Well, we’ve come down to the end of the first week of the Christmas shopping season and the stores are filled with shoppers. That in itself is causing some problems for the liberal media who were hoping to report with some glee that the economy was in the tank and we were only about two quick steps away from a major recession which they could blame on Bush.

But that’s not the case. However, the liberal media, led by the Associated Press, still can’t resist mentioning it in stories about Christmas. One headline, that’s a headline, the title of the story, reads “Despite Economy, Malls and Stores Jammed. ” And the subheadline reads, “Store Usher in Holiday Shopping With Big Discounts, Expanded Hours in Touch Economy.” You want to tell that to the shoppers?

If the economy were in the tank the way the liberals want us think it is, under Bush, by the way, do you think people would be out before sunrise to shop? I wonder if anybody’s bothered to tell the liberal media about things like Wyoming’s unemployment rate dropping below three percent in November. I wonder if anybody’s bothered to tell them about all the new jobs that have been created and here in Gillette, the number of jobs begging for workers. Does that sound like an economy in trouble to you?

Yet, they keep hounding on how bad the economy is. I wonder just how they’d report the story if we had a liberal Democrat as president. Oh, it would be great and wonderful, how robust the economy is. I guarantee it. Well, now we have another bit of news for all you politically correct grinches out there. Everywhere across the country, Christmas trees are Christmas trees again and not “holiday trees”.

People are saying “Merry Christmas” again and even down in Fort Collins, where it was being considered to outlaw colored lights because they were somehow religious symbols and ornaments and Christmas trees were to be banned from city property, the city council voted 6-1 to restore Christmas to what it originally was. So Merry Christmas, political correctness. If you don’t like it, don’t participate. Nobody’s going to pass a law that says you have to, although you wanted to pass a law that said we couldn’t.

It’s Christmas season, America, the Baby Jesus, Santa Claus, gifts, decorated trees, colored lights, peace on earth, goodwill to men. I wonder what liberals find so offensive about peace on earth and goodwill to men.

Well, here a flip, there a flop, everywhere a flip flop. It’s almost getting amusing to watch the liberals flip and flop and then try to explain why they did. The latest flip-flopper is hot tempered liberal wacko Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York. After proclaiming from the rooftops that giving driver’s licenses to criminal aliens in New York was the only way to make the state safer, he’s suddenly changed his mind.

You don’t think that the overwhelming majority of people in New York didn’t like the idea had anything to do with it, do you? Do you remember back not too long ago when the much tried amnesty plus bill was soundly defeated three times in Congress? That was 80% of Americans didn’t even want them to be here, much less driving around on our roads with LEGAL licenses. So how did Spitzer play the CYA card?

He said New York couldn’t conduct his program on their own, that it needed federal intervention for it to work. That’s the liberal answer for everything, a federal government intervention. But there’s a lot more to this story than just that. Remember a couple of weeks ago at that Democrat presidential debate when Hillary contradicted herself in under two minutes on the same issue?

Well now, showing the courage of her own convictions, Hillary has finally said she’s against giving criminal aliens driver’s licenses. You don’t think the public outcry against it and Spitzer’s flipping and flopping had anything to do with it, do you? Of course, not! We all know what a woman of principle Hillary is. How can you be so naïve? She has principles, just like John Kerry.

But now, there’s a new player in the game, Senator John Barrasso. He’s never been for the idea anyway but now he’s introduced a bill that would withhold 10% of federal highway funds to any state that grants criminal aliens driver’s licenses. And the money they wouldn’t get would be divided among states that don’t grant licenses.

That would mean, conceivably, more highway dollars for Wyoming, whose legislature wouldn’t consider granting criminal aliens driver’s licenses on a bet even though the liberals in the liberal limousine capital of the state, Jackson, see merit in the idea. But they’re liberals and that says it all.

So…programs, programs, get your programs. You can’t tell where a Democrat stands today without a program. Yesterday’s program is probably out of date so get your NEW programs today.

I think you could count the number of people on one hand who were surprised by Barbara Cubin’s announcement Saturday that she won’t be running for re-election next year. She announced to the Republican Party Central Committee her intentions not to seek an 8th term in Congress. She cited her husband’s health as the reason she’s leaving Washington.

And I think we all understand that. She had only been present less than half the time during her husband’s recurring illnesses and it was a matter of her either resigning her seat in the House or not running for re-election. She chose the latter. This was probably wise on her part because, during the last election, she won by only about a thousand votes statewide.

And this time, Gary Trauner, the man she defeated in the last election, has already announced his intentions to be the Democrat on the ticket a year from now. Trauner is a dynamic and articulate man and you know he’d be all over Cubin’s voting record like a cheap suit. Okay, in all fairness, he’d have a case but isn’t that hitting below the belt?

Barbara Cubin is stepping down because of family concerns and nothing else. And, really, that’s something she has no control over whatsoever. But does Gary Trauner reflect the sentiment of the people of Wyoming or is he just another puppet of a socialist-driven national Democrat party with higher taxes, more expensive government social programs, less national defense, and fewer individual rights?

Now, the big question that remains to be answered is who will the Republicans run against him. The only name of any recognizable value mentioned has been State Representative Colin Simpson of Cody. But Simpson hasn’t announced yet. If Simpson DOES plan to run, wouldn’t it be to his advantage to go ahead and announce now, hot on the heels of Barbara Cubin’s announcement, to get the momentum going?

I realize the election is still a year away but you know the Trauner machine is going to be shifting into high gear soon and, if the Republicans want to mount any kind of counter campaign, they’d better do so now. For those who didn’t care for Barbara Cubin, there’s a clean slate now. She won’t be running again. And whoever the Republicans put up as a candidate better take the gloves off and be ready to fight for Wyoming.

And I hope the Republicans don’t diss Wyoming the way they’ve been doing, thinking we’ve only got three electoral votes and it’s in the bag for the Republicans anyway. Nothing’s a given anymore.

Last week we brought you the story of the president of the University of Delaware who instituted a program that said all white people are racists and, if you don’t believe it, you have to undergo a brainwashing “treatment”. Well, exposure of that nonsense in the media put the kibosh on that idea rather quickly and the president of the University of Delaware ordered an end to the program.

But wait. Colleges are breeding grounds for radical anti-American ideas and I know you won’t be surprised to hear that another bonehead idea has been suggested by another totally useless, left wing college professor. This time, it’s at the University of Maine. A student there alleges that her professor of her History of Mass Communications class offered extra credits to any class member for burning an American flag or a copy of the U. S. Constitution.

What burning a flag or the constitution has to do with the history of mass communications I don’t have any idea but sophomore Rebekah McDade says that’s what Professor Paul Grosswiler told his class on the first day of the new semester. She says she was offended because she comes from a military family and dropped the course immediately. She says she’s going to take the course again next semester but with a different professor.

So, with the story out in the news media—not in the liberal media, mind you, but objective media—the smarmy professor is scrambling to play C Y A. He says McDade just misunderstood—that he was trying to provoke thought. Okay, if you go burn an American Flag of a copy of the U S Constitution, I’ll give you extra credits for that. What’s to misunderstand about that? He offered them extra credits for doing it. How does that provoke thought?

Then to continue his lame coverup, he said he wasn’t intending for them to actually do it. Yeah, right. Folks, just look at a recent list of college radical leftist episodes, Ward Churchill, the University of Delaware, William and Mary, where you can report another student for being politically incorrect and have that student punished, and now, the University of Maine. Oh, did we forget Columbia University inviting Mahmoud Achmadinejad to speak?

Or UW, for inviting an active communist like Angela Davis to speak in Laramie? And it goes without saying that we can’t leave out the People’s Republic of Berkeley. So, students, if you want to get a college degree, fine. But don’t let it stand in the way of getting an education.

Folks, we have a sage grouse news update for you. (MUSIC: “SURFIN’ BIRD”) And this time, the sage grouse news comes from Jackson, the limousine liberal capital of Wyoming, and it could point out even more the hypocrisy of the liberals. Here’s the story. The Jackson Hole Airport Authority wants to expand the main runway to allow for more of those carbon producing private jets that rich liberals love to fly in to fly into their summer estates in Grand Teton National Park.

This is beautiful. Guess what’s at the north end of the runway now? A sage grouse breeding ground! That’s right, the same type of breeding ground that got the coal bed methane industry shut down for three months last spring here in lower-on-the-social-ladder Campbell County. Now, aside from the practical danger of birds being sucked into the engines of the planes and possibly causing a disaster, what to do, what to do?

Everybody knows we can’t have those rich liberal environmentalists being inconvenienced by not having their private jets land them almost at their doorstep. Perish the thought! And, isn’t spring, when the liberals start migrating to their summer homes in Jackson, the same time the sage grouse go through their mating ritual? Well, we’ve got to do something so why not apply pressure equally all over the state?

The tree huggers managed to get the coal bed methane industry shut down for three months so what’s wrong with shutting down the airport for three months. And forget the idea of runway expansion. Does the BLM know about this? They should because Jackson Hole Airport is on federal property and Lord knows you can’t have any kind of construction on federal property near a sage grouse breeding ground.

Why, the roar of those airplane engines could frighten the sage grouse and get them out of the mating mood. The BLM said that coal bed methane drilling did that to sage grouse on federal property in Campbell County. I wonder if the BLM will give them the same song and dance they gave Campbell County when mating time comes. Keep an eye on this one, folks.

And don’t hold your breath until anything is done in the environmentalist Mecca of Wyoming, Jackson Hole, to protect the sage grouse. If nothing IS done and the runway gets expanded, it’ll just show you once again the hypocrisy of liberalism, as if you needed any more examples. By the way, all those cars going by on the highway, don’t they disturb the sage grouse, too?

Folks, Senators Enzi and Barrasso are on the warpath—as well they should be. They’re trying to stop the federal government from getting a majority share of royalties from Wyoming’s minerals. Currently the deal is that the feds and the state split the mineral royalties 50-50. But in a proposal that’s buried deep inside an Interior Department appropriations bill, the federal share of those royalties would go up to 51% while Wyoming’s share would drop to 49%.

Now, you say, “Steve, that’s only one percent. What difference would that make? ” Well, you run the numbers and you’ll see that the state gets shafted out of about $20 million a year. Senator Enzi said, “It’s unfortunate that the appropriators think taking money away from states to spend it on bigger government programs or some other federal priority is the way to fix a problem.

Senator Barrasso said the money could be used very well here in Wyoming to be spent on highways, state building projects and families. He said, “The federal government is trying to rob our future. I won’t let them pickpocket Wyoming’s royalty money. I’ll work hard with my Senate colleagues to strike this provision from the bill. ” Now, folks, wait till you hear the reason for this. The Interior Department says the measure is necessary to help cover federal administrative costs? Federal administrative costs?

If you translate that into English, it means the salaries of bureaucrats who have no appreciable abilities in the world other than shuffling papers and complicating things needlessly because bureaucrats think if you make something complicated, you’re smart. And the more bureaucrats you have to complicate things, the better is the way they think.

Never mind that you’ve got five different people doing the exact same job and one doesn’t have a clue as to what the other four are doing. And if there’s a contradiction in their paperwork, don’t let that bother you. They’ll just include both in the new set of regulations. And the poor shmoe in the mineral industry is left to figure it out by himself. It’s just another prime example of your tax dollars at work.

This idea, oddly enough, was proposed by the administration, the BUSH administration. You know, the ones who got elected twice telling everybody they were conservatives? Well, so much for credibility on their part. Do you remember when the federal government’s motto used to be “In God We Trust’? Well, that’s all been changed now.

With this latest confiscation of money that rightfully belongs to the people of Wyoming, the new motto for the federal government goes from “In God We Trust” to “This is a stickup.”

The Wyoming Department of Public Instruction Friday filed a lawsuit in District Court in Cheyenne asking that the court order five school districts, one of which is Gillette, to cough up the $44 million dollars the department says the districts owe the state under last fall’s Amendment B passage. There’s an administrative hearing going on now as to whether the state has the right to strong arm these five districts.

But the department of Public Dumbing Down doesn’t want to wait. They want the money now. Isn’t that what this hearing is all about? Why be so impatient? Is it going to cost $44 million dollars more to teach kids to memorize the answers to the final exams, which is what’s being done. Anybody with a grain of honesty about the school system will tell you that’s what they’re doing.

But that’s not the point. The point is that, when the amendment was approved by the voters last November, there was no effective date for it to start. So, therefore, it has to be assumed that, since this was a money matter, it would go into effect at the start of the new fiscal year which began July 1st. Plus, the five districts say the amendment really doesn’t change anything. It only gives the legislature the option to change the law and the legislature didn’t change the law last winter. So nothing’s really changed.

Speaker of the House Roy Cohee of Casper said Friday that there weren’t any lawmakers who knew about the hearing who objected to the Department of Public Instruction taking the five school districts to court. The amendment calls for school money taken in from tax revenues to be turned over to the state in a socialist-like share the wealth program and doled out in a per-student as needed basis. So it’s basically “from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.”

Know whose philosophy that was? Karl Marx, that’s who. And isn’t it coincidental that the five school districts are in more prosperous areas of the state? And where does the money go? To the less prosperous areas. And the Department of Public Instruction can’t wait to get their hands on the money in their “no dollar left behind” lawsuit so they can re-distribute the wealth.

Do you recall the Department of Public Instruction so anxious to collect money in the past? If they’re being short sheeted by the Federal Government on funds for education programs, then why not tell the Feds and their no child gets ahead program to take a hike and get back to educating kids?

Here’s a rule of thumb to live by: When a tax increase is proposed, no matter how soundly it’s decried by lawmakers as unnecessary, it’ll always come back stronger than before. Do you remember in the last session of the legislature how somebody proposed a raise in the gasoline tax and how it was soundly hooted down? Well, guess what. It’s baaaaack.

The interim Transportation Committee agreed on Friday to move forward with two proposals they say would generate funds for road construction and maintenance in Wyoming. The first would raise the state’s gasoline tax from 14 cents a gallon to 24 cents a gallon in stages by 2011. When the top rate has kicked in, it would bring in $70 million more annually.

Right now, Wyoming’s gasoline tax is the second lowest in the nation with Alaska’s being lower. The raise to 24 cents a gallon would put us with a higher gasoline tax than Colorado, who hits drivers up for 22 cents a gallon. Senator Michael von Flatern of Gillette says the proposal would be a tough sell in the legislature. He says committee members need to convince their colleagues in the legislature as well as the general public about the need for money if the bill ever stands a chance of passage.

Last year on my morning show, Senator von Flatern didn’t seem too hot on the idea of the gas tax increase so something must have changed his mind. Okay, let’s do the math on the proposal. It’s supposed to bring in $70 million a year. There are 500,000 or so people in Wyoming. That comes out to $140 extra in gasoline taxes for every man, woman, and child in the state. And that number goes up when you figure that children don’t drive.

Now, for you people who buy that “oil companies are price gouging” bill of goods, do some more math. The oil companies make 10 cents a gallon profit on gas. With the new tax rate, the state would be making almost 2 1⁄2 times that on a gallon of gas. Now, who’s gouging who?

The other proposal under consideration is a 70% hike in the cost of a driver’s license and a license renewal. Right now, a new license is $20 and a renewal is $15. That adds up to a new license costing $34 and $25.50 for a renewal. So remember when a proposed tax increase is hooted down, it’ll be back even stronger. Oh, I haven’t even had time to mention another proposal that got thumbs down last time but the idea isn’t dead. That’s turning I-80 into a toll road.

Don’t hold the funeral for that idea yet.

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.

I think I’m going to like Dr. John Barrasso as a Senator. I like the philosophy he stood for in those TV and newspaper ads in which he urged people to take responsibility for their own health rather than rely on the government. I like his conservative voting record in the Wyoming Senate, voting FOR prayer in school and voting AGAINST measures that would promote gay marriage. Plus, he’s against infanticide, the real word that should be used to describe abortion.

Barrasso was chosen by Governor Freudenthal from the final three out of thirty original candidates by the Wyoming Republican Central Committee. Governor Freudenthal pledged his cooperation to make sure Barrasso is a successful senator and I wonder how, in this era of sharply polarized party differences, how that went over with the Democrats, Freudenthal’s party. And already the liberal magpies in academia are already starting to squawk.

A political science professor at Laramie County Community College says he’s surprised at the appointment, given that Barrasso has limited experience despite his having been a state senator for five years and being chairman of a committee looking into ways to remedy the lack of money in the highway maintenance program. Well, that’s all well and good that the professor of political science is so surprised.

After all, when you graduate from college with a degree in political science, isn’t that degree a B S degree? Now, when John Barrasso is seated in Washington, he’s going to dropped into the middle of a dog fight over the amnesty plus bill that President Bush and a handful of liberal senators want to jam down our throats in spite of its having been rejected soundly once before and not too long ago.

I think Barrasso understands that America was made a great nation not by its government but its people. He understands that personal responsibility for our actions is at the heart of the American ethic. But I wish him well in this era of politicians who want nothing but to be elected and re-elected and think that the more government programs you promise people, the more successful the nation will become and government programs will somehow remove personal responsibility from the picture.

Well, the opposite of that is true and he knows it and will fight for it. My congratulations to the new senator and thank you to Governor Freudenthal who seems to have put the well being of Wyoming over party politics.

Go get ‘em, Senator.

Okay, folks, I said if I was wrong about this, I’d admit it openly and, yes, I was wrong. I really thought that State Representative Colin Simpson of Cody would be one of the three that the Republicans would pick to forward his name, along with two others, to Governor Freudenthal, who’d pick one to fill in temporarily until the special Senate election next year to replace the late Senator Craig Thomas.

Well, apparently Fred Parady and the rest of the Republican Central Committee didn’t see it the way I did so they picked three others. The three names the governor will be considering now are Tom Sansonetti of Cheyenne, who’s the former chief of staff and legislative director for Senator Thomas, Dr. John Barasso, a state senator from Natrona County, and former state treasurer Cynthia Lummis.

Now, the ball’s in the governor’s court and we’ll know by Monday just who’ll represent Wyoming in the U S Senate for the next year and a half or so. Now, the question is, will whoever the governor chooses run in the special election run again next year as sort of a quasi-incumbent for the rest of the term which expires in 2012?

Ray Hunkins, who lost the governor’s race to Freudenthal last year, was the only candidate who said he wouldn’t run to fill out the rest of Thomas’s term and I think that may have hurt him because the Republicans were looking for the momentum of an incumbent rather than start flat footed in a race with the Democrats who are heady with victory from last year in the both the Senate AND the House.

But, in the meantime, whoever the governor selects will be walking into a dogfight, and I’m referring to the criminal alien amnesty plus bill. You know that the Bush White House is going to be putting pressure on the new senator big time to go with their plan to reward these criminals with amnesty AND citizenship. Whoever the governor picks better know going in that this is going to happen and not be dazzled by all the attention they’re sure to receive.

Bush needs every vote he can get on this and he’ll figure that here’s somebody I can win over. Let’s hope not. I don’t think the people of Wyoming would sit still for that and that would hand the election to a Democrat in 2008. Okay, so I was wrong about Colin Simpson being one of the names selected. Does this mean that the Barbara Cubin people want me to predict that he’ll beat her in the House race next year?

Senator Craig Thomas This is Steve Norris and I’m not running the usual introduction for this portion because this is not a shot across the boughs of anyone. Today, the state of Wyoming is in mourning. Senator Craig Thomas died Monday night at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland at age 74 of leukemia. Senator Thomas had been diagnosed with the disease last fall and announced just after the election that he had it.

At first, the diagnosis was pneumonia and he watched the election returns from his hospital bed. Then, after the diagnosis of leukemia, he underwent chemotherapy treatments and he returned to work in the Senate a month before he was scheduled to. In fact, he was on my morning show after his return to the Senate and he told us that he felt great, that he had even resumed his morning running regimen. Then came the announcement that he was planning to undergo another round of chemotherapy treatments.

We didn’t think too much about it at the time because that’s not unusual for cancer patients. Then, yesterday afternoon, we received word that he was hospitalized again and this time his condition was serious. When I heard the news that his family was at his side in his hospital room, I had an uneasy feeling about it. But I don’t think anyone expected the end to come this quickly. We were all caught off guard with what happened.

I didn’t always agree with Craig Thomas on the issues but I never for a moment doubted that he was saying what he believed. He didn’t play the Washington beltway publicity game and that’s very much to his credit. But this is a time when you put politics aside and you mourn the loss of another human being, a man who was just starting his third term in the United States Senate, having been re-elected with 70% of the vote in Wyoming.

What will happen now is that the state Republican party will meet and select the names of three possible successors. Then Governor Freudenthal, a Democrat, will pick one to fill out the nearly full term that Craig Thomas had left. But today, we grieve because we’re stunned by his death. We really weren’t expecting this after the senator himself had issued such optimistic reports himself about his health. Senator Enzi called Thomas “the core of our delegation” and Representative Barbara Cubin said he was a “true statesman.”

I liked what the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said about him. “The Senate is a lesser place without him but Wyoming and the nation are much better places because he was here.” Life will go on, as it should but there’ll always be a void there that was once filled by Craig Thomas.

Godspeed, Senator, and thank you for your service to Wyoming.

There’s another battle front on the horizon in the seemingly never ending fight between the environmental cases and normal people. While the war is going on between the BLM and the coal bed methane operators, now the Sierra Club has staked out new territory, the coal itself. 

Basin Electric Power Co-operative has applied for a state air quality permit to build a major coal-fired power generating plant using coal from the Dry Fork Mine. Well, needless to say, this going over with the Sierra Club like Rosie O’Donnell at a Donald Trump house party. 

Adam Rissien, who’s the associate regional representative of the Sierra Club in Sheridan said, “We’re opposed to any new coal plants, especially those old style, 19th century pulverized coal plants.”  So what does he prefer, 18th century dried buffalo chips? 

Besides, the state department of environmental quality has recommended that a permit be issued because this is one of those 21st century clean coal burning plants, one of the cleanest in the nation. It’ll be a 385 megawatt plant that’ll sell electricity to the nine states that are served by the cooperative. 

And the Department of Environmental Quality is taking public comments on its construction through March 28th. Folks, it might just do you well to send them a comment that you’re for it because the environmentalist motor mouths will be out in force to try and stop it. They’ll want to stop it because it violates two of their cardinal rules. 

First, it’s technological progress that’ll mean life will be more comfortable for people. And second, people will make money on it. Again, the environment doesn’t matter. The whole idea is to stop both technological and economic development and keep us living in the dark ages. And, of course, the environmental kooks would be the ruling class. 

Now, if I were in charge of Basin Electric, I’d make sure of one thing before I broke the first inch of ground to build it. If there’s a sage grouse within twenty miles in any direction, you’re going to have trouble. Just ask the coal bed methane people about that. And the Sierra Club has money to fight with. 

You were aware, weren’t you, that the EPA, the Environmentalist Political Agenda, the tree hugger’s answer to the secret police, gives them huge amounts of money each year to try and wreak havoc? Another example of your tax dollars at work. 

For over a week now, on the morning show, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on with the BLM ordering shutdowns of coal bed methane wells in the Powder River Basin. A week ago, when we had Glenn Wise from Dan Hart Patrol on the show to give the coal bed methane side of the story, we got a lot of calls from listeners, most of them angry at the environmentalist posture the government bureaucracy had taken in such a heavy handed manner. 

Oh, we had a few calls that leaned to the environmentalist side, but not many. Now, for a week, we’ve been trying to get a representative from the Buffalo Field Office on the show to answer questions from you and from me. 

Well, yesterday afternoon, I got a call from Lisa Brent, the Basin Radio news director, who informed me that she had finally been able to talk to somebody at the office after several unreturned phone calls. Lisa said they had an invitation if they wanted it to appear on my show. And their reaction? "The Steve Norris Show is not a forum we wish to participate in.” 

Okay, that’s their privilege. Nobody says they have to be on the show. But don’t you think with thousands of people laid off from work and their doing the cow patty sidestep to questions, that it would be in the best interest of their image in the public’s eyes to at least make an effort to repair that image? 

From their reaction, I can only surmise they’re afraid to for some reason. They’re afraid that they might get asked a question or two they’d have a hard time answering, given the way they’ve double talked over the whole thing. And I’m betting the questions would come from you. 

Look, I wouldn’t be trying to ambush them. I gave the coal bed methane people their chance to tell their side of the story. And while my sympathies are definitely with the well operators, I’d be fair and let them have their say. But apparently they don’t want that. 

So I can only assume from their actions that the reason they don’t want to be on the show is because you can only dance around a question for so long before people begin to suspect they’re being given a jive session and it would be even more obvious how arbitrary and dictatorial they are. And like most environmentalists, they don’t want to hear any disagreement.  

And we pay their salaries. That’s what’s really insulting about it. Folks, it’s just another example of your tax dollars at work.

Well, folks, guess what happened just this morning? Over in Buffalo, representatives and workers from the coal bed methane industry wanted to meet with the Bureau of Land Management. The industry wanted to talk about a recent tightening of bird regulations at drilling sites that have forced the shutting down of operations and the resulting layoffs of hundreds of workers.

Well, the workers showed up but the bureaucrats at the BLM didn’t. They were taking the day off. That’s right, they were taking the day off…with pay. And I don’t think I have to tell you where their paychecks come from. On my morning show, we were flooded with calls from people who were, shall we say, angry. No, they weren’t angry. They were mad as hell over this.

And out of all the dozens of calls I got, there wasn’t one was in favor of what the BLM did, both in the way they interpreted the regulations or for taking the day off…with pay. And the workers who got laid off because of these bird nesting regulations, they didn’t get paid. So what you’ve got are people, hard working people in the coal bed methane industry, people with bills to pay just like anybody else, being denied their livelihood by a group of unelected, paper shuffling bureaucrats who don’t care.

Frankly, I smell the stench of the environmental movement in all this. What other reason could it be? The environmental cases just want to shut down industry. The environment is not an issue. Theirs is a completely political agenda designed to inflict as much damage as possible to the nation’s economy. And their exercise of power is as autocratic and heavy handed as you can find.

And the real insult here comes in that they conveniently took the day off when they knew they’d have to face any organized disagreement to their edict over these birds. Okay, what about the environment? Have there been any environmental crises in the past? Surely, we would have heard about it. The environmental cases aren’t exactly the kind who keep mum if there’s a crisis.

But since there wasn’t one, they had to act unilaterally and shut down the coal bed methane industry without a reason. After all, they’re the government and government doesn’t need a reason. They just do it. Just ask their partners in destruction, the EPA, the environmental political agenda. Tomorrow morning, we’ll continue exposing this environmentalist brute force power play on the Steve Norris Show between 6 and 10.

And I hope you people who think government is the answer to society’s problems are beginning to have second thoughts.

In the legislature, Senate File 118, passed by the Wyoming Senate, was passed by the House on a vote of 35-24 with a few changes. Now it goes back to the Senate to see if they approve of the changes and, if they do, then Governor Freudenthal will see it on his desk for signing. Basically, Senate File 118 says that anybody who murders a pregnant woman can be charged with two counts of murder, one for the expectant mother, the other for her unborn child.

Well, as you might suspect, this has the abortion hags in a fit. They say it’ll open the door to outlaw abortion in Wyoming. They say “it will open up some very real possibilities for court litigation in the state of Wyoming. ” And the proponents of the bill say it won’t do any such thing. And it won’t. The abortion hags go into apoplexy anytime anybody dares to bring up the possibility that a fetus might be a living being. I don’t know what they think it is if it isn’t a living being. It’s growing and developing into what will be a human being. But the abortion hags don’t see it that way. However, they have yet to produce any non-living thing that’s growing.

But where the abortion crowd misses the point is that this bill doesn’t outlaw abortion. Nowhere does it say you still don’t have the choice of murdering your unborn child. All it says is that, if somebody murders a pregnant woman, they’ve committed two murders. Look, if the abortion hags are so afraid that their blood thirsty choice might be taken away, 34 other states have similar laws and it hasn’t affected abortion one bit.

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that most people realize that abortion is the termination of a life. It’s just that you have a few monsters who want to play God and determine who lives and who dies. And somehow, 34 years ago, a weak minded Supreme Court agreed they could do that, determine who lives and who dies. And it’s their worst nightmare come to life when somebody even suggests that a fetus is a living thing. In fact, they didn’t want the term “fetus” even used in the wording of this bill. Maybe they would have preferred “human being in development” used instead?

They get paranoid if somebody even suggests that a doctor tell a woman who comes in for an abortion about the risks involved. Abortion seems to be their one and only thought in life. To them, unborn babies are like Jews were to Hitler. But this bill won’t change their goal of continuing the American Holocaust. The right to abortion? Where is that in the Constitution?

Oh, it comes right after the clause that separates church and state.

A bill that made it through the Wyoming Senate died yesterday in the House Rules committee. The bill proposed that the state not recognize any same sex marriages performed in other states—and right now Massachusetts is the only state that performs marriages although a few recognize “civil unions,” whatever that means. 

And the vote was close. House Speaker Roy Cohee cast the tie breaking vote which went against the bill. Both sides said the bill was extremely important. And I suppose in a symbolic way it was. And while I was for the bill—if nothing else but for its symbolism—it was treading dangerously on the full faith and credit clause in the U S Constitution that says that each state must recognize the laws of another state. 

Yes, I do think that gay is destructive to a society and it goes against the entire natural purpose of marriage which is the production of children in order to propagate the human race. Plus, nature did not intend people of one gender to be sexually attracted to people of the same gender. No, I’m not going to get into a discussion here on whether you’re born gay or if it’s some kind of malfunction in your mental makeup. We could do a whole hour on that and still not have a definite answer when it was over. 

But to the people who were against the bill—the people who by their outspoken stance were obviously FOR gay marriage—I think you may have gotten a little melodramatic on its importance. Representative Dan Zwonitzer of Cheyenne said, “This is the civil rights struggle of my generation.”

Now, that’s a really tired, invalid argument. Civil rights was about being allowed into restaurants based on race. It was about sitting in the back of the bus. It was about things that gays have never encountered. If a gay walked into a restaurant and was told, “We don’t serve your kind”, then that argument might apply. I don’t think that’s ever happened, at least not to my knowledge. Has a gay ever been told he or she couldn’t vote because they were gay? If so, then you’ve got a civil rights argument. 

So it’s not a civil rights issue at all. The whole point of the gay political posture is to get homosexuality accepted as normal, something it isn’t. The same people who want gay marriage want being gay taught to children as normal, something it isn’t. They want the society changed for three to five percent of the population. And it’s all based on their sex drive. That’s all. So did the House do the right thing? 

Legally, you could say so. Morally? It just took us one step closer to the gutter.

President Bush has proposed his 2008 budget for the Department of Energy and guess what? Wyoming gets the shaft again over coal. But wait, Steve, you might say, isn’t coal that horrible polluting black rock that you find in the ground all over Campbell County, you know, the stuff California says is the reason they won’t buy electricity from us because we use that to fire power plants?

No, for once, I don’t see any environmental cases at work in this situation. What President Bush is doing is turning his back on Wyoming in favor of funding biofuel plants such as the Future Gen plant. We earlier got shafted on that because of some vague explanation about the state’s altitude being too high. So they made two locations in Texas, President Bush’s home state, coincidentally, (yeah, right) as finalists for the site.

Now, back to the subject of coal for a minute. We’re not talking about normal coal, we’re talking about gasified coal, a coal that’s turned into gas and is virtually pollution free. Well, Senator Thomas isn’t too happy about the situation even though he’s been a staunch Bush supporter since the get-go of the administration. He recently grilled Energy Secretary Bodman for not following the guidelines laid down in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Did that help? Not a bit. Thomas might as well have been trying to knock the moon out of its orbit.

As I said, this has nothing to do with the environmentalists and everything to do with that other great source of global warming, the politicians. The Bush administration looks on Wyoming as in its back pocket, much the same way the Democrats look on the black vote. And here’s the heart of the matter. Wyoming has three electoral votes. Texas has thirty-four, better than eleven times as many.

So, in the pursuit of votes in an upcoming election which has no Republican rising above the crowd yet who might beat Hillary or Obama, you go running off throwing money at a project which has yet to even be assigned instead of funding something that could give us clean technology until we can work out alternative energy sources. This is not only a slap in Wyoming’s face and an insult to it because of the political values, it’s an extremely short-sighted answer to a problem that will only continue to haunt us with America continuing to rely on oil from countries who hate us.

If this were Christmas, I’d say what George W. Bush should find in his stocking is a lump of coal.

Okay, folks, let’s get in the car and take a little drive. We’re going to head east, just across the state lane to Spearfish and guess what, we’re going to continue a great Wyoming tradition. We’re going out of state to South Dakota…to buy…lottery tickets. You know the drill. You’ve been doing it for years. And now it looks like you’re going to be doing it for a year longer.. at least.

Monday the state house of representatives voted no on a lottery bill. Oh, it was close this time, 31-27 was the vote count. That’s almost reaching a moment sanity there for a state that won’t allow electronic bingo games because they say it’s gambling yet you have some horse racing and OFF-TRACK BETTTTTING sites in the state.

Oh, speaking of off track betting, Eric Spector, the owner of the Wyoming Downs Race Track in Evanston, and played his violin for the legislators about how if a lottery gets established in Wyoming, then it’ll drive him out of business. Unfortunately, Mr. Spector didn’t produce any examples of this having happened in other states that have both a lottery and horse racing. And I don’t suppose anybody questioned him about it, especially the real anti-lottery zealots. They just wanted to get the session over with, keep Wyoming free from addictive gambling, and get to the liquor store before it closed or make hotel reservations in Deadwood.

Yesterday morning, I talked with state representative Erin Mercer about what happened. She said you had your usual contingent of anti-lottery types there with their tambourines going. But then she said she heard about this group that came in and supposedly pointed out that some states want to dump their lotteries because they weren’t producing the revenue needed for the state.

Again, no examples were given but I don’t know of a state that wants to get rid of its lottery. I will stand corrected if you can produce one with more evidence than just your word. Maybe they were talking about California. If they were, that state’s so far in the hole not even Bill Gates if he turned over his entire fortune could produce the revenue needed for the state.

So here we’ve got two statements taken as gospel without any questioning at all, a race track in Evanston and state drowning in red ink and its lottery isn’t helping any. Shall we worry about them on the way to Spearfish? Or maybe we should count the number of Wyoming license plates at convenience stores there?

Oh, I realize they’re not necessarily there to buy lottery tickets. They could be there for the cheaper gas.

If I may, I’d like to borrow some terms from the career of Muhammed Ali to describe a situation. If you’ll remember, in his career there was the Battle in Seattle, The Thrilla In Manila. Well, folks, over this past week, we’ve seen the Charade in Sheridan.

Last November, and even the bon bons and Oprah crowd will remember, we had an election. Outside of a few local races that went right down to the wire, the only nail biter was the race for Congress between incumbent Republican Barbara Cubin and challenger Democrat Gary Trauner. Cubin won by just over a thousand votes over Trauner.

Well, two months after the fact, here come some Democrats—the electoral three musketeers—in Sheridan, where Trauner was predicted to win but didn’t, to challenge the results. But they just couldn’t come charging in with faces that looked like they’d each just eaten a raw lemon. They had to find some noble, semi-believable reason for the challenge.

So what did they do? They said, “We want to check the accuracy of the electronic voting machines. ” Why this wasn’t done the day after the election will be a featured segment if they ever bring back “Unsolved Mysteries” but that was their story. And they INSISTED that it be the house race where the results would be challenged. Wyoming law doesn’t allow for hand recounts so, under the guise of checking voting machine accuracy, these three crusaders of righteousness, got Sheridan county to agree to let them count the ballots by hand, all 11,000 plus.

Well, guess what happened? After a tedious hand counting of the ballots, did they find some great, sinister voter fraud that denied Gary Trauner the seat in Congress? Uh, no, they didn’t. What they found was, out of more than 11, 000 ballots cast, six of them were doubtful. And those six weren’t even counted. The machine threw them out. And to add insult to injury, out of those six, four of them were for Cubin. And if they’d been counted, she would have won by four more votes than she actually won by. Well, so much for that vast right wing conspiracy theory.

And you know the reason these three sour grapes Democrats went on this fishing expedition. The Democrats had predicted Trauner would win easily in Sheridan County. This was nothing but a game where the losing kid always says “you cheated” to the winner because he lost. Well, I hope this puts this little juvenile, thinly-disguised game to bed once and for all. And it probably will…until the next election.

But in the meantime, if the Democrats insist on acting like children, the only response to this faux pas they’ll understand is …“Ya, ya, ya-ya, ya, ya. ”

Okay, folks, here’s a new one. The Wyoming House of Representatives sent a tax bill back to the House Revenue Committee because it was too complicated. This has to be a first in the history of tax laws. Let me explain what happened. 

Last year, the Legislature passed and sent to Governor Freudenthal for his signature a bill that would put a two-year moratorium on sales taxes you’d pay for groceries. That means that sometime in 2008, if something isn’t done, then we’d revert back to the state sales tax on groceries. 

But there’s been a lot of talk around the state of making the grocery tax repeal permanent. In fact, that was one of the big items the legislature would be discussing in this session. 

Now, the reason the House sent the permanent repeal motion back to Committee is because when the bill was brought to the floor for a vote and was looked at, it was loaded down with amendments nobody understood fully. One that was understood was a provision in the bill that the state would reconsider its effect on state revenue in 2013. 

House Majority Floor Leader Colin Simpson of Cody thinks it’s what he calls “a bit hypocritical” to repeal taxes on groceries in one section of a bill and then try to work its renewal in another section. Representative Pete Jorgenson of Jackson questioned the idea of putting a sunset date for tax exemptions. And House Speaker Tom Lubnau of Gillette suggested the whole thing go back to Revenue Committee due to the volume and incomprehensibility of the amendments.”  So how did all this get out of hand and into this chaos? 

Well, to find out, let’s go back to last year’s session. Representative Rodney “Pete” Anderson of Pine Bluffs fought even a temporary repeal of the grocery tax as hard as he could. And guess what? He’s Chairman of the House Revenue Committee. Are the lights coming on now? 

The way you kill a bill that’s very popular with the voters is load it down with complicated, meaningless amendments until it sinks under its own weight. In politics, this is called “Well, I’ll show them.” 

And the timing couldn’t be more exquisite. There was a poll out yesterday that said 64 percent of voters in Wyoming want the grocery tax done away with and given a decent burial. Apparently Representative Anderson doesn’t want to be the undertaker so what you get is a smoke screen of complicated amendments. 

As somebody said once, “politics is the art of denying people to the affairs of life that concern them.”

Well, it’s time now to begin in earnest the annual ritual when men and women from all over Wyoming gather in Cheyenne to figure out new ways they can shaft Campbell County. Yes, the 59th legislature is in session. The pomp and ceremony are over. The leaders of each house have been sworn in. Governor Freudenthal has given his state of the state message. The only thing left to do now is to see how much of Campbell County’s and two or three other counties’ money they can take and not give anything back in return.

Alright, you might say, Steve, what are you talking about? Well, can you say Vo-Tech Center? That was last year’s coup.

Before that, we had the widening of Highway 59 shot down because some of the legislators voted against it because they never used it even though it is, outside of the Interstates, the most traveled road in the state.

And last year, there was a little matter of the state loan and investment board threatening Campbell County with losing state energy impact money because they only charged 11 mills of property tax instead of the full 12 and still showed black ink on the books.

And, lest we forget, there’s Amendment C. In case you’ve forgotten, that was the amendment which was voted down soundly in November in Campbell County but passed statewide by a narrow margin. It’s a darling little plan that distributes school recapture money evenly around the state instead of allowing districts that need it to keep it, such as Campbell County. Oh, and the legislature isn’t even under orders to spend the money on education, even though it is distributed evenly, theoretically.

So what can we expect this time around? How about toughening up the laws against child molesters? That’d be a nice start. Governor Freudenthal has made no secret of how he feels. He wants laws toughened with life sentences handed out for a second offense. Last year, the legislature had eight chances to come down hard on these perverts and did nothing.

What about making the repeal of the grocery tax permanent? That one ought to separate the taxaholics from the true representatives of the people. Keep an eye on that one and find out how your representative votes if that comes up, and it most likely will.

Now, I realize that WyDOT is short on money and the roads need lots of work. They say $500 million. And while I think that figure may be a little high, there’s talk of a nickel increase in gas taxes. Yeah, that’s the ticket. That ought to raise an astounding $34 million or 6. 8% of what WyDOT says it needs while it costs each driver a nickel more for each gallon of gas. Isn’t math revealing?

And that’s just a start to some of the things the legislature will talk about this term. To the Campbell County legislative delegation, one bit of advice. Keep your eyes open at all times. Think Campbell County first. After all, we do provide a significant portion of the money they’re playing with in Cheyenne.

Remember, the golden rule. He who has the gold gets to make the rules.