A number of pundits marked the Newtown anniversary with opinion pieces, some with cautious (nonetheless exaggerated) optimism for gun control at the state level, others repeating the same righteous indignation against any support for gun rights. What’s most telling is that these articles all assume that the gun-control debate is taking place in a vacuum, and recent events are overshadowed by Newtown. This is simply not true.

Just days after President Obama urged the graduating class at Ohio State University to “reject these voices” that claim “tyranny’s always lurking just around the corner,” the Internal Revenue Service scandal broke, showing that the IRS targeted Tea Party and other advocacy groups for invasive scrutiny and extensive delays when they applied for tax-exempt status. Despite continuing efforts by some to sell the “real” scandal as anything but the one the IRS and President have already acknowledged, Congressional investigation continues and paints the IRS as, at best, completely insensitive to political speech and association.

In the following days, we learned that the Department of Justice obtained more than two months of information from more than 20 telephone lines at the Associated Press in a leak investigation, and named Fox News reporter James Rosen a “co-conspirator” in another leak case in order to subpoena his phone records. These both marked a seriously overbroad targeting of journalists, and by extension the free press, on the flimsy justification that the DOJ needs to do this to keep the federal government clean. Naturally, the DOJ stands by its work.

Finally, the most controversial revelation came early this month with news that the National Security Agency is indiscriminately collecting telephone records of millions of foreign and domestic calls. The NSA also has a program, Prism, that “allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats” from Google, Facebook, Apple and other major companies. This unfortunately is garnering bipartisan defense in Washington (and even from Miss Alabama). Of course, coming so quickly on the tails of the IRS and DOJ scandals, it’s very difficult for many (myself included) to believe law, oversight and other safeguards will prevent these programs from being abused if indeed they’re even lawful in the first place.

The implication of these scandals on gun rights is self-evident. It is hard to say when acts of tyranny become an irredeemable tyrannical regime, and thus justification for revolution. I still believe we are far from that given the changes we can make with our other freedoms, but we must always have the option. Even with a well-armed citizenry government oversteps, and with the recent callousness by numerous federal agencies the Second Amendment is as relevant as ever.

None of this is to say that Newtown was not terrifying. But tyranny is far worse, and there are numerous public policies, some proposed right here in Wyoming, that can prevent mass shootings while respecting the right to bear arms. By ignoring recent events in discussions of Newtown and the resulting anti-gun efforts, gun-control advocates reveal a severe case of myopia that thankfully dooms their cause politically if not in principle. Nevertheless, their continuing rhetoric reveals just how far they’re willing to take the fight, and that the enduring principles of the Second Amendment will need enduring advocates.

Ms. Luther, a resident of Cody, wishes to become a master sommelier – an accredited wine expert – according to an article in the Casper Star-Tribune. And to that end this writer sincerely offers up a toast for all the luck and success in the world.

With one caveat, however.

And that would be finding another method to fund Luther’s esoteric career choice; something that doesn’t employ public monies.  

According to the Star-Tribune:

The Wyoming Workforce Development Training Fund awarded her a grant to help defray costs associated with her first exam in Omaha, Neb. She’s hoping for continued help when she attends a conference in Dallas this August.

The fund grants about 2,000 contracts a year in a diversity of professions, said Bill Schepeler, business liaison at the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.

“It’s kind of twofold,” he said of the fund’s community value. “It will be a benefit to employers, in keeping the workforce educated, and we want to be able to help employees keep their skill sets up to date.”

Last time your writer checked, establishments in the habit of engaging sommeliers were, for the most part, a bit out of his price range. However, Mr. Schepeler seems to think our tax dollars are spent wisely on a young woman’s education for the benefit of a very small, wealthy minority who enjoy spitting fermented grape juice into buckets.

Not to insinuate that sommeliers, wine connoisseurs and a fine vintage don’t all have their place, mind you, but to assert that such rarified pastimes are undeserving of public subsidies.  Otherwise, state taxpayers might be on the hook for training both sherpas for Wyoming mountain climbing and pet sitters for purse pooches.

Where would it end?

Furthermore, in today’s job market, mobility is the norm rather than the exception. Who’s to say state taxpayers will get the maximum bang for the bucks allocated for Luther’s education before she flees the state for greener, more lucrative pastures?

Granted, the DWS operates on a $163 million budget, so whatever funds Luther receives is more than likely a drop in the ice bucket. But, as noted above, where does it end? Harry Nilsson famously sang about wanting to be a spaceman. Should he have received an education grant as well? And what about poor Kid Rock, the Detroiter yearning to be a cowboy – could he also be a candidate for Cowboy State largesse?

Yes, the DWS has an impressive placement and retention record for Wyoming jobseekers – currently hovering above 96 percent. But last time I checked the employment listings in state newspapers there wasn’t an overwhelming call for spacemen and cowboys, much less sommeliers. In fact, the Star-Tribune notes, there are only 201 master sommeliers in the entire world, of which 133 reside in the United States.

The point of all this isn’t to denigrate the honored sommelier profession or to take Luther to task for accepting found taxpayer money to further her dream.

Instead, I’m trying to convey the risk of paying for specialized knowledge shouldn’t fall on the public inasmuch it should be the responsibility of the person seeking such an education. Failing that, employers looking to increase the reputation of their respective establishments by trumpeting the arcane certifications and advanced degrees of their employees can foot the bill for same. Additionally, those employers can request something the state can’t; namely, a guarantee the employee will stick around long enough for the employer to receive a reasonable return-on-investment.

I truly wish Ms. Luther tremendous luck in her endeavors to become a sommelier. I also hope that moving forward DWS focuses more on performing as a responsible steward of public funds rather than doling it out for one exceptionally qualified wine steward.

These governments are making a major miscalculation if they downplay benefits when comparing government pay to private-sector pay. Government workers enjoy benefits that many private-sector employees can only dream about. Sham studies mean taxpayers might pay even more for government-employee benefits.

Benefits add a significant amount to the cost of government employees. For example, salary costs at the City Attorney’s office amounted to $314,735 in 2013, but benefits added an additional $99,434 to the total personnel costs of the office. The story is similar at the County Attorney’s office, where salary costs totaled $270,100 and benefits added an additional $100,051 to the cost of personnel.

Benefits cost taxpayers big because at both the City of Cheyenne and Laramie County, employees enjoy gold-plated pension benefits and subsidized health insurance premiums.

Most full-time city and county employees belong to the Wyoming Retirement System, which provides impressive benefits for government workers enjoyed by few in the private sector. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Mountain geographical area to which Wyoming belongs, about 84 percent of government workers have access to these generous plans, while only about 20 per cent of private-sector workers do.

City and county employees contribute very little to their plans, leaving Wyoming taxpayers to foot the lion’s share of the tab. According to Wyoming statute, 14.12 percent of a city or county employee’s salary must be contributed to the plan. The taxpayer burden for both city- and county-employee pension plans is 7.12 percent per government worker. The employee is supposed to contribute 7 percent of which city employees currently pay only 3 percent.

But that’s not all: County employees enjoy an even sweeter deal than their city counterparts. According to Laramie County’s 2012 audited financial statement, county taxpayers fund 100 percent of the employee contribution. When the Wyoming Legislature passed the 2.79-percent increase in pension-plan contributions in 2010, county employees were to pick up half of the employee increase, according to Laramie County Clerk Debbye Lathrop. As a result county employees now pay only 1.39 percent of the total 14.12 percent contribution.

Government-employee health insurance is another expensive perk shouldered by taxpayers. The majority of city and county employee health-insurance premiums is picked up courtesy of the public. At present, city employees pay only 12.5 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums. Lathrop says county employees pay “approximately 20 percent” of their own health insurance premium.

During a recent KGAB radio interview, Laramie County Commissioner Chair Troy Thompson magnanimously suggested that this year the county “may split the premium increase with employees.” The increase is expected to be 2.5 percent, leaving county workers to pick up a miserly 1.25 percent.

So, when government workers complain they haven’t received pay hikes over the past several years, they should be reminded that they are recipients of gold-plated benefit packages provided by Wyoming’s hard-pressed taxpayers. Consideration of public-employee pay hikes should be delayed until current actual compensation – including health and pension benefits – is presented in an honest and transparent manner.

As I discussed in an opinion piece last week, O’Donnell endeavors to portray the “real” Internal Revenue Service scandal as the agency’s failure to require proof that 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations fulfill “exclusively” social welfare (as it says in the law) functions rather than “primarily” social welfare (as it says in the IRS regulations) tasks.

However, reconciling the law and the regulations would not lead to an actual solution. It would instead create another vague standard no one—from grassroots groups to IRS agents— can understand. Nevertheless, O’Donnell has succeeded in finding two or so congressman to parrot this line. Further, O’Donnell gleefully dismissed the testimony of Tea Party groups who appeared before the House Ways and Means committee on Tuesday, June 4:

However, if O’Donnell insists that the IRS should not have the authority to arbitrarily interpret the law, in principle he should take aim at other areas of IRS interpretation, such as the administration of tax credits offered through Obamacare’s federal healthcare exchanges.

As I explained in a letter to Wyoming Governor Matt Mead in October of 2011, the explicit wording of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act “limits the premium assistance tax credit for exchange enrollees to those exchanges ‘established by the State’” (emphasis added).  (Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute discusses this in detail beginning on page 19 of his “50 Vetoes” white paper.)  Nevertheless, contra the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act law, the IRS passed a rule allowing the issuance of tax credits through federal exchanges. This is sure to lead to a lawsuit if Health and Human Services ever gets around to actually setting up these federally run exchanges.

Unlike the IRS interpretation of 501(c)(4), which happened 50 years ago and has become engrained in tax law governing thousands of nonprofits across the country, the IRS’s interpretation of Obamacare hasn’t taken effect. O’Donnell, so staunchly opposed to arbitrary and capricious interpretations of law by the IRS, would make far better use of his TV time by urging the dismantling of this administrative bomb rather than trying to fix a long-forgotten explosion. 

Of course O’Donnell won’t do that. Obamacare is sacrosanct to him and his ilk, so the “real” IRS scandal could never extend that far. As the video above illustrates, O’Donnell relishes the blows dealt to the Tea Party by the IRS, and is working diligently to obfuscate a scandal that’s already been acknowledged by not only the IRS itself but the President.

Nevertheless, the hypocrisy in this obfuscation is particularly glaring, and further erodes the crumbling edifice of MSNBC’s credibility.

The Cheyenne City and Laramie County councils are not working in the best interest of the citizens who voted them into office to represent them.

Members of both councils want to fund pay increases to government workers by continuing to pick taxpayers’ pockets while ignoring other options such as privatizing or contracting out poorly run government programs.

In the private sector, wages are determined in a large part by consumer demand for the good or service provided. In the government sector, consumers get what government offers whether the public demands it or not.

Government-worker salaries are thus arbitrarily determined, and often enjoy large increases even if taxpayers had other ideas about how they wanted to spend their money. In fact, the City’s pay-hike proposal would cost taxpayers an additional $615,000. County taxpayers would pay an additional $1.7 million to cover the proposed salary increases.

Instead of milking taxpayers, local government must find savings in other areas.

Salaries and benefits are the largest component in the City’s budget. The 2014 general fund budget is set at about $55 million. Nearly 70 percent – $38 million – will pay for salaries and benefits.

City and county governments are supposed to provide services essential to their respective citizens. Traditionally, “essential services” include police and fire protection as well as such public works as water and sewer services. But there are many nonessential services provided by government that are more efficiently provided by private businesses.

How could Cheyenne find efficiencies? One way would be to reduce the burden on taxpaying families by eliminating services competing with the private sector.

Imagine a company that spent almost $600,000 to generate about $150,000 in revenue. What would we call that? A money loser? Bankrupt? A waste of resources?

How about a government department?

Recreation is a good example of a group of government services better provided by the private sector. At the City of Cheyenne, recreation is broken up into a number of areas such as golf, parks, cemeteries, the botanical garden and aquatics.

Revenue from aquatics – that’s pool fees and swimming lessons – generated about $143,000 in revenue in 2013 at a total cost of $578,000, wasting about $450,000 per year. In 2013, aquatic-service salaries plus benefits cost taxpayers $410,000. Taxpayers paid about $12,500 into the employee pension plan and $29,000 for their health insurance premiums.

Golf is the game of kings. Forcing the average taxpayer to fund this is simply outrageous. City golf courses brought in revenue of $357,000 in 2013, and cost about $575,000 to run. This waste of about $218,000 is not as bad as aquatics but still a loser for taxpayers. Salaries and benefits cost taxpayers about $470,000, and account for about 81 percent of city golf course costs. Taxpayers paid about $25,000 into their pension plan and $72,000 for employee health insurance premiums. 

This means families with trouble affording shoes for their children are paying for jobs with great health and pension benefits as well as subsidizing someone’s green fees. 

If elected officials want to actually represent the people who voted them into office, they will either reject the pay hike or find savings in other areas to fund it. Taxpayers cannot afford high-priced help at City Hall. 

The City’s pay hike proposal would cost taxpayers about $615,000 and the County’s about $1.7 million. These proposals come with some controversy. The Cheyenne City council’s 2014 budget was rejected primarily because of a disagreement on the form of the employee pay hike. The County budget pay hike priority only came to light after the information was leaked by a concerned county councilor.

Forgotten in the discussion is where the money comes from to pay for local government – taxpaying Wyoming families. 

For the City of Cheyenne, the largest single revenue source comes from the state sales tax, but at least families can control how much they spend to avoid paying more sales tax. A more direct attack on the wallets of taxpaying families is garbage collection. Sanitation removal has long been used as a cash cow to fund poorly managed city services. 

According to the City’s budget, sanitation removal fees took $6.3 million out of the pockets of Wyoming families in fiscal year 2012-2013. This will go up to $6.5 million in next year because of the now approved 3.4 percent increase in trash collection fees that will extract another $215,000 from family budgets. 

In fiscal year 2012-2013, sanitation removal costs ran about $3.3 million, so fees generated a $3.0 million profit for the City. Higher personnel costs are expected to increase the sanitation budget to $3.5 million next year. In other words, homeowners and renters are overpaying nearly $3 million every year for garbage pickup and will soon be paying even more to fund increased salaries and benefits for sanitation employees. 

Salaries and benefits are the largest component in the City’s budget. The 2014 budget is set at about $55 million. Approximately $38 million – 70 percent – is salaries and benefits. 

The City is currently engaging in a curiously skewed “employee investment study,” which appears suspiciously to be window dressing to justify the pay hike. Whether to bestow raises to employees who are “below market” or alternatively to grant an across-the-board, cost-of-living increase seemed to be the council’s sticking point. 

In any case, the survey will no doubt show employee salaries below “market” because the employee survey does not include benefits, and these can add an additional 50 percent to the cost of an employee. 

For example, sanitation employee salary costs totaled $1.9 million in 2013. Benefit costs totaled $1.1 million. According to the 2014 budget, salary costs would go up to $2.06 million, an 8.4 percent increase. Benefit costs would go up to $1.14 million, a 3.6 percent increase. 

Leaving benefits out of the calculation conveniently results in a massive understatement of the value of a government salary. Government benefits are often gold-plated compared to what private sector workers, the ones who pay for government worker benefits, receive. 

For example, fulltime City employees are included in the State pension plan. This plan provides retirement benefits few people in the private sector should even bother dreaming about. 

Worse still, City employees contribute very little to their gold-plated plan. Total contributions equal 14.12 percent of the employee’s salary. The City is required by State statute to contribute 7.12 percent of the amount, leaving 7 percent for the employee to pay. However, the City also pays 3 percent of the required employee’s contribution, leaving the employee to cover just 4 percent. In the sanitation department, this cost taxpayers about $191,000.

Government employees get subsidized health insurance as well. City employees pay a mere 12.5 percent of the cost of the insurance premium, leaving the remaining 87.5 percent for the taxpayer to pick up. In the sanitation department, this costs about $650,000. 

People working in the private sector who may not even have a pension or health insurance are forced to fund gold-plated benefits for someone else. 

For some reason, the only option to pay for these higher salaries seems to be higher taxes and fees. No one seems to be talking about making government more efficient or jettisoning functions that should be provided by the private sector. 

City and county councils are not working in the best interest of the citizens who voted them into office. If elected officials are truly representing the people who voted for them, they will either reject the pay hike or find savings in other areas to fund it. Taxpayers cannot afford high-priced help at City Hall. 

Update: Please note that paragraph six has been updated. In the sentence, “Higher personnel costs are expected to increase the sanitation budget to $3.5 million next year” the word “to” has been added before $3.5 million to make the sentence clearer. 

Residents of Saxtons River, Vt., both Leclaire brothers have a rare genetic disease, Duchene Muscular Dystrophy, which involves progressive and fatal muscle degeneration. Most sufferers of DMD die by their mid-20s.

The only difference between these two boys is that the Food and Drug Administration will allow Max to take the wildly successful experimental treatment, Eteplirsen, while forbidding Austin to do the same. As a result, Max is now able to run around and play soccer and Austin remains confined to his wheelchair due to lost mobility.

Complicating matters is the regulatory morass of the FDA’s drug approval process. In a March meeting between Sarepta, the manufacturer of Eteplirsen, and the FDA, the agency cautioned that the company would be required to demonstrate more evidence concerning the drug’s efficacy before it could be granted approval.

If the FDA grants accelerated approval status, the drug could reach people like Austin years earlier than if the agency follows its usual labored path to approval. Or, as McNary explained to the Burlington Free Press: “The idea is to do it as fast as humanly possible so they don’t lose another single function or we lose another single kid. A kid died today, a 20-year-old kid, a kid that I actually think could have benefited from this drug. That’s very real to me. In a couple years, that could be Austin.”

Unfortunately, the FDA has a history of restricting potentially lifesaving medicine for those most in need. The Abigail Alliance sued the FDA in 2004, for example, to recognize the right of college student Abigail Burroughs to purchase experimental cancer treatments without government interference. Abigail died after exhausting traditional cancer treatments as the FDA continually refused access to experimental treatments. Unfortunately her legal claims—that her right to self-defense also included the right to purchase life-preserving medicine—failed.

 Today FDA exercises seemingly unlimited power over American lives. Whatever claims may be made for government control of drug approval, one thing is clear: forbidding the voluntary usage of experimental medicine to save lives is the act of a cold and cruel bureaucracy.

 Perhaps this is why leading scientists, like Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, is outraged about the FDA. “Shouldn’t this be the patient’s choice to say I would rather beat the odds with a total cure rather than just to know that I am going to have all my hair fall out and then after a year I’m dead? . . . Why should [FDA Commissioner] Margaret Hamburg hold things up?”

Stringent government oversight and interference in experimental medicine ensures a fake sort of assurance about our health. While some people may feel safe with a government watchdog purportedly keeping “dangerous” drugs off the street, along the way untold numbers of patients suffer unnecessarily and sometimes die.

One path to reclaiming our medical freedom is outlined in our paper, Medical Freedom Zones. Another is to divest the FDA of its authority and trust people with difficult choices about their health. Less regulation would  encourage innovation, allow more life-saving treatments to come to market by lowering development costs, and support the judgment of our medical practitioners as they compassionately care for their patients.

In April, nonfarm payroll employment increased in 30 states, decreased in 18 states and the District of Columbia, and was unchanged in 2 states. … Over the year, nonfarm employment increased in 47 states and the District of Columbia and decreased in 3 states. The largest over-the-year percentage increases occurred in North Dakota (+3.7 percent) and Utah (+3.5 percent). The largest over-the-year percentage decreases in employment occurred in Wyoming (-0.5 percent) and Maine (-0.3 percent).

The report confirms a low unemployment rate for Wyoming at 4.8 percent, a good number by national standards. However, we have neighbors that are doing as well or better: Nebraska has an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent; South Dakota (4.1) and Utah (4.7) are also ahead of us.

While Montana, Idaho and Colorado are behind us with unemployment rates of 5.5, 6.1 and 6.9 percent respectively, they are all growing their employment numbers while we are losing jobs.

The stagnant nature of the Wyoming labor market should not come as a surprise. On April 26 I explained that Wyoming is falling behind the national economic recovery:

[There] are still fewer people working in Wyoming today than in 2007.  But what is more troubling is that there has been no upward movement in employment since mid-2011: the third and fourth quarters of that year averaged 289,300 jobs. In other words, we are well into a second year with zero job growth – after the U.S. economy hit the bottom of the recession.

If this standstill was due to a decline in government employment and a steady rise in private-sector jobs, it would not be very much to worry about. But that is not the case – on the contrary. According to the BLS report, in seasonally adjusted numbers Wyoming lost 1,800 private-sector jobs from April 2012 to April 2013!

Our private sector is shrinking.

Compare this to the year-to-year, seasonally adjusted private-sector job growth in neighboring states:

The poor job-creation record in Wyoming spells trouble for our state and local governments. When the private sector slows down, stagnates and even shrinks, the tax base goes the same way. With a continued erosion of the private sector, the state government will eventually run into budget problems – a deficit, for short.

On the longer term, a stagnant or shrinking private sector spells trouble for Wyoming families. Not only will government services suffer, but private businesses will eventually see their markets shrink. When fewer businesses find it worth the while to compete for consumer spending, cost of living eventually goes up. This will motivate more families and businesses to leave the state.

While this is a longer-term outlook and not an immediate threat to our state’s prosperity, it is worth keeping in mind. An economy with a stagnant or declining private sector will inevitably reach a point where the downward trend becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: businesses and families will feel the cost of the decline begin to leave the state for that very reason. Every closed-down business and outbound U-Haul will accelerate the decline.

Again, we are not there yet. Our legislature and our governor still have time to turn the economy around. There are plenty of good ideas available, one of which is my five steps toward a better Wyoming economy.

All we need is a political will to do the right thing.

During a Travel, Recreation and Wildlife (TRW) committee meeting earlier this month, the department came on like a public-relations juggernaut with a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation apparently intended to convey all the wonderful things Game and Fish does on behalf of all wildlife and all people in all Wyoming.

Like bureaucracies everywhere, Game and Fish’s mission is vaguely defined and subject to mission creep. The department’s mandate was to protect and preserve “Game animals, birds and fish of this State,” but has crept along to cover programs far removed from these core functions. As a result, implementing budget cuts that would reduce the budget now and in the future (unlike current short-term measures such as delaying maintenance or leaving vacant positions empty) mean cutting programs that fall outside its traditional mission.

However, the department is evoking the fear of program cuts to manipulate legislators into either increasing fees or finding more creative sources of revenue.

Until recently, department funding came primarily from user fees charged to hunters and anglers. However, in 2004, it started receiving monies from the state’s general fund. With fee revenue on a downward trend since 2009, the department is trying to lure more revenue from state taxpayers.

It now seems to have enlisted some help.

During the public comment at the TRW meeting, representatives from the AFL-CIO, Wyoming Wildlife Foundation and the Nature Conservancy called for more money for the department and higher pay for department employees. Where would this come from? “Alternative funding” and “non-consumptive user fees.”

According to Wyoming Representative Marti Halverson (R-Lincoln/Sublette/Teton), “alternative funding” means department personnel costs would be paid out of the state’s general fund instead of hunting and fishing license fees.

This translates to cost shifting from hunters and anglers to state taxpayers, which increases the likelihood of a personnel cost liftoff because there are many more pockets to pick. 

Game and Fish bureaucrats are already doing quite well. Personnel costs, already 62 percent of the department’s costs, increased by 62 percent over the past 10 years. In contrast, median household income in Wyoming increased by 37 percent over the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. When government salary increases for an individual are double those of a typical Wyoming family, it’s clearly time to impose some parity in the service of budgetary sanity, to put it nicely.

But there’s more. Game and Fish bureaucrats and their allies are busy thinking up ways to force people to pay a tax when they take a photo or see a buffalo. Amateur photographers and wildlife watchers, it seems, have “consumed” wildlife but not paid a license fee so should pay a “non-consumptive user fee” instead.

Let’s stop and think about this one for a moment. Imagine walking past the cake shop. You look in. You see cake. At that moment, you’ve non-consumptively consumed cake. The shopkeeper walks out of his shop and charges you a fee for your non-consumption. 

Ridiculous? It sure is!

Once you stop laughing – be afraid. Wyoming already has a consumption tax – it’s called a sales tax, and Game and Fish is already looking to take a bite out of it. Game and Fish Director Scott Talbot announced this past October that he wants 1/4 of 1 percent of the sales tax, according to Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife Executive Director Bob Wharff.

A Legislative Service Office publication shows that a 1-percent increase in the state’s sales and use tax would bring in an additional $183 million in 2013. One-quarter of that is about $46 million – virtually six times the $8 million the Game and Fish department wanted with its proposed hunting and fishing license fee hikes in 2013.

This might be great for bureaucrats looking for pay hikes, but would likely be bad for everyone else. Here’s why:

If the sales tax goes up, people will tend to purchase less unless retailers lowers the item’s pre-tax price. This squeezes business margins and means the retailer who just barely makes ends meet at the higher pre-tax price level may have to lay off workers or close down completely. This means private sector jobs in Wyoming will tend to fall after a sales tax increase. A higher sales tax is a silent job killer.  

Seems the Game and Fish department doesn’t care where the money comes from, as long as it gets more. But stripping hardworking families of even more money will reduce department accountability and kill private-sector jobs. It’s time for more accountability, not less, at Game and Fish. 

In fact, this is a very important part of Free Speech’s lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, and we’re proud to represent Free Speech. Along the way, it’s been both humorous and sad to see supporters of so-called disclosure fail to practice what they preach; illustrate how even experienced attorneys can fail to “disclose;” and report that disclosure is leading to even more chilling oppression of constitutional engagement.

But until the most recent IRS scandal, convincing many folks who love liberty about the constitutional problems of “disclosure” was difficult. We’ve all stood in long lines at the post office while two workers behind the counter do something besides help customers, dealt with someone at the DMV who practically relishes the fact that we didn’t bring along one required piece of paper to renew our drivers licenses (a relatively new phenomenon in Wyoming thanks to Real ID) and, of course, filled out our federal income tax filings and attendant schedules.

Sure, it’s aggravating, but that’s life and that’s government, right? Why should paperwork and bureaucracy be any different for forming a Tea Party group or any kind of advocacy group?

Well, here’s why:

This is but one of five pages of invasive questions sent to one organization represented by Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who has practiced on behalf of nonprofits and tax-exempt organizations for years.

In a must-read memorandum released a few days ago, Mitchell lays out the lengths to which the IRS took its Tea Party inquisition. The memo includes this letter as well as letters sent to three other organizations (names and other information redacted), requiring them to not only answer dozens of questions “under penalties of perjury,” but to respond within roughly three weeks. Quite a bold requirement, considering these organizations (and many others across the country) waited more than a year without approval before the IRS sent these questions along. As Mitchell notes, even after answering these questions, “[o]nly one of the referenced organizations has received its letter of exempt status. All the others are still pending.”

Aside from the constitutional harms caused by the IRS’s delays and intrusive questioning, the applicants’ answers to the IRS’s questions become public once the organization is approved for tax-exempt status. The details are so minute, these forms are practically an ammo drop for groups that oppose the Tea Party.

For example, when the IRS asks groups to “provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,” (emphasis added) it effectively prohibits an organization from taking a different path later on. If, at the time of filing, a group aimed to train poll watchers, but then decided it would be better to focus on training grassroots lobbyists, a so-called “watchdog” could report the group’s leaders to the IRS for “perjury.” Of course, the group could always amend its (c)(4) filing, but you can imagine how enticing that is after waiting so long for initial approval.

If political “disclosure” cannot be eliminated entirely, at the very least it must be significantly rolled back.

The IRS went to such extremes and engaged in such blatant discrimination that folks are finally waking up to the stranglehold the federal government places on grassroots speech under the guise of “disclosure.” Considering how powerful the Tea Party’s voice was in spite of this censorship, one can only imagine what eliminating such onerous burdens will do for the liberty movement.

Then, just maybe, more citizens will realize there are reams of government red tape in other areas of our lives we can also cut through and throw away.