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After 15 months of ignoring a court order, the Biden Administration recently announced the long-overdue resumption of federal oil and gas lease sales – at a greatly reduced scale. With the available acreage significantly cut back and royalty rates hiked, it’s hard to see the move as anything other than a grand gesture to appease the critics who want more energy security and those who want fewer fossil fuels. A grand, but empty gesture that will offer few actual solutions to building up our domestic energy reserves, leaving us continually vulner...
Here’s a good question: how does political affiliation inform how a county assessor or county clerk performs their duties? We’re not sure they do as state statutes govern how they operate. Yet, throughout Wyoming many of the political races involved in the upcoming elections will be focused on offices that are dictated by state statute, not political ideology and that shouldn’t be the case. How would a Republican do a better job than a Democrat when it comes to running an office like the Sweetwater County Clerk of District Court’s Office?...
Dear Editor, The Green River Star editorial titled “Our View: Gordon is on the wrong side of climate debate” does not reflect an objective view of the scientific facts. Over 30,000 scientists (more than 9,000 of whom are PhDs, many working in the fields of meteorology and physics studying the global warming issue) have signed a petition stating: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the E...
A letter Gov. Mark Gordon has signed with 16 other governors shows the state’s leadership is firmly ignoring the present when it comes to energy companies. Gordon’s office issued a press release regarding him joining a group of governors in a letter opposed to a proposed rule that would require publicly-traded companies make disclosures about climate change risks and greenhouse gas emissions related to their operations. The release claims the proposed rule is prejudiced against business and does a disservice to investors by “increasing compl...
Sometimes, it’s the simple games that are the most enjoyable. Think about “Tetris” for a moment. The game is perhaps the perfect video game because of its simplicity and how only player’s skill determines its difficulty curve. “Tetris” is a game that will be enjoyed for generations to come. Another game that hits that same skill and difficulty point is Nintendo’s “Pinball.” It was recently released as part of the Nintendo Switch’s Nintendo Entertainment System game library last week, which is...
Given Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ mentioning Bitcoin during her ill-advised graduation address at the University of Wyoming a few weeks ago, it seems fitting to discuss how bad cryptocurrency is as a followup. Cryptocurrency isn’t what its backers claim it is. If anything, cryptocurrencies are products designed to consolidate wealth for early holders and mirror schemes involving pyramids. They have no value in and of themselves either. The only value they generate is through how much money is fed into a currency’s ecosystem by people buying into it. A...
The reveal of Sweetwater County Travel and Tourism’s master tourism plan to the Green River City Council last week had me thinking about a tourism-based study the Rock Springs city government initiated in the early 2010s. Although it was just over a decade ago, Rock Springs and Sweetwater County were a different place. The residual momentum from the oil and gas boom meant money was still coming in from the activity, but local leaders knew things were coming to a close and were looking at a m...
A lot has already been said of Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and the speech she gave that led her to being booed by University of Wyoming graduation attendees last weekend. While a lot of that conversation focuses on specific comments she made, we think the bigger issue is Lummis delivered a political speech to graduates not expecting to have their views either challenged or affirmed at an event that should acknowledge their educational achievements. In short, she misread the situation as well as the audience she presented to -- something any...
Liz Cheney’s fight to keep her U.S. House seat is supposed to be a slugfest. How could it not be? There’s so much inherent drama: Cheney, the fallen GOP princess, locked in a duel against her party’s once (and perhaps still) king, Donald Trump. His hand-picked surrogate is a former friend and ally, Harriet Hageman, who claims Cheney betrayed their leader. If Wyoming votes out Cheney, can she still someday make it to the White House? Folks, it’s Survivor: Politicos of the Plains! Except this showdown for the heart and soul of the Republican Part...
Gov. Mark Gordon and the Legislature apparently believe Wyoming’s electricity customers are all chumps.What other conclusion is possible, given their push to prop up the dying coal industry by retrofitting the state’s coal-fired power plants with wildly expensive, efficiency-killing carbon-capture systems by 2030? PacifiCorp, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, said last month it would cost between $400 million and $1 billion for each coal power plant unit to add carbon capture utilization and storage technology. A law pas...
I recently received a fund-raising appeal, that says, "Dear Friend, The Liberal elites, the Fake News Media and the Marxist Democrats hate America -- and they hate you." I am tired of the politics of hate and disparagement. I look forward to the primary election as an opportunity to reset the direction of the nation and the Wyoming Republican Party. I am with those who are concerned that Wyoming's Republican Party leadership is narrowly focused on a small set of strong views that do not...
The practice of journalism is littered with landmines that, despite good intentions, can be easily tread upon and will cause harm. The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics contains a section on minimizing the potential harm reporting can cause. Over the years, we’ve certainly stumbled in this regard and used those lessons to better inform how we cover sensitive topics. That point of view informs our suggestion to the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office to be more considerate in how it disseminates information through its press...
By Kerry Drake Wyofile.com I’ve been a Wyoming Democrat for my entire adult life. I certainly can’t speak for all members of my party, but some elections are easier on my psyche than others. It helps when I know our candidates are going to be competitive in some races. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 150,000. Even if every unaffiliated voter decided to back a Democratic candidate, it would only cut that advantage by 35,000. Yet it’s not impossible for Democrats to beat those lopsided odds. Three of Wyoming’s past si...
Some of the best opinions to have are very strong opinions about very unimportant things. And some of the strongest unimportant opinions are about food — especially candy. For some reason, Peeps seem to be especially polarizing. I’ve heard people argue their passionate opinions about the classic marshmallow Easter candy for years. I decided I wanted to see where my own friends and acquaintances fell in the debate, so I asked people to tell me their opinions on Facebook. Although opinions wer...
We’re supportive of the Sweetwater Economic Development Coalition’s desire to seek more funding as we think it could increase economic advocacy of Sweetwater County. With the organization seeking to increase its operational budget to $210,000 by seeking an increase from $30,000 to $70,000 from the county and the Green River and Rock Springs Councils, we believe this would be a great investment overall. The county’s economy has long been dominated by mineral extraction and a more diversified industrial and business foundation would shield the a...
While there’s still the chance of a late snowstorm or two hitting our corner of the word in the coming months, I think it’s safe to say that spring is here and as the temperature rises, I find myself thinking more and more about camping. The rainstorm we had last Tuesday is what caused my thoughts to drift towards escaping for a weekend to enjoy some time away from technology, work and portable devices. In fact, last week’s rain reminded me of the most relaxing camping weekend I’ve ever experien...
Dear Editor, Assuming that an unborn baby is a part of the mother’s body, the pro-choice advocates among us accuse the Wyoming Legislature of endangering a woman’s “right” to have sovereignty over her own body. “Our bodies, our choice.” they cry. This would be a legitimate argument if the assumption was true. But they conveniently ignore the clear scientific proof that at no stage in its development is the unborn child ever actually a part of the mother’s body. “How can that be,” some will exclaim. The answer is simple really. We just h...
When we hear the name ‘Union Telephone Company’ we think about high-speed internet, mobile devices, and terms like ‘connectivity.’ But at Union, while our focus is on helping to connect Wyomingites from every corner of the state, we also focus on supporting economic growth and the development of industries of all kinds because when Wyoming grows and prospers, so do our local communities. Dating back to 1884 and the first oil and gas well drilled in Wyoming, our state’s rich history has been closely tied to the energy industry. This industry...
Sweetwater County residents have three plays they can take in the next few weeks. They can watch Green River High School present “A Comedy of Errors” by William Shakespeare, watch Western Wyoming Community College’s presentation of “Uncle Vanya” or watch the Actors’ Mission perform the original play “A Reason.” In Rock Springs, a reception took place March 31 for recipients of the Mayor’s Arts Awards, an event that culminates a month-long celebration of the arts in Rock Springs and honors the award’s recipients. Four awards recognized the Sweet...
Dear Editor, There is NO relationship more intimate than pregnancy. Since we can’t yet even agree on when life begins, we each will have our own perspectives, assign our own meanings and decide by our own measures where we stand on this hot-button issue. It should be clear and certain that both the choice and the consequences belong to each woman based upon her own particular circumstances, not to you legislators. This is not, repeat, NOT a group decision! Men are, of course, entitled to their opinions, and that’s it. We’re not asserting that y...
Dear Editor, Regarding Simone Keevert’s March 17 “Threat to the Editor,” in the Green River Star, she is mostly wrong. Her complaint was that on February 24, the paper published a little editorial suggesting that it is “Time for Wyoming to get off the Trump train.” It was not signed because “Editorial Roundups” never are, including in one of America’s favorite and very conservative newspapers, The Wall Street Journal. Such editorials are the collective result of well-informed opinion, as one might expect to find in a newsroom. In the case of...
Dear Editor, The government has no obligation to protect you from death. That fact is well known and quite logical and enforced by the courts since time immemorial let alone during the minuscule lifetime of the United States. The fact of the matter is for the state to protect you they would have to supply every human with a protector which cannot be done because who’s going to protect the protectors? It is your obligation to maintain your life and in order to interfere with that the government must have a compelling interest in allowing you t...
By any stretch of the imagination, $161 million is an eye-popping amount. This is especially true considering it’s the estimated cost of all the various projects and infrastructure work the City of Green River has identified in a recent list submitted to the county as part of the specific-purpose tax local leaders intend to propose to voters. It’s a high number, but it isn’t hard to see how we got here. The city has historically had a very difficult time accomplishing capital infrastructure projects without some kind of external funding. This w...
