The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 3. The Confederate Legislature Edition.

 

February 9, 2026.

The 2026 Wyoming legislature commences today. 

It'll be the first one controlled by the Confederate Carpetbagger Caucus and therefore the first Wyoming legislature ever that doesn't have a strong element of moderation built into it.  The carpetbaggers of the WFC captured it, backed in no small part by riding the Trump wave, the collapse of the stability of the oil and gas industry (which was never all that stable) and oddly enough a series of warm winters that would have sent a lot of these people back to where they were from.  Instead, they stayed and brought their Dixiecrat disgruntlement into the state.

It seems that people are actually starting to wake up to them in numbers for the first time. They're gutting UW, education, and local governments, as people living in 1930s Alabama don't need none o' that stuff.  They've brought in with them a certain American sort of far right Evangelical view as well, something extremely foreign to the state.  And they're backed by money from out of state, one of which sends around Instagram messages as "Honor Wyoming" but which does anything but.  

Wyomingites who thought the WFC were just conservative have been shocked to find that ain't so.

The thing is, it might be too late.  Or it might not be.  They have the numbers not to do a lot of things, but they don't have the numbers to override vetoes.

This is a budget session, so it should only have 20 working days.  That hasn't stopped legislators from trying to introduce all sorts of things in the past, and it won't this year.  Here' are the prefiled bills:

2026 Wyoming Legislation.*

There are a lot of weird laws in this pack, but I'm just going to start off with this WFC one.  HB 01119 would ban the use of "foreign law" in Wyoming, and under its own terms, accidentally wipe out the complete body of civil law in the state, which specifically was adopted as being English Common Law.

This is an example of the sort of ignorant paranoia on the far right that preserved abortion in Wyoming.

Cont:  

The Governor and Chief Justice spoke.

Senate File 51, allowing for transferable landowner tags, a terrible wildlife privatization concept, died on introduction.

The Confederate Caucus revealed its agenda.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus Unveils 2026 Agenda Outside Wyoming Capitol

Prohibiting infanticide, I'd note, is something I agree with, but it's the far right's fault that it was preserved in Wyoming, which they need to wake up to.

Footnotes:

*In past years I ran the table of bills and much of the text of various bills on the trailing thread for that  year's legislature.  It made for lots of threads that grew really long.

That's hard to slog through, so this year I'm trying something different and putting that stuff on a seperate page.  It's up as a link now, but it'll likely go down as a link, although still be possible to bring up from the threads, when the 2026 Legislature is thankfully over.

February 10, 2025

The Confederate Caucus isn't starting off with much success. Wyoming voters apparently have awakened about them and their representation is taking note.

Six Of Seven Election Reform Bills Killed On Monday, Freedom Caucus Not Happy

School funding bill dies in Wyoming House: The Legislature is constitutionally required to undergo so-called ‘recalibration.’ The bill, drafted in the legislative off season, was unpopular among educators.

Wyoming House Kills Bill To Change How Schools Get Money, Senate Could Save It

The Confederates went to their playbook and blamed "liberal Republicans", which really don't exist in Wyoming's legislature.

Some other stupid bills died as well, including the paranoid geoengineering bill and a constitutional amendment on property tax valuation.

The Business Council seems to have survived.

It's a budget session, we need to keep in mind, so 2/3s of a body is needed to introduce a bill. 

Lawmakers kill dozens of bills on budget session’s first day

More data here:

2026 Wyoming Legislation.*

February 11, 2026

Gordon: It's Refreshing To See So Many Bills Die Because It's A Budget Session, After All

It is, although it does point out the need to end the WFC's chapter in Wyoming politics, as next year may well be different.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus calls foul on committee bill decimation: In a blow to the Republican group’s majority bloc, 21 committee bills failed introduction on Monday in the House— more than twice the number the caucus killed in the last budget session, when it was in the minority.

Funny, the Confederate Caucus was just beginning to make a stumbling effort to counter the growing "you're batshit crazy" movement countering them with "it's democracy", dragging out Cassie Cravens to with some potted meat, when now they're crying foul about how democracy works. 

Amongst the WFC's members, a fellow in the news a lot recently had a bad result.

Allemand-sponsored nuclear waste bill fails Wyoming House introduction

And this:

Wyoming House Kills Bill To Make Counties Pay Costs For Self-Defense Acquittals

And this is interesting:

Guest Column: The Hidden Price of Tax Relief — What Every Wyoming Citizen Should Know

It's interesting in part as Steinmetz, the author, is an "ally" of the WFC, and she's breaking ranks.

I will say the "hidden" aspect of this is complete crap.  Anyone who paid attention, including anyone in the WFC who was following, knew that this would gut local entities like a fish. For the most part, they simply didn't care.

Indeed, the carpetbagger element of this is really strong here.  WFC supporters include a fair amount of carpetbaggers who moved in here from other state, bought property at inflated values, and don't want to be taxed. They really don't care if towns and cities don't have services or if kids aren't educated. They raised their kids elsewhere and, American style, abandoned them somewhere else.  They're happy to sit i in their McMansions in a town with no local services as they're old and they aren't going to use them.

But now legislators are hearing from people who are from here, and who want a police department, a fire department, decent towns, and to educate their kids.  

February 13, 2026

Wyoming lawmakers will investigate checks activist gave to legislators on House floor: The incident in question occurred Monday night when Rebecca Bextel of Jackson handed out campaign donation checks. The House voted unanimously in support of the investigation.

 Change to Wyoming law to recognize legality of corner crossing clears early hurdles: Although it’s been smooth sailing so far, the measure still has “98 yards to go” in the legislative process and faces opposition from influential parties.

 Bill to put abortion-related question to voters fails Senate introduction: The measure would have asked voters to amend the Wyoming Constitution so the Legislature can define health care. It comes on the heels of a Wyoming Supreme Court decision striking down state abortion bans.

On the last item, the ghost of the constitutional amendment regarding "health care" now appears in the legislature, which provided the reason that some Republicans voted against the bill. 

February 14, 2026, Valentine's Day.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus in Cheyenne.

Well, the first week of the legislature is over and it proved to be an interesting, and surprising, one.

The Confederate Carpetbagger Caucus went into the session with its orders from out of state interests and extreme right wing agenda and ran right into, well, Wyomingites.

It also ran into its own ignorance.

Full of piss and vinegar, the collection of carpetbaggers and carpetbagger drones simply figured it had the numbers and it was going to return the state to November 11, 1620.  It forgot, apparently, that in a budget session it needs a supermajority to introduce legislation, and while it may have the majority, it doesn't have that.

It was also taken off guard by a sudden rise in attention to it by regular people from the state, which now that they are more informed, are starting to organize against it.  They haven't been able to get back on their feet from that, with perhaps the most pathetic response being Cassie Craven's "but don't you still love us?".

We never did.

All this is bad news for the WFC as it may have shot its bolt.  Candidates are starting to come out to take them on, as evidenced by the Mayor of Bar Nunn coming out against Freedom Caucuser Bill Allemand.

And the exposing of their money supply hasn't been a good thing for any of them, even though those who were watching them carefully knew about it all along.  Likewise, that they were fed canned legislation was well known, but it was not known that they were basically fed instructions on what to do.

Amongst those whom its not good news for is Chuck Gray, who turned the state's voters roles over to his beloved, Donald Trump, because Donny asked for them.  Gray adores Trump like a teenage bride adores her husband and is making that the gist of his campaign, Trump Love, but he's responsible for a bunch of WFC voting bills that went down in flames.  He's running for the House against Jillian Balow, Reid Ransner and David Giralt.  I suspect that this sort of thing really starts to boost Balow.  Gray is really detested by a lot of people to start with, and Giralt to unknown.  Rasner is a gadfly.  Gray's term as Secretary of State end in January, 2027 and if he doesn't secure the House his political career in the state is at an end.

Amongst the bill casualties so far has been the bill on abortion.  This also signifies, fwie, a return of Wyoming politics to the middle.  I'm opposed to abortion so I would like to have seen that bill advance, but it's the case that for eons Wyoming Republicans opposed abortion more or less, but wouldn't act to make it illegal. The first time that the legislature ever passed anything doing that was right after Dodds, and that's the statute, or statutes, that died in court.  It was killed there by an amendment to the constitution that was designed to protect individual health care decisions from the fantasy of AHCA death panes, and it became a death panel itself.  So effectively the state returns to the status quo ante on abortion, thanks to the GOP in the first place.

So we'll see what next week brings.

February 15, 2026

And, finishing up this past week:

Laramie County sheriff launches criminal investigation into Wyoming Legislature check controversy: The inquiry will examine whether campaign donation checks distributed to lawmakers amount to bribery.

Sheriff Investigating Check Passing Scandal In Wyoming Legislature

I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone too much to learn that Bextel, the check giver, is from Alabama, although she lived in Guatemala as a Protestant missionary, that part of the world having Protestant missions that seek to convert people who are already Christians.  She's been in Wyoming about twenty years.

It'll probably turn out not to be criminal, but the act of giving out checks on the floor was monumentally dumb, as was the act of receiving them that way.

Cheyenne Roundup 2026: Episode 2 | Checkgate, dead bills and the start of the session: Bills are flying and dying in the Wyoming Legislature’s budget session. And lawmakers haven’t even touched the budget itself yet.

Related threads:

In Full Debate On University of Wyoming Budget Cuts, Lawmakers Ask If It's Retaliation The Wyoming House and Senate debated a $40 million cut to the University of Wyoming on Thursday, with the budget committee co-chair John Bear confirming the number was meant to "get their attention." He said legislative directives on DEI were ignored.

Guest Column: Proud Of Wyoming And UW – And If You Take Time To Learn, I Bet You Will Be Too Guest columnist Marilyn Kite writes, "Most Wyoming citizens are proud of our state. But today, we hear attacks. Where all these attacks are coming from is a puzzle, but they are likely driven by out of state forces that know little about our history and public assets."

Tom Lubnau: Puppets, Phones, and Power — Inside Wyoming’s Shadow Legislature Columnist Tom Lubnau writes, "We know money changed hands – on the house floor. And during floor debate, you can routinely watch legislators read directly from their phones. We do not know who is scripting the debate."

Donor: Two checks given to Bextel were intended for pair of Wyoming Legislature’s most powerful lawmakers

Last edition:

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 2. Pre Legislative Committee Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Economics, Education, Ignorance, Mark Gordon, National Public Radio, Radio, Sports, Taxes, Tom Lubnau, Wyoming Freedom Caucus

Playing stupid games on health care and winning stupid prizes on abortion.

 

Exactly what backers of Art 1  § 38 should have known would occur. Lampoon posted under fair use exception as I couldn't think of a more applicable illustration.

Wyoming Constitution Art. 1, § 38. Right of health care access

(a) Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person.

(b) Any person may pay, and a health care provider may accept, direct payment for health care without imposition of penalties or fines for doing so.

(c) The legislature may determine reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights granted under this section to protect the health and general welfare of the people or to accomplish the other purposes set forth in the Wyoming Constitution.

(d) The state of Wyoming shall act to preserve these rights from undue governmental infringement.

Jonathan Lange: The Supreme Court Owes Us An Explanation

Hmm, depends a bit on how he voted on the dumbass Art. 1, § 38..

'Lange has a point, as much as I hate to admit it. But the party that really owes the state an explanation is the paranoid sots who backed the Constitutional amendment set out above from 2024, and those who voted for it, about a right to make your own medical decisions, which you already had, as they feared AHCA meant death panels.

That was freakin' absurd.

Lange, did you vote for it?

This was really predictable. That set it up.  It was obvious.

Nobody is more opposed to abortion, which I regard as infanticide, than me.  Indeed, my views in this general area are probably far more "conservative" than most peoples.  

And to extend it, I'm not in favor of the death penalty either.

And, no, I don't think abortion is health care by a long measure, but if this hadn't been passed, the question would never have come up.

But to set this in the constitution of the state, what the crap did you think would happen?  It puts the court in the place of making an existential decision.

A really easy one to make, in my view, but if you take my view, on natural rights, a lot of right wingers wouldn't be very comfortable, very soon.

Abortion in Wyoming and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

 This is what happens when a dumb, paranoid,  amendment to the Constitution is made.

The amendment that brought down the state's abortion laws was passed due to right wing paranoia that the AHCA would create "death panels". That fear was frankly stupid, but it was adopted by far right Republicans who really believed it.  The prime architect of the amendment has gone on record that he'd feel awful if the amendment caused the abortion laws to fail, and in fact he should feel awful.

Abortion remains legal in Wyoming after state high court strikes down bans

Abortion remains legal in Wyoming after state high court strikes down bans: Wyoming Supreme Court rules two bans passed by state lawmakers are unconstitutional.

Abortion-rights advocates cheer Wyoming Supreme Court ruling; opponents plan constitutional amendment

Abortion-rights advocates cheer Wyoming Supreme Court ruling; opponents plan constitutional amendment: Governor calls for a rehearing and urges lawmakers to draft a constitutional amendment to let Wyoming voters settle the matter.

The 2026 Election, 3rd Edition: The Self Inflicted Wound Edition.

And can they recover?

A major turn occured in the Wyoming election when all three of Wyoming's congressional delegation members supported Mike Lee's Deseret Dream to swipe Federal lands for land raping purposes.  The move was hugely, overwhelmingly, unpopular in Wyoming, but the delegation in part assessed the voters dim, and in part, trusted on them to forget.

Right now, it doesn't look like they will.

And the candidate are beginning to line up.  We have, so far:

Governor:

GOP.

Eric Barlow. Barlow is a state senator from the 23rd district and announced earlier this week. So far, he's receiving a lot of accolades from the none Freedom Caucus Republicans and condemnations from the populist Freedom Caucus, which frankly makes him the front runner.  

Brent Bien.  Bien is retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and another member of the recent Wyoming crowd who declares "after sucking on the government tit my whole life I hate the government and know best for people who haven't had such secure jobs as me".  He's on the far right.

Joseph Kibler.  Kibler is a web designer and might as well drop out right now.

Reid Ranser.  Far right gadfly who doomed his chances, which were non existent anyway, by filing a lawsuit which states that he's a homosexual and was slandered by certain GOP figures.  The slander aside, branding yourself as a homosexual is a bad political move in this atmosphere.  He's highly likely not to be the only homosexual running for a statewide office or perhaps in office, but Wyomingites tend not to draw attention to themselves in that manner during an era such as the one we currently live in.

Waiting in the wings are Chuck Gray, who is already campaigning for something on the far right wing of the far right, save when it comes to nuclear power, were the populist are flower children, so he is too.  Holding Gray up is Harriet Hageman, who seems likely to try to run, but whose position in opposition to the Federal lands is likely to sink any campaign of hers, or at least seriously damage it.

Also waiting in the wings is Mark Gordon, who has clearly not wanted Gray to replace him.  With Barlow throwing his broad brim in the ring, he likely won't run now.

August 15, 2025

This is interesting:

Wyoming crowd boos Hageman retort that protections against greenhouse gases based on ‘false science’

Wyoming crowd boos Hageman retort that protections against greenhouse gases based on ‘false science’: U.S. Rep. Hageman's comment didn't go over well in Pinedale, where residents struggled for years to clean up health-threatening pollution from oil and gas drilling.

Pinedale calls itself the "Icebox of the Nation" and the introduction of oil and gas operations near it are relatively new.  Given both of those, it clearly didn't drink the GOP Koolaide on global warming being a fib.

Hageman has so far received rough crewed treatment in Pinedale, Rock Springs, and Laramie. I suspect she would in Casper as well.  I also suspect she might want to start thinking about selling her house in D.C. and looking to move back to her brother's ranch, as she may be out of work next year. 

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2026, 2026 Election, Climate Change, Harriet Hageman, Petroleum, Wyoming (Pinedale), Wyoming (Sublette County)

Wyoming has been a prime example of "if I make money from it, it must be perfectly okay".  If we could grow big fields of opium here, we'd be loudly in favor of heroin.

Given that, and given that a lot of Wyomingites are imports from warmer regions of the country, people here are huge climate change deniers, even though if you've lived here your whole life its extremely obvious that its going on.  

And Hageman comes from the agricultural which is bizarrely resistant to accepting the reality of climate change, even though if nothing is done, it'll destroy their livelihoods.

So she no doubt thought stepping in front of a Sublette  County audience would mean that the "climate change is a fib" line would be well received.  It wasn't.

Something is finally really starting to change here.  Part of it is that people are waking up to reality, and part of it is that Hageman took a stand for something Wyomingites detest, transfering the Federal lands, and then basically asserted we were dumb for not supporting it ourselves.  She's so all in on these positions, she really can't change them, and stepping in front of audiences makes her situation worse.

August 20, 2025

Congressman Elsie Stephanik was booked off of a New York stage two days ago.

Stephanik likely sacrificed her career for Trump.

Elsie of course crawled into bed with Trump.  She originally was opposed to him.  Harriet Hageman, on the other hand, was never openly opposed to Trump and took the seat of her former friend Liz Cheney opportunistically.

Hageman has had a lot of simple adoring fans since that time, but the bloom is really off the rose.  She was booed in deeply Republican Sublette County last week, and received a hostile crowd in Casper on Monday night.  Indeed, the Casper event was notably not only for the outright hostility to Hageman, but to extent to which a lot of Republicans flatly did not show up leaving a lot of room in the auditorium.

Hageman had her sights set on the Governor's mansion and still might.  If nothing else, she's doubling down on her position on everything.  But that ship has likely sailed, and she stands a good chance, right now, of having to vacate her Congressional seat.

August 29, 2025

And yet. . . 

Joseph Kibler running for governor on promise of ‘being something different

being yet another carpetbagger coming in and complaining of too much bureaucracy, particularly in a state you just moved to, isn't actually different.

September 30, 2025

Sec. Gray has flagged over 2,000 Wyoming voters for County Clerks to investigate s voters who may no longer reside in Wyoming.

This entire topic has been a fictional bee in Gray's bonnet.

Progressive Palestinian American Palestinian State Rep. Ruwa Romman has entered the Georgia Governor's race.

October 22, 2025

The Barlow Effect: Candidates can’t officially join the race till next year, but an unmistakably powerful ingredient has entered the mix, writes columnist Rod Miller.

November 18, 2025

A Federal Court in Texas has blocked the state from using its recently redrawn Congressional District map.

Oops.

This will be appealed, but if the decision is upheld it would mean that the five GOP (probably) seats that the state added won't be, while California, in a recent election, added five.

Oops.

Additionally, early indicators are that Texas Hispanics are following the national tread and are becoming disenchanted with the GOP, so some Texas districts may swing Democratic on their own.

Oops.

All of this could mean that the 2026 election could see the House not only swing Democratic, but perhaps massively so, and that some of the Returning Republicans are no longer big fans of Trump, to which those survivors will be reassessing their loyalty to Trump.

On the last item, Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene are in a flat out war with Trump, and Trump is losing.  Greene has gone from one of Trump's most loyal adherents to an outright anti Trump insurgent.

There's a year to go, of course, but Trump is already acting like unstable and clearly under pressure.  Having pulled out all the stops to prevent the release of the Epstein files, he now is claiming to once again support the release, putting the Senate in the hot seat.  If Trump is acting behind the scenes at the Senate, it puts Senators in a terrible spot at the same time that they have the example of Massie and Greene, who aren't being hurt by opposing Trump.

Locally, it'll be interesting to see if Lummis and Hageman remain lashed to the deck of Trump.  I bet Lummis won't.

December 11, 2025

From the New York Times.

Indiana Lawmakers Reject Trump’s New Political Map

Republicans hold an overwhelming majority in the Indiana Senate, but more than a dozen of them defied the president’s wishes, voting against a map aimed at adding Republicans in Congress.

December 19, 2025

Cynthia Lummis will not run for her Senate seat next year.  We can bet that Hageman will run for it and probably already is.  It'd be interesting to see if Gordon runs for the seat.

This means Gray, whose political hopes were dead, will now run for Congress, although I doubt he will get Hageman's seat.  It'll be interesting to see if Stubson runs.

Elise Stefanik is dropping out of the New York Governor's race and will not run for Congress next year.

December 20, 2025

Lots of speculation up in the air following Lummis' surprise announcement that she's giving it up after a single term as Senator, including why she's doing that.

Included in speculative candidates are, as already noted, Gray, Hageman and Gordon.  Degenfelder has also been mentioned, whom I didn't think of.  Degenfelder would have a good chance against any of these three, although I'd prefer Gordon.

Reid Rasner has been mentioned , and I'd guess that he will run. . . and lose in the primary.

Matt Mead has been mentioned as well.

Of course, this shuffling will also bring out the hard right "I worked for the government my entire life but now that I'm retired and on a Federal pension let me run from the far right" candidates. Brent Bien is running for Governor now, but he might take a run at this as it seems Barlow is in such good shape.

With oil declining, the weather being rather weird, and a large percentage of Wyomingites about to lose their healthcare, this election will also present opportunities for moderate Republicans we haven't thought of yet, as well as with conservative Democrats, if any can be found.  I don't think that Karlee Provenza will want to give up her seat in the state legislature, but if Hageman runs for the Senate, which I think she will, and Chuck Gray for the House, which I think he will, Provenza would be an interesting dark horse candidate who might win against Chuck.  Indeed, it's not impossible to imagine Gordon and Provenza in, which would move Wyoming's Congressional delegation overall to the center, as Barrasso will do what he needs to do to keep his job, assuming he'll run again.

An interesting thing to note is that it's quite clear that Liz Cheney was going to run for Enzi's Senate seat when he died, but Lummis took her spot  It seemed pretty clear that there was animosity between the two because of that.  In spite of all the MAGA hatred of Cheney now, she was a very popular Congressman up until she failed to bow to Trump and took him on.  Had she won that seat, she'd still be in the Senate today.

The spectacular fall of Elise Stefanik is quite notable, and should serve as a warning to the flag of convenience politicians. Stefanik hitched her wagon to Trump and failed to get what she wanted.  Now she's dropping out of politics, for awhile.

Stefanik made an incredibly bad set of calculations and more or less sold her soul, Marco Rubio style, for power, except she lost power, rather than gain it.  She'll reemerge, I'm pretty sure, after Trump is out of office, banking on Americans having short political memory.  My prediction on her is that she, like Rubio, will declare they never really loved Trump.

Cont:

And we are in fact off. There are two filed candidates.

One is the predictable Reid Rasner.  Rasner took a pounding in the last election trying to run to the right of John Barrasso, and he'll go down in flames again here.

The other is Jimmy Skovgard.  I checked his website and have no idea what he stands for. He has a blog, with poor production values, and perhaps if I'd waded through all of it I'd know more, but I didn't.

I suspect his campaign will likewise go nowhere.

December 23, 2025

Lummis not running again changes 2026 political strategies: From Miss Frontier to the U.S. Senate, columnist Kerry Drake writes, Lummis has had remarkable success in state and federal offices.

With this entry, we close out this edition. 

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 2nd Edition: The early season.

Labels: 2026 Election, Carpetbaggers, Chuck Gray, Cynthia Lummis, Elon Musk, Errare humanum est perseverare diabolicum, Harriet Hageman, homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Lies, Politics, Populism, Republican Party, Sex, The Big Ugly, Wyoming

Blog Mirror and Pondering: Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

Let me start off by noting that as a rule, I can't stand Cassie' Craven's op eds.  They tend to be in your face unthinking populist, and I also resent (I'm not kidding) the co-opting of a cowboy hat that obviously doesn't fit.

And frankly I don't much like people spouting off about protecting Wyoming or what Wyoming is or was, when they aren't from here. She's from Nebraska, so that's not far off, but Nebraska is not Wyoming.  

Well, like some other populist things, or NatCon things, I'll confess that as a real conservative, and for htat matter a distributist agrarian, I find myself occasionally disturbed by a one of their members saying something that taps into something I've said myself.  This article by Craven does that:

Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

As much as I hate to admit it, and I do hate to admit it, she has a point, although in the typical populist manner, she starts off by saying something cruel to get to the point.  Indeed, it basically takes her 40% of her article to quit being an asshole before she gets to the point that 's worth considering, with this paragraph:

Welfare, in the 14^th century meant one’s good fortune, health and exemption from evil. This changed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as public assistance became a role the government took over from the private charities, which had historically helped to ensure that people fared well. Welfare was holistic, community-driven and just as much emotional and spiritual as it was physical.

The shift of society away from the church-based and community associations and toward the government was no good for our fellow man. Adding fuel to the fire were the rapid technological advances that made us distant, isolated, and serotonin-addicted.

This has addled people’s ability to engage in real conversation or romance.

Well, she's correct, sort of .

Craven seems to edge up on the point, actually and then wonder off again, being slightly mean spirited once again.  She never gets to the bigger point which is that a welfare system that creates semi permanent benefits, run by a bureaucracy, creates dependency, and corrupts.  Indeed, that was the huge difference, other than an inability to cover all who really needed help, from modern welfare and pre Great Depression charity.

Support form charitable organizations, and churches, and the like, was always very temporary.  And it tended to come with some requirements.  State funded welfare tends not to, although the GOP has attempted to insert some.  There are work requirements, of course, but it is difficult to tell how much they're winked at as the principles of subsidiarity have not been applied, so there's no real control.  In contrast, I know of a situation in which a Church collects directly for the poor and distributes directly to the poor.  In doing so, they do ask "are you working?"

And there are more uncomfortable truths as well.  Welfare has, ironically, been a major driver in the decline of Western morality, and more particularly, and arguably much more pronounced, American morality.

Prior to the current welfare regime, children were very much the responsibility of both parents, in every fashion.  We've discussed this in the context of the Playboy Philosophy and what not, but what was the case, even into the early 1980s, was that people that had children were normally married, and to a large degree, women who became pregnant out of wedlock either married the father or gave the child up for adoption (or after 1973, aborted).  Moral decay brought on by the Sexual Revolution, aided by pharmaceuticals, started to erode the two parent family however and in our current age that's pretty pronounced.  An African American commentator got in trouble a year or two ago by claiming that some women "married the government", but there's more than a little truth to that.  Kids raised in this environment are more subject to abuse by subsequent "boyfriends" of their mother, and are more likely to  be raised in poverty and declining morality.  It's simply the truth.

That in turn kicks back to society at large.  The American lower middle class tends to wade at least knee deep in a sort of moral sewer even while being horrified by those swimming in it.  This wasn't the case thirty year or more ago.  The trend line isn't good.

So, Cravens has a point.

But how do you end this? She doesn't opine on that, which is the cowardly way out.  Indeed nobody, except perhaps for those deep in the Heritage Society, is doing so.  What Project 2025 did, apparently, is to suggest an increase in work requirements, which was attempted sort of sub silentio earlier this year.  But then, the entire NatCon group in the government right isn't really willing, in general, to admit trying to bring into play any of their policies. They do them all silently while sometimes denying they're doing them at all.

Which is one of the things I really detest about the Trump Administration.  It's dishonest.  They should simply admit, if they think it, that "welfare is contributing to moral decay and we have to do something about it."

Of course, the problem here is that most Americans really don't want to do anything about the things they claim they do.  Bloated Americans who spend Sundays watching the NFL and who are living with their second or third wives or girlfriends might think about going to the megachurch once a month where the pastor is not going to equate their lifestyle with adulterous mortal sin, or preach about the dangers of wealth to their souls, and might bitch about homosexuals and the like even while being just as morally adrift, but they don't really want the responsibility of responsibility.

Of course, save for some, which explains a movement towards cultural conservatism in the young, thereby being proactive in the culture, even if not attempting to be cultural revolutionaries.

They were careless people.

 

Donald Trump at Mar A Logo's Halloween 1920s themed party.  Seated to Trump's left was an unhappy looking Marco Rubio with Jeanine Pirro looking back.  The event featured scantily clad dancing women, complete with the timeless barely clad woman in a giant champagne glass.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

Donald Trump ought to read a little.  History would be a good start, but also Fitzgerald's great novel.

Monday, October 20, 1975. Grain, Cubans, Primates, and AIDS.

The US and USSR entered into a five year grain sale agreement by which the US agreed to sell 6,000,000 tons of grain to the USSR each year, as its collective agricultural system tanked, and by which the US accidentally screwed Canadian farmers.

The Cuban Navy's El Vietnam Heroico, El Coral Island and La Plata brought the first Cuban soldiers to Angola to support the MPLA..

Presumably the El Vietnam Heroico didn't celebrate the numerous South Vietnamese who gave their lives in order to attempt to hold the Communist back South East Asia.

Cuban military support to Angola would lead to the introduction of AIDS into Cuba, that region of Africa having been ground zero for the disease.  Myths about the origin of the horrific disease, and a supposed ground zero in New York City, have abounded for years, but in reality SIVcpz, the strain in chimpanzees, was transmitted to humans via contact with infected blood, most likely during the process of hunting and butchering chimpanzees for meat.  It was a "crossover disease."  It spread undetected for some time in Central Africa, notably by hetrosexual sex, and into the Cuban population by that means of transmission.  In much of the Western World, of course, it spread through homosexual sex at first, and then by infected needle transmissions. 

FWIW, eating primates is a really bad idea. They're too closely related to us, giving rise to things like this.

It's an interesting example of how war brings plagues of all types.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 14, 1975. Operation Savannah.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Angola, Columbus Day, Namibia, Native Americans, Operation Savannah, South Africa, South African Army, Washington (Seattle)

A bankrupt policy. Trump shafts American consumers and does so again for 大豆

I had a draft post at the time of the last election I never published why farmers and ranchers routinely vote to have themselves shafted by voting for the GOP.  Democrats typically have farm policies that actually benefit farmers, including preserving the lands.  Republicans tend to be in favor of land rape to benefit the wealthy.

I really have no good explanation for it.

Well, no surprise, soybean farmers are getting pounded by Trump's tariff polich. D'uh.

Trump's trade battle with China puts US soybean farmers in peril

I love this quote from one soybean farmer:

“Overwhelmingly, farmers have been in President Trump’s corner,” said Ragland, the president of the soybean association. “And I think the message that our soybean farmers as a whole want to deliver is: ‘President Trump, we’ve had your back. We need you to have ours now.’”

Well, I'm a type of farmer, a livestock farmer, and frankly Ragland, screw you and the John Deere you rode in on.  You are getting just what you deserve.

Trump bets the soybean farm on tariffs | Wall Street Journal

But, have no fear, socialized farming through the GOP will come to the rescue.  Trump is going to take $10B from the national sales tax, i.e., tariffs, to bail out farmers.

So, the American consumer is getting taxed, as in the end it's us who pays the tariffs, to bail out soybean farmers.  

Good old free enterprise at work there.

Farmers are getting stiffed by Trump's taxes, and will continue to get stiffed by them, and he hopes to balance the table by handing over money the American public handed over via tariffs. 

A better plan would just be to let soybean farmers go bankrupt.  

That's way harsh, of course, but there is a certain element of justice to it.  People voted for it.  If they voted for it, you get what get and you don't have a fit.

Locally there's some of this going on, oddly enough, with nuclear energy.  I support nuclear energy, and apparently the Trump administration does as well, and of course Wyoming has uranium and once had a nuclear mining industry.

People are having a fit, including a lot of people who are diehard right wing populists.

I guess that's their right, but farmers  have no right to have the implications of a policy that Trump was very clear about implementing relieved from them.  Trump always was in favor of tariffs and made no secret about it. What did they think was going to happen?

Moreover, the "we supported you" argument is only a good one if its something unexpected.  This amounts more to political payola.