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The Freedom Caucus on the Cow Pie 8/4 · Cowboy State Politics

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Music.
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Installment. From very high above all the insipid and odious forms of Wyoming
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mainstream media, this is Cowboy State Politics.
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I, of course, am your illustrious host, David Iverson,
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firmly ensconced behind the silver Cowboy State Politics microphone and broadcasting
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to you from the base of the bighorns at the Cowboy State Politics studio in Sheridan, Wyoming.
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Good morning, my friends, and welcome to the program. Happy Monday.
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I and the lovely Christine are still over in Sturgis.
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I say still, I mean, we only got there yesterday, but we're gonna stay another
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night, and if all goes well, we'll be attending the Tesla concert tonight.
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I've always loved their cover of the song Signs, and so I'm really hoping that
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we get to watch the concert tonight.
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It'd be a lot of fun. On Weekend Update, I told you the story of the foul-mouthed
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chairman, Senator Jim Anderson, in the Minerals Committee meeting.
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He also let Senator Ogden Driscoll, old Oggy, get away with a whole bunch.
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Essentially, what Oggy was saying is, it doesn't really matter what the Freedom
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Caucus is saying, it's all lies, and they're just trying to kill this bill.
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Neither of those two things are true. If the bill worked out to be beneficial
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for the state of Wyoming,
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and if all of their questions were answered, and this actually was a good opportunity
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for the state and was not just creating a nuclear waste dump.
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And really, I think the truth of all of it is probably somewhere in the middle.
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Early last week, I recorded a round table discussion between Chairman of Appropriations,
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John Baer, his vice chairman, Agent 29, chairman of the House Minerals Committee,
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Christopher Knapp, and Representative Bill Alamand.
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I hadn't really intended on playing it for you on the podcast,
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But given everything that happened last week with the Minerals Committee and
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with the Weekend Update episode, I thought it would probably be good for you to listen to it.
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On Weekend Update, I played a soundbite for you from Senator Ogden Driscoll
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accusing Representative Chris Knapp of lying.
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Of course, he used different words, but that's what Oggy meant.
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I can only assume that what Ogden was referring to is this roundtable discussion
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in which Representative Knapp lays out some genuine concerns about all of these
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nuclear companies wanting to move to Wyoming.
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We started out the discussion talking about a reference to the Freedom Caucus
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in a Cow Pie article written by Claire McFarland, in which she refers to the
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Freedom Caucus as, quote, the new right.
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So we have a quick discussion about that, and then we move into some questions
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about all this nuclear energy and the bill that was being discussed in the Minerals Committee.
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I guess it's still being discussed in minerals.
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They just tabled it until the next meeting.
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So, because I'm out of town still, and you haven't heard this before,
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or unless you listen to the live program, you haven't heard this before,
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but here's the roundtable discussion between Agent 29.
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Representative John Baer, Representative Chris Knapp, and Representative Bill Alamand.
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There was a recent piece in the Cowboy State Daily that attempted to categorize
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or characterize the Wyoming Freedom Caucus as the new right.
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And the piece, I think, personally, it was just nothing more than a bunch of political drivel.
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They went to the Libertarian Party of Wyoming as evidence of,
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you know, to use in the piece.
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So I thought that we'd take some time and talk to some members of the Wyoming
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Freedom Caucus about what the term new right means and what it is that the Wyoming
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Freedom Caucus does believe.
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So joining me on the program is Representative Bill Alamand.
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Representative John Baer, and Representative Chris Knapp, and of course Agent 29.
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Guys, welcome to the program. Thank you for having us.
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I guess where I'd like to start is with you, Chairman Baer.
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And why don't you just first give me your gut level reaction of the piece that
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was in the Cowboy State Daily?
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Well, my gut reaction is it's very heavily editorialized, which I'm not surprised
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by that coming from the Cowboy State Daily.
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But the claim that we are the new right is a new one.
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I remember about 18 months ago, they changed from calling us the far right to
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calling us the further right.
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And I guess that was their effort to get more viewership or followers because
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they realized the more they attack us, the more it hurts their own reputation.
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Because we do really identify with the people of Wyoming more so probably than
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the media based on their approval ratings, the media that is.
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And so I was not shocked that it was editorialized. You asked the question, what is the new right?
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And I think that the most common definition or understanding of that term out
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there today is that it's basically the far left coming all the way around and
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calling themselves the right, and they're the new right.
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And by that, I mean they're anti-capitalists, which I use the term they are
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because I don't believe that should include us, us being the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
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So I'll let others opine on that if you'd like, but I have much more to say
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about the new right and where the Wyoming Freedom Caucus really is.
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Sorry, we'll just pause for just a second. There's a couple of different pieces
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that are, there's a particularly good editorial by John Stossel,
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and he discusses why the new right is pretty much anti-capitalist.
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So let me just take a minute or two and explain exactly what he means by the new right.
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We're seeing an interesting phenomenon in conservative circles that folks like
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Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, there's a few others.
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Have attempted to claim that, and I guess they have claimed,
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they haven't attempted to claim, that America first means only America.
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There's a group of them that are extraordinarily anti-Israel.
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And there, as Chairman Behr said, there's a bunch of them that are anti-capitalist.
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And, you know, there's a number of different articles that are out.
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There was one in the Free Press that was fairly interesting.
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It was written by kind of a leftist, but I'll go ahead and post both of those
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at CowboyStatePolitics.com.
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So if you want to check out what this term, the new right, is,
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you can do that. But I'd like to give you have an opportunity to either Representative
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Alamand or Representative Knapp to give us your thoughts. Let's start with Representative Knapp.
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Yeah, I think with the press, this is nothing new to me.
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It's a continuance of trying to divide people and put a class of people into
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something that can be demonized. So whether we were far-right MAGA.
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What they used to say of Tea Party, their goal is to treat you as the minority,
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when actually we're the majority.
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To me, all we are is freedom-loving, principled people who work for transparency
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and work for the general welfare of Wyoming and its citizens.
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And to label us with anything, they're going to continue to do that till the end of time.
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It'll be far, far right, radical right, you know, every term that they come
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up with to try to make us seem like we're not of the norm.
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Well, and it's interesting. They come up with terms like hard right,
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far right, further right, but
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you never hear them say hard left or extreme left or anything like that.
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If they're talking about somebody on the Wyoming left, they're always moderates. Chairman Baer?
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Yeah, thank you for coming back to me. I just wanted to point out something
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that they use as a pejorative. They call us populists.
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And I do believe that there is a lot of the understanding of what a populist
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is that does apply to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, because we do represent represent
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the vast majority, as Chris was saying.
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But I would also add a caveat that I think for most of us, we are constitutionalists
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first before we're populists.
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And so we would never let the population drive us against the original constitution
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and bill of rights that we've sworn an oath to and that I frankly love.
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So I just wanted to add that little comment in there that they're,
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I agree with Chris, they're never short of pejoratives for us.
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Well, and the term populist is interesting anyway, simply because it is meant as a pejorative.
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And I think that a lot of it goes back to being able to convince a crowd of just about anything.
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It goes back to the principle of yelling fire in a crowded theater,
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which, by the way, you do have the right to scream fire in a crowded theater.
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But it's the ability to entice a crowd I mean, to appeal to,
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you know, more populist ideas.
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But when we look at President Trump, I mean, the left tries to label him as a populist.
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And, you know, I mean, he got elected overwhelmingly.
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Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll finish up the roundtable
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discussion with the Freedom Caucus fellows.
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You kind of drew most of the ire from the Cowboys State Daily.
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What's your thoughts on this?
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Well, I think they just look at names to discourage us.
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And I think when we look at new right, I think that's very wrong.
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I think we should be called the old right because we're the Constitutionists.
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We are the ones that's following our founding fathers.
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We're the ones who want industry coming in and want development.
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What we don't want in this case, and it's why we're being called the new right,
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is we do not want nuclear storage in Wyoming.
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But I would be more happy with the conversation saying we're the old right.
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Well, it's interesting because a big fan of Barry Goldwater is our pal Agent 29.
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Before he went crazy. Yeah, before he went crazy. But the term new right actually
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started with Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley.
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And it was their devotion to conservative principles that people started labeling them.
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And I think that they kind of accepted the moniker, the new right,
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as opposed to the establishment Republicans that we have a big problem with right now.
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Ken? Yeah, I think part of the problem and part of what Claire,
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I believe, is trying to do is to paint us with a broad brush and use a term
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that has several connotations to it. It also has denotations.
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And some of the denotations of this near-right term have to do with racism.
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A lot of them do, yeah. Yeah, they refer to, you know, white Christian.
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And when they mean Christian, from what I've read, they're not necessarily talking
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about the evangelical type Christian.
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They're talking about the traditional, perhaps Catholic, but not just them,
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traditional beliefs, which have long had some issues to a lot of folks.
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So this is an attempt to whenever we say something, then they immediately are
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able to categorize us and kind of discard us, put us into on a shelf and say,
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don't worry about that. It is just a bunch of racist old white people.
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So we don't really want that old in there, Bill, as much as I respect the idea.
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All right, let's go back to Chairman Bear. I know you had some more thoughts on this.
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I do. Thank you. Thank you, David. First of all, I'll address what Bill was
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saying about capitalism before I go on to the racism.
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But I agree that we don't want the nuclear waste coming here,
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at least without, you know, some level of confidence that it's going to be safe
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and effective, the storage.
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And we're talking about the same people that told us that an experimental vaccine
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was safe and effective. We found that not to be true. So I'm a little bit leery of bringing it in.
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I don't know how successful we're going to be at pushing back on that,
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because if you look at the Texas case, the federal government is really preparing
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to shove this down somebody's throat.
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And with only 580,000 people in Wyoming, I think we're target number one for that.
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So it's going to probably take every Wyomingite to really push back on this
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if we want to avoid becoming the next waste dump site for nuclear waste.
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And I would say this, there was a comment from the supposed Libertarian Party
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and their five followers that we were anti-capitalists.
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And maybe that's where her comment of new right comes from.
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But when you look at nuclear, it's the furthest thing from capitalism.
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Because of the regulation required to keep it safe, it is so regulated that it's expensive.
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And because it's expensive, it's not what the free market is going to choose for its energy source.
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That's going to be something that's both reliable and affordable, and that would be coal.
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And so also along these lines, we can take three examples from the current discussions
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in Wyoming about nuclear.
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We got TerraPower down in Kemmerler.
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That experiment is 50% funded by the federal government.
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The other 50% is Bill Gates, who knows how to get federal funds.
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So it may be more than 50% funded by the federal government. Radiant.
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Their first five years worth of customers are the
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federal government all of the products they're going to produce
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are going to be for the federal government one in the first five years of their
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product capabilities and then bwxt well another nuclear company that cannot
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do anything without federal approval so i would say that we're just the opposite
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by pumping the brakes on this nuclear discussion.
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We're just the opposite of anti-capitalists. We're anti-federal government growing in Wyoming.
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Well, that's just the point that I was about to make, John, is that when you're
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talking about the free market, I mean, in all respects, you want as least government,
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the least amount of government involvement as possible.
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And when you have an industry like nuclear or solar panels or windmills that
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are heavily subsidized,
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I mean, it's, the contradiction in their argument is baffling to me,
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that folks that are screaming about, oh, you're against the free market,
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you're against capitalism, are trying to support an industry that is almost
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entirely profitable only because of subsidies.
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And, you know, one question that I haven't heard in this whole discussion,
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well, I have heard it from you guys, is if this nuclear storage is so great,
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and it's such a wonderful deal, and it's going to provide all these opportunities
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and jobs for everybody, why aren't there any nuclear waste storage sites?
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Why aren't any other states running at this, trying to set one of these storage sites up?
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I mean, if it's so fantastic, you would think that everybody would be running for it.
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Now, interestingly enough, Representative Alloman, you did a poll,
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and it was brought up in both the Casper Star Tribune article,
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the Red Star, and it was mentioned in the cow pie.
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So why don't you just take a few minutes and tell us about that poll?
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The poll was only a seven-hour poll. It was started at 9 o'clock Thursday morning.
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I wanted the results for my town hall on Thursday afternoon.
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So they gave me the results at 2.30 on Thursday.
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And at that time, they had 113 results, which is huge.
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And my key findings were people are somewhat aware of it coming in.
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73% said they knew the state law.
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25% said they didn't.
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Then when we look at supporting the storage of nuclear waste,
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my poll did not say in bar none. It said in Wyoming.
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It was 70% opposed it.
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But only 12.4% supported it.
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Okay, now was this a push-pull or was, what's the other kind of,
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I know I forget the other name of it, but was this a push-pull?
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You're going to have to tell me what a push-pull is. Well, I think the question
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is, were the questions neutral or were they suggestive?
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And push-pull would be very suggestive. They were very neutral for the fact,
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I'm not in this To find out and make an agenda For myself I want to know what
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the Actual people in my district,
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So I wanted it neutral. And this poll was very neutral. Not one time did we
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mention bar none in the poll.
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It was talking about Wyoming.
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Okay. Was there anything in your poll that suggested that nuclear is bad?
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No. That would make it pretty neutral. And I have given David permission to
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put the poll and the poll results on his website.
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So anybody who's listening to this, if they want to see that this was a neutral
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poll, they can go onto his website and look if he does post it.
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And I'll go ahead and put it at cowboystatepolitics.com.
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Representative Knapp, you've been kind of quiet. What are your thoughts on this?
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Yeah, I have two points, I think, because I sit on the Minerals Committee.
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But it's not just minerals. It's also Economic Development Committee, right?
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So when we look at this, nuclear energy is a chain. It's a chain of supply.
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It's a chain of fabrication, manufacturing, the power itself,
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and then ultimately the waste.
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So Wyoming can play a role, and I believe it should, in that supply chain.
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And that is, we have uranium we can mine. We've done that before,
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and we can continue to do so to, in effort, support Trump's defense rebuilding,
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if it were, and for the AI and data.
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We can do manufacturing. We have some of the best fabrication in the world.
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We have fabrication that does work for NASA.
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However, what we have found is those fabrication companies have bid before on
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nuclear projects and not been accepted because of either union ties,
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their qualifications for nuclear,
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or they're just not big enough.
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And so we've seen that before, and that is a fear going forward as well.
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The part that we draw the line on is waste.
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And I would say that when it comes to the argument or the debate of waste,
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we actually, from the other side, get an acknowledgement that waste is a challenge,
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that there are no necessarily good answers for waste, that technology has been
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on the energy side of it, but not the waste side of it.
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So it's not a matter of, you start to hear terms like fear-mongering, fake facts.
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Those types of things, boogeyman is a good one that comes up.
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Those are not debate type of facts that you can necessarily pin down.
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The facts that we bring are Hanford, a site where they have had $50 billion of cleanup so far.
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Is projected to be to the year 20, now 2100 with a cleanup of over $600 billion estimated.
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And interesting enough, that cleanup is being done by BWXT, which is a company
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that is looking at Wyoming.
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And they have not batted an eye with those figures. They confirmed those figures.
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So all over the country, it's upwards of a trillion dollars now that is estimated
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for sites across the country.
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So it's not as if we're using facts that don't exist or conjecture,
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you know, providing conjecture.
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So for me, I've always akin it to going to a car dealership.
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And if all you hear from is your car sales rep, chances are you're going to leave buying a car.
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We want the CARFAX. So in our committee, we've heard from all the proponents.
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We've heard from the legislators promoting the bills.
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We've heard from the lobbyists. We've heard from the companies that want to bring this.
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They negate the nuclear waste piece. They never answer it. And so we've heard
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from the NRC about waste.
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We want to hear from the Texas Attorney General's office.
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We want to hear from Hanford. We want to hear from those sites that can give
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us at least an opportunity to have a clear picture, have transparency so that
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the public can decide, is this something that is worth the risk?
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Because the money that you bring in, even bringing in nuclear waste and storing
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it, I think the federal government has between $400 million and $600 million a year.
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They spread out over the 90-some sites that are locally storing waste.
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No matter what you brought in does not equal the billions and billions and billions
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of dollars it costs if there's cleanup needed.
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So that's one area of the nuclear chain that we've said that's probably not
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worth our investment and probably not worth the risk.
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All right, now let me ask you kind of an obtuse question, because we started
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this conversation talking about the assertions that you guys are the new right,
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that you're some sort of anti-capitalist.
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So my question is, you know, I would consider all of you guys conservatives.
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In your mind, how does your conservatism play into your thoughts about nuclear
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waste, nuclear storage sites, and whomever wants to jump in and go right ahead?
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I'll try to answer that, but if I may, at the end, I'd like to come back to
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finish responding to Ken's comments about racism and the new right.
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But my experience is probably a little different because I had a Navy career.
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As an officer, I was very familiar with the nuclear side of the Navy.
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I didn't work in that area, but I was very familiar with it.
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And so I have a level of experience with what I would consider fairly safe nuclear program.
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I will tell you, I don't trust the federal government to run a both safe and
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effective or efficient nuclear program.
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What happened in the Navy is they gave control to one man,
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and that one man cared enough about the nuclear program in the Navy that he
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managed it for safety and for efficiency in a very good way.
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That was Admiral Rickover.
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And, you know, that's just uncommon in the military to allow one person to control
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an entire program in the military that became huge.
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I mean, every submarine was nuclear, every aircraft carrier was nuclear,
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and many destroyers were nuclear under his time.
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And he selected every single officer that came into that program,
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had to interview with him.
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He controlled and kept his thumb on everything from what kind of equipment was
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purchased to who was operating the equipment.
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And we just don't have that in the federal government where...
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The administration has potential changing every four years.
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And, you know, if you're going to keep this stuff safe, you need to keep that kind of thing in mind.
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And the discussion earlier was about, you know, about regulation. It's necessary.
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And so it's going to be heavily regulated, making it cost prohibitive.
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Now we're talking about a lack of efficiency.
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It's doomed before it even starts. I like the ideas.
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I've operated around nuclear quite a bit. I think it can be safe,
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but it requires something far beyond what our federal government is prepared
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to do, because right now it's far too political at the federal level.
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And that's why we've been building windmills like crazy and solar panels and
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things that just make no sense in a free market society.
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So with that, I'd like to, if I may, just go back and talk about the racism
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issue because we get called, we, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus,
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get called racists all the time.
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And so I guess I would start by asking the question, well, whose definition of racist?
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Because that is changing on a moment-by-moment basis.
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But I would ask this question seriously, for which of our good deeds are we being condemned?
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Because these are the things that they call us racist for because we support closed borders.
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Is that racist? We're the only nation that really doesn't have closed borders, and we should.
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Is it because we want to protect women's spaces from men invading them?
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I don't think so, and I don't think the people of Wyoming would agree with that being a racist move.
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Or is it ensuring that only Wyoming citizens vote in Wyoming elections?
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Those are the kind of things that we believe that those are just common sense
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things. They're not racist. They apply to every race.
29:41
But these are the kind of things we're attacked for and labeled as racist.
29:46
So if Claire McFarlane were attempting to call us the new right based on a racist
29:52
claim, I think we're the furthest thing from that. Okay.
29:57
Yeah, I completely agree, John. I think that was very well said. I just...
30:02
You mentioned the border. My own sister likes to call me racist because I'm
30:08
trying to block the border.
30:11
Overlooking the core of what I'm conservative about is trying to conserve the
30:17
culture that we have that is rooted in the rule of law and the rule of respect for law.
30:25
And if we throw those things out, and we've had the discussion,
30:29
David and I have had several times on the air, then we have nothing.
30:34
And if there's a problem with the law, fine, let's change the law.
30:39
Let's make it a little bit easier to work with, a little bit more flexible.
30:42
Whatever it is you think needs to be done, let's do that.
30:45
Let's don't just simply shove the law aside and say, it makes no sense.
30:50
And that's what conservative means to me. We're trying to preserve the culture
30:55
of the greatest nation on the face of the earth that has led to more prosperity
30:59
and more freedom, saved more lives, turned more people free than any and everybody else combined.
31:05
And I would point out, too, that as conservatives, one of our main goals is transparency.
31:13
It allows people to decide once they can see the whole picture.
31:18
The other side continues to defray that. And that's a good instance is between
31:24
illegals and immigration.
31:27
We have an immigration policy in the U.S. It invites up to 2 million people
31:32
per year to come to America in the right way by applying, by going through the process.
31:40
And they try to negate that as if we have no immigration policy at all,
31:45
and that all of this is because of that.
31:48
It's a continued confusion, whether it's the nuclear debate,
31:52
by including all nuclear energy into the conversation instead of nuclear waste,
31:58
which we're dealing with.
31:59
By talking about spent fuel versus waste, right now they're talking about this
32:05
fuel that can be recycled.
32:07
Well, trisofuel, which is what we're talking about now with both Radiant and
32:11
BWXT, at this point in time, cannot be recycled effectively.
32:18
And economically, but they like to mix those terms so that it continues to confuse people.
32:24
That particular fuel also burns at a higher isotope, so it creates,
32:31
it's enriched up to 19.72.
32:36
Versus 2.5 to 5% in normal commercial plants right now.
32:41
So putting that in a cask that we've always put it in,
32:44
again, we don't know what's going to happen in 40 years or 50 years or 100 years
32:49
with that elevated amount of radiation isotope that is bombarding that concrete and steel.
32:57
So once you start getting into the actual aspects of it and understanding all
33:03
the different nuances in waste, then you can start to make these decisions.
33:09
But the more they can create it to be generic and to be anti-capitalist.
33:13
We're all business owners as well.
33:16
We see things from a 30,000-foot view.
33:19
And that's our job as legislators as well, too. We don't want to get bogged
33:24
down in a bill-to-bill-type argument.
33:27
We want to look at these as policies, understand those policies,
33:31
understand the dozens of bills that would go with those policies before we just
33:36
jump into the river and then wonder why we get wet later. What about you, Bill?
33:43
Over this summer, I've been hearing all summer long in both telephone calls
33:47
and at my town halls that if this comes to bar none, I'm selling my house.
33:52
Last week I checked. There was one house for sale in bar none.
33:56
This morning I checked and there's 10.
33:59
So those people are not just saying stuff.
34:02
They're meaning it. and we're going to be losing our young kids and this Radiant
34:10
has split the community of Bar None in half. And I hate to see that.
34:16
Fair enough. Well, guys, we pretty much run out of time. Do you have any thoughts
34:21
before we wrap things up?
34:23
All right. Well, Agent 29. I'm happy.
34:27
I want to thank you guys for being on here and doing this on short notice,
34:31
coming out on a Sunday afternoon, getting this recorded. So thank you guys for everything you do.
34:37
Well, guys, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us.
34:40
Make sure you keep me informed how this whole nuclear thing and how many times
34:44
you're called all sorts of different names.
34:47
I would make one comment. There is the upcoming meeting for the Minerals Committee
34:51
is this Tuesday and Wednesday.
34:54
I'm in Casper, and so I would encourage people to tune in because there will
34:58
be more discussion, more facts about waste.
35:01
And I think it's important for people to tune in. All right. Thanks, guys.
35:06
Oh, little did he know how much stuff was going to happen in that minerals committee.
35:11
That'll do it for today's installment of Monday Reload.
35:15
Have a good week, and we'll be back on Wednesday for another incredible installment of the podcast.
35:22
For now, from the base of the bighorns at the Cowboy State Politics Studio.
35:27
I'm David Iverson, and this is the one and only Cowboy State Politics.