Much has been written, recently, about the Freedom Caucus, its goals, dreams and membership. Clair McFarland, reporter for the Cowboy State Daily wrote about which legislators are up front about being members of the Freedom Caucus and which one skulk in the shadows – hiding their caucus membership.
Nate Martin, the executive director of an outfit called Better Wyoming Action and Research, a 501c4 organization affiliated with Better Wyoming (a 501c3), wrote a letter to the editor to Cowboy State Daily calling out legislators and their affiliation with the caucus.
Better Wyoming, on its website, www.betterwyo.org, claims to be an organization that provides information and training that Wyoming residents need to be able to effectively participate in civic processes.
On November 6, BWAR issued a press release, corresponding to the letter to the editor they sent. In it, they conducted a statistical analysis of votes of legislators, to see which folks voted with the Freedom Caucus, and which folks did not. Their premise was that if there was a correlation in votes, there should be a correlation in caucus membership. Their website discloses, who, according to BWAR’s research they think are members of the Freedom Caucus.
Then, this week, Cowboy State Daily columnist, Cassie Craven wrote a piece entitled “Don’t Poltiticize My Conservatism.”
In her column, she described “Freedom Caucus Derangement Syndrome”, an affliction which forces people to characterize the Freedom Caucus as a bunch of tinfoil crazies because they talk about chemtrails and transparency in government.
She says the voters of Wyoming elected these folks, and they knew what they were getting.
During the session, Freedom Caucus members were reputed to receive a text message every morning instructing them on how to vote on bills in front of the legislature that day. Despite multiple requests to disclose those text messages and who the puppet masters are who are sending them, the Freedom Caucus remains silent. So much for open government
Rumors are circulated the text messages are sent via an app that has end-to-end encryption and automatically deletes the text messages after a certain time. If true, the rumor is disturbing, because the Freedom Caucus members appear to have something to hide from the voting public. Since the caucus maintains their veil of secrecy, who knows?
Reportedly, if caucus members vote as instructed a certain percentage of the time, then they receive caucus campaign support. Isn’t there a term for someone who receives something of value in return for official votes?
One issue which has occupied lots of legislative time is election security. No one can point to cases of rampant election fraud. Despite the lack of election fraud, the Corporations Committee is bringing forth a slate of bills preventing the proverbial “straw man” from committing “straw” election fraud.
If all the bills pass, guess what – it might be harder to vote, but we’ll see no difference in election results at all.
The Agriculture Committee, the same committee that wants to make flying over Wyoming illegal, is working on a plan to enrich landowners by allowing them to privately sell game tags. Hunters will have to pay ranchers to hunt. That bill will make ranchers richer and hunters poorer.
The Freedom Caucus has passed property tax relief, as promised. Their cuts disproportionately benefit the rich, who can afford multi-million dollar homes, as opposed to the poor, who receive proportionately smaller tax breaks.
Property tax funds schools and local governments. Those cuts hurt small communities more than larger cities and counties who can better absorb the cuts.
Proposed plans to backfill the funds lost due to tax cuts include spending savings, or income from state investments, which, for the first time, exceeded mineral revenue.
The Freedom Caucus has never passed a budget. They are living off the wisdom of prior legislators, they call the “insiders” or the “elite." We haven’t yet seen the long-term effect of their policies. They are living on the coat tails of those they ridicule.
Past legislators knew for every ton of coal that crossed the Wyoming border, a future asset was gone. So, to make up for the loss of the minerals, a portion of the income was saved into investment accounts for the future.
Now, the Freedom Caucus now has a proposal to gut those funds and use them for current tax relief. In other words, the Freedom Caucus wants to trade the state’s future for immediate gratification tax breaks.
They want to make cuts while Wyoming infrastructure deteriorates.
Is it Freedom Caucus Derangement Syndrome to ask if the state can survive more of the top-secret Freedom Caucus antics?
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
