My town...

[Bender 4 Life]

Bender...

 

I think a lot of things along these lines have to do with local culture.

 

And a lotta stuff has changed, too.

 

For example, where I live, you seldom if ever nowadays see a rifle rack in a pickup. Then again, most of the ranch pickups especially are four-door outfits where a cased rifle is a less likely target for city passers-by to steal.

 

On the other hand, the courthouse has signs saying "weapons," guns and knives, are not allowed. But if you look at the males and even about a third of the jeans-clad females, you'll see a clip in right front pockets holding rather large pocket knives - and no problem. They're not "weapons," as seen around here, they're "tools.'

 

A cupla years ago I was doing a piece on a first person living historian up in Deadwood. We'd known each other a bit beforehand, so we decided I'd wear a mid-late 1870s US Army uniform. No problem with my period-style revolver, but "Go ahead and leave the saber at home - that might scare some people." Oddly the saber without the revolver would be more likely in '76-78 in Deadwood for an officer, but folks are used to living history folks with revolvers there.

 

As I said, it's largely a matter of local culture.

 

I will admit I'd wonder about folks going to vote with a shotgun or rifle slung on a shoulder, although I'm certain a few folks with concealed carry permits likely were carrying concealed at local polls. Just the ladies carrying purses seems clumsy enough using the types of polling booths used around here, let alone having to mess with a shoulder arm. But definitely some farmers/ranchers will have arms of various sorts in their pickups, but not brought into polling places. No reason to. For those folks, the firearm is just another tool to carry.

 

m

 

The Grandmother that mostly raised me, worked as a "pollster" for over 20 yrs, and always had her .25 auto in her smock pocket.......i'd rather see a group of armed Seniors working the polls, than armed voters everywhere.

but to qualify that statement.....there are a good number of semi-crazy "hot-heads" in this area.

[TommyK]

What Wyoming needs, Milod, is a couple BIG metropolises to help suck up the tax dollars from the agricultural spaces.

 

I'd be willing to give you Chicargo in trade for Cheyenne,... even swap.

 

Yes, I live in down-state Chicargo sometimes known as Illinois.

 

I suspect that is why Wyoming's tax rate is so low, your ratio of urban areas to rural areas.

[EVOL!]

What Wyoming needs, Milod, is a couple BIG metropolises to help suck up the tax dollars from the agricultural spaces.

 

I'd be willing to give you Chicargo in trade for Cheyenne,... even swap.

 

Yes, I live in down-state Chicargo sometimes known as Illinois.

 

I suspect that is why Wyoming's tax rate is so low, your ratio of urban areas to rural areas.

 

Excuse me? Without us (Chicago), Illinois would be one flat corn field of nothingness. We are the economic center of the state and the Midwest. There are so many business (including the world's second-largest exchange for futures and options on futures and the largest in the U.S.: The CME Group) and industries. The tax revenue Springfield gets from city of Chicago dwarfs any other city.

[Bender 4 Life]

a knife mfg. plant 1/2 mile from my home (Bear & Son Cutlery) is in the process of +/- doubling its' mfg. site and employee number due to being awarded the contract to make ALL Remington knives incl. Military, Police, and Civillian......it has made the entire "Rem. Bullet" knife series since '06.

 

I personally won't carry anything BUT a Bear.....except the Case knives I tear up at work.

 

a little introspective on something going RIGHT in American Manufacturing.......

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH7WX66XVpw

 

i've been to a few "Open House" days & B-stock selloffs.......the employees actually seem HAPPY to work there !!

 

100% U.S.A. made!

 

Edit for clarification:

Bear is no longer affiliated w/Case (this must be an older vid) as it was "self purchased" several yrs back.....then bought out by Victronox "Swiss Army", but Re-Self Purchased again a few yrs. ago.

Bear and Son is now a free-standing company, and doing things RIGHT !!

[rct]

I suspect that is why Wyoming's tax rate is so low, your ratio of urban areas to rural areas.

 

I think the billoards across the beautiful state of Wyoming declaring WE PAY THE TAXES with a picture of an oil drum or an oil pump or an oil refinery or a gas station are a pretty big clue as to the Wyoming tax situation.

 

rct

[milod]

One reason the petroleum industry is making that point is that federal regulations are destroying Wyoming's coal industry - and also the coal-fired power plants there that didn't require pipelines or trains - just a short haul from a mine to the power plant. But those are being closed down, thousands in the area are losing well-paid jobs and that very obviously damages the entire economy. Meanwhile folks are anticipating a roughly 20 percent increase in electric costs as the shift is made to natural gas in a new plant fed by pipelines.

 

Besides, the feds already had regulated the wood products industry out of business and are doing the same to the coal industry. They want wind power - and then sue when a protected bird is killed by a windmill.

 

One can see how much of that has been lost in the current U.S. regulatory situation as well as in other economies in current "economically-advanced" nations.

 

One might also note some of the difficulties in Europe currently with their "energy" situation having turned down available coal toward preferences in less politically and practically reliable imports from "Russia," the Middle East or even Latin America. I personally cannot forget that WWII in the Pacific was fueled - pun intended - by cutting petroleum exports to Japan.

 

For what it's worth, US food exports to western Europe also suffered with the fall of the "Iron Curtain" because not only of lower costs from eastern Europe, but also fear that former communist peasants would flock to the social welfare states of western Europe.

 

Wyoming folk aren't even necessarily happy about the entirety of the natural gas industry there, either, at least among those who know what's going on. For example, when I lived on the eastern slope of the Bighorns, our natural gas bills took like a 20-25 percent jump when California had shortages in their own local petro supplies due to their increasing regulations - and gas was pumped half way across the country for them while locals paid the price for the Californians.

 

Corn fields, by the way, ain't "nothingness." That is, unless folks don't like food.

 

Yes, in Chicago big business and its infrastructure in urban areas does pay a lot of tax, but so also do those urban areas require huge amounts of spending for people who are not themselves paying taxes, nor working for firms that pay taxes, nor living in housing that pays taxes.

 

There are major changes in today's economies that are going to need some sort of a shakeout. It's not just energy and food - and "politics" are simply different perspectives of approaching a looming true crisis.

 

In a truly broad view, one might make a case that all of our "advanced" nations, from China and Russia all across the northern hemisphere, are killing themselves through increasing populations and stable or shrinking agricultural output. All know it only too well, and battle personality factors and geographic prejudices hoping their politics will bring good ends.

 

My own little town is proudly agriculturally based. Folks come from 70 or more miles away to do business from banking to buying furniture - and selling livestock. We're adding manufacturing to serve the petroleum boom in the region.

 

But... simultaneously the region and community are losing even more of the better-paying jobs to federal regulation. The average household income is less than they're rioting about in Missouri - and yet the unemployment rate remains low because people want to work and the local culture.

 

So... we return again to local and regional cultural differences - and an unfortunate global economic context.

 

m

[TommyK]

Excuse me? Without us (Chicago), Illinois would be one flat corn field of nothingness. We are the economic center of the state and the Midwest. There are so many business (including the world's second-largest exchange for futures and options on futures and the largest in the U.S.: The CME Group) and industries. The tax revenue Springfield gets from city of Chicago dwarfs any other city.

 

Without the 'nothingness' nay, substantial somethingness of flat corn fields, there would be no Chicargo, no CME, no CBOT, no farmland tax money that dwarfs ALL cities of the state... combined. And, I might add, no "Bears" (fka the Decatur Stahley's, financed by ... soybeans). Without the substatial somethingness, Chicargo would only be the onion field it used to be.

[EVOL!]

Without the 'nothingness' nay, substantial somethingness of flat corn fields, there would be no Chicargo, no CME, no CBOT, no farmland tax money that dwarfs ALL cities of the state... combined. And, I might add, no "Bears" (fka the Decatur Stahley's, financed by ... soybeans). Without the substatial somethingness, Chicargo would only be the onion field it used to be.

 

Agriculture may have built the state and city one hundred years ago, but we own the state now. I know downstate has some strange hate obsession with Chicago and I don't understand it.

[TommyK]

Agriculture may have built the state and city one hundred years ago, but we own the state now. I know downstate has some strange hate obsession with Chicago and I don't understand it.

 

Built and sustains.

[milod]

Actually the discussion is as old as Gilgamesh.

 

Ag supports and creates riches for cities.

 

Cities then tell ag how to operate.

 

One might note that Ur no longer exists except in ruins.

 

m

 

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[TommyK]

M, yup.

 

And satellite images of the Ur-ian or should I say UR-ban ruins reveal that the agriculture still thrives.

 

T