The bill, that is, to tax the income of large out of state retailers.
Senator Cale Case, the conservative Fremont County legislator, favored the bill and, as a local businessman, was well situated to note that out of state retailers had taken advantage of Wyoming. In the end, that didn't matter as the on slot of lobbyist and what not who descended on Cheyenne and the editorial pages of the newspapers, and which spread out to local Facebook campaigns and apparently lots of emails, raised the traditional fear in Wyoming of an income tax.
So the bill died.
In letting it die, the legislature, in a time in which money is short, basically voted to let those large out of state retailers keep money they'd already budgeted into their costs. So Wyoming consumers will continue to pay the same amount for things they buy at Sam's Club or Walmart. The retailer will continue to keep the part they budgeted for taxes but which Wyoming doesn't impose. Local businesses that struggle against big box giants will continue to do so, but then they would have anyhow.
The Tribune quoted Case, who delivered an apparently impassioned speech from the floor as stating:
When (small businesses) made profits,
those profits stayed in the community,” he said. “Now, they’re scattered
to stockholders all over the world. None of these companies’
headquarters are here; none of the value is spread over here.
And
Most people haven’t thought about it for five minutes when they send me an email, saying they don’t support the tax,"
No matter, the Senator who was responsible for keeping the bill from coming to a vote even apparently disputed that Wyoming really has a budget problem, which is contrary to the general view.
Which gets to why this likely didn't pass, it's a matter of tax philosophies.
Yes, philosophies, a plural.
Now, we can't simply discount the onslaught of opposition, with most of that opposition really centered outside of our borders. I understand why outfits like WalMart oppose a bill like this. . . they get to keep the money. In their view, as most people identify their economic interest with societies' best interest, they likely feel that makes their bottom lines better and that's better for everyone. If it means the demise of small businesses locally, well that's just progress or its not really thought of at all.
Indeed, for those who have grown up in the big box era, and that's now a lot of people, that's likely what the state of the world simply is like. There are a fair number of younger people who oppose big box retailers on a philosophical basis, but most people don't think of things like that. So its easy for the Wyomingites who oppose income taxation in general to view this bill with suspicion.
And then there are those who regard a bill like this as the foot in the door, or the camel's nose under the tent, or stepping out on a slippery slope, or whatever the proper analogy is. The thought is sure, I won't be paying an income tax today. . . but maybe in the future an income tax is expanded to apply to my business. . . or maybe I'll cross a state border and some other state will tax me if I get big (which in fact is already the case, they would).
Finally, there are those who really don't believe that the state has an income problem, but a spending one. The head of the committee that that killed the bill seems to be taking that view. That same view was close to the "starve the government into conservatism" approach that some in the George Bush II administration advocated. No money, smaller government, was the logic. That only partially worked in the Federal Government, but because the state government works differently, it really could have an impact of that type locally. When things drop away, they tend to be the things that are more liberal, so to speak, than conservative.
And finally, there are those who oppose taxation that has a philosophical underpinning, which it can be argued that this might. Closely related to that are those who simply oppose taxation except as necessary, on a philosophical basis.
Conversely, there are those who favor it, and Case was coming close to making a classic Distributist argument in his comments. Tax the large out of state retailers to try to benefit the small local ones. There's a real logic to that, but in order to make that work, the tax would have to be at a much, much, higher level. Of course, Case didn't advocate that actually, but rather simply noted that this was a way for the state to try to recapture money it lost when local retailers went out of business.
Anyway you look at it, this effort appears dead this year and will likely be for the next several. Long term, what happens in the state's economy, something we've been recently exploring, may determine what the future of such efforts will have to be.
Really interesting heavy metal treatment of Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing.
Sultans of Swing was the then unknown rock band's tribute to a south London jazz band by that name, that one of the band's members had actually heard when stopping in a bar to get out of the rain, and in which a member of the jazz band actually did say "one more think. . . we are the Sultans of Swing". The tribune song followed.
The song has always been an interesting one in that its a rock bands tribute to a jazz band which is getting ignored in the rock and roll era. The "crowd of young boys hanging around in the corner" are criticized as they don't like jazz as it "ain't what they call rock and roll".
Dire Straits is a long ways from heavy metal but the song makes the transition surprisingly well in this mixed heavy metal/guitar rock tribune. It's odd to think of how the song has that sort of staying power. Mary Spender is a rock guitarist who has come up solely through net exposure and who is the representative of a line of guitars. So the ironies of the song continue on it seems.
I've tried to get this topic rolling here a couple of times, without much luck (as I'm the only one who stops in here). None the less, here's another go at it:
If you can log in at SMH, please post an answer. If not, think about giving one here!
My prior efforts here:
I'm taking a bit of a poll, out of curiosity. It's decidedly unscientific, of course. Anyhow, of those people who stop in here (mostly just me, of course) how many have been in a career where they worked with animals.
If you have not, and most people will have not, how far back, if you know, do you have to go to find a person in your family who had a job working with animals. Any kind of job, farmer, rancher, artilleryman, whatever.
Nice photo showing urban draft horses. Draft horses were a huge segment of the horse population up until mid 20th Century, with some railroads owning enormous numbers for in city freighting. Urban drafts dominated the heavy horse market.
The
Manitoba Cartage & Warehousing Co. was extensively engaged in
agriculture and the breeding of Clydesdale horses. This is their award
winning six horse hitch in Toronto in 1929. Photo by Cook and Gormley.
Recently there's been some queries about the procurement of horses by the various armies early in World War One. It's popularly imagined that World War One was the end of the military horse era, but it wasn't. Millions of horses were used in the war, particularly in the role of draft animals for transport and artillery, and the procurement of horses was a really big deal.
Anyhow, while this thread doesn't really deal with the topic, directly, of the military use of horses and World War One is long enough ago now that darned near everyone who served in it has passed on, there's some interesting topics that this raises, that I'm linking in here
I was a participant in a conversation the other day when somebody volunteered an opinion I hadn't thought of, specifically regarding the practice of law. That this would end up being posted here, as a comment, I wouldn't have anticipated, but it was an interesting observation.
The specific observation was that the person making the query noted that it must have been enjoyable for some circuit riding lawyers of old to practice because of they rode. That's an interesting observation. It is true that American lawyers were sort of a mounted profession at one time, riding the circuit from town to town.At least John Adams wrote of that in sort of romantic terms. Adams liked horses and he liked riding the circuit. He actually bought his last horse, to train, while he was in his 80s.
I'm sure that not everyone who rode a circuit liked it, but what that does cause me to wonder about is the extent to which everyday life for many people once involved animals, and now does not. Now it involves pets for many people, but that's the note same thing. The circuit riding lawyers horse, the ice man's draft horse, and so on were working companions. I wonder if we haven't lost something, now that they're gone?
Epilogue 4
I've recently added a poll on this topic, for those who might find it interesting, now that there's a poll feature.
Epilogue 5
City of Houston, mounted police.
Epilogue 6
Recently this topic came up on the World War Two list in the context of armies that used mounted forces during World War Two, which is actually all of them. This is a misunderstood part of the history of the Second World War, but all armies used horses to greater or lessor degrees. In response that discussion, the bulk of which I left out, I noted this minor item in regards to the Marines on Okinawa (in addition to a lot of other items);
"Okinawa into service to a very limited extent, showing I
guess how that generation contained people who retained equine knowledge."
That brought this response from another poster:
Pat,
That's an interesting point...how widespread would
horse-knowledge be among Americans in say 1940? I would guess that a lot of
farm life was still dictated by animal power, even though tractors (I am
assuming here) had made inroads to American farm since the Model T. I have seen
video of Model T's being used in all manners on a farm (using the tires to
drive farm equipment via a belt for example).
I replied:
I'll babble on a bit as this is one of my favorite
topics.Indeed, I can probably link in
some old SMH threads on this very topic.
Automobiles actually hit the US like a storm starting
just prior to World War One.The
Model T was truly revolutionary as it was so widely affordable.Still,
horses remained a much more common means of transportation and work
"horsepower" than people imagine today.
Going back to prior to the Great War, the largest single
owners of horses in the US and Canada were the railroads.Railroads had huge numbers of heavy draft
horses, and their needs were so predominant that they dominated the draft horse
market.People today like to imagine
that heavy drafts were "farm" horses, but they were only farm horses
as farmers bread them for sale to draft users in the cities, i.e., railroads
and local transportation haulers.Farmers themselves preferred "chunks", a smaller type of draft
animal, but the numbers really began to decline in that category in the early
20th Century.Anyhow, huge numbers of
horses were actually maintained in towns by commercial users.
By WWI local haulers had started to switch to trucks, but
horses remained very common, and they continued to remain very common on in to
the 1920s. Horse use in agriculture also remained very common, even
with small gasoline engine tractors (by our standards today) making real
inroads.
The Great Depression slowed rural mechanization down a
great deal, and many farmers who would have switched to tractors chose not to
or could not afford to during the 1930s, so horses hung on in farming in a
major way.In local commercial
transportation horses greatly declined in the 1930s, but they did not disappear.You can still find horses in common use for
some sorts of urban hauling.Both my
parents, for example, could recall ice being delivered for domestic use by a
man who came with a horse drawn wagon.I
have a photo from the 1940s of the City of Montreal clearing snow with a horse
drawn snow plow, taken by my mother.
It was really the immediate post war period that picked
back up the pace of mechanization in agriculture and eliminated the urban
hauling with finality. There were still regular farmers who used horse or mules
as late as the 1950s, but they were very much on the decline.A friend of mine whose father I knew fairly
well once showed me a photo taken of him using the family's mules for the very
last time, the summer he reported for basic training during the Korean
War.With his father dead, and with his
leaving for the Army, his mothers and brother decided that the time had come
for a tractor.
On the other hand, one additional thing to keep in mind
is that most town and city dwellers in the US hadn't been horse users for a very
long time. Even in the late 19th Century, when horses were common
for all uses, people in towns largely did not use them.Just too hard to keep in town.Rural people used them, but those who lived
inside a town limit tended not to, as it just wasn't practical to keep
one.Only the wealthy could afford to do
so. So, for that reason, it was really the bicycle not the automobile, that was
seen at first as a real revolution in transportation for the common man.
So, I guess to answer the question a little more
directly, with a much larger percentage of our population living on farms (or
ranches, which still use horses today), and with some ongoing urban use, horse
familiarity would have been much higher than it is today, but at the same point
in time, it would not have been common knowledge amongst most troops either.
But it was this reply by another participant I wanted to note:
My dad's and mom's families' farms in Missouri still used
horses through WWII. They didn't get tractors until well after the war.
Just the news story my 53 year old self wants to read on a Sunday morning prior to a really busy Monday morning.
RED LODGE, Mont. —
Blowing up dead animals was “just part of the deal” in the 16 seasons Nolan
Melin worked as a backcountry horse packer and trail crew member for the Forest
Service.
“You’ve got to get rid
of them,” he said matter-of-factly about a pretty unusual occurrence.
Otherwise, a dead horse
or mule might attract bears to a wilderness trail, which is dangerous for
humans and the bears.
Horse packing is a skill
few people possess in this digital, mechanized age. The profession harkens back
to a simpler time when horsepower actually involved a real horse.
In the Forest Service’s
Region 1, which encompasses 25 million acres spread across five states, there
are only eight full-time horse packers with another 25 who include that
specialty in their other duties. So that made Melin a rare breed.
Traute Parrie, retired
Beartooth District ranger, said, “When I got to the Beartooth District ranger
job, it was some combination of humbling and thrilling to realize I’d landed on
a district where we still had a permanent packer, a rare thing these days. It
spoke to the values that this district holds important.”
The reality is that it’s
also a punishing profession — lifting heavy loads as well as dealing with
horses and mules that sometime possess a mind of their own. Most horse packers
have several tales about a wild blow up, when animals bucked loose and took off
for points unknown.
“Mules are unforgiving
if you don’t understand them,” Melin said. “I love those old mules, but they
knew who was boss and who they could walk over.”
Worn out at the age of
36, after years of heavy lifting and being thrown from his mount a few times,
Melin is stepping down from his job as packer for the Beartooth Ranger District
to work in Miles City, Montana. The new job will be closer to his hometown. He
grew up on a ranch outside of Ashland.
Different people react differently to a story like this. I sent it around to a collection of friends and an older one, perhaps now approaching 70, simply lamented how this news story reports the subject as broken down at 36. There's something to that. But, for a person who loves the outdoors but who spends every day in offices, imaging an occupation outdoors with horses and mules can't help but seem, well, romantic.
March 16, 2017 Epilogue 9
I ran this earlier this week and then considered that it really ought to be added to this thread.
I know that the German Army, as well as the Austrian army, retained horses and mules in a mountain troop role. And for that matter I know why they do, so this story isn't a surprise to me.
I have to admit that from the vantage point of my office window or the deposition hall, I have to wonder if I were German or Austrian I would have opted for something like this rather than the direction I took. That's easy to say, after all, as the probable answer is probably not, given as I'm not working for the Forest Service or the Game & Fish, etc.
Still, it's hard, at least for those of us with a certain mindset, not to look at scenes like this and be a bit envious, something I'm sure that surprises others.
FWIW, horses in a military role and rural police setting role remain highly viable in certain settings are are undoubtedly underused, rather than underused.
Come on man, we've both been riding the same elevator for thirty years and we've both been on our respective floors in a building that only has five floors the entire time. There aren't even that many people who work in this building.
