by Tom Rose If you have been following juvenile justice issues at all you may have come across the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation which has not decriminalized status offenses. You may even believe that you have an understanding of what that means. The concept is fairly simple: a status crime is an action that would not be a crime...

by Tom Rose For the last few weeks I have been writing about child wellness in Wyoming. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation Wyoming ranked 19th in the 2014 annual report which is a lower ranking than our performance of 15th according to the 2013 report. These rankings are determined according to sixteen measured wellness categories divided a...

A Wyoming love story For thousands of years, alchemists tried to change base metals into gold. Today, this lofty goal rests unachieved, but its legacy remains. Now, instead of changing lead to gold, crafty alchemists look to change money from the pockets of taxpayers to their own, and governments seem happy to assist. High on the alchemy hit list i...

by Charles Katebi In March, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a case that could decide the fate of Obamacare in Wyoming and around the country. The case centers on whether the federal government has the authority to issue tax credits to subsidize insurance on exchanges that it has established. If the chief justices rule aga...

by Wyoming Liberty Staff The 2015 Wyoming Legislative Session is over but our work here at the Wyoming Liberty Group for 2015 doesn't end as we continue to focus on a parent's fundamental right to raise their children without government interference. Recently we went to Washington D.C. with a group of mom's from around the state to speak to Wyoming...

Imagine you have ten accounts you allocate your paycheck to every month. At bill time, you take money from two of these accounts, call them your traditional accounts, to pay your bills. One day, your paycheck suddenly plunges and you don't have enough flowing into these traditional accounts. No problem, you can just divert the flow from some other ...

by Tom Rose In this part of the Wyoming Wellness series we look a bit more closely at a few of the specific wellness indicators related to child and teen deaths and teens who are not in school and not employed. Our starting point for following these wellness metrics is the 2014 Child Wellness report published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids...

by Charles Katebi If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. After the Wyoming legislature overwhelmingly rejected Medicaid expansion, its advocates returned to the drawing board to design another half-baked measure to help hospitals cope with the rising cost of uncompensated care. Senate File 145, otherwise known as the Uncompensated Care Bill...

"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...