Suppose Congress mandated that supermarkets like Wal-Mart must give away groceries to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Anyone who wanted to could walk in, demand milk, bread, baked beans and ice cream and then walk out without paying. It would be up to the supermarket to send us a bill and hope we pay it. Needless to say, such a law wo...

Back in July I wrote about the global socialist rebound, part of which involves the emergence of post-Chavez Venezuela. The new president, Nicolas Maduro, has doubled down on socialism and its fatally bad economic model, where daily life is dictated by shortages of everything from bread to electricity. Last year Maduro dictated "fair" pricing on el...

Among the many myths being spread around about fracking, the one about water consumption may be the most audacious one. Anti-fracking activists keep insisting that the process of hydraulic fracturing is threatening the water supplies in the West. This myth may grow legs in a drought-stricken state like California, but that does not mean it is true....

Federalization of education was the most heavily discussed topic this past week when the Republican candidates for the office of Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction met in Riverton for their final debate ahead of the primary elections on Tuesday, August 19th. Sheryl Lain, Bill Winney and Jillian Balow took the stage to wrangle over this an...

A quick look at price trends for goods and services reveals a head scratcher. While prices in the private sector tend to fall, prices in government-regulated industries, much like the cost of government itself, tend to rise. Why might that be? Perhaps because in the private sector, the profit motive drives entrepreneurs to find ways such as technol...

Corporate welfare violates the Wyoming Constitution.Data Center tax breaks cost taxpayers more than $500,000 per job.Higher electricity demand could send electricity rates skyward.Instead of picking winners and losers, the government should reduce taxes for all companies and let those with good ideas and private funding prevail. CHEYENNE, WY: The W...

CHEYENNE, WY – Judge Alan B. Johnson of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming approved a settlement in the case Wills v. Maxfield today, issuing a consent order that halts enforcement of certain campaign finance laws against minor party and independent candidates and their contributors. The order comes a few weeks after the W...

(Disclaimer: This blog post contains photographs of political signs. Wyoming Liberty Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that cannot, and does not, endorse candidates. We can, however, champion the rights of free people to speak out about candidates, including through political signs.) We won our lawsuit in Williams v. City of Cheyenne earlier this year...

As I explained last week, the American economy is pulling ahead of Europe. One reason is that our welfare state, big and burdensome as it is, is not yet big enough to bring the private sector to a grinding halt. That does not mean we will never pay the price for a growing government. If we continue expanding our welfare state, we will eventually be...

Since the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in our case Free Speech v. Federal Election Commission (that is, declined to hear the case), one of the issues raised in the case has only become more pressing. We argued that three men in Wyoming who wanted to spend as little as a few thousand dollars on ads criticizing the President and othe...

Racing automobiles is an extension of the joy and freedom empowered by the automobile in a free society. Since their invention, cars have enabled people to make individual choices in a way never before granted to the human race; when and where to go, how far, how fast, how many people to carry. Beyond that, the cars themselves are also a reflection...

Encampment, WY is home to 450 people and a high school with maybe a dozen graduates each year. It is a genuinely "local" school in every sense of the word. Except funding. If the Encampment school needs maintenance, the money comes from a fund built by one-time fees on new coal leases. The number of leases sold, in turn, depends mostly on demand fo...

The debate over legalization of marijuana is both philosophical and medical. From the philosophical viewpoint it is about individual choice; the medical side is about addiction and marijuana-based medical products. As a direct consequence of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, there is now a third side to this issue, an economic...

Of the 249 juveniles incarcerated in Wyoming in 2011 (the most recent year with data available), 42, or 16.9 percent, were jailed for offenses that are not considered criminal in any other state. Rather than being jailed for violent crimes, such as assault and battery or robbery, or property crimes, such as theft, these youths have been incarcerate...

Let's try a little thought experiment. First, think of your extended family, and pick out which ones you would consider poor. Next, imagine you meet Bill Gates and he says he'll give $10,000 to each of your relatives who is poor, and asks you for a list of those people. You may find a few more poor people the second time. This is the position the s...

The consequence for your electricity bill. In 2013, President Obama's Climate Action Plan laid out a plan to make the U.S. a leader in the effort to address global climate change. In June 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated rules for cutting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. One option the EPA would allow ...

In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - was constitutional. This was not surprising: after all, since the 1930s the federal government has mandated that Americans buy retirement benefits through Social Security. Now there is another legal challenge to the ACA on its way through the court ...

Last week, at the meeting of the Joint Judiciary Committee of the Wyoming Legislature in Newcastle, I testified in favor of two bills that, if passed, will reform the practice of civil forfeiture in Wyoming. Both bills would bolster due process and property rights that are currently at risk under the Wyoming Controlled Substances Act. Wyoming polic...

The issue of legalized marijuana is slowly carving out a spot for itself on the Wyoming political scene. In January the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, seductively abbreviated NORML, submitted a proposal for a 2016 ballot initiative in Wyoming, seeking to: make it legal for anyone 21 or older to use marijuana;allow medical use a...

NEWCASTLE, WY – Wyoming Liberty Group staff attorney Steve Klein testified before the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee of the Wyoming Legislature today regarding two committee bill drafts that would substantially change the practice of civil forfeiture in Wyoming. "The Wyoming Controlled Substances Act currently allows police officers to seize pro...