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...

During a tour of the Laramie County Juvenile Services Center with Tim Thorson and Captain Michael Sorensen I observed some trends that were further supported by data provided by the JSC. Through Mr. Thorson and Captain Sorensen I received a hard copy of the Overview of Laramie County Juvenile Services Center for fiscal year 20131 which provided the...

Sometimes it is difficult to show how the First Amendment and campaign finance reform are relevant to most Americans. But recent statements from a leading advocate of reform illustrate the significance of these issues. In April, the Democracy Alliance gathered in Chicago to discuss how best to shut down conservative policies. At the April meeting, ...

Fed Ed Secretary Arne Duncan announced this week that the U.S. Department of Ed is initiating a multifaceted new strategy to ensure every American public school child will have equal opportunities to learn. This despite the fact that provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) regarding training "highly qualified teachers" and reporting on teacher/st...

Wyoming has more state and local government employees per 1,000 private-sector employees than any other state. Since big government leads to low growth, it is fair to assume that with a smaller government our state GDP would be higher and we would all prosper. We would be able to find better-paying jobs, our state would see more business investment...

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on April 18, 2014 "The politician ... attempts to remedy the evil by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder." - Frederic Bastiat, "The Law," 1850 - Last week, while discussing locally-generated echoes of the national minimum-wage-raise debate, I made t...

Wyoming's wide-open spaces and horizons that appear to stretch to infinity are some of the most remarkable amenities residents can enjoy. For those who are more familiar with life in towns or even small acreages, these magnificent expanses of land without buildings can sometimes seem empty. Agriculturalists, however, can recognize how actively our ...

Education funding is a complicated issue in Wyoming. The state constitution gives education a special status on the list of public policy priorities, and the state's education funding formula has been the subject of much debate. It is therefore impossible to give a full picture of state education funding in a short blog or two. There is, however, o...

There are many myths regarding public policy. Those myths are particularly prevalent among people who purport to do economic research. One of those myths says that when you study Wyoming taxes you have to remove severance taxes from the equation because Wyoming is so exceptionally dependent on those; severance taxes, it is said, make Wyoming look l...