The First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry was formed.
A very famous National Guard unit, at one time it was mostly made up members of Philadelphia's social elite. It is still in existence.
The troop was originally called Light Horse of the City of Philadelphia.
Last edition:
Yesterday, I made some observations on Denver, and today I'm doing the same on Labor Day, 2024.
Of course, it's immediately notable that I'm making these the day after Labor Day, which was a day I didn't get off. I worked a full day.
I was the only one in the office.
Labor Day dates back to the mid 1800s as an alternative to the more radical observance that takes place in many countries on May 1. Still, nonetheless, early on, and for a long time, there was a fair amount of radicalism associated with it during that period when American labor organizations were on the rise. The day itself being a widely recognized day off is due to organized strikes on the day that started occurring during the 1930s, to the day as sort of a "last day of summer holiday" is fairly new.
Even now, when people think of it, they often think of the day in terms of the sort of burly industrial workers illustrated by Leyendecker and Rockwell in the 20s through the 40s. Otherwise, they sort of blandly associate it with celebrating work in general, which gets to the nature of work in general, something we sort of touched on yesterday with this entry;
Early on, Labor Day was something that acknowledged a sort of worthy heavy work. There are, in spite of what people may think, plenty of Americans that still are engaged in that sort of employment, although its s shadow of the number that once did. Wyoming has a lot of people who do, because of the extractive industries, which are in trouble. Ironically, therefore, its notable that Wyoming is an epicenter of anti union feelings, when generally those engaged in heavy labor are pro union. There's no good explanation for that.
When Labor Day became a big deal it pitted organized labor against capital, with it being acknowledged by both sides that if things went too far one way or another, it would likely result in a massive labor reaction that would veer towards socialism, or worse, communism. Real communism has never been a society wide strong movement in the United States, in spite of the current stupid commentary by those on the political far right side of the aisle accusing anyone they don't like, and any program they don't like, of being communistic. But radical economics did hae influence inside of unions, and communists were a factor in some of them, which was well known. As nobody really wanted what that might mean, compromise gave us the post war economic world of the 50s and 60s, which were sort of a golden age for American economics.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of the Cold War era, however, was the exportation of jobs overseas, which brought us the economic regime we have today, in part. The advance of technology brought us the other part. Today we find the American economy is massively dominated by capital in a way it hasn't been for a century, and its not a good thing at all. The will to do anything about it, or even understand it, seems to be wholly lacking. As a result of that, while an increasing number of Americans slave away at meaningless jobs in cubicles, and the former shopkeeper class now works at Walmart, we have the absolutely bizarre spectacle of two Titans of Capital, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, spewing out populist rhetoric. Populism, of course, always gets co-opted, but the working and middle class falling for rhetoric from the extremely wealthy is not only bizarre, its' downright dumb.
Indeed, in the modern American economy, having your own is increasingly difficult. Entire former occupations that were once local have been totally taken over by large corporations while agriculture has fallen to the rich in terms of land ownership, making entry into either field impossible. Fewer and fewer "my own" occupations exist, and those that do are under siege.
One of those is the law, of course. Lawyers, because of the nature of their work, still tend to own their practices, as to medical professionals of all types. The latter are falling into large corporate entities, however, and the move towards taking down state borders in the practice is causing the consolidation of certain types of practice in the former.
Not that "having your own" in the professions is necessarily a sort of Garden of Eden either, however.
Recently, interestingly, there's been a big movement in which young people are returning to the trades. That strikes me as a good thing, and perhaps the trades are finally getting the due they deserve. Ever since World War Two there's been the concept that absolutely everyone had to achieve white collar employment, which demeaned blue collar employment, and which put a lot of people in occupations and jobs they didn't care for. I suspect the small farm movement reflects that too.
Indeed, on my first day of practicing law as a lawyer over thirty years ago the long time office manager, who must have been having sort of a bad day, made a comment like "you might just end up wishing you had become a farmer". I remember thinking to myself even then that if that had been an option, that's exactly what I would have become. It wasn't, and it never has been for me, in the full time occupation sort of way.
Oh well.
And so we lost the garden to labor in, but we can make things better than they are. And we could do that by taking a much more distributist approach to things. Which seems nowhere near close to happening, a populist uprising notwithstanding.
In the early 1930s, upset with President Franklin Roosevelt, some well-placed businessmen plotted to stage a coup and install Gen. Smedley Butler (an odd choice, given Butler's independent character) as a fascist "President", or at least there's reason to believe they were plotting that.
Butler wouldn't go along with it, the plot failed, and FDR, thinking it best to not disrupt the country too much, never brought it out in the open, if in fact he did not outright encourage a general belief that the whole thing had never happened.
Read the recent Robert Reich item here:
Reich reports that Elon Must recently held a billionair's gathering with the tehme of defeating Biden in which he invited; well. . . :
The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury secretary.
You've heard of Murdoch, of course, the Australian-born billionaire who owns newspapers of a certain type, and who has recently been opposed to Trump. And you've heard of Michael Milken. Certainly you've heard of South African born Elon Musk.1
Consider this quote by billionaire Peter Theil.
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron. 2
Consider that somewhat alarming? Well consider this, from the same individual:
But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.
Theil contributed $15,000,000 to J.D. Vance's campaign. And according to Reich:
Just 50 families have already injected more than $600 million into the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Most of it is going to the Trump Republican Party.
One of the really remarkable things about politics of the last 20 or so years has been the swamping of right wing money into it. Rank and file Republicans like to worry about George Soros, but it's really the far right that's getting the cash infusion, and it's showing. It had a major impact on altering Wyoming's politics existentially, taking a more or less "leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone" brand of local Republicanism into far right populism. Early on, that was accompanied by lots of money. So much so that one frustrated legislature told me that those forces were "buying the legislature".
The amazing thing to see is the degree to which those who have radically different economic interests simply follow along. Again, the far right likes to call everyone else "sheep", but the analogy actually applies to Republican voters far more, who vote against their own economic interests continually.
The extremely wealthy can use their wealth in any number of ways. It's notable that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates weren't on the list. But that this occurs at all is troubling, to say the least.
Capitalist may believe that their interests serve everyone else, and that "freedom" would be "preserved" in an odd sort of Pax Capitalismus with a Cesarean Trump at its head, and probably as a figurehead but wealth, business and capital doesn't exist for the wealthy, but for everyone.
Panem et circenses, hatred and discontent, and false internal enemies. Sadly, the trend is well-developed, helped on by a Democratic Party beholding to its own blood soaked, genitals obsessed left wing.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Footnotes:
1. There's something concerning here that two really rich guys who were not impoverished when they showed up here are now messing with American politics in some fashion. This, as much as anything, shows how screwed up our immigration policies are. Both Murdoch and Musk ought not to be in the US at all.
2. It's getting impossible not to note the real rise of misogynistic commentary by the far right.
It's not the comments of people like Harrison Butker so much, as the comments by other characters on the far right. Butker's comments have to be taken from the position of traditional Catholic thought. In some Evangelical corners of Christianity, however, there are now some really beyond hostile views of the current roles of women. Interestingly, these same forces seemingly have no problems with conduct well outside the Christian norm, ranging from Trump's serial polygamy to Theil's homosexuality.
All this should give the far right pause. People like Trump, or Theil, clearly aren't in the traditional Christian camp if their own conduct is observed.
September 23, 1923.
Casper's mayor has resigned after having been accused of physically assaulting his wife in Texas. In resigning, he stated.
It is readily apparent to me that the City Council has abandoned me, band members who I have worked with for a number of years, have ended their relationship with me and it is apparent to me that every effort is being made to destroy me to the public.
Well, after photographs were run of his wife with a major scar suture on her head, no matter what happened, it'd be in the press. Perhaps the surprising thing this year is that it turned out to matter, given that so little otherwise seems to in regard to public conduct.
We will note that he's disputing her allegations, stating that she was intoxicated and fell.
He'd been in the press with comments a fair amount, including this recently:
President.
Democrats:
Joe Biden; the incumbent.
Marianne Williamson.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Republicans.
Donald Trump.
Nikki Haley
Vivek Ramaswamy.
Perry Johnson,
Larry Elder
Asa Hutchinson.
Tim Scott.
Ron DeSantis
Chris Christie
Mike Pence.
Doug Burgum
Will Hurd
Steve Laffey
Ryan Binkley
Green Party
Cornel West.
American Solidarity Party
Peter Sonski
U.S. Senate
Republicans
John Barrasso, maybe?
The long serving Senator has not announced if he's running or not. Right now, because it's pretty obvious that Mitch McConnell is headed on to the next realm, he stands to potentially be Senate Majority Leader.
Reid Rasner.
Rasner has announced and is running essentially as a far right populist. If Barrasso stays in, his campaign will be forgotten within days of the primary election.
September 25, 2023
Former President Trump's comments are getting increasingly extreme, even unhinged.
He's now openly threatening the Press. The scary part here is that his supporters will fall right in line with this.
September 27, 2023
A New York court has determined, in a partial ruling in a case, that Donald Trump committed fraud in the process of building his real estate empire, apparently by misrepresenting his assets. The ruling does not determine damages.
Joe Biden joined UAW picketers yesterday.
September 29, 2023
Some members of the Converse County GOP wish to censure Rep. Forrest Chadwick, whose districts straddles Natrona and Converse Counties. Included in their proposed censure is "failed to vote in a manner that has any semblance to the oath that he made to God to ‘support, obey and defend the Constitution’ or any semblance to the Wyoming Republican Party Platform.”
I'm not certain at all that the oath legislators take is a divine one. They take an oath, but I don't think it's in that context.
Ironically, moreover, many of the populist far right, including in Wyoming, have been supporting sedition, at least in their statements, which is clearly violative of their oaths if they're in office, as it amounts to subverting the U.S. Constitution. Lying, in the Catholic view, with Catholicism being an Apostolic and therefore an original branch of Christianity (and given Apostolic succession, the original branch) is regarded as a grave sin in some circumstances, which does invoke a person's relationship with the Divine, but not for the same reason. Here too, however, the far right position is rather ironic, given what is just noted above.
WyoRino, which recently failed to make an appearance at a Natrona County debate, is mentioned by name.
The effort appears to be tied to his vote against the Life is a Human Right Act as he thought it was unconstitutional and his vote for the budget in the last session. A person could be upset about either of these (although It's hard to grasp being upset about a necessary budget), but that doesn't amount to a violation of his oath of office.
October 3, 2023
I know nothing about Butler, and she may be supremely qualified, but its hard not to assume there's a fair amount of box checking going on in the selection, something that Democratic politicians are particularly likely to do. Butler is black, fulfilling a Newsom promise, and she's gay, making her the first black openly gay U.S. Senator. Should that matter? No, but its statistically improbable while also fulfilling promises to one major Democratic demographic and also satisfying, maybe, the desires of another.
John Kelly, a former adviser to Donald Trump, slammed his former boss in a CNN interview, stating:
What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.
October 4, 2023
The Trump campaign, in what should be regarded as an expression of concern, is calling on the GOP debates to end, so all resources can be focused on defeating Joe Biden.
A plea to end attention to other candidates, even though they have not touched him so far, demonstrates that something is causing concern in the Trump camp.
October 6, 2023
Cornell West, who may get as many as 5 or 6 votes next November, has ditched the Green Party in favor of running an independent campaign in hopes of actually getting on the ballot in various states.
This is his third switch this season.
West is a figure who fascinates American leftist and is otherwise wholly unknown to the American public.
October 8, 2023
Steve Laffey, a long shot candidate for the Oval Office on the GOP ticket has dropped out of the race and dropped out, as well, from the Republican Party. He called the GOP "dead".
October 9, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy is now running as an independent.
cont:
Will Hurd has backed out and endorsed Nikki Haley.
October 11, 2023
Far right populist Kari Lake has announced a bid for an Arizona Senate seat. She will run against independent incumbent Kyrsten Sinema, the Senates most photogenic member, and Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego. This assuming, of course, that Sinema runs.
October 12, 2023
Cenk Uygur, a media personality, has announced his candidacy for the Democratic ticket for the Oval Office.
As he was born in Turkey, he's not eligible to be President.
Trump, in a recent interview, stated, regarding Benjamin Netanyahu, the following:
He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn't have had to be prepared.
Why doesn't it occur to Trump supporters how deeply weird statements like that are?
October 17, 2023
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso has endorsed Kari Lake for Senator from Arizona.
This is politics, of course, but it really shows how far people are willing to go for no other reasons other than politics. Lake is an extremist. The calculation probably is that she might win, and you'd want her to owe you some favors.
October 25, 2023
The absurd flap on which Democratic primary will occur first means that Biden might not appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.
October 27, 2023
Larry Elder has dropped out of the Republican race.
cont:
Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips announced that he is running for President on the Democratic ticket and that he will seek to appear on the New Hampshire ballot.
October 28, 2023
Mike Pence has dropped out.
From here on out, with Pence breaking the dam, candidates will start dropping out of the GOP race. Pretty soon, it will be Christie against Trump.
While it expresses a minority view, my guess is that as Trump looks more and more childish and faces more and more criminal problems, Christie will gain.
For the second time, it should be noted, Pence has done something for the good of the nation.
October 30, 2023
Arguments commenced today in a Colorado suit on whether Trump's role in the January 2020 insurrection bars him from seeking office.
The Minnesota Supreme Court hears arguments on the same topic later this week.
If Trump loses either of these cases, this issue will be on its way to the Supreme Court, but perhaps not be heard until quite near the 2024 election.
Last prior edition:
surely he's looking for a way back into his native South Africa.
Go, Elon, go. I'm sure they'll let you back in.
A lot of Twitter is junk, but this comment hit me a bit:
The death of any man diminishes me but, beyond a quick yet sincere Requiescat for them, my main question now is how many public tax dollars were spent trying to rescue the super-rich from their super-dangerous escapades.
Not that they asked for it.
And not that there isn't an effort to rescue any who are, in the words of the hymn, "in peril on the sea".
But there's just something existentially different about this.
Many will say that nobody has a right to tell other people what to do with their money, but that is in fact wrong, and we do it all the time. There are plenty of things that are illegal that people spend their money on, and we aren't inclined to make them legal on this basis.
To have cash to such a surplus level that $250,000 can be spent for a single instance of amusement, no matter how profound the experience, raises moral questions of all sorts, and not just for those who are that well funded, but also for the societies allowing this to occur.
And the Titanic is the site of a mass loss of human life. To spend that amount of money to dive on what is essentially a grave is problematic.
There's a public duty to try to rescue those imperiled, irrespective of their wealth or lack of it. An interesting thing here is that the effort was undertaken when those in the know, already knew these individuals were dead. The U.S. Navy knew at the instant it occurred. Those on location did as well. It sounds as if those on location distributed the news within thirty minutes of it occurring.
I'm not saying that "expend any effort" shouldn't be attempted. That was done, and no doubt that cost at least the United States and Canada millions.
I'm saying that this shouldn't have been allowed in the first place, and that in this era of vast wealth, something should be reassessed.
More than 500 refugees are presumed to have drowned last week off the Greek coast.
From the Huffington Post, which I have little respect for simply because I found Ariana Huffington to be incredibly irritating.
But there's really a point here.
Or is there?
Some have already recast this story this way:
White privilege is corporate media's non-stop coverage of 5 people on $250,000 a person sightseeing submarine to see to Titanic wile ignoring that More than 500 refugees are presumed to have drowned last week off the Greek coast.
White privilege? Bullshit.
I'm white, and I don't have $250,000 to blow on something like this.
The entire term "white privilege is a left wing dog whistle. Go into any big city, and you'll see plenty of stoned street people living in ignored abandonment, most of whom are white. Where is their privilege?
And it's worth noting that the refugees in question are "Syria, Egypt and Palestine" would be émigrés. Up until some point during the Arab Israeli Wars, at least Syrians and Palestinians could in fact be regarded as "white". At least this was certainly the case with Syrians, of which the Lebanese were a sub category, again until the ongoing protracted hatreds of Middle Eastern conflict changed that. I have an entire set of partially Lebanese cousins and a late uncle who was half Irish and half Lebanese, who would have been surprised that everyone else in the extended family was part of some other (made up) racial demographic.
What Syrians, Egyptians and Palestinians largely are, is Muslim and poor. In the American WASP imagination, being Muslim makes you a non "white", even if the distinction here is purely imaginary. And quite frankly, at least to the American news media, which isn't really friendly to Christianity anymore, it's the latter category that really matters. They are poor.
So they aren't Europeans, which makes them not white to the benighted WASPs, and they are poor, both of which makes it really easy to ignore them.
The poor don't get much press.
The foreign poor truly don't get much press.
None of which this is really about.
Poverty and extreme wealth are.
I hope, as we all should, that those trapped in the submarine are rescued. I also hope that the refugees are relived from their maritime peril. But let't be honest.
There is something fundamentally immoral about a nation with so much wealth, at the very upper ranks, that people can spend $250,000 to go visit a maritime grave.
This statement would apply if they were Americans.
Except here, they actually aren't all Americans, as I thought they likely were.
Most of them aren't.
Nor are they all "white", as the Huffington Post would define it.
They are Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his son Suleman Dawood; Hamish Harding, a British businessman, pilot and space tourist; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Titanic expert; and Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of the sub business.
Now, with at least Rush, his being there makes sense. And maybe Nargeolet is there for an academic or service reason.
Harding? Space tourist? Too much money by any definition.
The Dawood's. Well, I''m not in a position to judge, nor really are probably very many others.
So this story takes a weird turn, from what was originally presumed.
So why do we find it fascinating?
And now what is the moral equation? Do we complain, now, when we learn that two of them are really wealthy Pakistani's, or would that be beyond the pale?
Well, we are fascinated in part because it fits into the category of bizarre disaster that we are unlikely to endure ourselves. It's the same reason that Chilean mine disasters are fascinating. Mediterranean maritime disasters, however, are not, however, as they're part of a massive ongoing crisis that we'd rather not think about.
At any rate, a tourist business taking people to see a maritime grave for really high dollar is unseemly.
And any vacation frolic that costs $250,000 suffers from a moral deficit.
I hope they are rescued, but people spending $250,000 for a private submarine trip anywhere have too much money.
Lots of legal news recently.
1. Donald Trump indicted.
He deserves to be charged with a crime, but that crime is sedition. Maybe other things connected with taking documents and the like, but sedition is the big one.
The current charges? Hmmmm. . . .
Frankly, those who regard the New York DA as pushing it are probably correct. These charges are never brought and they look weak. Added to that, New York prosecutors are subject to claims which at least have some merit that they tend to be influenced by politics. The state's going after the NRA, for example, had that appearance. This does as well.
Given that, this probably only serves to discredit the more serious claims to come, assuming that something surprising isn't revealed.
2. Fed Judge says name the names.
In Wyoming, that is.
This is the suit involving the UW sorority, which has admitted as a member a guy claiming to identify as a girl, even though his anatomical reactions to the girls suggest that his biology isn't that confused. The plaintiffs, member of the sorority, wanted to sue anonymously. The Federal District Court judge presiding over the case said no to that.
He's right. It's not like anyone is a minor, and while I don't even think there really is such a thing as transgenderism, we all know who the guy is. The Plaintiffs' should be known, and for that matter, there's honor in being known in a cause, even amongst those who oppose those in it.
3. Gwenyth Paltrow v some guy.
Didn't follow it and don't care.
4. The Justice Thomas vacation "scandal"
M'eh.
There's no law that says members of the Supreme Court can't accept gifts, even lavish ones, from their admirers. Accepting them may not be wise, but it's not illegal.
Is it supposed to be reported? The law seems vague on that.
Basically, this amounts to an effort to get Thomas to resign, which the political left has been working on for some time. The Thomas' for their part don't seem to act wisely in this area, giving fuel to those who are trying to ignite it.
This is also part of the unfortunate modern trend of dragging the privileged down. That may sound odd, but the real story of American wealth since World War Two is that the population has moved from mostly being lower middle class to mostly being upper middle class. Not everyone, of course, but that's been the move of the economic center. Oddly, as it has happened, resentment towards the really wealthy has increased, even though more Americans than ever are in the wealthy class at some point in their lives.
5. Amending Title IX to include transgenderism
It's an attempt to usurp democracy at the state level.
You can't really have it two ways with democracy, for the most part. Democrats became very used to rule through the courts until the court turned to the right and started sending stuff back to legislatures. That's distressed the left no end, even though court rule fed the populist right. Since the January 6 Insurrection, the left has rediscovered democracy, but it can't quite break itself of its old habits.
5. Booting legislators out of their legislatures.
We've all been reading about the three legislators who have been booted out of Tennessee's legislature for violating decorum rules. It's being portrayed as a shocking attack on democracy.
Frankly, this example should be followed more. There's a Wyoming legislator right now who is in trouble for wearing an assault rifle themed transgender shirt, right during a time period in which it seems there were in fact two armed assaults by people identifying themselves in that fashion. She's apologized, but maybe she should get the dope slap.
Anthony Bouchard of Wyoming's legislature certainly should have. MTG should have been booted out of Congress.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
The German free state of Saxony changed its election laws providing for four different classes of voters, those being; taxpaying men, 25 or older, one vote, men with higher incomes, two votes, three or four votes. Men reaching 50 years of age acquired another vote.
Which takes us to stuff we're not supposed to say.
This weighting of the vote was obviously based on the concept that society should be governed by men of means. Current American politics would suggest that this certainly isn't the case. Donald Trump is reputedly as rich as Midas, although how rich he really is, isn't clear, and he clearly shouldn't be in politics and no deliberative person should vote for him. Many, however, are going to.
And that raises a question. In 2024, as opposed, let's say, to 2016, or even 2020, after he attempted to defeat the results of an election, and after those who support him have gone increasingly hardcore populist (not conservative) is there something wrong with the American electorate? It would appear so, and what it would appear to be, is ignorance. That's an ignorance that's reinforcing itself. We'll deal with it elsewhere, but what questions does that raise about who really should have the franchise?
Jackson County, Colorado, was created from western Larimer County.
