Showing posts with label Petroleum. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

The 2025 Wyoming Legislative Session, Part 1. And we've already started. . .

April 4, 2024

Eh? 2025? Didn't the 2024 session just wrap up?

Yes, yes it did, and:

Lawmakers begin work on new bills after voting against special session

It seems like we're getting closer and closer to a full-time legislature, which is a bit scary.

June 18, 2024

From: Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part 3. The Decarbonizing the West and Electronic eartags Edition.

Related to this, and acknowledging that electric vehicles are coming, a draft bill for the 2025 legislature proposes to tax electric vehicle charging. While that sounds punitive, the thought it that it will make up for lost gasoline taxes used for roads. The introductory part of that bill:

September 24, 2024

The final makeup of the 2025 legislature isn't known yet, but as some other things posted today demonstrate, its fairly likely, although not certain, that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a populist (not conservatives) entity that's really a political party in its own right, will control the House.

If this comes to pass, it'll make for a massively contentious legislative session. The populist have already been extremely disruptive in the legislature, and now they'll be expected to advance their agenda, which in some instances are actually completely unworkable. Should their views on taxation advance, for instance, it'll bankrupt local governments and reduce Wyoming to an overall sort of Appalachia in terms of government services.

Additionally, the hypocrisy of Wyoming positions on the Federal government will rapidly come to the forefront. Can we really give the US government the middle finger, while accepting highway and disaster money?

Are we going to fight wildlands fires on our own?

Indeed, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus may be the biggest gift to the Wyoming Democratic Party imaginable.

In the meantime, it's the outgoing legislature, not the incoming one, that's working on bills for the 2025 session. These are the ones being considered right now.

Appropriations

September 26 - 27, 2024

June 21, 2024

June 20, 2024

25LSO-0064 v0.4 Public property and buildings-amendments.

Select Committee on Blockchain, Financial Technology and Digital Innovation Technology

September 16 - 17, 2024

July 1 - 2, 2024

May 20 - 21, 2024

25LSO-0028 v0.4 Special purpose depository institutions-amendments.

October 4, 2024.

November 17, 2024

As Wyoming lawmakers look to the next session, a Freedom Caucus majority looms

Small coal fired power plants?

Seriously?

November 19, 2025

Making driver's licenses busier:

November 26, 2024

Looming disaster:

Wyoming Freedom Caucus poised for nation’s first statehouse takeover

Headline in the Tribune.

Cont:

Wyoming’s House and Senate have new leaders after secret votes

Freedom Caucus in control of the House. Uff.

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. A return to Pre Covid statuts

US incomes have returned to their 2019 level, adjusted for inflation.

The adjusted rate of inflation was 2.9%.

While people will continue to complain, this is pretty close to being back to the economic status of 2019.

Oil dropped yesterday to $69/bbl.

September 25, 2024

Delta To Pull Out Of Casper Airport, Last Flight Is Dec. 3

November 17, 2024

Boeing is commencing layoffs.

November 26, 2024

In a monumentally bad idea, President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he will issue executive orders imposing new tariffs on all imported goods from China, Mexico and Canada. with the rates being 25 percent tariffs would be imposed on Mexican and Canadian merchandise and 10 percent on Chinese goods. This was tied, oddly, to his immigration goals.

Related threads:

September 10, 2024. Pearls Before Swine.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2024. The times more or less locally, Part 3. The Decarbonizing the West and Electronic eartags Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2024, Agriculture, Alcohol, Canada, Cattle, Climate Change, Coal, Computers, Disease, Economics, Health, Internet, Labor unrest, Railroads, technology, Unions, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Friday, October 11, 2024

Inflation. A needed primer.

Seeing as I see so many posts, some from people running for office on this, a reminder.

Inflation going down just means the rate of inflation, goes down. Prices still rise, just more slowly.

The U.S. Government targets inflation to be at about 2%. It's 2.4% right now, which is basically a return to the pre Covid rate of inflation. It goes up a little and down a little.

Personally, I don't like it that the government targets inflation for a perpetual slight rate. I think the ideal rate is 0%. Economist dispute that, but I'm not an economist, except in the amature, and distributist, sense.

Some people, such as Jimmy Akin, blame the government for inflation itself, and to some extent that's warranted. But the recent inflationary cycle reflects world events, a war in Europe's grain belt between to oil producing entities being a big part of that. Ironically, recent drops in the rate of inflation have been partially caused by Iran being a menace.

Anyhow, politicians who keep suggesting that "prices will go down" if they are elected are either lying or economically ignorant.

Prices can go down, of course, and for a variety of reasons. Technological advances cause the price of some things to go down, although they cause the price of some durables to go up. Political actions can impact the price of things, but it tends to only occur very moderately over a prolonged period of time, or due to something dramatic, like deregulation of a very heavily regulated industry, or like busting up a big monopoly.

When prices really go down, that's deflation. Not a decrease in inflation. Once again, a decrease of inflation means that prices still rise, just not as much over a given period of time. Deflation means they actually drop.

Deflation is pretty rare in a healthy economy and when it occurs in a healthy economy, it tends to only be for a month or so. A general prolonged deflation only occurs in a depression.

Depressions cause deflations. People are out of work, so they don't have money, so they don't buy things, so prices drop.

And there you have it.

Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

All of this is still true, but the focus of the blog has changed somewhat. It now focuses on the era from 1890 to 1920 in general, rather than on the law and lawyers specifically, although that may be far from obvious. It's also become the location where we comment on anything we feel moved to comment on.

We hope you'll feel moved to comment as well. While we moderate every comment, so as to weed out Spam, we greatly appreciate the comments where they are offered, and hope to see more.

Thank you for stopping in!