What do you do when the people vote in a constitutional amendment but put no date on it for it to take effect? Well, in the case of most amendments, they’re in effect from the date of approval but there are exceptions. One I can think of in particular is Amendment B, which was voted in last November. That amendment says that some of the richer school districts in Wyoming must relinquish millions in property tax dollars to the state so the state can re-distribute the wealth to other schools.

No, we haven’t had a socialist takeover in Wyoming although the end result is pure socialism. What you have here is a manifestation of jealousy by some Wyoming counties that are less productive than, say, Campbell County and want to punish the more fortunate by taking some of their money away. The bottom line is the same thing but five state school districts haven’t turned over some $44 million for “No Child Left Behind” bureaucrats at the Department of Public Instruction to dole out.

And the reason? Well, the five districts say that the amendment, since it involves money, is a fiscal matter and, since no date for it to take effect was ever specified, reason says you default to the start of a new fiscal year, which was this past July 1.

But Superintendent of Public Instruction Jim McBride doesn’t see it that way. He thinks those five districts should have been paying up all along and, as he so melodramatically put it, the districts are not only thumbing their noses at the voters but they’re, quote, “withholding funds rightfully due the students of this state.”

Well, here’s where that argument goes in the tank. The school funding cycle is on a fiscal year basis, running from July 1 through June 30. The budgets, for whatever department of government, are set in stone. The election was last November and that leaves eight months in the fiscal year. Is the Department of Public Instruction that desperate for money that they can’t wait until the start of the next fiscal year?

Or is it that department can’t wait to throw money at a situation, which is so typically bureaucratic behavior? What do you think?

Okay, so Campbell County got the shaft in the election. Were schools in that bad a shape before this great experiment in socialism got approved, whatever the misguided reason? To hear the Department of Public Instruction tell it, if we don’t cough up that money, and do it now, little Johnny will go to bed ignorant tonight.

The pursuit of excellence is no more. The Campbell County School Board brought that to an ignominious end last week when they lowered the minimum grade for passing from 70 to 60. And these are people who oversee the education process in Campbell County? I’m sorry to report this isn’t some kind of collective nightmare. It’s actually happening. And why is it happening?

It’s happening because a lot of other counties in Wyoming have done the same thing. Is this a sign that the No Child Gets Ahead program isn’t working so they have to cook the books to make it look like students are passing so they can self-righteously pat themselves on the back and say what a wonderful job public education is doing? That’s very much a possibility.

But, when you were a child and you wanted to do something your parents knew wasn’t right and you said “Well, everybody else is doing it”, didn’t they ever say to you “if everybody else was jumping off tall buildings would you do it?” About the lamest reason I’ve ever heard is that “we want to level the playing field. ” Excuse me for being such an old fuddy-duddy but isn’t school supposed to be something that challenges kids to read and achieve?

Public education today is a fraud, perpetrated by educrats who have no vision or, Lord knows, no honesty. If kids in Campbell County know they have to make a 70 to pass, then they’ll work harder. If they know all they have to do is score a 60, they’ll try that much less. So what if other counties in Wyoming have compromised and sold out their standards? Does that mean we want to do it too?

I don’t think so, at least the parents who’ve called the show in the morning don’t. I said public education is a fraud and it’s because they’re going in completely the opposite direction from what they should. They’re rewarding failure. And these kids are going to wonder when they get out in the real world why their passing grades in school aren’t helping them on the job. As the world gets more technical and requires greater learning, what have we done? We’ve LOWERED the standards to pass.

Folks, these are your children who’ve been victimized by this scam. And another question: Why is the state sitting still for this body blow to education? Does that make you wonder just what’s going on? It should. And you should remember these con artists in November of next year.

ABC’s "Nightline" came and "Nightline" went after doing a feature on the Healthy Schools Initiative in Campbell County. The program ran Tuesday night and we talked about on the morning show yesterday morning. And from the large number of calls we got on the subject, it was almost unanimous that the listeners didn’t think too much of the health initiative in the schools.

Okay, nobody’s going to argue that obesity is a problem, not just with school kids but with the population in general. The disagreements come in what causes it and what do we do about it. The first point of contention is that there are parents who don’t like their kids being singled out as being overweight in a letter inviting kids to an exercise program three times a week called “The Strong Kids” club.

Whether the kid’s got a weight problem or not, nobody likes getting a letter from the school saying “Your kid’s fat." Well, it doesn’t say fat. It couches it in a term called the body mass index but it’s the same thing.

The next point of contention is “is this something the schools should really be involving themselves in? Isn’t this a parent’s responsibility, the health of their children? ” And we had calls from listeners who said the problem can’t be solved in school because kids eat so much fattening junk food at other times away from school. Then I received e-mails and faxes of the Campbell County school lunch menus and that in itself was a revelation.

I didn’t see a whole lot of difference in what the schools are serving and what we normally condemn as fattening. For instance, during May, the Campbell County school lunch menu has pizza listed four times. For the breakfast menu for May, there’s something listen three times called “Breakfast Pizza”. Total it up and you’ve got pizza seven times in a month. And you mix that in with other offerings such as tacos and sloppy joes and it makes you wonder if there’s just not a lot of talk being done by the School Board in the name of healthy schools.

Well, it did get ABC to fly a correspondent and a producer to Gillette for some time on the tube. Oh, one other thing. Looking ahead to June, and June 4th is the last day of school, it appears we have a nutritional bonanza that day. For breakfast, we have the ubiquitous breakfast pizza appearing again. And to top off the day and send the kids off to a summer of slimness, lunch is hot dogs.

Well, it looks like the lodging tax is going to be presented to the public again. If you’ll remember, in 2004 when it was proposed to raise the lodging tax from 2 to 3 percent or do away with it completely, the “we don’t want your tourist dollars” crowd did away with it completely. That’s one I still don’t understand.

So when do we get to vote yea or nay on this newest incarnation of the lodging tax? It looks like it could be on the ballot in next year’s primary election. That ought to give both sides enough time for the people in favor of it to mount an argument for it and the people who are against it to go on another xenophobic emotional tear. For you kids in the No Child Left Behind Program, you can look up xenophobic in your dictionary. Here’s a clue. It’s starts with the letter “X”.

Last time around, I made no secret of how I felt about it. It’s not a tax that people in Campbell County pay. Oh, I know, I had arguments from the “keep the outsiders away” bunch, “Well, what about people living in hotels while they find a place to live? ” One of the best kept secrets of that was you don’t pay the tax after thirty consecutive days in a hotel. And the new proposal keeps the tax at 2%. We had calls to the morning program from people who said if you raise it to 3% now, it’ll be 20% before you know it.

Another well kept secret the anti-visitor Neanderthals didn’t want you to know. There’s a state ceiling of 4%. Sheridan raised theirs from 2 to 4% and there wasn’t this great outcry about it. Why is that, do you think? The money raised is used to promote tourism for Gillette and Campbell County and tourism is the second largest industry in the state. Think about all those people going to Devils Tower or Yellowstone. They have money. Why do we listen to a group of backwoods buffoons who don’t think anything good has happened here since the stagecoaches stopped running?

This is a classic win-win situation. We win because we don’t pay the tax. The area wins because, as we said earlier, those tourists have money. If they spend some of it here, that’s all the better, isn’t it? Councilman Tom Murphy said, “voting the tax down was probably the silliest thing we’ve ever done as a community. ”

But the lodging tax being on the primary election ballot isn’t set in stone yet. Maybe it will be. And, if enough people wake up to the economic realities and don’t listen to the emotional outbursts we had in 2004, we can continue on into the 21st century.

They’re baaack! Yes, folks, the national media have once again picked Gillette for a hatchet job, uh, to be highlighted on a news feature program. Just when you thought it was safe to go back out on the streets after the Dan Rather environmentalist propaganda piece on coal bed methane, here comes ABC and a producer and a correspondent from the “Nightline” program.

And they’re here right now, even as we speak, and they’ve been talking to students, parents, and school officials about the Healthy Schools Initiative. You see, Nightline has been running a series on childhood obesity and supposedly they’re here to gather information for that series. Okay, out of all the cities and towns in America, how did they come to pick Gillette?

Okay, with the coal bed methane issue, I can understand. Gillette IS the energy capital of America. But childhood obesity is a national problem, isn’t it? Oh, well, for whatever reason they’re here, they want to focus in on fat kids. And they’ve scheduled visits to Wagonwheel Elementary and the Campbell County Aquatic Center along with several other unnamed destinations.

Okay, another question: What does the Campbell County Aquatic Center have to do with childhood obesity? Maybe there’s a connection somewhere, I don’t know. But is the healthy schools initiative the answer? I mean, you can serve healthy foods all day but when a kid gets out of school, how do you monitor what they do? You don’t. We haven’t reached that stage of the food police, well, not yet.

Okay, it’s good that schools are doing what they can to encourage eating right. But how did we get to this state of affairs to begin with? Could it be the lack of exercise and doing kid things that kids have done forever? Remember when kids used to go out and play? Well, now they’ve got MySpace, and YouTube, any number of non-physical activites that let the calories pile up and turn to fat.

I’m sorry but a computer keyboard is not an exercise program. But smile for the camera because once again Gillette is thrown into the national media spotlight. There’s no word on when the Nightline piece will be shown or how much face time Gillette will get. But at least it won’t be Dan Rather or Geraldo Rivera. I guess we can be thankful for some things.

Okay, kids, smile. You’re on television.

Do I have to do the tobacco disclaimer before we start this? I do? What? If I don’t, some nicotine nazi will come down here and hit me over the head with a whiskey bottle? Oh, okay? “Mr. Norris in no way is approving of the use of tobacco in any form. Recent studies at the University of Bill medical school have shown beyond doubt that the use of tobacco will cause the left cheek of your butt to fall off.” 

(MUSIC: SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE BY WILLIE NELSON)

Okay, folks, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Nearly four years ago, when I started the morning show on KIML, I told you that we’d see a smoking ban proposed in Gillette. And many people scoffed when I said it. Well, it’s come to pass. A week from today, at 7 in the morning, the Gillette City Council will meet with some nicotine nazis, uh, non-smoking advocates to talk about a citywide ban on smoking in public places and in restaurants. 

And City Administrator Bret Jones says a smoking ban in Gillette has the potential to be a divisive issue. I wonder what gave him that idea. The make-smoking-a-capital-crime crowd will be there I’m sure with their manufactured research figures. I would say to the city council, let them talk but after they’ve done their talking, ask if the figures they’ve presented are verifiable and have they been proven scientifically. 

Otherwise, they’re going to try and run some things by you that are scientifically questionable, at best. Ask them to show you a scientifically objective report on second hand smoke done by a reputable scientific organization. If they try to use the EPA report, that’s already been disqualified as biased by two different medical schools, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. 

But all those arguments aside, the question becomes: Does a government, any kind of government in America, have the right to tell a private business how to conduct their business? Why not let the marketplace decide? If everyone’s as gung-ho against smoking as a few zealots are, then wouldn’t they not frequent a place of business where smoking is allowed and that would show up on the bottom line? 

Do we really need more laws inspired by busybody control freaks about a product that is still legal? And what’s the next step for the control freaks? They sound like they’re first cousins of the environmentalists.