Why I Joined the Boston Tea Party

George, what you say about Wyoming is very true. I have lived in both states, and find Wyoming to be far more easygoing. What’s more, it has its own Free State Wyoming (FSW) project, though I am no longer involved with them. I know many fine people in Wyoming who are dedicated to making it a more free place. There’s also a guy named Ken Royce who heads the FSW project, not such a fine guy, but he writes under the pen name Boston T. Party.

I am involved with two companies in Wyoming, one called Reliable Distributors, the other Sovereigns of the High Frontier Society. It would be great to work with others in Wyoming to form a new state affiliate for Boston Tea Party. Sovereigns http://www.hisovs.org is having a costume dance party in Gillette on Saturday 6 December.

Your idea of working together seems perfect. There’s no reason for anyone to leave another party, if they feel they can accomplish something in the GOP, DNC, or LP. We have, this year, endorsed many candidates from the LP, many independents, and one GOP candidate. Of course, BTP candidates are also welcome, and on our voter guide.

There used to be an annual event for FSW. The founder, Ken Royce aka Boston T. Party (his pen name) was unable to organise one for this year, so I thought to do him a favor and put one together. I’ve never been hassled so much.

“You can’t use the name Freedom Summer Wyoming because it uses the initials FSW. You can’t use our colors purple, blue and green in your logo.” Geez. It went on and on. I’m no longer a member of FSW, though curiously, Royce pocketed my membership fee and hasn’t refunded it.

If you are interested in events in Wyoming that may be related to FSW, there is an annual costume dance party in Gillette sponsored by hisovs.org. Should be the first Saturday in December this year. There is also a campground set up by Rich H. near Newcastle and Upton. They had an invitation-only event there over Labor Day weekend. Many of the active FSW folx are in Weston county.

There are lots of jobs in Wyoming. Lots of business opportunities, too. The government is very easy to get involved in if that’s your thing, and there are lots of activists in Wyoming. People do things differently there, though.

One of the obnoxious things about Yankees, to me, has always been how they know everything about everyone else’s business. I think relying on the FSP guy for info on NH is fine, and would work great. Expecting that person to know anything about Wyoming seems a bit far fetched.

“I hope both projects succeed.”

I think hope is a waste of time. If you want one of the projects to succeed, work on it, dude. Do something useful like praying, but don’t expect anything to come of hope.

I shared the exciting news about NH legislators from the FSP with one of my friends in Montana. He wrote back:

“Montana has elected a few Grand Western Conference attendees: Jerry O’Neil = state senator (Columbia Falls)
Andy Lockridge = Philipsburg City Council (county seat of Granite Co.)
Rick Jore = state representive (third party and from Polson)
others

In addition, LP candidate Stan Jones helped defeat Republican,
Conrad Burns, in 2006, and thus gave the Dems a majority in
the US Senate. Mike Fellows, MTLP Chair and host at GWC,
just got third place in Montana’s lone Congressional District.”

No, I did not quit, liar. I was prevented from logging in. To this day I am prevented from having access to the member benefits. Ken Royce is a liar and a thief. He stole my membership fee. He lied when he said he would do everything he could to support the event that I volunteered to put together this past Summer.

I realise this doesn’t matter to you since you never had to pay a fee to become a member. You also didn’t have to travel to Wyoming in 2004 and on various occasions to be involved in the group. Nor did you donate thousands of dollars, including gold and silver, to the group. I’m sure that your interest in slamming me for making a statement about Ken Royce is purely vicious.

But, I stand by my statements. Ken Royce made a statement to me that because I had used the colors blue, green, and purple, and the words “Freedom Summer Wyoming” that I was persona non grata with his little dictatorship. He had asked me to organise an event for this past Summer, which I did. But because he didn’t like the way I chose to market it, he threw me out.

I never voluntarily agreed to “quit” of my “own volition.” To say so is a lie. I defy you to prove it. You suck. Being a sycophant for authoritarians makes you disgusting to me.

I call things as I see them. If you don’t like being called a liar, Jen, stop lying.

If you don’t like being called a sycophant for authoritarians, stop sucking up to sleaze and filth like Bob Barr and Ken Royce.

Yes, logging in to comment upon and defend myself in discussions with other members of FSW was one of the bright points in my life. You helped to destroy that for me.

I invested my time, my thoughts, and my effort in a project that you never really cared about. So, you are in no position to evaluate what it meant to me to spend four years working on that project. You weren’t at the Grand Western Conference II when I got involved, you weren’t at the first, second, or third jamborees. I was.

Ken did forcibly take it from me, yes. He forcibly and against my express preferences prevents me from accessing my member privileges. He does so without returning my member fee, because he is a filthy thief. He failed deliberately to support my efforts to create a successful event this past Summer in spite of his promise to the contrary because he is a liar.

You are a nasty person, and I have contempt for you. Please stop involving yourself in my life. Please stop following me around the blogosphere to criticise everything I say and do. You are a contemptible person who has never accomplished anything worth having. I regret deeply my efforts to be your friend. Pearls before swine.

I say exactly what I think, and express how I feel. You don’t like it? Tough. Why don’t you do something about it?

You do, in fact, behave like a harpy. As you know, I was getting along fine with my friends in FSW before you started making sharp and unpleasant comments about the event being planned for last Summer. You claim no responsibility for your words. So why should I be responsible for mine?

You were not there from the outset. You have no idea what it means to me now, nor what it meant to me then. You just felt like dumping on me, and minimising my concerns. Because, of course, being a harpy, you have to belittle the issues other people have. You stink on ice.

Royce does prevent me from having contact with my friends in Wyoming. More importantly, he prevents me from having the benefits of membership, without bothering to return my membership fee. That’s because he’s a thief. His theft of my membership fee is a fact. Calling him a thief is not name calling, it is truth telling. Just like calling you a harpy.

I am a fair person, you are not. I don’t mind getting kicked around. I stand up for what I believe, and people know exactly where they stand with me. I don’t try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I don’t put lipstick on a pig.

Charles Jay wanted to keep the Dagny Barnes episode quiet. He made a deliberate power play to destroy the Boston Tea Party. So I posted his nasty messages to the public lists, and he lost his friendship with John Wayne Smith. I don’t regret my actions at all in the least. If it cost five state affiliates, I’d do the same thing again. Leadership often involves taking a stand on principle – something that a sycophant like you would never understand.

See a pattern? Sure. I see a pattern. I see you and a lot of other authoritarians pretending to be libertarians. I see you deliberately causing trouble for me wherever you can, whenever you are able. I understand that you are a cruel and heartless hating person. That’s okay. Hating you back works for me.

You are very hurtful. And you always will be. Thanks for the dig about my teaching skills, you nasty old harridan.

My apologies, George. Jim, I will pray for you. Happy Thanksgiving.

I would like to thank George for his gracious willingness to have me respond on his blog to Mr. Royce’s distortions, lies, and malfeasance.

One of the first things that is important to mention is the character of Mr. Royce. He is a writer of some minor note, especially amongst fans of a certain type of gun book. He has self-published an array of books, some of them more interesting than others. His “Boston’s Gun Bible” is a definitive review of every conceivable gun, contains some good advice, some bad advice, and an enormous amount of minutia on various guns. As a reference work it is very useful. As reading material it is sleep inducing. His “Hologram of Liberty” is an excellent review of the anti-federalist arguments against the constitution together with some truly brilliant analysis. His identification of distinct language in the constitution establishing a case for oaths to two separate documents is quite compelling. “Bulletproof Privacy” is very dated. “Molon Labe” is a very unusual novel, as any novel with appendices must be regarded as weird. I found the story in “Molon Labe” compelling, but the presentation dragging. Amazon carries reviews of many of his books, so I shall not belabor the point.

Royce has a number of character flaws. I believe these include racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, religious bigotry, and other classic conservative difficulties with freedom for people unlike himself. I base my belief that he is racist on my experience of him telling a large number of racist and ethnic jokes, as well as some of his explicitly stated positions on immigrants, especially those who speak Spanish. My experience of his xenophobia and sexism is similarly direct, in listening to him talk candidly around campfires for a number of years. I also reflect on the small number of Native Americans, the scarcity of Hispanics, and the complete absence of blacks at the various events he sponsored for his group.

His conservative politics also run toward a very strong law and order mentality, whether or not the laws are just. He seems to hold against me his belief that I might possibly be a felon, although the actual legal evidence for this point is exceedingly ambiguous. The only documentation available indicates that I was admonished by the same court, in the same set of papers, both that I was being convicted of a misdemeanor and that I was being convicted of a felony. The court did not sentence me to state prison, so the argument that I was convicted of a state prison felony is void. The court did, however, take official notice of my injuries sustained at the hands of Houston Police, including eleven broken bones. I feel confident that Mr. Royce is the sort who enthuses about a group of police standing around watching while one of their number kicks a suspect (who is laying face down at the time) in the face, then jumps on his back, handcuffs him, and then kicks him repeatedly in the chest. The X-rays and MRI of my injuries are unequivocal.

Now, of course, the issue of whether or not I might possibly be a felon comes up with respect to my being in possession over the last several decades of any number of firearms. It so happens that this matter was addressed in a Tennessee court, which found no evidence of “felon in possession of firearms” violation, in 2006, and in a Kansas court which similarly dismissed a charge of “felon in possession of firearms” in early 2007. The latter court investigated the charges and found the clerk of the court and the judge in my 2004 conviction in Houston to both be of the opinion that I was *not* convicted of a felony. But, I’m sure that if Royce chooses to respond, he’ll be eager to call me a felon. Doing so would be a lie, mind you, but he’ll want to do it.

And, of course, Royce is not at all sympathetic about police brutality. Anyone who is beaten by police under any circumstances had it coming. Given his views on law and order, on police brutality, on talking back to the police (cite his “You and the Police” endorsements of sycophantic behavior), on the relationship of the genders, on race, on immigration, and on sundry other issues, I have, over the years, come to the conclusion that he is an authoritarian. He wants an orderly society, preferably with himself in charge of designing that order.

> Gee, not him/this again . . .

It is unfortunate, of course, that I continue to exist, and continue to express my views. Royce is too timid to bother to kill me, or otherwise render me unable to point out the limitations of his character.

> First of all, Jen had nothing to do with Jim’s wholly self-deserved reputation

Actually, Jen had quite a lot to do with it. At a time when Jen had my telephone number and more than one private e-mail address for me, she posted a series of public criticisms of my efforts to organise an event, at the time several months away. I was surprised and very upset by her approach to this matter.

> Jim Davidson left the FSW and its forum in a huff in April 2008:

I was excluded from the forum, and prevented, by Royce, from logging in.

> “I absolutely, categorically refuse to post on your forum.”

I had offered not to post on the forum in order to appease his concerns that I was attempting to take over the FSW or abuse my posting privileges. Doing so in no way indicated a repudiation of my other membership privileges. To this day, I cannot log into the forum to retrieve private messages left for me there.

> (He wrote this, even in regards to managing his own summer event which
> he threatened to effectively bail on.)

This set of statements deliberately misrepresents the facts. First, Royce demanded that I stop posting, which caused me to refuse to do so, as above. He also demanded that I not contact other members of FSW to inform them of the facts of the event, so that they could post details to the forum. These were among the many things Royce did to deliberately undermine the event.

Second, I objected to Jen’s criticisms of the event by posting my concerns about my difficulties to that point in getting any reply from the land owner who had agreed to let us host the event on his property. I had made, over a period of two months, repeated attempts to phone and e-mail Rich, and due to various difficulties of his own, he was unable to reply. After Jen’s very ugly criticisms, I focused considerable attention on the event, and after being given wrong numbers by three people, finally got through to Rich. It was then possible to confirm the event could take place. I made my concerns about the fundamental problem of not having contact with the land owner known to the members of FSW in order to be open with them about whether the event would likely take place. Royce, of course, does not like openness. He wants to have all the details worked out behind the scenes, without bothering the little people as he sees them with any of the potential difficulties. I favor a much different style of management, in which the facts as I know them are made known to as many people as possible, so that solutions can be generated without the group think limitations of the leader principle.

> He left; he quit. His choice.

I did not. I did not quit. I stopped working with Royce, but I never stopped working on the Freedom Summer Wyoming event. In fact, we held the event, in June 2008, with some limited attendance. I never resigned from FSW. Of course, Royce neglects to mention that his requirements for my continued involvement in and posting to the FSW forum included not using the words “Freedom Summer Wyoming” to promote the event, not using the colors blue, green, and purple in our marketing materials, and many other idiotic and asinine requirements. Royce is an arrogant prick.

> Only then after was his account blocked, after attempted forum misuse.

Only then after. Not quite sure how to parse that. But I suspect it represents Royce trying out various ways of making a misleading statement. Not sure why he settled on that one. My account was blocked because I asked another member of the forum to post information about the event – which Royce had claimed he would support with all his abilities and powers. He describes this request on my part as attempted forum misuse, because he had already determined to shut down my event as much as possible. Royce is a hateful authoritarian who cannot stand to have anyone else be successful.

> Then I learned that he had solicited/accepted funds for the event before
> he had actually secured the “hearsay” private campground that he was
> soliciting those funds for.

This statement appears to be an accusation of fraud. Since the agreed upon private campground was provided for the use of the actual paid members of the event, I’m not sure what Royce is going for here. Either it was wrong of me to say that there was a difficulty in coordinating with the land owner, together with my offer in the same message that I would return all the fees received, or there was a difficulty in receiving funds while uncertain whether the land owner would coordinate adequately to make the event successful. As it turns out, Rich did an excellent job, and everyone who paid into the event was able to camp on his land. So, I’m not sure what Royce is on about here. He’s probably trying to get me arrested, because he’d like some more cops to beat on me.

> He did donate several hundred dollars in specie total to the FSW,
> but certainly not “thousands of dollars.”

I did in fact donate several thousand dollars of value, including cash and specie, to the FSW. Of course, Royce has never been willing to provide any accounting of the income or expenditures of the FSW to any of the founding members, nor to anyone else. However, I have my own records of my contributions, including the cash and specie donated to him, including the $1500 for the December 2006 event I hosted for FSW and LP Wyoming, and including many other contributions of my time, talents, writings, and labor. Among the very many things that made me resentful of Royce over the years was his deliberate slighting of my contributions at each and every event where I made them.

> He has never asked for a refund of his $25 membership fee.

I have in fact repeatedly asked for a refund of my membership fee, for access to the paid up member benefits. Admittedly, this task has been somewhat more difficult because Royce forbade me from contacting him by e-mail on several occasions.

> He’s welcome to it, if I am provided an address to send an M.O.

My address is published in quite a few places on the Internet, including at Vertoro.com. If a money order for $25 shows up in Panama, I’ll withdraw the accusation of theft. Until then, given the very substantial contributions of value to FSW, and the absence of member benefits, I believe the accusation stands.

> If he continues to falsely defame me as a “thief”, then I will see
> him in a court of law or in a boxing ring. His choice which.

If I continue to be a paid up member with neither a refund nor member benefits, it seems to me that the statement is exactly accurate. I see that he’s willing to threaten me with force, here, for a statement expressing the truth as I see it. Either the force of a government court, or the force of a boxing ring. Note that like most of his choices, and the typical choice offerings of authoritarians, there is no non-violent offer. Arbitration, mediation, negotiation – none of these are sufficiently violent for his taste.

For my own part, I would not bring boxing gloves to a gun fight. Any threat of violence allows me to invoke my freedom to defend myself with as much force, when, and as I see fit.

> If Jim insists on publishing untruths,

I’m not the publisher here. I am quite confident of the truths that I have stated. We can see here that Royce admits he has my membership fee and that I don’t have my member benefits. He asserts, quite falsely, that some sets of my words taken out of context, represent my quitting his group. But then he offers to send me $25. So, it is a mystery which position he is taking. Either he did hold my member fee without providing member benefits, in which case I am right in feeling ill used, and justified in describing the process as theft, or he is certain that I had quit his group “voluntarily” and not in the midst of one of the most acrimonious fights I’ve ever had with people I had previously trusted – a matter of having my heart broken by Jen in the process – and therefore he would conceivably be justified in having me beaten up in a boxing ring by one of his friends.

> I will format the entire exchange, post it publicly, and allow
> people to judge for themselves what happened.

Oh, my goodness, what a delight. Please throw me in the briar patch, Br’er Bear.

Yes, that would be delightful. Why not post the entire FSW forum where it can be seen publicly? Mind you, if it becomes a matter for courts of law, my attorneys would love to get it on discovery and distribute it far and wide. Royce might be mindful of the extent to which publication can be a multi-edged sword. I have attorneys in jurisdictions competent to require Mailvault to unload a number of documents, as well. I have not threatened Royce with the force of the state, but I am very willing to use the state’s protections for the accused and for the defendants in a civil case to defend myself, when, as and how I see fit.

> (That would include, Jim, your Houston saga which was relevant to the FSW.)

You mean the bit of business about having eleven of my bones broken for allegedly “evading arrest” in January 2004? Please, publish all sorts of misconceptions and misstatements about it. Now that you have threatened to sue me for slander or libel, I can evaluate a defensive counter-suit in the same vein. Does anyone know what I was allegedly to be arrested for when I was allegedly arrested? There seems to be no record of that point in my case file.

> Thanks, Jen, for your posts and support.

Curiously, I had tried my best to paint a positive picture of Wyoming and give a reasonably pleasant overview of FSW, my difficulties with its fuehrer to the contrary notwithstanding. But am I thanked for presenting information about FSW on this thread? No.

Jen’s comments, rather than enhancing the quality of things being said about FSW has brought out one of the more unpleasant episodes in its recent history.

> That’s all I have to reply about this tired old topic.

We’ll see whether that’s a true statement, soon enough.

I am curious about the 2008 plans of FSW. I recall a number of political ambitions for the group outlined in part in 2004. I must say that I continue to agree with the strategy that Royce outlined at the Grand Western Conference II in Three Forks, Montana in Spring 2004. He called for a strategy of filling up smaller population counties – of which Wyoming has quite a few – with immigrants interested in more freedom. These freedom enthusiasts would then seek office within the county government.

I say that it was excellent thinking on Royce’s part, because the county is the essential level of government for the administration of elections. The county sheriff in Wyoming counties is the highest law enforcement authority. A vast array of powers and possibilities arise from any county anywhere in the USA being run by actually libertarian persons. Which fact, I think, is reflected in the heinous treatment of Ron Paul delegates to county conventions far and wide.

There were a number of goals for FSW, some of them identified in the book “Molon Labe” for moving people in to certain counties (Crook, Weston, and Hot Springs first). I remember 2006 goals and 2008 goals for members in state.

A number of FSP enthusiasts have been elected in New Hampshire And Ben tells me that a number of Grand Western conferees were elected in Montana. I would be curious to learn about any progress in Wyoming.

The only guy I know who got very far in his county was Ken Bollinger (sp?) in Crook County. Ken got on the planning board or zoning committee, or some such group. He was there when urban planner Fred Duncan showed up demanding new fees for septic systems, and new regulations to review and approve private property owner land uses. (I find the parallel to urban planner Mikaela L. Engert in Keene making trouble for Ian Bernard Freeman to be intriguing – FSW activists caught on to the urban planner’s online forum and found a number of posts suggesting that urban planners do not respect individual liberty or private property.)

As I recall, Ken said something like there would be permits for new construction on private property over Ken’s dead body. Within a few weeks, Ken had been encouraged by a county clerk to make incorrect statements on an application for a concealed carry permit, and was in court for essentially all the time since. I don’t know if Ken is ever going to get his freedom back.

I know that Rich has ambition to run for a county level office in his county in Wyoming, so that would be fun. I have a continuing respect and admiration for Rich which he has earned by being ethical, considerate, hard working, and honorable.

In spite of my difficulties with Colorado interloper Royce and South Carolina resident Jen, I have found nearly all the people I’ve met and worked with in Wyoming to be good people. Decent, hard working, honorable, ethical, willing to go long distances to help friends, and unlikely to let government get in the way of their determination to do the right things, are the qualities that I’ve observed in nearly all the people I’ve met in Wyoming going back to 1997. (I have very few complete memories of my family travels in Wyoming in 1971, but they are uniformly positive.) That’s particularly true of the people I met in LP Wyoming. So, I would suggest that anyone thinking about Wyoming not regard Royce as in any way typical.

Rather a great many authoritarians who masquerade as libertarians think that anarchism is a threat to their liberty. This generally represents their preference for the state to smash other people’s faces, whether they admit it or not.

In answer to Ken, or is it Boston’s, question: yes, I got my guns back.

Thanks, George.
It has already taken thirty years for the LP to get where it is today, and although BTP’s name is self-explanatory, is not well-known. There are mainly ballot access hurdles and recognition hurdles to get though. It is frustrating enough as a Libertarian to jump those, I would imagine moreso regarding the BTP. That is my opinion, and it is just that.

I do not appreciate the leadership of the Boston Tea party smearing the Libertarian Party unjustly. Competition is good, but all should play nice in the sandbox. We should reserve our insults, if we are going to give any to the Demopublicans. And even in this, I think it is the wrong campaign tactic to take instead of just focusing on issues.

Great points, George.
I am not interested personally in all the crap going on within the National LP. A lot of it is infighting, and although I wish everyone would be fair and nice to each other, I just don’t care to hear all the gory details. Both warring factions have turned me off.

I just support my local Libertarian Party, and that’s it. That’s all I have been doing since national had started spending lots of money at the national HQ for office stuff instead of state party ballot access.

Thanks, George.

____________
I’m not sufficiently informed on the LP/BTeaP issues to comment
here, but some previous thoughts I posted elsewhere may be helpful:

“One thing that the Reform Party truly understood was the value of
sufficiently large consensus. They didn’t expect every candidate to
rate 100% on their platform, and considered 80% a passing grade.
This strikes me as highly realistic. It worked well enough to win the
governor’s house for Ventura.

“No perfect Libertarian candidate will ever be elected from the start,
primarily because the voting majority will never hear of him. We
must arrive there by stages. Ron Paul is an excellent first stage.

“The “Judean People’s Front” and the “People’s Front of Judea” need to get behind the most electable Judean candidate [that they can find].”

_____________
If the LP and the BTeaP and the Constitution Party and the libertarian
wing of the GOP could momentarily set aside their <30% of philosophical
differences and support vastly libertarian candidates, we could probably
see some of them reach office.

Whatever our libertarian label, we are a niche market. We need each
other, because even the largest of us is not large enough to matter
(i.e., not even to swing 3% of the national vote).

Regards,
Ken Royce

Big tent. That is how I view the LP. I do not believe the LP has “compromised” just because we have had one candidate who some people didn’t like, and national officers that perhaps should not be re-elected. There will be other candidates, and other times to change the platform, officers, and procedural rules. There are many different shades of libertarian within the party.

I see the BTP as purists who aren’t able to work with others or see shades of gray, except for those who are still working within the LP. So while I do not feel that working with another minor party is worthwhile, I do not view the BTP as something “good” I can sell. Particularly when you have people within it throwing around insults to other libertarians willy-nilly. That does not go for everyone, but when you have a former chair who can’t be mature, I want no part of it.

George,
No, of course not. I am not denying any wrong doing by anyone in the LP. I am sure there is. And a lot of the politics that seems to go on in the LP is not only about real issues, but personal attacks of each other, which the BTP is clearly not immune from. So no party is perfect, is what I am saying.

Perhaps you view the LP as more corrupt than the BTP, just as I view the Republican Party as more corrupt than the LP. I can understand this view, appreciate it, and possibly agree with it. Maybe I just need to get to know more about the Boston Tea Party. I agree with the BTP’s basic concept, but I find the mantra “to reduce government” to be lacking because it does not make any indication that rights should also be protected.

Ah. Well you have the same thoughts on security that I do. I consider myself a minarchist. True, vigilance will always be needed from the citizenry to be sure that checks and balances stay in place, and that government stays on a short leash.

However, my dreams of a libertarian society are probably way off base, as there will always be authoritarian types that will have to be contended with. Any “compromise” that a libertarian politician makes is either going to be viewed either good, or selling out. Any advance of liberty is good, though. Major education needs to take place in this country. Most citizens do not know their rights.

If Keaton is not kicked off the LNC, I think there still may be some hope for transparency.

I’ve read through this site (though not all of the outward links). As a lifelong resident of Wyoming, I’d like to recommend that if you decide to follow-up on the Wyoming plan – you’ll need it to come from Wyoming natives. Wyoming is a very open, freedom-loving, state, but many of us have grown very ill-tempered towards outside interests trying to come in and utilize us for their whims. We resent and fight any group or idea that we feel is coming from the outside. We are tired of feeling like we are looked at as a “toy” of those from larger states. While I do not imply that this is your aim, I would just like to offer a friendly warning that you might need to take extra steps to make sure it isn’t interpretted this way by Wyoming residents. In my most humble opinion, any such action (as you have suggested) will almost necessarily need to be run by native Wyoming residents. We’ve had too many people from out of state (or transplants) telling us what we are supposed to do as of late; followed by too many developers coming in and grabbing land (shutting it down); followed by the Hollywood elite who have somehow mistaken Wyoming as their own personal backyard plaything. We love freedom, but we’re pretty pessimistic of outside forces trying to peddle things to us. Please don’t take this as discouragement, but instead, as advice on how to approach any dealings with the people of Wyoming. (Don’t even MENTION what the federal government has done to us with the wolf thing!!)

(I could point out several folks living in the hills of southeast Wyoming that will quite literally shoot you if they see you on their properties/ranches if you have not made plans with them prior to showing up (no exagerations, and since many of these folks don’t even have telephones – this can be a quite tricky catch-22)…folks who don’t have or need electricity, have caves carved into the side of hills with months worth of provisions, etc., etc., so you really will meet A LOT of resistance if anyone gets even the slightest hint of outside influence driving movements. As you mentioned above – we love our freedom in Wyoming, and we don’t like ANYONE tinkering with it; but if it’s gonna be tinkered with – it had better be from native Wyoming folks!)