The 2027 Legislature, super early edition. The make them stop edition.

Ugh, just when the first corn fed, cornfederate legislature was safely in the history books, the Management Council met.  Of course, the same dumb ideas that get rejected repeatedly are back up for reconsideration, at least in part.

I hear we want to do the election review again and redo the same bills that just died three weeks ago ... in exchange for 911 funding.

Tara Nethercott.

The corner crossing bill won't be back, which is too bad.

Vote the WFC out and send them back to pre 1964 Alabama where they'll be happy.

May 13, 2026

Woman Sued By House Candidate Reid Rasner Urges Ban On Frivolous Lawsuits

I was aware this legislation had been introduced.  Frankly, Anti SLAPP provisions are really tricky as they're based, basically, on pre judging a litigants intent.

June 10, 2026

Lawmakers revive proposal to remove Wyoming property taxes

The money has to come from somewhere.  Property taxes rise because in no small part new people come in and overpay in the local housing market, and otherwise inflate it.

A better idea would be to have an unrealized sales tax on the sale of real property from other states that

 is used by a person within five years of moving to Wyoming.

August 13, 2026

Lawmakers reject proposal for online court records, streamed hearings

Thank goodness. This idea was outright unworkable.

August 29, 2026

Things are going to be rough from now until the the beginning of the next legislative session as the members of the deposed Freedom Caucus be a general pain.

At Least Five Lawmakers Walk Out Of ‘Absurd’ Joint Committee Meeting

August 30, 2026

The WFC food fight at the legislature continues as Chip Neiman took to Facebook to pout over Senators walking out of the recent pointless joint meeting.

As Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives, I’m entrusted with the responsibility of appointing legislators to standing committees. It’s a charge I didn’t take lightly upon my election to the Speakership.

I’m proud of the members of the House Minerals and Appropriations Committees for finishing the job they took up for the interim pertaining to local government infrastructure funding and the Wyoming Business Council. 

Today, the Senate walked out on Wyoming cities, towns and counties. Conversely, the House committee members remained steadfast in order to deliver the strongest local government funding model seen in decades. This bill will fund local infrastructure and benefit every local jurisdiction and citizen.

The Legislature isn’t a place for turf warfare. 

I worry for the future of the Wyoming Legislature. I encourage those new members coming to Cheyenne, to remember who they serve; not a committee, a chamber or any particular lobbying outfit, they serve the people of Wyoming. See less

Neiman notes that he's Speaker of the House in the legislature, which is true, but he's on his way out and is a lame duck.  The complaint that the "Legislature isn't a place for turf warfare" is really rich given that the WFC acted like the first Vandals in Rome in Cheyenne.  If it's turf warfare, they started it.

We're going to see a lot more of this.  The WFC has been kicked to the curb, but like the the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) in the Battle of Berlin, it's going to see that everything is destroyed that it can destroy before it goes.

One common theme we're now seeing in connection with the WFC losing is this one that appears in the comments to Nieman:

Me too! We are quickly becoming a blue state, just as Charlie Kirk predicted!😢

I've scene that more than once now.

People who make that comment are deluded.  I don't know about this person, but they're likely also carpetbaggers.  Wyoming is a conservative state, but it's not a Turning Point USA Southern Bible Belt state.  This is why traditionally there was no support for restricting abortion much here (which I do feel should be restricted, and indeed illegal) and nobody cared much whether somebody was a homosexual or not, which apparently is also no longer the case.  The local view, and it was expressed in the Democratic and Republican parties, wsa "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone".  The WFC didn't want to leave people alone.

As for Charlie Kirk and his predications, I'm increasingly in the "I don't care what  Charlie had to say" camp.  I don't mean to sound like a Kirk basher, but those politicos and their followers that are Kirk acolytes increasingly don't impress me.  Kirk was brought to UW by one of his collegiate admirers who went on to work for Hageman and get canned for following Francoist website, with the same fellow then managing Chuck Gray's campaign.  That's a good enough reason not to vote for Gray, although were are are plenty of other reasons not to do so.  Anyhow, Kirk never reflected a Wyoming point of view.

September 3, 2026

Wyoming lawmakers change course on property tax reform amid signs of waning support

This is a result of the defeat of the WFC, and that Wyomingites did not rise to the occasion to take advantage of a bevy of potential exemptions, at least one of which was in my view likely illegal.

The last year made it increasingly obvious where local funding came from for municipalities and counties, which likely helps explain this.

It also signals the death spiral of a WFC dream.

From Bill Barlow's Budget in 1897.  I wouldn't have guess dishwashers even existed in any form at the time.

 A really surprising item on A Hundred Years Ago:

Electric Dishwashers a Hundred Years Ago

I had no idea whatsoever that electric dishwashers existed in 1926.  It really surprises me.

It's another example, however, on how domestic machinery was entering the home at this point in time, the impact of which was about to revolutionize economics and how people simply lived.

We've discussed this in the context of the introduction of domestic machinery into the home in the 40s and 50s.  We've also noted before that this process, which had started early in the 20th Century, was delayed by the Great Depression.  This is a good example of that.

I took a look at this topic, which I've never even considered before, and it appears that one American socialite, Josephine Cochrane, was instrumental in the invention of machine dishwashers and was working on it in the late 19th Century.  She went into commercial manufacturing of them in 1898.

Cochrane was a widow at the time, and she passed away in 1913 at age 74.  In the 1920s a new type of design was introduced by William Howard Livens, a British professional soldier of an inventive mind who is known for his military inventions related to chemical warfare and flame throwers.

His front loading dishwasher introduced the modern form of the device.  Introduced in 1924, he continued to work on it and by 1940 had introduced the drying element to the machine.  A man of independent means, he served in both World Wars and died in 1964 at the age of 74.

On the same day that this advertisement appeared, December 12, 1941, this was the headline in the same paper:

If Romeo hadn't bought his dishwasher by that time, he was waiting at least four more years to get one.

In 1926 Cochrane's company, which still existed, was sold to the Hobart Manufacturing Company.  Using the name KitchenAid, it introduced the first house specific dishwasher in 1949, reflecting a period during which the introduction of domestic machinery, much of it improved by the advances of technology during the Second World War, were rushing into households.  Still, dishwashers were still regarded as a luxury item well into the 1970s, and as a kid not only did we not have one, none of the people whose houses I'd visit as a child had them either.  They were regarded as really bougie 

Indeed, my parents never had a dishwasher, and it would never have occured to me to actually buy one myself.  However, the first house we lived in, that is rented, when we were first married had one, which was my introduction to them.  When we bought our house (we've only ever had the one), it had one, and when it broke, we bought a new one.  Everyone has one now.

Which gets back to the point I made in the Maytag entry noted below.  It's not like washing dishes ever seemed like a huge chore to me, but we were a small family.  I'm sure for the homes of my parents, which featured large families, they were, particularly when combined with all of the other domestic chores that had to be done in a less automated world.

Related threads:

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

Labels: technology, The roles of men and women, tools and appliances, trends, Women, Yeoman's First Law of History, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Friday, August 30, 1901. Vacuum cleaner patented.

Hubert Cecil Booth patented the first motorized vacuum cleaner.

The first one was essentially an industrial device, not a domestic machine, but it pointed the way towards things to come.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 24, 1901. The Royal Navy, Ottoman Navy, and Kuwait and the heroic sacrifice of Clara Maas.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, Art, Disease, Heroes, Kuwait, Medicine, Personalities, Protestant, religion, Spanish American War, The roles of men and women, Women

The Agrarian's Lament: Trump Moves To Allow Ranchers And Farmers To Process Their Own Food

The Agrarian's Lament: Trump Moves To Allow Ranchers And Farmers To Proce...: Trump tries to backstep after a major screw up. Trump Moves To Allow Ranchers And Farmers To Process Their Own Food While this will aid beef...

Trump Moves To Allow Ranchers And Farmers To Process Their Own Food

Trump tries to backstep after a major screw up.

Trump Moves To Allow Ranchers And Farmers To Process Their Own Food

While this will aid beef producers, it doesn't address the existential problem of the packing industry monopoly.  Breaking that, and particularly breaking that on Distributist principals, would have a massive impact.  That won't be happening, however.  

Instead, this basically would allow producers to sell their own beef across state lines.  While some people will buy beef in that fashion, most people won't, and that doesn't do much at all for the cost of beef sold at restaurants and the like.

As noted, applying the Sherman Anti Trust Act to the meat packing industry would have a real impact.  A bigger one would be limiting corporate ownership to a single packing facility.

All of this will have no immediate impact on meat prices. The US cattle inventories, i.e.., the herd size, have not been this low since 1941.  The reasons for that are varied, by herd reduction due to drought caused by climate change is a major part of it.  In some ways, this is just a minor way of trying to repair the damage done by Trump allowing the importation of foreign beef, which has the added theater element of being introduced, supposedly, by Glenn Beck in an interview, something that just screams out the entire thing being something that is pitched towards farmer and rancher ignorance.

Small herd size is a problem, but it will take years to address.  By that time, given the very small herd size, we may very well be seeing a meat production climate that hasn't existed since the introduction of refrigerated rail cars in 1878.  The massive increase in the Western herd during the Civil War and the invention of the refrigerated rail car shifted the American diet from pork to beef.  Various factors have been making inroads on beef for years, and the price at the counter, which this will certainly not immediately address, is shifting it once again, and has been for many  years.

Whether this will serve as a salve on farmers and ranchers so they can justify voting for a party that has screwed them for years is yet to be seen.

Related thread:

The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.

Labels: 1920, 1929, 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Bureau of Land Management, Chuck Gray, Donald Trump, Great Depression, Ignorance, Kevin Christensen, Predictions, Republican Party, Stupidity

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 7. The jackass in a tin barn edition.

We weren't really ready to start a new one of these, but Chuck Gray has been in such rare form recently as it starts to look like he's going to lose in ten days and his dreams of a carpetbagging political career be crushed, that it mandates it.

Gray, as Secretary of State, sits on a variety of state boards and has been using that position to attempt to advance his campaign for higher office, any higher office, all along.  Generally in the global warming is a fib camp, he at one time was okay with development projects of all types but now is anti "woke wind".  Lots of people don't like the viewscape and land use aspect of wind and solar farms, and he's hoping to tap into that dislike, but he's such a disagreeable pissant he can't seem to say it that way.  Nor can he explain his prior positions.

The real gem in this is that he almost voted to preclude use of an access road to a power substation that provides power to farmers on the basis that it might receive electrical power from solar farms or wind farms or provide power to data centers.

When the State treasurer noted that this meant, he changed his vote, but had to blame the whole thing on somebody else.

Gordon: Gray Sounds Like 'Jackass In A Tin Barn' For Blaming Data Center Vote On Gov

Gray Changes Mind On Power Station Access After Spat With Curt Meier

Data centers are now big in the news around here, and for good reason.  Gray is opposing them as he figures it's good politics.  Put a gigantic strip mine in over the same area, and he'd be all for it.  It's difficult to tell from one moment to the next if Republican candidates this year are members of the Flat Earth Society or Greenpeace.

Gray is particularly disgusting.  He's consistently rude and nasty.  It's difficult to understand why anyone would vote for him, unless they're really duped.

I wonder how this news works for people like Gray:

Huge 500-MW Solar Project Wants To Build Natural Gas Power Plant Near Glenrock

Some other economic news:

Wyoming’s First Nickel Discovery Heads Into High-Tech, High-Stakes Drilling Phase

August 9, 2026.

Casper Couple Proves You Can Make Award-Winning Wine In Wyoming

August 14, 2026

Oil supply disruptions due to King Donny's war are predicated to last well into 2027 if not through it.

Diesel is up over $5.00/gallon here locally. There's no way on earth prices like that don't cause a rise in the price of everything else.

And, related to that:

Zoinks! Gas Is $6 A Gallon In Muddy Gap — That's 42% Higher Than Wyoming Average

And in another energy story:

Black Hills Energy wants to hike electric rates 32% in northeast Wyoming

August 20 2026

The US debt is now an unsustainable and unconscionable $40T.

cont:

An Open Letter to Scott Bessent: Why You're Wrong and I'm Right

But you're the one with power, so your error is dangerous

August 21, 2026

Why the US economy is ringing alarm bells

Bessent was sent out yesterday to try to calm fears, but ended up being ridiculed.  The US is buying back bonds which did help stabilize the bond market, at least for now.

People have been wondering about the appeal of Democratic Socialism all of a sudden.  I think this states it pretty well:

I'm not for all of those things.  I'm not for a universal basic income, or universal childcare.  But the point is very well made.

And this:

First of all, beef prices have nothing to do with Joe Biden.  Secondly, the "thank you for our attention" line is stupid.

The real stupidity here is that American agriculturalist support the GOP, which routinely hurts them.  Ranchers and Farmers are solidly members of the Leopards Won't Eat My Face Party.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. The screwworm edition.

Labels: Animals, Artificial Intelligence, Canada, Disease, Distributism, Donald Trump, Economics, G7, inflation, Petroleum, Screwworms (Cochliomyia hominivorax), Taxes, United States and Israel v. Iran, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Saturday, August 17, 1946. All The King's Men.

 

Published on this day in 1946.

The novel was a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of Huey Long.

Soviet physicist Pyotr L. Kapitsa was removed from his posts and put under house arrest over his feud with Beria.

First Sergeant Lawrence Lambert, U.S. Army Air Force,  became the first person in United States to test an ejection seat by being ejected mid flight.

It was a brave act, but it should be noted that both German and Swedish developers had already introduced ejection seats.  The very first use of one occured on January 13, 1942, when Henkel test pilot Helmut Schenk was forced to use one while making a test flight of a He 280.

Last edition:

Friday, August 16, 1946. Direct Action Day and the founding of the KDP (ارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان).

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Australia, Bangladesh, Catholic, China, Communism, Harry S. Truman, India, Kurdish Democratic Party, Kurdistan, Manchukuo, Pakistan, religion, Unions, War Crimes

Thursday, August 10, 1876. First long distance telephone call. Crook and Terry combine.

Alexander Graham Bell placed a telephone call between two Ontario towns, fourteen miles distant.  It was the first long distance telephone call.

Long distance telephone calls were a big deal when I was growing up, and indeed were expensive and frankly a big deal. People waited for certain times of the day or night to make them, when the price was reduced.  I'm guessing in an average year we had or placed maybe one or two long distance calls.

I dimly recalled that still being the case when I was first practicing law, and it was.  Indeed, I recall we had to be careful about how we logged the time to recapture the cost.  The revenue from long distance calls peaked in 2000, but cell phones made inroads shortly thereafter and by 2004 most long distance pricing had ended and it continued to decline throughout that decade.

Crook and Terry joined forces at the Rosebud.

Last edition:

Tuesday, August 8, 1876. A long ride by Captain Jack. Terry resumes the march.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Alfred Terry, cavalry, Ft. Laramie Wyoming, George Crook, Great Sioux War, Montana, Personalities, Sioux, Wyoming, Wyoming (Ft. Laramie)

Friday, July 5, 1776. Getting the word out.

Two Hundred printed copies of the Declaration of Independence were delivered to Congress.  One copy was officially entered into the Congressional Journal and the others were for distribution.

It's easy to forget that in the context of the times, Congress may have declared independence, but hardly anyone knew it.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 4, 1776. Declaring independence.

Labels: 1770s, 1776, American Revolution, Colonial North America, Declartion of Independence, Donald Trump, Hypocrisy, Intolerable Acts, Second Continental Congress, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, United Kingdom

It happened in 1876.

We started one of this trailing posts concerning things that were introduced in 1911, and now we're doing the same for 1876.

1.  The Telephone

Yeah, we've already covered it. 

The surprising thing, I suppose, is that telephones were very early.  We don't typically think of them being this old, but of course the year of its invention isn't the same as it becoming common.

2 Budweiser beer.

American Budweiser was introduced to the market in 1876.  It's introduction was particularly timely as it came two years prior to the introduction of the modern, more or less, refrigerated railroad car, designed for shipping beef.  That invention revolutionized the cattle industry, but it also did the beer industry, as it allowed brewers to ship a mass produced product, which Budweiser soon did.

Budweiser interestingly linked itself to its founding year very early on, providing its shipped beer to commercial customers with large prints of a painting of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

3.  Anthrax

Robert Koch demonstrated that Bacillus anthracis was the source of anthrax, a disease that threatened the public health more than it does today.

4.  Dog whistle

Francis Galton invented the silent dog whistle.

5.  Winchester Model 1876

Theodore Roosevelt with a Model 1876 Wincester.

Winchester introduced an larger version of its Model 1873, the Centennial Edition Model 1876.

The new lever action rifle would take big cartridges suitable for big game hunting, namely the .45-75 W.C.F., 45-60 W.C.F.. 40-60 W.C.F. and the .50-95 Express, and it was therefore revolutionary in that sense as it was introduced at a time in which really big black powder cartridges were the domain of single shot rifles. Indeed, those rifles had really only been around for about a decade and many hunter in 1876 were still armed with muzzle loading rifles.  Winchester was developing new rifles rapidly at the time, and the 76 itself would be in production for only a decade.

The new cavalry.

 Cavalry is back, and its unmanned and remote.

Ukraine is shredding Russian supply lines. The US should pay attention

Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian logistics is a preview of what U.S. forces could encounter in future conflicts.

Oh No. The Last Working Pay Phone In Yellowstone National Park Is Dead.

 

Oh No. The Last Working Pay Phone In Yellowstone National Park Is Dead.

 

Sick of paying to maintain power grids built in the 1950’s?

Churches of the East: Magnifica Humanitas

Churches of the East: Magnifica Humanitas: Just out, it's notably already being hailed as a great work, and notably already criticized by the United States Secretary of the Interi...

Magnifica Humanitas

Just out, it's notably already being hailed as a great work, and notably already criticized by the United States Secretary of the Interior.

 MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS

OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE