The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Another one of our trailing posts.

It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are now being filed in earnest.

As we know from following prior sessions, most of the bills introduced won't make it to the floor, and that is particularly true this year as this is a budget, not a general, session. So in order to see the light of legislative day, there will have to be 2/3s support from the body to even consider a bill.  That will happen for just a few.

Anyhow, let's see what's in the hopper so far.

1.  Aviation topics.

 

Okay, there are none, but there were some being considered. They seem to have died off for the time being but there was some serious examination of potentially subsidizing air travel between the smaller communities in the state.

I frankly wish this would happen.  It's not going to happen this session, but maybe its not dead. To my surprise, it was better received than I would have supposed.

2.  Opiate Crisis

President of the Wyoming State Senate Eli Bebout has indicated he wants to focus on the Opiate Crisis this legislature and form a body to study it.  In response, a well known physician interviewed by the Casper Star Tribune has said there is no Opiate Crisis in Wyoming.

I don't know if there's a crisis or not, but the abuse of prescription opiates has been going on big time for a long, long time.  For that reason, I've been skeptical of the "crisis" term nationally, as it seems to be one of those crises that occur when people suddenly notice a bad situation that's been going on for a long time.

Which doesn't need that it doesn't need to be addressed.  It does.  Nationwide.

3.  Don't change that clock.

 

One legislator, for the second time, has introduced a bill into committee to keep Wyoming on Daylight Savings Time year around.

Frankly, I hate the fact that we play with the clock and I'd like to keep us on standard time year around.  So I am kind of sympathetic with this bill, although I think it odd to keep us on the fake Daylight Savings Time rather than standard  time.  There's some logic in his position, however, as it turns out, to my surprise, that we're only on standard time for four months out of the year. Bizarre.

Anyhow, I'm sure that this bill will also go nowhere and there's already criticism of it by another legislator.

Well, so much for now. We'll be back.

January 15, 2018.

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What does the possible recovery of oil mean for the Legislature?

Rumor has it . . .well more than rumor, that some Legislative committees were pondering changes to Wyoming's tax structure, including allowing local governments to levy more taxes on their own.  Chances are that wasn't going anywhere, but with a state hiring freeze and an ongoing enormous drop in the state coffers, a boost in the price of oil and the stabilization of coal, albeit a potential new normal that was less than what it once was, are pretty significant developments.  The Legislature isn't in session yet, but its hard to imagine that the news, which is now coming in steadily, won't have some sort of impact.

January 29, 2018. 

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The legislature, in committee, has rejected several bills designed to increase state revenues through various taxes, including a bill to increase the lodging tax which was defeated six to six.  That one had been expected to pass.

The Committee had delayed its work in order to see how the State's economy was looking and the increase in petroleum revenues apparently persuaded it not to approve any new taxes.  Irrespective of that, the action leaves a $850,000,000 deficit at the present time.

February 1, 2018.

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ENDOW Study. Air Travel First
 

 

 Federal Express at the Natrona County International Airport.  An airport that can  handle a plane like this could sure easily handle intra state air travel.

February 4, 2018

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An action entitled "Stand Your Ground" has been introduced in the State Senate that is generally a "no duty to retreat" bill.  The introductory text provides:

A BILL for AN ACT relating to crimes and civil liability establishing and modifying when defensive force can be used; establishing when the opportunity to retreat may be considered; providing immunity from criminal or civil liability for reasonable use of defensive force; providing for an award of costs if a civil lawsuit is filed as specified providing a definition and providing for an effective date.

February 6, 2018. 

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Some Time Ago we published this item here on Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

February 7,  2018

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From the Casper Star Tribune:

Bills to watch in Wyoming's 2018 legislative session 

A good synopsis, some of these I would have had no idea about and with some I wasn't aware of what their status was. 

Here's one I wasn't aware of, for example:

What it does: This bill includes several major revisions to Wyoming’s campaign finance laws. It expands the definition of what is covered under the law and changes some reporting requirements.
What they’re saying: The Equality State Policy Center faced off against the Wyoming Liberty Group on this legislation during interim committee meetings. ESPC was heartened to see the definitions expanded, while the Liberty Group claimed that strengthening the laws any further would be unconstitutional and was successful in rolling back an existing reporting requirement. It appeared some of the lawmakers were confused as to what they were voting on during the interim committee meeting and amendments to this bill are likely if it is successfully introduced to the full Legislature.

I still can't say I know much about it, but that is pretty interesting.  Also interesting is that the Tea Party Wyoming Liberty Group is opposed to a bill limiting corporate participation in campaigns via monetary donations.

Here's another one that's interesting, which the Tribune titled with "Air Wyoming is Back"

What it does: This measure would move forward an ambitious proposal by the Wyoming Department of Transportation to effectively create a state-run airline, through which WYDOT would contract with regional carriers to operate specific routes and schedules. The idea is to ensure reliable air service to cities across Wyoming without relying on the whims of commercial carriers.
What they’re saying: Critics argued that the idea remains half-baked and that more information is needed before acting on it. But proponents say if Wyoming doesn’t move quickly, it may be frozen out of any regular air service in many cities as commercial carriers begin using larger planes and have a harder time staffing pilots for rural routes. Von Flatern resurrected this piece of legislation after the full transportation committee declined to advance it, and the bill has the support of Senate President Eli Bebout, which may give it a boost. A similar measure is also included in Gov. Matt Mead’s Endow economic diversification initiative.

I'll be very surprised if this passes, but I hope it does.  The backing of Eli Bebout is interesting as well, as he's far from a gadfly of any kind.  I'm skeptical of this bill's chances, but maybe I'm a bit too skeptical.

February 12, 2018 
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Governor Mead delivered his State of the State Address to the Legislature:



February 13, 2018

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Lots of bills hit the floor or the committee floor on the opening day of the 2018 Legislative Session.  Of course, most of them will die.

School Funding

There were three proposed bills to amend the Wyomign Constitution to address education funding. These propose, in no particular order:

1.  To match our funding to an average of the neighboring states.

That's an odd suggestion for a state that prides itself on independent thought quite frankly.  And as Colorado and Utah both have huge metropolitan areas, it doesn't make a lot of sense in other ways.  It would tie funding, bizarrely, to the acts of other legislatures.

2.  The second one proposes to limit judicial review of education funding.  Interestingly, it has one of the same sponsors as No. 1 above.  I note that in interest as I doubt the constitutionality of No. 1, and perhaps the sponsor senses that.

This is specifically designed to "keep the courts" out of funding on the concept that those bad old Wyoming courts are monkeying with things.

Bills to limit judicial review ought to always be regarded with suspension as they effectively make the legislature, with the assistance of the Governor, dictatorial. They'd deny that, but judicial review has served the nation really well and most of the really horrifying abuses of legislative power around the globe in some fashion occur in environments of no judicial review.

3. The third bill sort of returns Wyoming to the local bond era of school construction funding.  That's a proposal made by Sen. Charles Scott of Casper.

This would return school construction funding to the era that existed before, yes. . . the Wyoming Supreme Court found it inequitable.  The thought presumably is that addressing this in a constitutional amendment would return us to the past in this fashion.

Was that a really great past?

Well, it had its merits and demerits.  Certainly, fwiw, the massive school construction Natrona County has had over the past decade would not have existed in this environment.  Indeed, as lamented here frequently, the bond issue to fund a swimming pool at NCHS's massive reconstruction failed, sadly in my view.  My guess is that there wouldn't have been much school construction in recent years in this county with this amendment in place.

Other bills.

In other bills, Chuck Gray has proposed a bill to bypass the Attorney General of Wyoming and allow the legislature to hire an attorney to sue the State of Washington over coal terminals. This is a really bad idea and it won't go anywhere.

If it were to pass, it would fund some lawyer for an expensive suit that would surely fail.  It would be more productive to simply burn the cash.

It will likely be just about as likely to pass, however, as two pre doomed bills sponsored by the very few Democrats in the legislature, one of which would take on Medicaid Expansion again and the other which would propose new taxes, including a state income tax. Those aren't going anywhere.

And so the legislative session commences.

And then there's this:

Hunters would have the option to wear fluorescent pink instead of the traditional blaze orange when they head into the field if a bill proposed in the Wyoming Legislature passes.

Senate File 61 would allow hunters to substitute fluorescent pink for the currently required fluorescent orange. Sen. Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne) proposed the legislation after hearing about a study in Wisconsin that showed fluorescent pink was as visible as fluorescent orange, and sometimes more so. The high visibility prompted Ellis to propose pink but not colors like green or blue, she said.

“Safety is the most important part of the bill,” she said.

From the Wyo.file.

Seriously?   I think the days of girls wear pink ended some time ago.

February 12, 2018

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And here we go yet again.

Yet another misguided effort to get the Federal domain transferred to the state.

HOUSE BILL NO. HB0094

State lands-net gain in acreage.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Jennings, Clem, Edwards, Halverson, Lone, Miller, Stith and Winters and Senator(s) Hicks

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to state lands; providing that the acquisition of lands from the federal government may increase total trust land acreage; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 36‑2‑111 is created to read:

36‑2‑111.  Acquisition of trust lands.

Subject to any other limitations as provided by law, the board is authorized to acquire land from the federal government or any federal agency that would increase total trust land acreage held by the state.  Any land acquired under this section shall not be included in any rule, policy or formula that limits the total trust land acreage which is or can be held by the state.

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2018.

This one the sponsors managed to sneak in somehow without much notice.  Boo Hiss.

This will go to the floor this morning, February 14, 2018.   Call your legislature and leave a message.  Enough of this.

To make sure we keep public lands in public hands, call the the House Floor receptionist before 10 a.m.—307.777.7852—and tell your legislator to VOTE NO on HB 94.

February 14, 2018 
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HB 94 Fails

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Ses...: I'm already running a thread on the 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session, which is supposed to be a budget session.  That thread is here: ...

House Bill 94, I'm pleased to note, died a rapid death. 

Yellowstone license plates have also died.

As did revisions to cruelty to animals provisions. 

A bill on interfering with a process server also died.

A bill prohibiting sanctuary cities failed. . . not that there are any in Wyoming or even any suggested.

A Senate health care bill failed.

Another one to make the State Attorney General's position an elected office also failed.

February 14, 2018
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The Tribune reports that the "Stand Your Ground" bill has advanced with enormous support.  Assuming that Governor Mead will sign it, it seems assured to become law.

I'm actually somewhat surprised as this is a Budget Session and its hard for things to advance.  And the law, at least when I read it, wasn't very well drafted and it actually seemed to lessen the protection for the users of deadly force in some instances, while probably moderately expanding it in others.  But there have been at least two notable cases in recent years in which the use of deadly force by civilians has come up in criminal trials, with one resulting in a reversal of a conviction by the Wyoming Supreme Court, so perhaps this is overall on the legislators minds.

According to the Trib, Wyoming is the only state without such a law.  If that's true, I'm surprised again.

February 16, 2018.

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It's odd how certain Tea Party elements are for local control until they aren't.

In today's Tribune newly minted legislator Stith has letter in support of HB83.

I checked on it this morning, and it's already failed.  Be that as it may, the bill did the following:

AN ACT relating to education; specifying that the salary of a school district superintendent shall not exceed the salary provided under the education resource funding model; specifying applicability; and providing for an effective date.

Stith was the only sponsor of the bill.

Anyhow, the bill wanted to keep local districts from paying their superintendents more than the model provides for.  Apparently some districts do that.

I.e, local control.

Stith was one of the sponsors of the land grab bill that failed, which is always advanced on the thesis of local control is good.  But apparently, it's not universally good. . .

February 18, 2018.

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Readers of the Casper Star Tribune woke up this morning to banner headlines proclaiming:

House, Senate At Odds

What they're at odds about is education funding. The Senate's bill proposes to cut $20,000,000 from education funding.  The House proposes to cut $75,000,000.

As will not doubt be pointed out, cuts have to come as the coal money is never coming back like it once was. Wyoming's coal producers have had two bits of bad news about coal customers of this type within the last two weeks.  But it also needs to be remembered that education is part of that vital support that will allow Wyoming, maybe, to diversify its economy, maybe.

It is certain that if education begins to lapse in quality, that's not going to help things at all.  So cutting education should be thought over very carefully.

At any rate, the teachers' lobby has found itself in the odd situation of supporting the $20,000,000 cuts as the $75,000,000 proposal is so severe.

February 25, 2018

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Today's Tribune reports that yesterday the Wyoming Senate adopted an amendment on the "No Duty To Retreat" bill which effectively made it more or less revert to the existing standard of Wyoming's law.  It will likely pass in that form, although then it will have to be reconciled with the House bill, but there's actually very little point in passing a law which merely codifies an existing common law standard.


After the original bill passed the House a Wyoming Peace Officers association came out against the bill as they felt it hampered their ability to investigate potential homicides. That seemed to play a role in the amendment.  Both the NRA and a local firearms owners association backed the bill and made it known that they're rate voting yes on the amendment as an anti gun vote, but that doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on the vote.

I don't know what I think of the bill one way or another.  The common law standard is a "reasonable man" standard which is always difficult, but that is what its been for centuries.  On the other hand I found the editorial in the Tribune that prosecutors "won't" prosecute a matter unjustly if the evidence shows that to be charmingly naive.

February 28, 2018.

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With less than a week to conclude their business, the House and Senate have not been able to reconcile competing budget bills, the very reason they are there.

The differences are not minor either.  Education is the hold up.

March 6, 2018.
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The Wyoming Public Lands Day bill failed.

Prior to its failing, the name had been amended to be Wyoming's Multiple Use of Public Lands Day.  I'm all for multiple use, but that was a rather political change and not in the spirit of the bill.  At any rate, the bill died.

March 9, 2018

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A budget was passed on time, but the Legislature failed to come to an agreement on construction and school cuts.  Given that, they failed to conclude on time and will gather again later this week.  Saturday was supposed to be the end of the session.

March 12, 2018
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Lots of bills are heading towards the governor for signature.  It'll be interesting to see if any are vetoed.

One that is somewhat uncertain is the "Stand Your Ground" bill, a bill that turned out to be subject to some surprising controversy.  Governor Mead expressed concern about the original version of the bill which had a provision basically making a person who claimed to have stood their ground immune from suit.  The bill that passed, however, no longer reads that way and incorporates a reasonable man type standard, apparently.  That amendment drew the ire of the NRA and a local gun owners group which had the surprising counter reaction that Wyoming state senators, which are normally friendly to the NRA, openly balked at having pressure applied to them.  The amended statute was subsequently amended itself and everyone seems more or less satisfied with the current version of the bill, maybe.

I've questioned whether such a bill was necessary as there's not a big reason, in my view, to simply pass a bill that replicates a common law standard.  Be that as it may, this bill will almost certainly be signed into law as Every Town For Gun Safety, demonstrating that its leadership has mush for brains, at least as far as this state is concerned, took out a full page ad opposing its signature by the Governor.

Mush for brains.  Boiled mush.

An organization like Every Town For Gun Safety has to be run by an entire truckload of morons to think that putting a full page advertisement in a Wyoming newspaper doesn't instantly generate 167% opposition to its position.  The massive load of stupid that demonstrates is really blistering, but that sort of dimwitted behavior is common in the anti crowd in pro gun areas.

I doubt Mead would have vetoed the bill as written.  I suppose there's a chance he will. But now that Every Moron Gets his Own Stupid Ad has published, I suspect such thoughts have been driven from everyone's head.

Speaking of driving  thoughts from heads, the bill to help fund intrastate air travel, something Governor Mead has very much supported, has also gone to him for signature.

It's interesting to see how this has worked.  I think this is a great bill but I didn't think it would get far.  The fact that it did shows that the legislature really listened to the recent ENDOW study which stated reliable local air travel was a state must.

And then there's Chuck Gray and the legislators who take his view (at least locally, he seems to get the press).

Chuck Gray is a Casper legislator who stepped into local radio after graduating from the Wharton School of Business.  It doesn't hurt that the radio station was (or is) owned by his family.  He isn't from here, but he's taken the position of being an extreme conservative, putting him far to the right of the legislator who occupied his seat before him.  Gray is opposed to spending money, any money.

Now, the bill mentioned above had other opponents, to be sure, so singling out Gray is unfair.  But I suppose this shows my nativism.  Being born and raised here means that at some point you've been on the bottom end of the economic ladder, most likely.  That makes most of us pretty unsympathetic to extreme Tea Partism.  Like it or not, Wyoming's economy isn't a three legged stool, like Harriet Hageman likes to state, it's a four legged one and government expenditure is one of the legs.  A lot of that government money, over the years, has been spent on transportation.  Highways are government funded. The transcontinental railroad was government funded in a way.  If the legislature is serious about trying to diversify the economy, air travel is going to have to be supported for a time. There's no two ways about it.  Opposing  that is fine if you don't really depend on the economy at all.  If you do. . . well, perhaps you can still oppose it, but you better be able to cogently explain why your position in the world informs your position in a way that relates to the experiences of other people.  The experts have been saying a lack of intra state air travel retards our economy.  People in business, and I'm one of them, know this to be true.  It's not like British Overseas Airways is going to put in travel here without a little bit of encouragement starting it off. . the same sort of encouragement that every other major industry in Wyoming, whether we acknowledge it or not, has also had.

March 13, 2018 
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Bills Signed by Governor Mead on March 7, 2018

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Here is the list of the bills signed by Governor Mead:

	Enrolled Act	Bill Number	Title
1.	HEA0001	HB0019	Wyoming Money Transmitter Act-virtual currency exemption.
2.	HEA0002	HB0023	Audit requirements for conservation districts.
3.	HEA0003	HB0072	Ad valorem tax collections.
4.	HEA0004	HB0076	Supplemental security income program.
5.	HEA0005	HB0088	State construction department-amendments.

Here is the list of the bills Governor Mead signed March 9, 2018:

	Enrolled Act	Bill Number	Title
1.	HEA0006	HB0003	County clerk map recording fees-conforming amendment.
2.	HEA0007	HB0004	Investment of state funds-amendments.
3.	HEA0008	HB0009	Obsolete reporting-department of workforce services.
4.	HEA0009	HB0021	State parks designations-updates.
5.	HEA0010	HB0110	Wyoming retirement plans-member accounts.
6.	HEA0011	HB0058	Game animal licenses-limitations
7.	SEA0001	SF0018	Orphan site remediation funding.
8.	SEA0002	SF0016	Financial assurance-class I and V UIC wells.
9.	SEA0003	SF0008	Insurance-audited annual financial reports.
10.	SEA0004	SF0007	Insurance-corporate governance annual disclosure.
11.	SEA0005	SF0006	Real estate exemption restoration.
12.	SEA0006	SF0054	Water development project requirements.
13.	SEA0007	SF0005	Medicine Lodge state archaeological site.
14.	SEA0008	SF0053	Small water projects.
15.	SEA0009	SF0037	Purple Heart Day and state.
16.	SEA0010	SF0033	Military member spouse and children-resident tuition.
17.	SEA0011	SF0026	Nationwide multistate licensing system-collection agencies.
18.	SEA0012	SF0024	Court information technology equipment.
19.	SEA0013	SF0021	Required reports in adoptions.
20.	SEA0014	SF0020	Custody in the best interest of the children.
21.	SEA0015	SF0003	Antelope hunt licenses.
22.	SEA0016	SF0009	Insurance code revisions.
23.	SEA0017	SF0044	Fire protection revolving account.
24.	SEA0018	SF0002	Legislative budget.
25.	SEA0019	SF0050	Collection of state financial obligations.
26.	SEA0020	SF0025	Corrections exception to defense of habitation law.

Here is the list of the bills Governor Mead signed March 10, 2018:

	Enrolled Act	Bill Number	Title
1.	HEA0012	HB0164	Overweight vehicles-agriculture exemption.
2.	HEA0013	HB0100	State emergency response commission membership.
3.	HEA0014	HB0077	Instream flow consultant.
4.	HEA0015	HB0035	Motor club services updates.
5.	HEA0016	HB0034	Duplicate titles-motor vehicles.
6.	HEA0017	HB0033	School finance-capital construction amendments.
7.	HEA0018	HB0032	School finance-major maintenance formula.
8.	HEA0019	HB0018	Nonresident employer bonding.
9.	HEA0020	HB0017	Child support amendments.
10.	HEA0021	HB0010	Worker's compensation-extraterritorial reciprocity.
11.	HEA0022	HB0101	Electronic corporate records.
12.	HEA0023	HB0002	Election law violations-penalties and enforcement.
13.	HEA0024	HB0126	Limited liability companies-series.
14.	HEA0025	HB0022	Quebec 1 missile alert facility-fees.
15.	HEJR0001	HJ0002	Commercial driver's license-compact agreement.
16.	SEA0034	SF0111	Property taxation-digital currencies.
17.	HEA0027	HB0070	Open blockchain tokens-exemptions.

Here is the list of the bills Governor Mead signed on March 12, 2018:

	Enrolled Act	Bill Number	Title
1.	SEA0021	SF0031	Veterans’ skilled nursing center.
2.	SEA0022	SF0082	Miner’s hospital board account.
3.	SEA0023	SF0027	Excise tax audits.
4.	SEA0024	SF0081	Game and fish department-budget requests.
5.	SEA0025	SF0011	Public utility regulation-joint powers entities.
6.	SEA0026	SF0090	First judicial district-number of district judges.
7.	SEA0027	SF0010	Utilities-rate making.
8.	SEA0028	SF0041	Organ donation promotion-task force.
9.	SEA0029	SF0035	Military Service Relief Act additional protections.
10.	SEA0030	SF0060	Wyoming Women’s Suffrage Pathway-highway designation.
11.	SEA0031	SF0084	Motor vehicle registration-deployed military members.
12.	SEA0032	SF0069	2018 large project funding.
13.	SEA0033	SF0063	Interfund loan accounts and interest rates.
14.	SEJR001	SJ0002	150th Anniversary of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
15.	HEA0026	HB0125	Wyoming lottery revenues.
16.	HEA0028	HB0008	Stalking revisions.
17.	HEA0029	HB0028	Education reporting-children of military personnel.
18.	HEA0030	HB0031	Hathaway scholarship application deadline-extension.
19.	HEA0031	HB0061	Roadside waiver of property rights prohibited.
20.	HEA0032	HB0106	Municipal court authority-conditional suspension of fines.
21.	HEA0033	HB0108	Estelle Reel.
22.	HEA0034	HB0141	Concealed weapons in places of worship.
23.	HEA0035	HB0117	Domestic abuse-phone numbers.
24.	HEA0036	HB0099	Prescription and possession of FDA approved drugs.
25.	HEA0037	HB0029	Alternative school accountability.
26.	SEA0035	SF0089	Local government distributions.
27.	HEA0038	HB0144	Wyoming invests now exemption-amendments.
28.	HEA0039	HB0039	Wildlife conservation license plates.
29.	HEA0040	HB0084	Approval of bridge designs, plans and specifications.
30.	HEA0041	HB0170	Wyoming children's trust fund-amendments.
31.	HEA0042	HB0042	Justice reform-graduated sanctions.
32.	HEA0043	HB0172	Produced water treatment.
33.	HEA0044	HB0026	Post-conviction relief.
34.	HEA0047	HB0175	Common college transcripts.
35.	HEA0048	HB0036	Move over requirement.
36.	HEA0049	HB0014	Municipal jurisdiction.
37.	HEA0050	HB0157	Health care providers-sexual assault protections-2.
38.	HEA0051	HB0192	Legislator communications on recordings and broadcasts.
39.	HEA0052	HB0156	State songs.
40.	HEJR0002	HJ0005	Yellowstone and Grand Teton wildlife conservation fees.
41.	HEJR0003	HJ0008	150th Anniversary of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Bridger.

Here is the list of the bills Governor Mead signed on March 14, 2018:

	Enrolled Act	Bill Number	Title
1.	SEA0036	SF0100	Economic diversification-broadband services.
2.	SEA0037	SF0108	Economic diversification and development.
3.	SEA0038	SF0058	Game and fish licenses.
4.	SEA0039	SF0019	Uniformity in domestic violence law.
5.	SEA0040	SF0040	Commercial air service improvement.
6.	SEA0041	SF0017	Cease and transfer priority list.
7.	SEA0042	SF0030	Notice of hearing to reopen an estate-amendments.
8.	SEA0043	SF0057	Board of law examiners appointment-supreme court rules.
9.	SEA0044	SF0062	Omnibus water bill-planning.
10.	SEA0045	SF0075	Biological products-pharmacies.
11.	SEA0046	SF0083	Controlled substance prescription tracking.
12.	SEA0047	SF0066	Volunteer health care.
13.	SEA0048	SF0029	Education-computer science and computational thinking.
14.	SEA0049	SF0022	Orders of protection-revisions.
15.	SEA0050	SF0015	Large project account modifications.
16.	SEA0051	SF0068	Amendments to agency plans and new program review-2.
17.	SEA0052	SF0046	Elections-notices and resolutions.
18.	SEA0053	SF0013	School facility property insurance.
19.	SEA0054	SF0056	Real property as a collateral bond.
20.	SEA0055	SF0072	School finance recalibration-transportation.
21.	SEA0056	SF0079	Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft-regulation.
22.	SEA0057	SF0061	Hunting colors-fluorescent pink.
23.	SEA0058	SF0118	Kickstart Wyoming-economic diversification.
24.	SEA0059	SF0119	Workforce development-priority economic sector program.
25.	SEA0060	SF0078	Opioid addiction task force.
26.	SEA0061	SF0105	Drug Donation Program Act-expansion.
27.	SEA0062	SF0116	Retirement income security task force-2.
28.	SEA0063	SF0042	Professional licensing-applicant criminal records.
29.	SEA0064	SF0070	Revisor’s bill.
30.	SEA0066	SF0036	Veterans tuition program limits.
31.	SEA0067	SF0093	Child sexual abuse education and prevention.
32.	SEA0068	SF0034	Military spouse unemployment sunset repeal.
33.	SEA0069	SF0045	State fair board-2.
34.	SEA0070	SF0120	Government efficiency project.
35.	HEA0053	HB0006	Research and wildlife information-confidentiality.
36.	HEA0054	HB0162	Penitentiary savings fund-amendments.
37.	HEA0055	HB0129	Glider kit vehicles-title and registration.
38.	HEA0056	HB0093	Speeding fines amendments-2.
39.	HEA0057	HB0066	Purchase of water rights and facilities.
40.	HEA0058	HB0069	Impersonation through electronic means-spoofing.
41.	HEA0059	HB0086	Medicaid birth cost recovery.
42.	HEA0060	HB0119	Genetic information privacy.
43.	HEA0061	HB0040	Election Code revisions.
44.	HEA0062	HB0001	General government appropriations.
45.	HEA0064	HB0130	State fair endowment.
46.	HEA0065	HB0109	Public employee retirement plan-contributions.
47.	HEA0066	HB0078	Omnibus water bill-construction.

The following bill became law without the Governor’s signature on March 14, 2018:

1.

HEA0063

HB0168

Stand your Ground-2 (Sub #2)

The following bills were acted on with veto or line item vetoes on March 14, 2018:

1.	HEA0062	HB0001	General government appropriations. Budget bill line item vetoes.
2.	SEA0062	SF0116	Retirement income security task force-2. Line item veto
3.	SEA0065	SF0074	Crimes against critical infrastructure. Veto

March 16, 2018

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And s one of the most interesting budget session in some time has come to a close, with the final adjustments to the budget itself being the hold up to closure.

In the end, cuts were made to quite a few things, including education, but not as much as some wished for, which is likely a good thing.

There seemed to be a bit of a recognition by the Legislature that Wyoming's economy is, like it or not, a four legged stool, not a three legged one, and that had to be taken into account.  As part of that, the Legislature passed the bill which will help subsidize intra state air travel.  That's something I argued here should pass, even though I didn't think it would.  I'm both impressed and surprised that it did.

One thing that didn't surprise me was the passage of the Stand Your Ground bill, although I shared Governor Mead's skepticism that such a bill actually achieved much.  Wyoming has long used the common law in this area and the bill that passed actually isn't much different from t he common law, if at all.  Mead ended up not signing the bill, signalling his unease with it, and allowed it to pass into law without his signature.

That bill did see some surprising developments however.  An amendment drafted by Sen. Drew Perkins pretty much gutted much of it and drew the ire of the NRA and a local gun owners group, something we hardly ever see here.  They put public pressure on the Senators who in turn reacted back, showing that pushing Wyoming's legislature openly is a bad idea, even when that pushing is by an organization that most of the Legislators are sympathetic with.  There were amendments subsequent to that which reclaimed part of that ground, but in the end, as noted, the bill merely codified the common law.

At that point Every Town For Gun Safety entered the picture and guaranteed the bill would become law.  ETFGS acted like morons in taking out full page advertisements in a Wyoming newspaper, and buying the banner on that paper's website, as it was guaranteed to eliminate all opposition to the bill.

This is similar, I'd note, to what happened to Dan Neal when he ran for the Legislature last term.  I think Neal would have lost anyhow, but he was running a fairly strong race based on outdoors issues when some outside far left group came in and endorsed him. Game over. 

Another gun bill passed into law with the Governor's signature and really under the radar. The Wyoming Concealed Carry law was amended to take out the requirement that people who wish to carry concealed in church need the church "administrator's signature".  Now, in order to prevent people from carrying concealed in their churches, after July 1 when the bill becomes law, the church will have to post a sign indicating that carrying is prohibited.  Most churches are unlikely, I think, to even really know the law has changed.

That change came about due to the shooting in Texas and frankly I don't think it's a bad change.  It's just interesting how one bill got a lot of attention, and the other did not.

March 17, 2018.

120th Infantry, Col. William B. Cochran, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 16th, 1918

310 Auxiliary Remount Depot, Major Hayden W. Wagner, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 16th, 1918

113th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. J.A. Mack, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 16th 1918

Pie Day

Yeah!

Why can't there be at least one week in the Trump Administration . . .

which isn't emphasized by chaos?

Firing Rex Tillerson remotely.  Totally rude and scary.  Like Tillerson or not, he added an element of dignity to an administration otherwise lacking one.

Agreeing to meet the North Koreans and thereby giving them the gift of legitimacy they've been craving.

And then there's Stormy Daniels.

I'd note that the Democrats won yesterday in Pennsylvania.  It's difficult to not imagine the Democrats taking the House, and likely the Senate, in the next two elections.  Assuming, I suppose, that they don't impeach Trump first, which is increasingly likely, but which would likely be a strategy that backfires. 

It's obvious that nobody in the administration can influence Trump in any fashion.  He seems to like chaos, but that can't serve his interests forever.  Nor the country's.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 13

From our companion blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: March 13:  1918  The Ohio Oil Company commences drilling a well that would become the first Lance Creek area producing oil well.

I'm amazed that this is the first entry I've made featuring Lance Creek.

Lance Creek, Niobrara County, was the location of some major oil exploration for years and years.  It started, apparently, during World War One.  The town expanded massively during World War Two, but has fallen back into being a very small town today.

An accurate prediction? The Wyoming Tribune, March 13, 1918.

The Belgian minister of war was predicting a big German offensive. . . followed by Germany's defeat.

A big German offensive was widely predicated at the time.  A defeat behind it?  That's the first I've read of such a prediction.  We'll be seeing how accurate it was.

In other news, the American Army was starting to see some action.  And T.R.'s son Archie had been wounded in action.

105th Supply Train, Maj. J.W. Bradford commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 13, 1918

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018: March 4:  Photograph added for the outbreak of 1918 Flu at Camp Funston, Kansas . March 7:  Newspapers added for 1918 .  Students walko...

Eugene McCarthy takes 48% of the vote in the New Hampshire Primary. March 12, 1968.

And thus began the rapid decline of Lyndon Johnson's reelection chances. . . and ultimately the decline of any chance for the Democrats in 1968 as well.

Johnson would, correctly, attribute his flagging fortunes to the war news coming out of Vietnam, although its important to remember that ultimately, the voters did not go for the peace candidate in the fall.

Odds and ends of the Zeitgeist

I started this post quite a while ago, and then didn't get around to posting it.  As things have moved on, and therefore some of the things I wrote about are easy to misinterpret, I've thought about shelving this post from time to time.  Maybe I still will.  Or perhaps not.

The AR Again

One of the interesting things that's come up in the past few days since the terrible recent tragedy is that for the first time in a very long time, perhaps since the 1960s, there's some real consideration going on in the shooting community about a common class of firearm, that being the AR15 in its many variants.

Actually, let me rephrase that.  It isn't really on the AR15 per se, "in its many variants".  The focus is really on the carbine variant of the AR15 that mimics or comes close to mimicking the the Army's M4 carbine.  Having said that, there's a zillion tacticool versions of the AR out there.  So much so, that when you come across somebody at a range firing a service match rifle version of the AR that is the same in configuration as the M16A4 or M16A5 they look positively boring.  And outside of a single instance in a sporting goods store, you will not find the original version of the AR15 which was had the configuration of the M16 (not the M16A1) anywhere.  I don't know what happen to them, but they must look sad and tired now and you just don't see them.  Of course, the M16 and M16A1 were in fact rather sad compared to the M16A4 and A5.

Anyhow, the last time something like this happened was in the 1960s and trailing on into the 1970s.  While its been generally forgotten now, when the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed into law it had the support of the leadership of the NRA at the time.  There was really no Federal provisions regarding the sale of firearms prior to that, save for the National Firearms Act which regulated (but does not prohibit, contrary to widespread belief) fully automatic weapons.  The Gun Control Act of 1968 brought in a Federal system of registration (yes, its' registration, also contrary to the widespread popular belief that there is no gun registration in the United States), restricted sale of handguns and handgun ammunition to those 21 and over, required that the retail sellers of firearms be licensed by the Federal government and prohibited sale by mail, amongst other things. As noted, the leadership of the NRA was for it.

Following that a rebellion broke out in the NRA.  There had been state gun control bills prior to the 1968 and the NFA but a real fear broke out in some parts of the firearm community that the GCA would inevitably lead to some sort of more restrictive bills and perhaps even confiscation of some items.  Indeed, during the 1970s, when the focus was on handguns, the majority of Americans supported their being made illegal, a very severe view indeed.  Some states passed highly restrictive laws and ultimately a fight broke out in the NRA which lead to the old leadership falling and a new one, in the 1970s, coming in that had a no compromise on anything view.  

At the same time a change in the views of the firearms owning community slowly came in about some things, as well as in the general public.  Crime peaked out in the 1970s and began to decline and people became much less concerned about handguns.  Sport shooting of handguns also picked up.  An academic, John Lott, who was not a firearms owner or even fan studied the association of guns with crime and came out with the book "More Guns, Less Crime" which reflected his fairly unchallenged conclusions.  A "right to carry" movement broke out across the US which reflected two separate philosophies, depending upon where it was permitted or unpermitted, but which had widespread success. There's very little concern in most quarters about handguns today.

However, and this is leading (really) up to the point, something also happened in the firearms community about which I wrote earlier in my long missive"

Vietnam and the Law of Unintended Consequences: The AR15

I've been writing a lot, in contravention to our recent focus on 1915-17 in a distinct, sometimes daily, way, about the Vietnam War.  Indeed, it's always been an interest of mine and I have have several other threads in the hopper.

This one is one that I've hesitated to write about as I'm well aware that its really controversial.  So much so that it sparks rage in some people on both sides of a debate that rapidly become so vitriolic that they aren't part of a debate at all.

I speak of the AR15 rifle.Long winded vitriolic introduction

 Paratrooper in Vietnam armed with M16A1 rifles.  This trooper seems to have a cleaning brush sticking through the front swivel.  That's something I've never seen a photo of before, but in some photos you can see the assembled cleaning rods, designed to be carried disassembled in the stock, sticking through the ventilation holes of the front grip to be used an emergency ramrod in case the weapon jammed.

I've been repeating myself here a lot recently, so I'll avoid doing that here wholesale again, but there's something that I noted in that long post which is back in play now, and may remain in play and be a significant development. 

Back in the early 1960s when Colt introduced the AR15, which it had just acquired the manufacturing rights for, the rifle was disdained by a large part of the existing firearms community, as I wrote in my earlier post.  Serious shooters were not fans of the rifle.  Indeed, while most of them opposed gun control, there was a widespread and deep feeling that Colt had crossed a line by offering the rifle to the general public and there was widespread discontent about it.

The original AR15 was generally regarded by serious riflemen as junk, and that view is not uncommon today.  While military semi automatic rifle had gained popularity with some shooters, and were mandatory for National March shooters, who at that time shot the M1 Garand and the M14, the AR15 was viewed as being a crude weapon built for a single purpose.  Marksmen who admire the mechanical and firing qualities of the M1 and M14, and even the FAL, were not impressed at all by the AR15 (or the M16 for that matter).

At that time, there was a widely heard view that Colt was betraying the interest of the firearms community as the AR15 was good only for killing people, and truth be known good only for killing people in the fetid swamps of Southeast Asia.  Quite a few shooters thought Colt should discontinue offering the rifle.  Bill Ruger, who entered the 5.56 (.223 Rem) field with a competing rifle, the Mini14, which was built much more conventionally didn't go that far, but even he, the owner of a firearms manufacturing company, testified in Congress that Congress should ban large capacity magazines.  During his lifetime, to the ire of some shooters as thinking evolved, Sturm Ruger & Co. would not offer magazines that held more than five rounds to civilians.

Then something changed.

It's hard to say exactly how it came about, as it was subtle.  But the AR15 managed to become something that had a degree of civilian following.  It was still so small that in the mid 1980s none of the shooters I knew had one, and I can recall serious marksmen openly holding those who would admit to owning one in open disdain.  But in that same decade civilian semi automatic variants of the Soviet AK series of assault rifles came into the market and picked up a big following fairly quickly.

The AK has no marksmanship virtues at all and is a highly inaccurate rifle.  But its introduction into North American civilian sales (you could buy it in the US and Canada) meant that all of sudden there was a market for a cheap rifle that simply functioned.  The AR, its' Vietnam War competitor, was much more accurate by comparison and started to pick up as well.  In the same decade the Marine Corps redesigned the rifle to be much more accurate and then soon after that organizational body that controls National Match shooting mandated that the M16 type rifle take pride of place in those competitions, resulting in the phase out of the rifleman's M14 and M1 as the primary competition rifles in that class.

Soon after that, of course, came the "assault rifle ban" which was a negative gift of the AK rifles.  When that was repealed the AKs never really came back, but the ARs did in spades.

Indeed, they did way too much.

Perhaps due to age or acclimation, the old voices that held the AR in disdain were silenced.  Indeed, they were so silenced that when Jim Zumbo, a hunting and rifle writer, wrote against them in a sporting magazine, he lost his job.  Not only did the old voices simply quit speaking, perhaps as they were resigned to the AR, or had grown used to it, but it actually became impossible to criticize it on philosophical grounds (however a steady rear guard criticism of the rifle, often by veterans, on its junky action has never stopped).

Indeed, somehow or another a virtual cult of the AR developed in which it literally sucked all the air out of the room.  Truth be known it is simply not that good of weapon in any application.  In its rifle, rather than carbine, form it is accurate, but the gas system has been problematic from day one and remains so.  It's far from being the best military rifle around at the present time and it appears that the service only hangs on to it in anticipation of some sort of revolution in cartridges.  The Army and the Marines have toyed with replacing it for years and the Marines actually are in the form of the M27, a weapon that looks like it but which has a piston gas system.

Nonetheless M4 carbine variants have somehow flooded the market and are everywhere.  And with them is a seeming Tour Of Duty mentality in which it seems that many of those who buy the M4 imagine themselves in combat with the Taliban.

Some serious gun owners will tell you, if the room is quiet and there are no other ears, that there's very little reason for a person to own a M4 type carbine other than they're fun to shoot, which may be true.  There are reasons beyond that, and in recent years a certain type of sport shooting based on the old police obstacle course has developed in which they dominate.  And that type of sport shooting, or even just plinking with them, is fully legitimate and fine.  But the endless articles that appear here and there on "home defense" and "tactical" use of the M4, which is what is always featured, have done real damage to the sporting community and ought to cease.

That is the manifestation of the very problem the old riflemen of the 1960s and 70s worried about.  A lot of them had truly seen the elephant.  Almost ever adult male I knew at the time had served in World War Two or the Korean War.  They knew what combat was all about and most of them were not shy to voice the view that there was a time and place for it. But they didn't imagine combat in the streets of the United States even when, during the 1960s and early 70s, some of that was actually going on.  They weren't in favor of banning these rifles, but they were of the view that a person didn't need to imagine themselves fighting the Battle of Hue in your own neighborhood and that if you wanted to act like a commando you should join the Army.

And while its a little late in the day now, part of what might need to occur is a return to the view that shooters and sporting goods stores had in the 1970s. (NOTE, I started writing this prior to the recent news from Kroger and Dick's that they are discontinuing the sale of AR15s)  I can recall a local sporting goods store that had one AR15 in its rack that it basically wouldn't sell.  As it stocked Colt firearms, it was required by Colt to have an AR15 on hand.  It had one, but it priced it at a relatively high level and it actively discouraged people from buying it. . . and that's here in Wyoming where there's never been any sorts of support for gun control at all.

Now, any sporting goods store will order a rifle for you if you want one.  But most don't stock the various military battle rifles, some of which have fully legitimate sporting uses, and if somebody wants one they order it.  That means that most of the arms on the wall are not of this type. And that would be a good thing frankly.  And the entire cult of the armchair commando that has so taken over in certain sectors ought to cease as well.  Want to compete in a sport that requires the use of an AR type rifle? Fine, get one.  But should every magazine have a "home defense" and "tactical" columnist?  No.  That sort of thinking leads people to be generally afraid of every semi automatic arm, and for that matter, to think poorly of firearms owners in general.

Well, it seems that maybe some people who were in the cult of the AR are in fact reconsidering and there's a minor movement of that type, in which some people who were in it are getting rid of or even destroying their ARs.  I don't think they have to do that, but I do think that the entire concept in recent years that the AR is the only suitable rifle for anything was always off the mark.  If people who are shooters would take a look at this and decide to purchase something else that better suits their firearms use (you really don't need an AR for big game and if you are using one, you chose poorly), good.  If you need one for sporting use, okay.  But if this means that the chairborne commandos who imagine Stalingrad in the Midwest stop and getting a little more realistic about the world, great.  Of if you do feel that's for you. . . an Army recruiter is not far away.

One thing I didn't anticipate when I started this thread was the reaction of retailers to this last incident.  It's growing too large to ignore.  This too would have fit into that "we warned you" category that old firearms aficionados of the 70s would have warned about.  As noted in my earlier post on ARs, stores actually used to be reluctant to stock them.  Now all of a sudden some major retailers are refusing to.  Beyond that, some retailers are taking it out even on companies that are diversified and manufacture firearms even if they, the retailers, don't sell them.  REI, for example, has quit carrying products, such as the Camelback products, manufactured by a company that includes, in its product lines, Savage Firearms.

I frankly think that's a bit much and I thought, when I read that, it was particularly inappropriate as Savage, I thought, doesn't make a M4 carbine type rifle. In fact, it turns out they do.  I associate Savage mostly with really nice youth model .22s but at some point they joined the AR parade.  Sturm Ruger did too I'll note.

There's no telling where all of this will lead.  The firearms manufacturers were doing well under the Obama administration but have been doing poorly under the Trump administration as panic sales dropped off.  They're pretty vulnerable right now.  On top of it market consolidation hasn't been kind to them at all and some very old companies that did well as stand alone companies have not been doing well as branches of larger entities.  I frankly wonder to what extent some of that is due to the follow the leader type of thing we've been seeing going on.  Remington, for example, has been around for 200 years and has always gone its own way on everything, but it was purchased by a larger entity and sure enough it joined the AR parade although all of theirs are clearly tailored for hunting.

I'm not wishing any of these companies ill. Indeed, I'm not even arguing that the manufacture and sale of M4s should stop. But the focus on them has been over the top and that needs to stop.  The percentage of the sales that went to people who imagined fighting street battles in their neighborhoods has hurt everyone and that sort of thing needs to greatly diminish.  It may be the case that the trend went so darned far the reaction by way of market forces will now be real.

But maybe this is just the disgruntled voice of somebody who has handled plenty of ARs in the M16 form and never liked them.  Or the voice of somebody who has been to the nearby city range and found that its take up completely by ARs that are just burning through ammunition.  But, that is the right of the owners of those, if they wish to do that.  Indeed, my comments smack of the Col. Townsend Whelen elitist type, I admit.

Entertainment Hypocrisy

As I was sick recently, and still am, I've caught a lot of television.  I also caught some of the Oscars.

People have said, regarding the current episodes, that "something has changed" in us. Something sure has.  And one of those things is that since the mid 1960s the entertainment industry has just rocketed into complete non standards.

During the recent Oscars the Hollywood set went into a full court press to show us how enlightened they are. Well, they aren't.

One wag recently noted the irony when he noted that one of the hosts in the recent event was  "the guy who hosted the breast-obsessed 'Man Show' " in order to "give awards to people who spent decades doing business with Harvey Weinstein" and observed, satirically, "you know Hollywood has gotten serious about sexual harassment."

Exactly.

Hollywood, to be followed by liberal elites, has worked for decades to make money off of what is in fact pornography combined with a pornographic depiction of violence. There's no two ways about it.  While sick, I happened to click past, at one time or another, The Boondock Saints, The Replacement Killers, Hell or High Water and John Wick.  No matter what you may otherwise think of them, each of them has a cartoon version of violence that glorifies it.

At the same time traditional values, and particularly Christian values, have been sidelined.  The past Oscars were bold in their endorsement of views that were only recently regarded as morally depraved and demand that they be accepted.

This is part of what's going on.  You can't, really, go around depicting all women as sexual toys and all violence as glamorous and then demand that powerful men not view women as toys and that those who are troubled not resort to violence.  That has about as much credence as trying to start an Adolf Eichman branch of the Jewish Anti Defamation League.

One friend of mine sent me a link to a blog I otherwise don't know anything about, but the point was made there very bluntly, and there is one.

To those on the Left, shrieking for the government to make the pain stop by exerting more control — you celebrities, politicians, editors, and yes, you goodthinkful liberals that I know personally here in New York, many of whom I have called friends — I’ll say this:

While you were, over the last half-century, systematically destroying, displacing, denouncing, and dismantling the historic American nation and its civil society — all moral norms, every basis of public commonality, all respect for our history and heritage, public expression of religion, the nuclear family, sexual restraint, and every natural structure and category and hierarchy that held civilization together and gave young people a framework within which to learn dignity and duty and gratitude and belonging and meaning and self-control — while you were doing all that, what did you think was going to happen? And now you want to “fix” the moral and social wreckage you’ve created by disarming us against your future predations upon our rights, our culture, and upon the society we still hope, against hope, to restore and preserve?

Go to hell. This sickness is your fault, not ours. You will not degrade us any longer. If you want our arms, come and take them.

Pretty blunt, but there is a point to it, no doubt.

Speaking of hypocrisy a bit, we now have a really weird set of ironies going on in regard to Dick's Sporting Goods.  Dick's is widely noted to have discontinued the sale of AR15s when in fact they didn't offer them anyhow.  Apparently a subsidiary store, Field and Stream, did, and they'll be discontinuing the sales. So in reality, Dick's isn't anything under its own name, but a company it owns and controls which is smaller is.

So be it, in my view. Stores can sell whatever they want, and as noted above I think the mass stocking of ARs of the M4 type is overdone.  But while this move is lauded on the left it's interesting to note how the same groups don't really see the hypocrisy in their position  Indeed, neither side does here.  Some in the pro gun camp are really mad at Dick's, which they should not be.  But on the left, if you think its nifty and keen that a retailer can vote with their cash register, shouldn't that right be universal?  In other words, if you think it brave of a retailer to say "no" to AR money, why isn't it brave of a retailer to say no to same gender wedding cakes for which such a retailer would also be giving up some cash?

Of course, in the end, it's because most people are in for their positions as that's their position, not because they've thought the greater concept of those positions out.  And that's the same reason that Hollywood can claim itself brave publicly but serve up a steady offering of violence and dimwitted easy moral tarts otherwise.

The NRA

One of the real risks when you are a successful powerful organization is overplaying your hand.  People within the NRA but not within the hard core of it have worried about that for years.

The NRA does a lot of things other than act as a lobby, if it can legitimately be regarded as a lobby at all.  It does a tremendous number of things in the are of gun safety and the shooting sports.  It's a tremendously important and effective, and very sober, organization within the shooting sports.  There are things that it does, indeed most of what it does, that anyone who is familiar with them would wholeheartedly agree with, whether or not they shoot at all.  But the thing people know the most about the NRA is is absolute opposition to gun control.

I suspect that people who say "the NRA doesn't represent the voice of most gun owners" are a bit delusional.  Probably the average firearms owner in fact doesn't agree with the NRA on everything, but most don't pay that much attention to 100% of the NRA's pronouncements.  On average, I think the average gun owner generally agrees with the NRA most of the time.

Be that as it may, starting during the Obama Administration its hard not to conclude that the NRA began to overplay its political hand.  For most of the Obama Administration the administration did absolutely nothing regarding firearms whatsoever, but to listen to the NRA the government was about to break down doors and take BB guns.  That wasn't true.  Finally in the last couple of years of his administration Obama began to make a few statements about gun control, vaguely.  By and large, however, the Obama Administration was not hostile to gun ownership up until the last quarter of its existence.  During that last 1/4, however, it turned hard left on a lot of things.

But in doing that you have to ask the question if President Obama got so little credit for being moderate in this area, as well as others, that he ultimately lost any incentive whatsoever to be moderate.  If he had come out in a press conference with a Thompson submachinegun and argued for putting in a shooting range in Rock Creek Park the NRA would probably still have proclaimed him a real bastard.  At some point, you will give up.

Indeed, when Trump ran the NRA went whole hog in favor of him and that has made a lot of people in the shooting community a bit queasy.  That's strongly hitching your wagon to a single political horse and it's risky.  His entire administration, however, they've been as strident as ever in their written text. A recent issue of their magazine states that the Democrats are Socialist and must be opposed for that reason.

That really strays from common sense. The Democrats are Socialist and there's really no reason to believe that Socialist are actually any more or less in favor of guns than anyone else.  Francois Mitterand was a Socialist and was a huge Reagan ally.  Trotsky was a duck hunter, probably the only thing about him that a person can really admire.  Stuff like the Democrats are Socialist are over the top and at some point the NRA isn't going to be listened to just for saying things like that.

But then. . .

Banners proving the opposite point

One thing that the NRA can consistently rely up on for people in the other camp to come out as rampaging extremist in their own right.

It's well proven that gun control basically achieves nothing.  If you are going to have any "gun control" that has any sort of impact, what you are really doing is adjusting along the margins, that's it.  People who want to ban this or that are pretty ready to believe things which simply aren't true and which aren't going to do anything, and never had.

Recently as study, but a liberal entity, not a conservative one, came to the conclusion that Canadian and Australian gun provisions, much celebrated on the left, do pretty much nothing at all in the area of achieving anything. That doesn't keep the press and banners from citing to these examples constantly.  Nobody, I'll note, ever cites to Canadian actions which would amount to rampaging examples of unconstitutional restriction of free speech as something we wish to emulate, nor does anyone, curiously, ever cite to the Australian examples of immigration control, which would make American adjustments in that area look minor at best.  The point is, that when these examples are cherry picked out they're out of context to start with and don't hold up overall, when closely examined.

The worst examples are when banners pick some example from a culture we don't really follow in this area and then cite it.  I've seen, for example, citations to Japan's provisions which are wildly inaccurate.  One claimed, for example, that in Japan only air rifles are allowed.  No, spanky, you can own rifles and shotguns in Japan.  It's not easy, compared to the United States, but it's hardly impossible.

Japan has a massive suicide rate and features mass knife attacks as well.  That's rarely mentioned.  Indeed, it's hardly ever mentioned that problems with violence in any one society tend to follow certain cultural norms that go very far back in their history.  Asia tends to feature edged weapon attacks and has, well. . . forever.  The Japanese culture favored edged weapons for certain things well after firearms became available and it still does.  What's that mean?  I don't know, as I'm not a student of Japanese culture, but it's part of the overall human picture.

Which gets us up to something already noted above.  We've been enduring a fifty year assault on our own culture in some significant ways.  By and large violence has declined everywhere world wide, but standards have evaporated and society wide moral guides are missing.  That part of this story is one that needs to be addressed more than anything else.

But then

The Extremist Extremist

One thing that people who don't really follow this stuff likely don't realize, or at least that those who don't follow the firearms side of the argument likely don't realize, is that while people are likely off when they say "the NRA doesn't represent most firearms" owners is that, while they are probably wrong, some of the firearms owners who the NRA doesn't represent believe that the NRA is in bed with liberal left gun banners.

Yes, that's completely absurd, but it shows how extreme this argument has really become.

Spend any time around firearms fans and you'll eventually run into people who seriously believe that the NRA doesn't do anything at all to protect firearms owners.  A lot of these people have really extreme ideas about what the 2nd Amendment means and pretty much feel that there should be no restrictions on anything at all.

I've basically covered these folks in a way on the discussion above about the AR, but folks who believe that regulations on bump stocks are to be opposed at all costs and if you don't oppose them you are a Communist are really, really detrimental to the public support of firearms.  If significant controls ever come about, these people will be partially to thank/blame for that. 

Likewise, there are people who pretty much think the world should be covered in nerf, beef should be banned, and everybody ought to be an urban tight pants wearing boring dullard.  They wonder why their obviously, in their mind, superior view isn't adopted by anyone.  Well, that's because anyone listening to them who is rational is repelled by their argument.

It was Barry Goldwater who proclaimed that "extremism in the defense of liberty is not vice."  And he was right.  Extremism for a well though out point isn't a vice either. But knee jerk extremism isn't a virtue.  It is a vice.

21

It appears some various states will raise the age requirement for purchasing semi automatic rifles to 21 years of age.

I guess that might be a good thing.  It seems well established that up until that age a lot of young men exhibit some rather poor choices. After that, people seem stabilized into things to some greater degree.  The whole thing is rather spastic, however, in regards to "the age of majority".  Why can you drive at 16, marry at 18 (and let's not get into the absurd press reports that "Americans can marry at 12!" or other weird exceptions to the rule), and have to register for the draft at 18.  It's really strange.

Arming Teachers.

There's been a lot of discussion on arming teachers.

I've been blunt on this in the past, and will be here again.  I think that people who think the police can handle everything are highly naive.

I've explained my views here before and I've tried not to be insulting to policemen, who I have a lot of respect for around here.  I don't have nearly the same level of respect, I'll be quite frank, for the marksmanship abilities of east coast police forces.

Indeed, a very liberal friend of mine posted an item that policemen only hit their mark 16% of the time in average armed encounters, his point being that we should think of how bad citizens will be compared to these trained professionals. Well, if we take into account that a lot of those armed encounters are by big city policemen, I don't doubt that the hits are low.  Many big city departments have policemen who are crappy shots.

This brings me back to my point on concealed carry and people who will engage in it.  Most people won't, but of those who do, most are going to take the effort to train themselves.  They'll be at least as good of shots as policemen are, I suspect, and chances are, probably better.

An aspect of this gets back, I'd note, into the left/right divide.  When guys like Roger Moore were advocating for eliminating eons old definitions on what makes up a marriage, they'd like to say "if you are opposed to marrying somebody of your own gender for goodness sakes don't", completely missing  the nature of the argument.  Oddly, here, the same argument by the same crowed, which applies better, is never made.

If you are a teacher opposed to carrying a concealed weapon. . . don't.

That part of the argument is a real part.  A lot of the argument here is treated as if some body is going to require armed teachers.  Not hardly.  The option is to allow those who would undergo the necessary training, etc., to so carry.

There's something at some point that's a little cowardly about not, at the end of the day, allowing concealed carry in some circumstances.  The question is where to draw that line, but the arguments against allowing teachers to do so are mostly based on emotion or bad arguments.  

The underlying problem

At least 19 people were killed and 26 injured in a stabbing spree at a facility for disabled people west of Tokyo, making it one of Japan's deadliest mass killings since World War II. Nine men and 10 women, ranging in age from 18 to 70, were killed in the attack.

From 2016.

At the end of the day there's something amiss with modern society.  In all of the spilled ink on this topic there's next to nothing that notes this.  I've come back to it again and again.  

U. S. Soldiers with German pistol. March 11, 1918.

Corporal Howard Thompson and James H. White who were part of a group that killed and captured several Germans in no man's land on March 7, 1918. Thompson holds a pistol taken from a German soldier killed by White. Photograph taken in Ancerviller, France, March 11, 1918.

American soldiers of the Machine Gun Battalion, Company G, Second Brigade, gathered around outdoor kitchen in Hermitage, France during World War I on March 11, 1918.

Set your clock ahead. . . now

Yes, the biannual fiction of changing the time has struck again.  Right now, you need to "spring forward".

123rd Infantry, Col. S. W. Kirkpatrick, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Georgia. March 11, 1918.

106th Sanitary Train, Major S.N. Keenen, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Georgia. March 11, 1918.

Birds eye view of 29th Division, Camp McClellan, Anniston, Alabama. March 11, 1918.

Birds eye view of Camp Joseph E. Johnston, Florida. March 11, 1918

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Rawlins Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Rawlins Wyoming:

This is St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Rawlins Wyoming.  This church was completed in 1916, and is probably the most prominent building in Rawlins, even taking into account that that Rawlin's Carbon County Courthouse occupied an entire city block.  St. Joseph's is visible from nearly any location in Rawlin's.

The Church is one of the most unique Catholic Churches in Wyoming, and features a copper dome.

Poster Saturday. First Division

The Best Posts of the Week of March 4, 2018

Best post of the week of March 4, 2018.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 4, 1918 The start of the 1918 Flu Epidemic

 Soldiers with the Flu, Camp Funston, 1918.

Lex Anteinternet: On being sick

The 1918 Flu Epidemic. How did it impact your family?

International Women's Day, 2018

And on this day in 1968

The town of Acme Wyoming, depicted in the post card above in 1910, the year of its founding, sold to a group of Chicago investors.  It wouldn't reverse the town's fading fortunes.  It's a ghost town now.

Jimi Hendrix and his Experience played a two set concert at the Washington Hilton Hotel.  Odd to think of Hendrix playing a hotel venue.  The Jimi Hendrix Experience headlined the event, which also featured The Soft Machine.

North Vietnam outlawed opposition to the North's effort in the war in the South. . . not that this wasn't basically illegal anyway.

Robert Kennedy, edging up on a form announcement of his candidacy for the Oval office, went to Delano, California, the headquarters for the United Farm Workers, and after Mass spoke in solidarity with Cesar Chavez.

Actress Helen Walker died of cancer at age 47.

That dreated time change. . . Daylight Saving Time Changes 1918 in Paris, Île-de-France, France

So, in 1918, in Paris, time leaped ahead and an hour of March 9 was lost.  At 11:00 p.m. March 9, it became 12:00, March 10.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech at 1199 - March 10, 1968

The ceremony of "Escort to the Standard", 114th Field Artillery, Lt. Col. Thomas D. Osborne, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 10th, 1918

Camp Sevier, S.C., March 10, 1918

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018: March 4:  Photograph added for the outbreak of 1918 Flu at Camp Funston, Kansas . March 7:  Newspapers added for 1918 .  Students walko...

Elmore James - "It hurts Me Too" | Remastered

115th Field Artillery, Col. John T. Geary, commanding; Capt. Max C. McKay, adjutant, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918

115th Field Artillery, Col. John T. Geary, commanding; Capt. Max C. McKay, adjutant, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918.

This depicts, of course, the 115th FA Rgt. of the U.S. 11th Division in 1918.  Not the 115th FA Bde which is associated with the National Guard.

Grand Review, 40th Division, Camp Kearny, California. March 9th, 1918

118th Infantry, Col. H.H. Pattison commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918

A Trade War?

 Electric steel furnace, 1941.

I've mentioned more than one time that I regard Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post as a snot.  The youthful Ivy League educated Rampell doesn't have the experience at anything real necessary for her opinions usually to be worth considering.

I note that as her most recent article on the upcoming, apparently, Trump tariffs was a really good one, and she deserves credit for it.

I'd think that, of course, as it points out something that I already have in regard to coal, that being the advance of technology and how that plays out in trends of production.  Indeed, on her article on American steel production and tariffs (which isn't much longer than a lot of my longer articles here. . .indeed it's shorter, she points out, correctly:

But here, too, Trump ignores the bigger force at work: robots. Like steel, coal extraction has seen big productivity gains. Coal has also been displaced by natural gas, which itself has seen gigantic technological gains in the form of fracking.

Yup.

Anyhow, on steel, Rampell points out:

We're producing about as much steel today as we did 30 years ago. But we're doing it with less than half the workers. That's primarily because of technological advances -- or, to oversimplify, robots.

The story is the same in many industries. As Chad Syverson, an economics professor at University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, puts it: "We get better and better at making things, and we've needed fewer and fewer people to make those things."

The steel industry in particular has been transformed in recent decades. It shifted away from vertically integrated plants that smelted their own steel from scratch toward more-efficient, highly automated "mini-mills," which primarily recycle existing steel and employ many fewer people.

Thirty years ago was around 1990, which was hardly the golden age of American steel, it should be noted.  But that's part of the problem as well.  Rampell correctly points out that technology has moved on and the way steel has produced in the past thirty years has changed.

Nothing is bringing the smelting methods of 1990 back.  That era is over.  A new one is here and tariffs aren't going to impact that at all.  And if 1990 isn't coming back, 1930 really, or perhaps more accurately 1970, really isn't.

And when people think of this topic, if they're in favor of this move, that's what they're really thinking of.  Indeed, the Trump spokesman who spoke in favor of the tariffs on the weekend show made that plain, pointing out that our current favorable treatment of foreign steel came about following World War Two, when we were trying to help restart the world economy.

Our policies then may or may not have been in error.  No matter what was the case, if we really intended to address the decline of American steel through tariffs, it would really have been the 1970s when we should have done it.  We didn't.  It's too late now, the industry moved on in the environment that existed.  And part of that environment is radically new production environment.

Unlike coal, steel (and aluminum) aren't in a long term global slide.  But production methods are changing. They were never static.  Tariffs, however, don't change much in how they operate from year to year.  Tariffs here are, frankly, way too late.

Blog Mirror: March 8, 1918: The United States Demands to Repeal the Taxes on Oil

March 8, 1918: The United States Demands to Repeal the Taxes on Oil

Some of the headlines from a century ago have an oddly familiar echo to them today.

International Women's Day, 2018

Today is International Women's Day, as March 8 always is.

I've put this poster up before, it apparently means something like "let's rebuild together", perhaps an appropriate slogan for International Women's Day 2018.

I'm not sure what I make of this day, as I find myself in the category, quite often, of marveling at modern contemporary society struggling to cure its ills created by becoming too modern by reaching vaguely out towards the standards of the past.  And frankly International Women's Day has a rather Communist, if you will, sound to it.

German "Women's Day" poster from 1914.  This poster was rather obviously sponsored by the German Socialist left.  It was also banned by the Imperial German government.

None of which would mean that the day, which has been endorsed for some time by the United Nations, isn't legitimate.  Nor would my comments suggest that women don't deserve an International Day.  Indeed they do.

And on that, the theme for 2018 perhaps very ably demonstrates that.  The theme this year is "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives."  The UN says of this year's theme:

This year’s theme captures the vibrant life of the women activists whose passion and commitment have won women’s rights over the generations, and successfully brought change. We celebrate an unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality, safety and justice, recognizing the tireless work of activists who have been central to this global push for gender equality.

All that's probably true, and indeed brave women all over the world do struggle as noted.  Cudos to the UN for noting it, even if the UN rather oddly regards nations co-equally that abuse women's rights, as well as act anti democratically in all sorts of other ways.

In the US I suspect that there won't be much attention to the plight of rural women around the globe. There should be, but we're in the second half of the "Me Too" era which demonstrates a different set of problems. . . maybe. . . for women. An age old one that social progressive keep trying to solve by suggesting that that they've discovered a new standard that's actually a very, very old one.  That's had its own interesting dynamics, as those same forces struggle not to admit the historical truth that equality for women is a movement that's not only western, but Christian.  There's a reason that western societies are in the forefront of this movement, and always have been, and that's where that reason is to be found.

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018: March 4:  Photograph added for the outbreak of 1918 Flu at Camp Funston, Kansas . March 7:  Newspapers added for 1918 .  Students walko...

Smiling Artillerymen with Red Cross supplies, 5th FA, 1st Division. March 7, 1918.

From the National Archives Blog.

March 7, 1918. Not knowing when to get up from the table. Leaving after having gotten there late. Villa resumes losing and acts spiteful to foreigners. . . except the Germans.

The Russians had surrendered.  Even at that, the Germans kept taking ground. . . and all while they presumably are getting ready for a Spring Offensive in the West designed to win the war prior to millions of fresh American troops coming into action.

Romania, spelled differently in those days, hadn't been at war with the Central Powers for long and it was also getting out.  You have to wonder why they even wanted in the war in the first place. By the time they got in, its horrific nature was pretty plain.

And if reports were correct, Villa's fortunes were not going well, and he was lashing out.

Rouge Bouquet- A poem by Joyce Kilmer set to music (about the March 7, 1918 event involving the Fighting 69th).

Mid Week At Work: U.S. Foresters in France, March 7, 1918.

105th Engineers, Lt. Col. Joseph Hyde Pratt, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 7th, 1918

Mid Week At Work: Paying the (Federal Government's) bills.

Irish American tenor John McCormack writing a $75,000 check for his taxes as Mark Eisner, Collector of Internal Revenue for the Third New York District sits at table with him.

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for March, 2018: March 4:  Photograph added for the outbreak of 1918 Flu at Camp Funston, Kansas . March 7:  Newspapers added for 1918 .

The Jeep to receive competition from the Ghost of Jeeps Past?

Folks who stop in here from time to time know that I not only drive a Jeep, I'm on my third Jeep now and I use the Jeep I currently have, the best one I've ever had, as my daily driver.  I love it.

Which hasn't stopped me from lamenting the sad abandonment of the 1/4 ton 4x4 truck by the automobile industry such that what were once a proud assortment of semi dangerous off road utility vehicles is down, now, to just the Jeep.  Indeed, the SUV has gone from a collection of off road vehicles to a bunch of wimpy urban soccer transporters.  Bleh.  And Chrysler Fiat, having a really great product where it's the only one in the field, actually was pondering last year selling the product line to a Chinese fan, which might kill it with fickle Jeep owners.

Well, perhaps a slight turn of events has occurred as the Jeep is now getting competition from. . .itself.

Eh?

Yes, truly.

One of the oddities of the 4x4 around the world is that there are actually a fair collection of really rugged 4x4s made globally that never see the light of day in the US for a variety for reasons.  As, contrary to what people in the Western World think, the entire globe isn't made up of a bunch of Hollywood influenced narcissists in touch with their feelings as long as that doesn't take them much past the city park and transporting sissypooh hounds with vegan dog treats, there's a real market in a lot of places.  Toyota, fwiw, has a lot of that market sewed up globally with vehicles that it doesn't offer here, less it make the tight trouser crowed cry, but they aren't the only ones.

Indeed, one of the oddities of the 4x4 story around the world is that American military vehicles of the 40s, 50s, and 60s received a lot of local production and they still do.  We just don't think of them here.  Included in that production are Japanese and Indian versions of the Jeep.

Well, now Mahindra, an Indian company, has determined to open up a production line in the United States to sell the Mahindra Roxor.  The Roxor is a diesel engined M38A1. . the early CJ5 to most of you.

Being sold as "off road only", it will only get up to 45 mph. . . but then early Jeeps were slow and the diesel Jeeps used by various armies were not speedy.

I hope it does well.  It's taking on a titan. . even if a wounded one.

The 1918 Flu Epidemic. How did it impact your family?

We noted the start of the 1918 Flu Epidemic yesterday, the date it broke forth at Camp Funston, Kansas.

Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming's History: March 4, 1918 The st...:  Soldiers with the Flu, Camp Funston, 1918. Today In Wyoming's History: March 4 : 1918 Mess Sergeant Albert Gitchell  reported ...

Your family was impacted. Every family in the world was.  Most pretty dramatically.  Do you know how it impacted your own family?

If you do, let us know.

I know that it infected my mother's aunt Patricia, after whom she was named.  Like a lot of the young victims of the flu, it didn't kill her right away.  She "recovered", but never really recovered, and died a couple of years later.  Her health destroyed by the event.