Sunday.

Tuesday, April 13, 1943. Jefferson Memorial Dedicated.

Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial on the 200th anniversary of President Jefferson's birth.

Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC

Another blog's item on this:

April 13, 1943 – Dedication of Jefferson Memorial

If the memorial were to be dedicated today, there's be protesters and consternation, noting correctly that Jefferson was a slave owner and had bedded one of his slaves, who was a half sister to his late wife.  We have the luxury of protesting, of course, as today we're perfect.

Radio Berlin announced the discovery of the graves of the Katyn Massacre, which became a propaganda point for the Germans.  That fact is thick with irony, given the extent of which Nazi Germany was involved in mass murder, of which the Poles in general were an early victim.

644th Tank Destroyer Bn at Ft Lewis WA. Wikib101hermann, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Saturday, March 13, 1943. Freedom from Fear.

Gen. Henning von Tresckow attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler in an aspect of "Operation Spark" in which he handed a bomb disguised as a gift of liquor to a staff officer boarding an airplane with the German dictator.  The bomb, which would have killed all on board had it exploded, failed to go off.  The fuse, a British time pencil, failed to detonate.

The plan was not a fully formed one, unlike the July 20, 1944, plot.  The thought was simply that with German losing the war, Hitler's death would spark a coup d'état.  This attempt is the only one depicted in the movie Valkyrie prior to the July 44 attempt.

The plot was one of several that this circle of German officers would attempt, but it was the first.

The Germans removed the final 10,000 Jewish residents of Kraków.

The Saturday Evening Post had the last of its four freedom illustrations appear in the magazine, the four taken from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt. This one was "freedom from fear".

The illustration featured a (middle-aged?) couple tucking their children into bed.  It's likely the least well liked of the four illustrations, but it is full of interesting details.

The two children are being tucked into the same bed, for one thing, something that the viewers would not have thought odd even in a middle class home of the era.  The young children are, moreover, a boy and a girl, which would also not have risen to odd comments at the time.  The father is still wearing a tie, even though we'd presume this is early evening.  The newspaper he's holding notes what the world had to fear, at the time.  Viewers today would probably put the male image in his 50s and the female adult in her 40s, but chances are pretty good that Rockwell was portraying a woman in her 30s and a male around 40.

The bedroom, given the angle of the background, is likely an attic bedroom.

It'd be worth asking how we've done with the four freedoms over the years.  Perhaps we can do that in another tread, but in regard to freedom from fear, fear is still with us, and indeed we live in an era of record angst.

The accompanying article was written by Stephen Vincent Benét.

The Canadian Pacific Ocean liner RMS Empress of Canada was sunk by the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci in the South Atlantic, 1,400 of 1,800 passengers survived, with 392 being lost, half of which, ironically, were Italian POWs.

On the same day, the Canadian corvette sank the U-163 in the Atlantic.

Finland signed a trade agreement with Nazi Germany.

Japanese troops ended their assault on Hill 700 on Bouganville.

 J. P. Morgan, Jr. died at age 75 in Boca Raton.

Thursday, January 14, 1943. The Casablanca Conference opens.

Prime Minister Winston Church and President Franklin Roosevelt met in Casablanca for the opening of a multiday conference at the Anfa Hotel.

The Anfa.

The Japanese commenced Operation Ke, the withdrawal of their forces from Guadalcanal.  Somewhat counterintuitively, it commenced with eh landing of additional troops to act as a rear guard.

Saturday, October 3, 1942. The Rocket Age

In a remarkable scientific achievement, but one which came in the context of war, and one which would foreshadow a terror that was introduced during World War Two and has remained ever since, a German V2 rocket became the first man-made object launched into space.

The horrific weapon would not enter into service until September 1944, two years later.

President Roosevelt ordered a freeze on wages, rents and farm prices under authority granted him the day prior.

The British raided the German occupied Channel Island of Sark.

The Hollywood Canteen opened.

Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth serve food to soldiers at the Hollywood Canteen in 1942, the year that it opened.

The Idle Rich and Noblesse obligee.

Territorial seal of Wyoming, depicting rich people from other areas moving in to control the state's politics. . . oh, wait. . . it mostly depicts work.

And I'm gonna tell you workers,

'fore you cash in your checks 

They say "America First," 

but they mean "America Next!"

Woody Guthrie, Lindbergh.

This was originally going to be a post in the election thread, as it comes up in that context.

Here's how.

Recently former Wyoming Secretary of State Max Maxfield filed an election complaint against Chuck Gray which in essence stated that Mr. Gray only reports $11,000 in income per year, but loaned his abandoned campaign against Liz Cheney over $200,000.  The math, Mr. Maxfield maintains, doesn't add up for a guy whose only been in the state for a decade and who must be in his early 30s.  In other words, how can a guy with no visible means of support earning money at the poverty level loan himself that kind of dough.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious.  Gray has external funding sources.

In the recent debate with his opponent Tara Nethercott he accused her of being behind the Maxfield effort, for which there is no evidence at all.  Nethercott surely didn't start it, but she has made use of it, noting that his connection with work is pretty thin.  Gray has attempted to defend himself by accusing Nethercott of being a "lawyer/politician".

That's ironic for Gray, as he's also a politician. They both have been in the legislature the same length of time.  Moreover, while I can't find it now, while Gray was at Wharton he gave an interview to some sort of school journal in which he said his ambition was to become a lawyer.  So his disdain of lawyers apparently comes more recently.

Gray said in the debate that he had inherited the money that he loaned to his campaign, which in some ways, although he probably doesn't realize it, makes this story worse.  As does this:

August 11, 2022

The Trib ran an article on this date on campaign donations and the various candidates.

Perhaps the most remarkable figures where for Secretary of State, where Chuch Gray has raised $528,000 to Nethercott's $333,000.  Of that, $500,000 of Gray's money was donated by his father and $10,000 from himself, meaning he's really raised $18,000.  Nethercott loaned her campaign $95,000.

Gray has seemingly been able to get by in the state for a decade with a light attraction to what most people would regard as substantial work, assuming that his role at his family's radio station isn't accounted for in some other fashion that's allowable under the IRS code but which isn't regarded as income.  I have no idea.  That may be the case.  At any rate, however, most people's parents aren't in a situation to give them $500,000 in their early 30s in order to mount a bid for office.

Which raises a number of topics.

The first is, in regard to Gray, does this matter?

I'd think so.

What a person does with their own money is their own business, to an extent. But when it comes to spending money in order to obtain a public office, that's everyone's business.  One of Gray's recent television advertisements complains that Nethercott voted for a bill to raise the Secretary of State's wages to $125,000, for instance.

This would suggest that Gray thinks $125,000 for that office is a lot, but it's not.  The median income for Wyoming is $33,000, which is very low, so for a lot of people that would be a lot, but Nethercott will probably be taking a pay cut if she wins.  Gray will be getting a big pay raise, but apparently his situation is such that this doesn't really matter.

Of course, it's a four-year position, which also means that Nethercott will have to work the better part of a year to pay back the load to herself.  Gray won't have to, but the $500,000 investment on the part of his father?  Well, I guess that's also like spending your inheritance.  That somebody is willing to spend a half million dollars to obtain a job that will take several years in pay in order to recoup the loss raises, yet again, more questions.

All of which gets to this.

Very few people are in the category of "idle rich". Even most of the rich aren't in the category of idle rich, where they have so much surplus cash they really don't have to do anything.

If a person is in that category, what they do with their cash is their own business, as long as they are honest about it, and their employment of their resources doesn't work to the detriment of other people.

And that's the problem with what Gray is doing.

Wyoming has experienced an influx of money in recent years, with there being some really spectacular examples.  Susan Gore, who has funded far right political movements, is one such example.  She's not from here, but more than that, she's not of here either.  Her efforts are funding attempts to make the state into something it's never been, under the banner of "liberty".  Gray is part of that same effort.  

Gore is one example, but Gray's quite another.  The resources presumably are nowhere equal, but the thought of a young man seemingly employing his efforts at doing little else other than to try to advance in politics in a state he has virtually no connection with is, well, disturbing.  I can't really imagine it myself.  That is, if I had surplus money, I don't think I'd go, let's say, to Alaska and try to influence their politics.

But that's what Gray has being doing from day one here, and that's what people like Susan Gore and Foster Friess have been attempting as well.  To make it worse, the Wyoming they're trying to recreate is an imaginary one that they don't really know.  The state they moved to isn't the one they think it was, and what they're attempting to make it into isn't where most of us would have wanted to go.

At one time, having vast idle wealth in the country bound a person to obligation.  We only recently mentioned the two Roosevelts who were elected President in this blog, as they were rich men. They were both examples of this, however.

But they were also examples of noblesse oblige, the sense that "being nobility obligates".

This was particularly true in the case of Theodore Roosevelt.  His father was wealthy, but he'd also been dedicated to the cause of poor newsboys, something that was a real problem in his era.  Theodore Roosevelt senior also made it plain to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. that their wealth would enable the younger man to choose a career of his liking that didn't have to pay well, but he'd have to choose one.  Originally, the later President had intended to be a scientist, and indeed was published and well regarded in natural history.

Indeed, while Theodore Roosevelt, following his father's death, turned to the then disreputable career of politician in years as tender as that of Gray's, he never really quit working.  He wrote, he published, he studied, and he ranched.  His finances were not always great by any means as he's overspend in his endeavors, but his capacity for work was literally manic.

Wealthy New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve at great hazard in the Spanish American War.  We don't see too many wealthy Americans doing this sort of service anymore.

I know less about his cousin Franklin, but Franklin always admired Theodore.  He came to the nation's attention first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, something Theodore Roosevelt had also been.  So he entered public service. . . as a type of bureaucrat. . . .  before he was a politician.

And other examples abound.  Winston Churchill, who was from a wealthy family (although he always overspent his resources, as did his mother) served as a British Army cavalryman in his early years, with that being his intended career in an era in which those born into British wealth were not expected to "work" but to go into public service in the military or the clergy, or perhaps engage in agriculture.  He took a break from that to act as a correspondent, and then later served in the Army again in the early part of World War One before entering politics.  T. E. Lawrence, from the same class, and burdened with the same cultural expectation not to "work", was first an archeologist before entering the British Army during the Great War.

John F. Kennedy in World War Two.

Turning back to our own shores, I'll be frank that I'm not a fan of the Kennedy family, including John F. Kennedy. But the President of the early 1960s had served, and heroically, in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. That's definitely work.

Yet another interesting example would be George S. Patton, whose family was very wealthy.  Patton had a career as a soldier, quite obviously, as that was something people in his class did.

Patton in World War One.

We don't seem to see things like this much anymore.

Gray, according to what little we know of him, went right from Wharton to a Wyoming radio station.  A really blistering article in WyoFile notes his career and that he was reported as an executive at the station.  That article goes on to note that the radio entity in Wyoming seems to facially be out of compliance with registration requirements   The article is so extensive that about all you can do is quote from it, rather than try to summarize it, as it notes:

He has listed Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. as his sole employment — initially working as a program director, then later as an operations manager — on each of his requisite elected official financial disclosure forms.  

According to records from the secretary of state’s office — and later confirmed by a department spokesperson — Mount Rushmore Broadcasting was administratively dissolved by the state almost two decades ago for failing to file annual reports and pay its license fees to Wyoming. Gray’s father, Jan Charles Gray, is president of the Delaware-based entity, according to state records. The entity uses a registered agent in its Wyoming filings, but 2016 documents from the Federal Communications Commission indicate that the elder Gray is also owner of the corporation. 

Like all out-of-state entities, it was required to obtain a certificate of authority from the secretary of state’s office before transacting business in the state. It did so in 1993, according to state records, but failed to file requisite annual reports and pay yearly fees based on its assets located and employed in Wyoming. Mount Rushmore entered into a 24-month period during which it could have paid a reinstatement fee, as well as what was already owed. But the company did not comply within the two-year window, after which Wyoming statute does not allow entities to be brought back into good standing. 

Monique Meese with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office confirmed that Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. was administratively dissolved on June 10, 2003 and thereby lost the ability to be reinstated. At press time, the entity was not under review by the office, Meese said, because no written complaints had been submitted. 

On his most recent state elected officials financial disclosure form dated Jan. 28, 2022, Gray listed operations manager of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting as his employment. According to his campaign website, he began his career there in 2013 “as a radio executive and hosted a conservative radio show,” until 2019.

During a July candidate forum in Casper, Gray said he became a permanent resident of Wyoming in 2012. He spent his childhood summers here with his father after his parents divorced, he said. 

Prior to going to work for his father, Gray graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s of science and bachelor’s of arts degrees, according to his lawmaker bio. 

When WyoFile approached Gray to clarify his professional experience immediately following the forum in Casper, he declined to answer questions, but said he would respond to written questions over email. WyoFile sent several written questions to the lawmaker, including a request for more details regarding his duties as an employee of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting and how his academic and professional resumes qualified him for the position. Gray responded with a statement about ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting — he feels both are threats to election integrity — but no further information on his background. WyoFile sent a subsequent email asking about his employer conducting business in Wyoming without a certificate of authority. The lawmaker did not respond. 

Mount Rushmore Broadcasting is currently the licensee for two AM stations and five FM stations in Wyoming, according to Federal Communications Commission records. Most of those stations are in Casper, and all but one of those can currently be heard on the air.

In 2016, three years after Gray claims to have begun working there, Mount Rushmore entered into a consent decree with the FCC for failing to maintain a full-time management and staff presence at the main studio of two of its stations during regular business hours, among other things. One term of the settlement was a $25,000 civil penalty, which was less than the originally proposed penalty. Mount Rushmore Broadcasting submitted a sworn statement along with several years of tax returns indicating an inability to pay all forfeitures, according to the consent decree. The original amount was just under $160,000, according to the FCC. Part of the agreement required Mount Rushmore Broadcasting to pay the remainder of the originally proposed penalties if the FCC found it misled the commission regarding its financial status. The commission declined to say whether that occurred. 

In 2015, Mount Rushmore Broadcasting paid almost $5,000 in back wages to former employees, after the U.S. Department of Labor sued the entity for not properly paying its workers. 

Between April 2020 and March 2021, it received more than $28,000 in federal dollars through the Paycheck Protection Program in order to retain two jobs. Gray, a vocal opponent of federal subsidies, voted during the 2022 Legislative session against a bill authorizing the state to spend other pandemic relief funds. He declined to answer questions on the matter when WyoFile contacted him for previous reporting.

I'd note that there could be explanations for why it is seemingly out of compliance with filing requirements in Wyoming, and indeed for all of this, but it does raise questions.

Maybe the bigger question, however, is this.  Does simply graduating from school really mean that you are now qualified to legislate and govern?

I guess the voters can and will decide that. But quite frankly, those who were not born wealthy, and have had to work, have rounder experiences than those who simply benefitted from the circumstances of their births.  Those born wealthy, however, who have educated themselves in school and out in the world have different qualifications yet, and are often quite admirable.

The Roosevelts, we'd note, were champions of the poor.  Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't even be qualified to walk into a county Republican Party meeting today, in spite of still being admired as a Republican President.  John F. Kennedy, for all his faults, was concerned with the same class as well.  Churchill had to be restrained from directly entering into combat a couple of times during World War Two.

Noblesse Oblige.

Monday, February 23, 1942. The Japanese bombard Ellwood, California.

A Japanese submarine shelled Ellwood, California.

The event was directly tied to a scheduled radio address by Franklin Roosevelt, which the Japanese were oddly concerned about.  

That address was a fireside chat on the progress of the war.  In it, Roosevelt stated:

My fellow Americans:

Washington's Birthday is a most appropriate occasion for us to talk with each other about things as they are today and things as we know they shall be in the future.

For eight years, General Washington and his Continental Army were faced continually with formidable odds and recurring defeats. Supplies and equipment were lacking. In a sense, every winter was a Valley Forge. Throughout the 13 states there existed fifth columnists – and selfish men, jealous men, fearful men, who proclaimed that Washington's cause was hopeless, and that he should ask for a negotiated peace.

Washington's conduct in those hard times has provided the model for all Americans ever since – a model of moral stamina. He held to his course, as it had been charted in the Declaration of Independence. He and the brave men who served with him knew that no man's life or fortune was secure without freedom and free institutions.

The present great struggle has taught us increasingly that freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice everywhere in the world.

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people.

The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

We must all understand and face the hard fact that our job now is to fight at distances which extend all the way around the globe.

We fight at these vast distances because that is where our enemies are. Until our flow of supplies gives us clear superiority we must keep on striking our enemies wherever and whenever we can meet them, even if, for a while, we have to yield ground. Actually, though, we are taking a heavy toll of the enemy every day that goes by.

We must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies – protect these lines from the enemies who are bending every ounce of their strength, striving against time, to cut them. The object of the Nazis and the Japanese is to of course separate the United States, Britain, China and Russia, and to isolate them one from another, so that each will be surrounded and cut off from sources of supplies and reinforcements. It is the old familiar Axis policy of "divide and conquer."

There are those who still think, however, in terms of the days of sailing ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense. But let me illustrate what would happen if we followed such foolish advice.

Look at your map. Look at the vast area of China, with its millions of fighting men. Look at the vast area of Russia, with its powerful armies and proven military might. Look at the (British Isles) Islands of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch Indies, India, the Near East and the Continent of Africa, with their (re)sources of raw materials – their resources of raw materials, and of peoples determined to resist Axis domination. Look too at North America, Central America and South America.

It is obvious what would happen if all of these great reservoirs of power were cut off from each other either by enemy action or by self-imposed isolation:

(1.) First, in such a case, we could no longer send aid of any kind to China – to the brave people who, for nearly five years, have withstood Japanese assault, destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and vast quantities of Japanese war munitions. It is essential that we help China in her magnificent defense and in her inevitable counteroffensive – for that is one important element in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

(2.) Secondly, if we lost communication with the southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination. Japan in such a case could (then) release great numbers of ships and men to launch attacks on a large scale against the coasts of the Western Hemisphere – South America and Central America, and North America – including Alaska. At the same time, she could immediately extend her conquests (to) in the other direction toward India, (and) through the Indian Ocean, to Africa, (and) to the Near East and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.

(3.) Third, if we were to stop sending munitions to the British and the Russians in the Mediterranean area, (and) in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, (areas) we would be helping the Nazis to overrun Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq, and Persia – that is now called Iran – Egypt and the Suez Canal, the whole coast of North Africa itself and with that inevitably the whole coast of West Africa – putting Germany within easy striking distance of South America – 1,500 miles away.

(4.) Fourth, if by such a fatuous policy, we ceased to protect the North Atlantic supply line to Britain and to Russia, we would help to cripple the splendid counter-offensive by Russia against the Nazis, and we would help to deprive Britain of essential food supplies and munitions.

Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is – flying high and striking hard.

I know (that) I speak for the mass of the American people when I say that we reject the turtle policy and will continue increasingly the policy of carrying the war to the enemy in distant lands and distant waters – as far away as possible from our own home grounds.

There are four main lines of communication now being traveled by our ships: the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. These routes are not one-way streets, for the ships (which) that carry our troops and munitions out-bound bring back essential raw materials which we require for our own use.

The maintenance of these vital lines is a very tough job. It is a job which requires tremendous daring, tremendous resourcefulness, and, above all, tremendous production of planes and tanks and guns and also of the ships to carry them. And I speak again for the American people when I say that we can and will do that job.

The defense of the world-wide lines of communication demands – compel relatively safe use by us of the sea and of the air along the various routes; and this, in turn, depends upon control by the United Nations of (the) many strategic bases along those routes.

Control of the air involves the simultaneous use of two types of planes – first, the long-range heavy bomber; and, second, the light bombers, the dive bombers, the torpedo planes, (and) the short-range pursuit planes, all of which are essential to (the) cooperate with and protect(ion) (of) the bases and (of) the bombers themselves.

Heavy bombers can fly under their own power from here to the southwest Pacific, either way, but the smaller planes cannot. Therefore, these lighter planes have to be packed in crates and sent on board cargo ships. Look at your map again; and you will see that the route is long – and at many places perilous – either across the South Atlantic all the way (a)round South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, or from California to the East Indies direct. A vessel can make a round trip by either route in about four months, or only three round trips in a whole year.

In spite of the length, (and) in spite of the difficulties of this transportation, I can tell you that in two and a half months we already have a large number of bombers and pursuit planes, manned by American pilots and crews, which are now in daily contact with the enemy in the Southwest Pacific. And thousands of American troops are today in that area engaged in operations not only in the air but on the ground as well.

In this battle area, Japan has had an obvious initial advantage. For she could fly even her short-range planes to the points of attack by using many stepping stones open to – her bases in a multitude of Pacific islands and also bases on the China coast, Indo-China coast, and in Thailand and Malaya (coasts). Japanese troop transports could go south from Japan and from China through the narrow China Sea, which can be protected by Japanese planes throughout its whole length.

I ask you to look at your maps again, particularly at that portion of the Pacific Ocean lying west of Hawaii. Before this war even started, the Philippine Islands were already surrounded on three sides by Japanese power. On the west, the China side, the Japanese were in possession of the coast of China and the coast of Indo-China which had been yielded to them by the Vichy French. On the North are the islands of Japan themselves, reaching down almost to northern Luzon. On the east, are the Mandated Islands – which Japan had occupied exclusively, and had fortified in absolute violation of her written word.

The islands that lie between Hawaii and the Philippines – these islands, hundreds of them, appear only as small dots on most maps, but do not appear at all. But they cover a large strategic area. Guam lies in the middle of them – a lone outpost which we have never fortified.

Under the Washington Treaty of 1921 we had solemnly agreed not to add to the fortification of the Philippines (Islands). We had no safe naval bases there, so we could not use the islands for extensive naval operations.

Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them – thereby completely encircling the (Islands) Philippines from north, and south, and east and west.

It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines. For forty years it has always been our strategy – a strategy born of necessity – that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.

We knew that the war as a whole would have to be fought and won by a process of attrition against Japan itself. We knew all along that, with our greater resources, we could ultimately out-build Japan and ultimately overwhelm her on sea, and on land and in the air. We knew that, to obtain our objective, many varieties of operations would be necessary in areas other than the Philippines.

Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity – except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance, and he and his men are gaining eternal glory therefore.

MacArthur's army of Filipinos and Americans, and the forces of the United Nations in China, in Burma and the Netherlands East Indies, are all together fulfilling the same essential task. They are making Japan pay an increasingly terrible price for her ambitious attempts to seize control of the whole (Atlantic) Asiatic world. Every Japanese transport sunk off Java is one less transport that they can use to carry reinforcements to their army opposing General MacArthur in Luzon.

It has been said that Japanese gains in the Philippines were made possible only by the success of their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. I tell you that this is not so.

Even if the attack had not been made your map will show that it would have been a hopeless operation for us to send the Fleet to the Philippines through thousands of miles of ocean, while all those island bases were under the sole control of the Japanese.

The consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor – serious as they were – have been wildly exaggerated in other ways. And these exaggerations come originally from Axis propagandists; but they have been repeated, I regret to say, by Americans in and out of public life.

You and I have the utmost contempt for Americans who, since Pearl Harbor, have whispered or announced "off the record" that there was no longer any Pacific Fleet – that the Fleet was all sunk or destroyed on December 7th – that more than a thousand of our planes were destroyed on the ground. They have suggested slyly that the government has withheld the truth about casualties – that 11,000 or 12,000 men were killed at Pearl Harbor instead of the figures as officially announced. They have even served the enemy propagandists by spreading the incredible story that shiploads of bodies of our honored American dead were about to arrive in New York harbor to be put into a common grave.

Almost every Axis broadcast – Berlin, Rome, Tokyo – directly quotes Americans who, by speech or in the press, make damnable misstatements such as these.

The American people realize that in many cases details of military operations cannot be disclosed until we are absolutely certain that the announcement will not give to the enemy military information which he does not already possess.

Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us. In a democracy there is always a solemn pact of truth between government and the people, but there must also always be a full use of discretion, and that word "discretion" applies to the critics of government as well.

This is war. The American people want to know, and will be told, the general trend of how the war is going. But they do not wish to help the enemy any more than our fighting forces do, and they will pay little attention to the rumor-mongers and the poison peddlers in our midst.

To pass from the realm of rumor and poison to the field of facts: the number of our officers and men killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th was 2,340, and the number wounded was 940. Of all of the combatant ships based on Pearl Harbor – battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines – only three (were) are permanently put out of commission.

Very many of the ships of the Pacific Fleet were not even in Pearl Harbor. Some of those that were there were hit very slightly, and others that were damaged have either rejoined the Fleet by now or are still undergoing repairs. And when those repairs are completed, the ships will be more efficient fighting machines than they were before.

The report that we lost more than a thousand (air)planes at Pearl Harbor is as baseless as the other weird rumors. The Japanese do not know just how many planes they destroyed that day, and I am not going to tell them. But I can say that to date – and including Pearl Harbor – we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed of ours.

We have most certainly suffered losses – from Hitler's U-Boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific – and we shall suffer more of them before the turn of the tide. But, speaking for the United States of America, let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it. We and the other United Nations are committed to the destruction of the militarism of Japan and Germany. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon, we and not our enemies, will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.

Conquered nations in Europe know what the yoke of the Nazis is like. And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan. All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of (for) us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over the forces of Axis enslavement.

If a just and durable peace is to be attained, or even if all of us are merely to save our own skins, there is one thought for us here at home to keep uppermost – the fulfillment of our special task of production – uninterrupted production. I stress that word "uninterrupted."

Germany, Italy and Japan are very close to their maximum output of planes, guns, tanks and ships. The United Nations are not – especially the United States of America.

Our first job then is to build up production – uninterrupted production – so that the United Nations can maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air – not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority.

On January 6th of this year, I set certain definite goals of production for airplanes, tanks, guns and ships. The Axis propagandists called them fantastic. Tonight, nearly two months later, and after a careful survey of progress by Donald Nelson and others charged with responsibility for our production, I can tell you that those goals will be attained.

In every part of the country, experts in production and the men and women at work in the plants are giving loyal service. With few exceptions, labor, capital and farming realize that this is no time either to make undue profits or to gain special advantages, one over the other.

We are calling for new plants and additions – additions to old plants. We are calling for plant conversion to war needs. We are seeking more men and more women to run them. We are working longer hours. We are coming to realize that one extra plane or extra tank or extra gun or extra ship completed tomorrow may, in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield; it may make the difference between life and death for some of our own fighting men. We know now that if we lose this war it will be generations or even centuries before our conception of democracy can live again. And we can lose this war only if use slow up our effort or if we waste our ammunition sniping at each other.

Here are three high purposes for every American:

1. We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, or conciliation or arbitration – until the war is won.

2. We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any one group or occupation.

3. We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so. We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.

This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group – something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this nation is and what we owe to it.

The Axis propagandists have tried in various evil ways to destroy our determination and our morale. Failing in that, they are now trying to destroy our confidence in our own allies. They say that the British are finished – that the Russians and the Chinese are about to quit. Patriotic and sensible Americans will reject these absurdities. And instead of listening to any of this crude propaganda, they will recall some of the things that Nazis and Japanese have said and are still saying about us.

Ever since this nation became the arsenal of democracy – ever since enactment of Lend-Lease – there has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda.

This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, (and) that Americans have considerable industrial power – but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight.

From Berlin, Rome and Tokyo we have been described as a nation of weaklings – "playboys" – who would hire British soldiers, or Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers to do our fighting for us.

Let them repeat that now!
Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men.
Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting hard in the far waters of the Pacific.
Let them tell that to the boys in the Flying Fortresses.
Let them tell that to the Marines!

The United Nations constitutes an association of independent peoples of equal dignity and equal importance. The United Nations are dedicated to a common cause. We share equally and with equal zeal the anguish and the awful sacrifices of war. In the partnership of our common enterprise, we must share in a unified plan in which all of us must play our several parts, each of us being equally indispensable and dependent one on the other.

We have unified command and cooperation and comradeship.

We Americans will contribute unified production and unified acceptance of sacrifice and of effort. That means a national unity that can know no limitations of race or creed or selfish politics. The American people expect that much from themselves. And the American people will find ways and means of expressing their determination to their enemies, including the Japanese Admiral who has said that he will dictate the terms of peace here in the White Mouse.

We of the United Nations are agreed on certain broad principles in the kind of peace we seek. The Atlantic Charter applies not only to the parts of the world that border the Atlantic but to the whole world; disarmament of aggressors, self-determination of nations and peoples, and the four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

The British and the Russian people have known the full fury of Nazi onslaught. There have been times when the fate of London and Moscow was in serious doubt. But there was never the slightest question that either the British or the Russians would yield. And today all the United Nations salutes the superb Russian Army as it celebrates the 24th anniversary of its first assembly.

Though their homeland was overrun, the Dutch people are still fighting stubbornly and powerfully overseas.

The great Chinese people have suffered grievous losses; Chungking has been almost wiped out of existence – yet it remains the capital of an unbeatable China.

That is the conquering spirit which prevails throughout the United Nations in this war.

The task that we Americans now face will test us to the uttermost. Never before have we been called upon for such a prodigious effort. Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

"These are the times that try men's souls."

Tom Paine wrote those words on a drumhead, by the light of a campfire. That was when Washington's little army of ragged, rugged men was retreating across New Jersey, having tasted (nothing) naught but defeat.

And General Washington ordered that these great words written by Tom Paine be read to the men of every regiment in the Continental Army, and this was the assurance given to the first American armed forces:

"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the sacrifice, the more glorious the triumph."

So spoke Americans in the year 1776.

So speak Americans today!

The attack on Ellwood's oil facility, which is located near Santa Barbara, was about 20 minutes in length.  It didn't achieve much actual damage, but it did serve to make Californian's nervous.