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Saturday, March 14, 2009
913 - Thankfully, Wyoming needs no new slogans
The Big Empty.
Wyoming is what Wyoming was.
Strong Winds, Blowing Snow, Slick in Spots.
mockingly glib ideas for a new Wyoming state slogan written by people other than me!
Not sure I could imagine a tougher job today than coming up with a new state slogan.
This thought comes to mind as two issues concerning slogans have been in my “in” basket recently, one locally and other a national story.
Locally, we have been working with a committee to come up with a new slogan for little old Lander. The results have been positive.
On a national level there has been a huge furor in the state of Wisconsin about spending $50,000 to come up with a slogan, which had been used by a liquor company for the past ten years. Ouch.
Seriously, Wyoming has a bunch of very good slogans that it uses and its citizens are quite comfortable with. For example:
Forever West – the recently minted slogan by the state Division of Travel and Tourism. My compliments to the division for a great slogan.
The Equality State – the slogan on our state seal, which honors our state as where women first received the right to vote.
The Cowboy State – this fits our University of Wyoming Cowboys, the biggest rodeo in the world (Frontier Days in Cheyenne) and our true Cowboy and Indian heritage.
Over the years, we have seen efforts to use the following as our state’s slogan:
Like No Place on Earth– a tourism slogan in the 1990s.
Find Yourself in Wyoming – a tourism slogan in the 1980s.
Wyoming Is What American Was – a tourism slogan in the early 1980s.
BIG Wyoming – and yet, another tourism slogan in the 1970s.
Meanwhile over in Wisconsin, some people who were originally thought to be pretty smart, really blew it by coming up with “Live like you mean it,” which worked just fine for decade as a slogan for Bacardi Rum. The new Wisconsin slogan is designed to replace the apparently worn out “Life’s So Good.”
Heck, I thought their slogan was “The Cheesehead State.”
Probably the most trouble a slogan ever caused in Wyoming occurred here some years ago when the state economic development department (pre-Wyoming Business Council) stated: “Wyoming – Where Nothing Stands in Your Way. “ It was shouted down quickly and disappeared into the dust bin of history.
Meanwhile during this economic downtown Las Vegas is suffering and thinking of a new slogan to replace their infamous “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.”
Some of the funnier ideas listed on the Internet include:
“You’re broke, hung over and mad. Now go home.”
“We’ve got what it takes to take what you’ve got.”
And my favorite: “Where luck goes to die.”
Here in Lander, a brilliant committee has come up with:
Lander.
Real. Western. Spirit.
Very nice.
There are a great many wonderful state and city slogans such as New York City’s “The Big Apple” and New Orleans “The Big Easy.”
I always liked South Dakota’s Great Places. Great Faces.
Listed, as the most banal state slogan, is Idaho’s Great Potatoes.
New Jersey is also having a struggle since legislators there wanted to adopt Bruce Springsteen’s song Born To Run as their theme song until they read the words which go: “ . . . baby this town rips the bones from your back, it`s a death trap, it`s a suicide rap, we`ve gotta get out while we`re young."
Wyoming surely does not need a new motto but it clearly could (and should) be called The Energy State.
Maybe we should get some kind of recognition for powering the country? Sort of like Idaho’s potatoes, I guess.
A funny story on the Internet claims that the economic downturn is causing the governors of North and South Dakota to think about merging their states into one great state called Dakota. Or in a more imaginative thought: New Iceland.
Their proposed motto: "Everybody, run like hell, it`s a damn buffalo stampede!"
Some guy named Yancey Ward on the Internet claimed that West Virginia is vying over two ideas for its new state slogan:
“Got Teeth?”
“One Big Happy Family.”
Meanwhile, I have to thank Wisconsin for starting this discussion so I would have a column to write this week.
Apparently, one of the best ideas for a new slogan for that state came over NPR from a listener who loves the New Hampshire slogan of Live Free or Die. His idea for Wisconsin:
“Eat Cheese or Die.”
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Thursday, March 12, 2009
912 - Sometimes we need to thank our energy industry
The ground was trembling.
The roar was deafening.
Right in front of me sang out a terrific screech that I had only heard before from a distance. The whole experience was truly fantastic. I was in the presence of truly one of the modern wonders of Wyoming.
It was a trainload of coal.
And it was a mile and a quarter long.
This long, long train was bearing down on Lusk as it made a big east turn near Orin Junction carrying low sulphur coal from the vast seams of the Powder River Basin to some distant power plant in Iowa or South Carolina.
Many big companies were involved in that coal train getting to its destination. And it is time to say, bless our energy companies. Yeah, bless’em.
Lately, if you have been reading my columns, you might conclude that I may have some gripe against the energy industries working in our state.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is just that I wish Wyoming could get more taxes from its resources and that the state could do a better job of counting the tons, barrels and Mcf’s that are disappearing over the horizon.
Huge companies like ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Arch Coal and others, have made huge investments here in Wyoming. They employ thousands of workers. And they pay hundreds of millions of dollars in severance and property taxes.
When you embrace what this means to our state, it is easy to be caught up in the notion that we owe a lot to these giants.
And maybe we do.
So let me make myself perfectly clear here. It is truly wonderful that Wyoming is the energy capital of the Western Hemisphere. And that we are making our natural resources available to the American people so that people have consistent electrical power and reliable sources of oil, natural gas and uranium.
Within reasonable environmental concerns, we need to get this stuff out of the ground and to market as fast as possible.
We have 300 years of the cleanest coal in the country here in Wyoming. And despite recent TV commercials to the contrary, coal is probably never going to be squeaky clean. But it is not quite as bad as they are making it look, too.
My concern is only that we should be looking at how we do our taxing for the energy companies.
I have long called my tax idea an “indexing” plan where tax rates go up when times are good and come down when times are bad. That way, we share in the prosperity of the energy companies during good times and we suffer along with them when times are bad.
Sounds logical to me.
And Gov. Sarah Palin, the number-one candidate for president on the Republican ticket in 2012, did just that in Alaska. And it is making billions for her citizens.
This is not a new idea. Even some countries have done it successfully.
It just seems that our governor or the legislature or someone should establish a commission to hold some hearings and do some investigations of how the state might better deal with these tax situations before the time is too late.
Too late?
The thing I fear would be a worldwide blessing but perhaps a curse to Wyoming.
Someone in a lab somewhere, be it in India, China or Silicon Valley, is on the verge of discovering that wonderful device that may make these big power grids obsolete. And when that happens, our coal and oil and natural gas might just stay in the ground.
This killer application would probably be some kind of nuclear device or battery that would power homes and vehicles as a small, compact energy source.
Now I know this sounds like futuristic-type stuff but it is coming because the countries with vast populations need it so badly.
Thus, that is what drives my reasoning about getting our products out of the ground and to market as soon as possible. And properly taxed.
These comments make my environmentalist friends cringe, but we have a short window of opportunity and we owe it to ourselves and to the future generations of Wyoming to maximize this potential.
We just need a fair tax system to be placed on these products while we still have the opportunity.
And getting back to those gigantic, faceless billion-dollar, international corporations that are responsible for getting all our energy out of the ground?
It needs to be said, once in awhile, even by me: bless’em.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
911 - Sometimes Wyoming looks and acts like a colony
My friend Donny recently had some harsh words about my home state of Wyoming:
“There are times when it sure looks like the USA consists of 49 states, one district and one colony. And the colony appears to be Wyoming.”
Despite my protests, he persisted as he listed two reasons as a basis for such a blatant insult. They concern severance tax inaction and the inability to keep money at home for local government-sponsored projects.
“Obviously, the leaders of your state feel so indebted to the big international energy companies who operate there that a discussion of whether severance taxes are fair is never discussed. Nobody in the legislature or among the five elected officials has the nerve to even mention it.
“Now, does that sound like a colony or not?” he asks.
He says this almost sounds like the Congo offering up its treasure to Belgium 100 years ago. Or Rhodesia letting Great Britain claim its resources in the late 1800s.
He continued:
“It sure does not sound like 2009 in America. This is an America where every real state is scrambling to get as much tax revenue as possible. And real states are targeting out of state interests as sources of this new money.
“Severance taxes paid by energy companies to Wyoming for resources permanently taken out of the ground and whisked away to far distant places as fast as possible.
“These companies pay tiny taxes on coal, oil, natural gas, trona and uranium. These taxes have rarely been adjusted for 21 years, except once when a coal tax was lowered. Incredible.
“These tiny taxes should be doubled at least. The big companies will just pass these small increases downstream to their customers.
“Wyoming, since it appears to be a colony, produces very little itself except resources to be exported. Its 520,000 residents need to import just about everything they use. Or they go to Denver, Salt Lake City, Billings, Idaho Falls or Rapid City to buy goods,” he claims.
He says when Wyomingites import items or go outside the state to pay for goods, they pay many local taxes on these items. It is easy to contend that residents of Wyoming pay more of these kinds of taxes, per capita, than anyone in the country.
“It just seems nuts why Wyoming’s leaders are so shy about even talking about raising severance taxes. Especially now when Gov. Dave Freudenthal is predicting hard times.
“So, on the first question of whether Wyoming is a colony or a state, well, the obvious answer is that it sure looks like a colony,” he concludes, much to my dismay.
On the second question, he mentions that Wyoming has been awash in money for the past seven years. Billion dollar budget surpluses even occurred.
State leaders decided to build schools and prisons and implement many impressive programs.
Donny then starts to get wound up: “Hundreds of high-priced consultants, agencies and firms were hired to make sure these projects were done right. Almost every project involved hiring experts from out of state.
“Seldom was an effort made to specifically hire in-state with the assumption that few people in Wyoming have the brains to do the job as well as the out of state experts, right?
“Does this sound like a colony or not? Sounds like one to me,” he says.
Donny says there was a solution but Wyoming’s leaders did not want to listen. That solution was to make out of state companies work with in-state companies on many of these projects. It seldom occurred.
But the consultant issue is small compared to the big construction projects that have been done and will soon be done by out of state firms, he says.
Donny reminds folks that State Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) blew his top when he saw the Colorado-based Hall-Irwin Construction Co. doing work in Cheyenne.
“There was a big sign on the lawn of the State Capitol building that read: ‘All hiring done at Colorado offices located at Milliken, Colorado.’ A Wyoming worker needed to travel 100 miles south to Colorado in order to apply for a job on a project in Wyoming being paid for with Wyoming tax dollars.
“How come nobody seems to be upset about this?” Donny wonders.
And then he concludes, “Probably because if you are a colony you do not protest. You gamely go about your business with your head down and hope you do not upset your rich, powerful out of state masters.”
So why doesn’t Donny do something about all this?
He can’t. He doesn’t live here.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
WCR07 - The Irish had big impact on Wyoming
May soft be the grass you walk on,
May fair be the skies above you,
May true be the joys that surround you,
May dear be the hearts that love you.
An Irish blessing
Wyoming has a rich Irish heritage. There are places all across the state where Irish Catholic people can be found.
Later this month, people will celebrate the annual St. Patrick’s holiday, which is a traditional Irish (and Catholic) holiday.
One of Wyoming’s most famous Catholics is former Gov. Mike Sullivan of Casper. Besides doing wonderful work as governor for eight years, he later served as this country’s ambassador to Ireland.
While there, he played a major role in finally solving the generations-long warfare there among the Catholics and Protestants.
He and his wife Jane were upholding a rich tradition of good work by Wyoming Irish.
Another Wyoming Irishman whom I miss is the late Dr. Joseph Murphy of Casper.
Besides being a fine doctor and wonderful human being, he was an excellent writer who wrote from the heart. His columns in the Casper Star-Tribune were treasures.
Knowing them made me proud of my own Irish heritage. My grandmother’s maiden name was Flanagan and we come from large Irish Catholic families. My family includes eight brothers and two sisters.
When my father died eight years ago we made a pilgrimage back to our family home in little Irish-rich Wadena, Iowa. We held a memorial service for our father in the little church in that town of 300 people.
During the service, several of us spoke. When I talked, I reminisced about all the Irish families back there and how my brothers and I (and even our father, a generation before us) had probably served Mass 4,000 times in that little church. We had some wonderful Irish priests that we served during that time.
Because of our Celtic heritage, I have tried to learn as much as I could over the years about various Irish things.
Many years ago, I called my late great aunt, Cecil Flanagan, in Wadena one morning to find out more about our Irish background.
She pointed out that my great grandparents, John and Mary Flanagan, were both children of parents who came to this country during the last great potato famine in Ireland. They came from County Cork and Tipperary. (It should be noted that hundreds of other Irish perished on the Titanic, also trying to escape the bad times in their homeland.)
"They worked on the railroads and followed them west to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. They ultimately ended up in the small valley in northeastern Iowa with quite a colony of Irishmen with names like Kelly, Raftis, Welch, Murphy and Corkery. Many of them lived in an area called Corn Hill Ridge.
She recalled singing Irish songs to the accompaniment of her brother playing the Jew’s harp. Cecil, who was 88 when she died, was a long-time schoolteacher in that part of Iowa.
Ireland is a lush, green island with a population of about four million. It is interesting to note that total immigration from that country to the USA, since 1820, is an estimated 4.6 million people.
A Denver Post columnist, Tricia Flynn, wrote about the origins of St. Patrick and some of the interesting things about his life.
According to Tricia, St. Patrick of Ireland was actually Bishop Patricius, a Roman. He sailed to Ireland in the year 484 AD. Her column heaped huge praise on old St. Pat because of his respect for women.
She credits his good work in Ireland having a major effect on a vote the Church leadership held 100 years later that was important to the future status of women in the Christian world.
She reports that the Catholic Church held a Council at Lyon, France, with 63 Bishops and church leaders in which the main topic was: “Are women human?” She reports the women prevailed by a vote of 32-31 by one vote!
St. Patrick found in Ireland a place where women often ruled the clans. Women had full rights and some of the strongest warrior leaders were women.
So on St. Patrick’s Day, she thinks all women should celebrate this feast day along with the rest of us.
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Sunday, March 1, 2009
910 - A crabby time in the sunshine state
TAMPA, Fl. – Crabby Bill.
Here is a quiz. Why was Bill crabby after leaving chilly Wyoming for a trip to sunny Florida?
• Was it because the space shuttle launch was postponed? It offered a Wyoming story angle because five of the astronauts had been on a National Outdoor Leadership course with the Lander school?
• Was it because the biggest clean coal-powered electrical plant in the country near Tampa was closed for repairs and unavailable for a tour?
• Was it because the temperatures stayed at 50 degrees or better every day back in Wyoming?
• Was it because Crabby Bill’s is the name of one of the best seafood restaurants there?
• Or was Bill just being crabby?
The answer is all the above.
So here I sit in a wonderful inn in Ybor (E’-bor) City in Tampa trying to determine a storyline about Florida and make it interesting to Wyoming readers.
Shall we start with tobacco? Although I have worked for years to limit smoking, I admit to past love of cigars. And this is the biggest cigar place in the country.
It all started when Don Vincente de Ybor (for whom my hotel is named) fled Cuba during an early uprising and brought cigar-making facilities with him.
At the height, 12,000 people were making cigars in this colorful part of Tampa.
We were there during Fiesta, which is a combination of ethnic music and dance and colorful clothes and displays plus a pretty raunchy Gay Pride Parade. (“Nancy, we are not in Wyoming, anymore!”)
So I indulged in a couple of tightly-wound Cuban-type cigars, which tasted great but left me with heartburn akin to Tabasco. We smoked and had beverages at Gaspar’s Grotto named after the famous Pirate and watched the human tide stroll by.
This trip started when we flew into Tampa Feb. 22 and then headed over to Disney country with hopes to see the shuttle launch.
For 43 years, I had promised Nancy we would some day stay in a place where each room had its own swimming pool. She had always wanted to go to a resort called Las Brises in Acapulco.
I found us a three-bedroom town home in a development called Encantada. This would be perfect for family groups going to Disney World. The private, heated pool was the high point. Finally got that obligation resolved and I did not have to take her to Mexico.
But news was not good in Florida. Headlines were about tax deficits and the horrible economy.
Want to buy a house? There are 300,000 empty ones in the state. There are 2,000 condo foreclosures in Tampa Bay, alone.
One in ten people is on food stamps. Its biggest industry, tourism, is down and legislators even want to put a sales tax on Internet sales.
But the biggest tax issue is about putting a severance tax on bottled water. Millions of gallons of Florida water are put into plastic bottles and shipped out of state at great profit by big international corporations who pay little or no taxes. Sound familiar?
Still, we had a great time. We were also guests at a posh new Tampa hotel called the InterContinental. The InterContinental is located in central Tampa and its restaurant, Shula’s, features huge steaks and football-player size portions. Outstanding. We would also recommend the Pelagia Trattoria and the Columbia, the oldest restaurant in the state.
Other neat sites in Tampa Bay included the Florida Aquarium, the Lowry Zoo, the IMAX Dome and we would recommend the dinner cruise on the Yacht Star Ship. That cruise was a wonderfully romantic way to see the city lights and enjoy great food.
With all the housing foreclosures and talk of a dying economy, you would expect people to be glum, but they weren’t. Everyone was friendly and there were no protest marches in the streets that we could see.
A drive out Clearwater-way revealed blue skies and white sand beaches. We had not been here for 25 years and it was just as pretty as we remembered it.
The weather was nice and topped out at 86 on the day we went to Disney World. Nice day to be shorts and a short sleeves, that is for sure.
So, we left Florida with lots undone. More detail about this trip can be found on www.billsniffin.com.
The shuttle launch has been rescheduled for mid-March and the power plant will be open about then, too.
Who knows? Maybe I can return and be crabby all over again.
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