Stock Market Likes Obamacare
The Dow Jones average shot up 103 points the day President Obama used 22 ceremonial pens to sign the largest piece of social engineering legislation this country has ever seen.
My health care stocks took big jumps.
The President of Cigna Insurance says some fine tuning will be needed over the next few years, but that talk of repealing the act is pointless and counterproductive.
My taxes and my premiums will take big jumps. Ouch!
But the stock market seems to like it.
If I wrote this as fiction people would consider me a nut case.
The Sage Grouse is a moniker for a critic who is only sometimes sage but often a grouse.
History: I (a mainly Irish person) was born in the South (if you don’t understand the need to capitalize that word, you need to talk to my mother, who now denies that she taught me that the South won the Civil War). My minister father tried, with some success, to integrate white churches in the Mississippi delta in the late 1950s; this was followed by a move to Wyoming to get away from death threats.
We kids grew up in Buffalo, I attended college at liberal schools in Minnesota and Montana, worked on radical antiwar and antipoverty causes including liberal Missoula newspaper “Borrowed Times”, studied biology and botany, came back to Wyoming in 1975 to work for penurious wages for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, beating on power companies for years while living in Sheridan and Douglas. In revenge for those lawyers slapping me around I went to law school, changed some perspectives (old friends say understatement here), married a journalist with ink in her veins, went to the Attorney General’s office to work on tax and water issues, argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court wearing cowboy boots, moved from Cheyenne to Buffalo again to mix up a general practice for a while, moved to Gillette and now focusing on oil and gas and related land use issues, incidentally seriously irritating some in the environmental community.
Meanwhile, supported local organizations helping poor and children and disadvantaged, hiked and skied for a while, bought a ranch in Montana to improve bird habitat, chased exotic birds on several continents, helped the local bird banders, wrote a book on birds and another on easements, all the while trying to make original, independent judgments about people, landscapes, wildlife, causes and effects.
Hailing from the South, being an ornithologist and wildlife biologist, and having a soft spot for iconoclastic tendencies in people and institutions, I look forward to more from the Sage Grouse about the Greater Sage-grouse and other subjects of interest. Look me up at the Draper Museum of Natural History when you’re in Cody.
As a former church lobbyist for the Wyoming Association of Churches I can attest to the fact that these gun issues are all NRA driven. I was at one hearing when the legislators were proudly displaying their NRA membership cards to the lobbyist. This is not just in an election year. Its every year. Last year it was the “Castle Doctrine”. Most of the proposed bills will make life much more dangerous for law enforcement officers. For self protection sake they will have to be a lot more aggressive on traffic stops.
Thank-you, Mr. Cox, for the article, “Weird Anti-Obama Fallout: Guns.” It seems that many feel you can’t support our President and be a gun-toter, too. Your argument is rational, cogent, and should be published across the country. I’ll vote for you as “Sage.”
Dear RT:
I’m not concerned about you having concealed carry, or myself (should I chose to pursue a permit), but that twitchy guy over there, at the end of the bar, him I’d worry about.
It doesn’t take much imagination (or common sense) to see how arming Tom, Dick and Harry with concealed carry could go horribly wrong.
It seems that some of our politicians are engaged in NRA idolatry, worshipping at the altar of guns for pretty much everyone, anywhere, anytime.
Robert Heinlein wrote that an armed society is a polite society, because rude people will inevitably encounter someone faster and more accurate than themselves. Rude, unintelligent people will tend to weed themselves out in a heavily armed society. While that might be viewed as a positive good, I don’t see it happening without extensive and unforeseen collateral damage and innocent victims caught in the cross-fire.
There is a fantasy out there, that being armed equates with being an I’ll-survive-anything bad-ass, but that simply isn’t true. I don’t care if you’re armed to the teeth — sooner or later, you have to sleep, you have to let your guard down. And if you’re an extreme bad-ass, that’s when your enemies will come after you. It is far better to have supportive friends than an armory for an army of one.
A civil society is not necessarily an armed society, but one which exercises self-restraint and common sense — two qualities which are sorely missing among the sponsors of this bill. Maybe their next bill will be bazookas for fourth graders. What could possibly go wrong?
Every once in a while a legislator uses a lot of common sense. One of the most conservation legislators President of the Senate John Hines – strongly suggested that there were a lot of crazies out there and arming them is probably not a good idea. I hope the rest of the legislature heeds his message. How come these NRA issues always come up in election years?????
Yes, RT, please find out who supplies these gun ideas to the legislature. I want to know. I am with you all the way. Laney
Hi RT … long time no see. I was in the House lobby on the first day of the session, talking with a legislator, when the sheriffs’ lobbyist came by to say that the bill allowing Wyo residents to carry Wyo guns was being looked at again to make sure Wyo residents didn’t include Wyo felons… oh dear me …
I believe that “Laney” is mistaken about the photo.
Mr Grouse. You finally found a creative place to plant your grousings. Much better reception here than before a bunch of old duck hunting buddies. Keep it up. I am enjoying it.
Hailing from the South, being an ornithologist and wildlife biologist, and having a soft spot for iconoclastic tendencies in people and institutions, I look forward to more from the Sage Grouse about the Greater Sage-grouse and other subjects of interest. Look me up at the Draper Museum of Natural History when you’re in Cody.
I find it very interesting RT that you state the grouse are under stress.
Yet, you defended energy companies who destroyed landscapes and their very habitat.
I believe you talk out of both sides of your mouth.
Yes, interesting column. I am wondering what RT sees as his role and objective. I think it is fine to see oneself as not fitting a standard role, but I would like some discussion as something beside a politically incorrect person. That is a terrible picture of RT. I could do much better.
Although, in your second paragraph, you correctly hyphenated “sage” and “grouse:, you DID split an infinitive! Otherwise, a great introductory article; I look forward to many more. And, as a fellow double agent (geologist and conservationist) and veteran of many environmental adventures in Wyoming, I want to meet you.
The next time you are in Casper, give me a message, and I’ll buy lunch.
Bart Rea
RT, good luck grousing. What is that river behind you in the picture? It looks like the Yellowstone.
RT, I look forward to reading your articles on sage grouse. I too stopped hunting them about 7 years ago. I like your idea of shooting only males like in pheasants and I’m sure the G&F would have instituted that long ago. . .but dude, come on. You can’t tell the difference between the two in the fall. A big old rooster pheasant blasting up with green head and dark plumage compared to a light brown hen is an easy ID. You can’t do this with sage grouse in the fall. They look alike. Be careful writing this stuff or you’re going to lose your credibiity fast.