"We need to look like we are doing something for that community." Wyoming Sen. Wasserberger, Joint Appropriations Committee, January 26, 2015 Facing declining mineral tax revenues, the desire to continue spending and the inability, so far, to raid the rainy day fund, Gov. Mead's push to diversify the economy to create jobs and generate more tax rev...

by Wyoming Liberty Staff It has now been five years since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. Notoriously known as "Obamacare", this highly debated reform - probably the most complicated piece of legislation in U.S. history - is still dispensing unintended consequences. With yet another case related to the ACA being heard...

The Food Freedom Act has passed in Wyoming. It decriminalized some voluntary capitalist acts between consenting individuals and not a moment too soon. Government regulation is no panacea and food regulation could soon become even more disconnected with its purported purpose of keeping us healthy. Seems the USDA may incorporate environmental sustain...

by Charles Katebi With just two weeks remaining in the legislative session, the forces of socialized medicine were defeated, at least for now. After losing decisively in the Wyoming Senate and finding no traction in the Wyoming House, Medicaid Expansion supporters tried to ram this policy through with an amendment to the budget bill. Amendment 31 o...

by Tom Rose Over the last few months I have been researching juvenile justice issues with a particular focus on how to keep kids out of jail. While writing about my findings I have explored the disturbing national phenomenon of extremely young kids being arrested. This research has also uncovered the troubling connection between police officers (SR...

by Stephen Klein On Friday the Institute for Justice (IJ) won an important free speech victory against the Washington Public Disclosure Commission (PDC). IJ charitably refers to the PDC as "bullies." I think a more apt description of the PDC is "free-speech-hating thugs." Following a victory against such opposition, gloating is not only appropriate...

by Tom Rose The Shame on U.S.report has recently recommended that Congress withhold all federal child welfare funds in order to compel states to comply with child welfare laws and standards that the authors say are being violated in every state. The Children's Advocacy Institute of the San Diego School of Law in conjunction with First Star, a non-p...

by Sven Larson Friends of economic freedom are good at criticising big government, they are even better at expressing outrage over growing government, and many of them are outstanding at demanding a return to "limited government". The criticism of big government and its growth very often rests on solid grounds, but it is never more than the opening...

by Tom Rose As introduced in the first part of this series, the Shame on U.S. report, published in January 2015 has made some radical recommendations to address the national crisis of child welfare. If the Congressional committee to which it was presented follows the recommendations of this report, Wyoming may soon see a drastic decrease of federal...

by Tom Rose Wyoming's status as the only non-compliant state to the JJDPA (Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act) has recently come under scrutiny at a national level. In January 2015 the Children's Advocacy Institute presented a report entitled Shame on U.S.: Failings by All Three Branches of our Federal Government Leave Abused and Neglected...

Facing a state budget deficit, declining revenues and the desire to continue spending, Gov. Mead asked, "What constitutes a rainy day?" This thinly veiled call to raid the state's rainy day account to fund his spending priorities was ignored by the legislature. Instead, the legislature began the search for more revenues by developing a task force c...

by Stephen Klein CHEYENNE – The Wyoming House of Representatives passed Senate File 14 today with a vote of 54-6, which follows the Senate's passing vote of 26-3 (1 excused) on January 23. The bill would amend the Wyoming Controlled Substances Act to end the practice of civil forfeiture by requiring an individual to be convicted of a drug felony be...

by Wyoming Liberty Staff This article is not about Wyoming. Not directly, at least. But it is about the values that the people of this great state hold dear: freedom and self determination. Beyond our state borders - in fact, beyond the borders of the United States - a new, aggressive brand of radical socialism is on the rise. It is more radical th...

by Tom Rose I recently wrote a blog entitled Keeping Kids Out of Jail which led into an entire series including the Troubling Trend of Elementary School Arrests and finally to the Wyoming School Safety Issues That Every Citizen Should Know series. This week we return to the consideration of what can be done preventatively to keep our children on-tr...

by Stephen Klein After narrowly emerging from the Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee by a 3-2 vote on Monday, yesterday the entire Wyoming Senate began to consider Senate File 14, which would replace civil forfeiture under the Wyoming Controlled Substances Act with criminal forfeiture. That is, instead of law enforcement being able to seize and for...

by Tom Rose The final subcommittee for the Wyoming School Safety and Security Task force is the Response, Planning and Training Subcommittee. An overview of the findings of this task force can be found in the first blog of this series and we've respectively covered the first subcommittee on School Resource Officers (SROs) and the second on Faciliti...

by Tom Rose The Wyoming School Safety and Security Task Force was initiated in early 2013 and published its recommendations on October 24, 2013. The team was "…asked to evaluate the current state of safety and security across Wyoming school districts; identify weaknesses, strengths and best practices; and to propose recommendations for improvements...

The legislature must rein in out-of-control spending demands Wyoming school districts are funded using the School Finance Block Grant Funding model. About half of the funding for these block grants comes from the state's School Foundation Program account, and the other half from local revenue sources. For the 2015-16 biennium, the state's contribut...

by Tom Rose First of all let's just state outright: school violence is genuinely terrifying for all concerned. The issue at hand is whether draconian measures as directed by the Department of Homeland Security are relevant, necessary or even beneficial for Wyoming. We began by consideration of the findings and recommendations of Wyoming Governor Me...

by Tom Rose In our recent blog on Keeping Kids Out of Jail we mentioned that revisiting the policies that led to placing school resource officers in Wyoming schools would significantly reduce Wyoming's second-in-the-nation juvenile arrest and incarceration rates. In this blog we will explore some of those policies. While policy direction appears to...