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...

Earlier this year, after being contacted by Tim Thorson, I toured the Juvenile Services Center in Laramie County. Mr. Thorson is a member of the Laramie County Community Juvenile Services Joint Powers Board, which oversees many aspects of the Juvenile Services Center. Upon our arrival, Mr. Thorson introduced me to Captain Michael Sorensen, who is i...

The Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS) has proposed legislation to reform the current Child in Need of Supervision (CHINS) system to a Family in Need of Supervision (FINS) program. The underlying premise of FINS (sometimes called Families in Need of Services, Persons in Need of Services or PINS) as enacted in many other states including Ar...