by Goldwater Institute | Jul 12, 2021 | Education, Opinion
By the Goldwater Institute |
In too many of our nation’s classrooms, children are being taught that everything should be seen through the lens of race—a divisive and damaging worldview that negates the value of the individual. Instead of reading our country’s founding documents, students are being told that America was founded on fundamentally hateful and intolerant ideas. And they’re learning that the American Dream isn’t really for everyone. What is a parent to do?
In a new paper released by the American Enterprise Institute, Goldwater Institute Director of Education Policy Matt Beienburg shows that in order to truly put parents—and not bureaucrats—in control of kids’ education, more sunlight is the answer. And Goldwater is leading the effort to bring that sunlight to school districts across America, in the form of academic transparency.
To date, state lawmakers have dealt with the issue of politically charged classroom content by either doing nothing or banning certain curricula or materials. But neither path is sufficient to proactively root out political content in our schools. And neither path gives parents the power they need to make the best possible decisions regarding their children’s education.
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by AZ Free News | Jul 2, 2021 | News
On Friday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, struck down California’s demand that nonprofit advocacy groups turn over confidential information about their donors. The 6-3 ruling in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta is considered a major victory for First Amendment advocates.
At issue was a dispute that began in 2014, when the Thomas More Law Center and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation went to federal court to challenge California’s rule.
“The case ends more than a decade of litigation that began when then-Attorney General Kamala Harris abruptly ended the practice that allowed nonprofits to turn in their annual reports with private information redacted, as a security measure. That had been allowed for many years, since if the Attorney General’s office ever actually needed such information, it could easily get it in many other ways—such as a subpoena or audit,” explains Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute in a blog post. “But in 2010, Harris ordered any nonprofit that collected money in California to hand over copies of their unredacted IRS paperwork. That information would be placed into a government database that Harris promised would be kept confidential. Of course, it wasn’t—a trial judge later found almost 2,000 instances in which Harris’s office allowed this information to be publicly circulated. (The Goldwater Institute received such a demand, but refused to disclose this information.)”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion which reverses the 9th Circuit Court opinion.
In his blog post, Sandefur says the Court’s ruling “vindicates the privacy rights of millions of Americans who choose to contribute to nonprofit organizations that articulate the political, cultural, or religious values they hold dear. That choice is guaranteed by the First Amendment—yet many federal, state, and local officials continue to devote their powers to stripping donors of their privacy rights whenever they exercise that constitutional freedom. This is often done under the guise of “transparency,” but transparency is for government—privacy is for people. Today’s decision is a victory for the free speech rights of all Americans, whatever their ideological background—and we look forward to continuing the fight for freedom of speech and privacy at the federal, state, and local levels.”
by Goldwater Institute | Jun 26, 2021 | Economy, Opinion
By Victor Riches of the Goldwater Institute |
The Arizona Legislature just approved the Goldwater Institute’s plan to dramatically reduce income taxes and simplify the state’s tax code, making Arizona one of the lowest-tax states in the country. This historic reform will restore Arizona’s competitive advantage as a low-tax state and provide a boost for small business owners still struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic.
This plan collapses Arizona’s pre-Prop. 208 tax rates into a single, low 2.5% rate, and it caps the maximum tax rate at 4.5%. This means that no one’s taxes will increase because of Prop. 208. In fact, everyone’s income taxes will go down as a result of this victory.
Additionally, the Goldwater Institute has challenged the constitutionality of Prop. 208, and we’re now awaiting a decision from the Arizona Supreme Court. Fortunately, this new tax reform measure will mitigate the negative effects of Prop. 208—which otherwise would have decimated our economy—and help ensure the state’s future economic success.
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by Goldwater Institute | Jun 13, 2021 | Opinion
By the Goldwater Institute |
With states still feeling the economic damage done by the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden signed the “American Rescue Plan Act” to give states billions of federal dollars to help them recover. But there’s a catch: The Act effectively prohibits states that take the money from cutting taxes through 2024. That’s unconstitutional—and the Goldwater Institute is joining one legal challenge to it.
Congress can sometimes put conditions on grants to states, but it can’t take advantage of an emergency to coerce states into giving up control of such an important issue of state policy, and it can’t impose a condition on a grant that has nothing to do with the grant’s purpose. That’s why many state attorneys general have filed federal lawsuits challenging this “Tax Mandate”—and it’s why the Goldwater Institute has filed a brief supporting the state of Ohio’s challenge.
THE TAX MANDATE
A provision in the Act says that states cannot use federal grant money to “directly or indirectly offset” a loss of revenue resulting from a tax cut enacted between March 2021 and the end of 2024. If they do, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury will take the federal money back, up to the amount of revenue the state lost. That appears to mean that states that cut taxes between now and 2024 will have to pay back some or all their grant money.
The Tax Mandate’s defenders say this is just to make sure states actually use federal money for COVID relief. But the Tax Mandate doesn’t actually do that. The Act lists four broad categories of things a state can spend federal grant money on. After states spend the money, they have to report how they spent it to the Treasury Secretary. If the Secretary determines that a state spent money on something that doesn’t fall into one of those categories, she can take that money back.
So if a state receives a grant of, say, $5 billion, it has to show that it spent $5 billion on things the Act allows. If some things it reports weren’t appropriate uses of the money, the Secretary can recoup that portion of the grant. That alone ensures that states spend their federal grants for the purposes Congress intended.
The Tax Mandate, on the other hand, does not help ensure that states spend their grant money properly. Instead, it focuses on whether a state indirectly used federal funds to offset revenue lost as a result of tax cuts. That might make sense if the Act were otherwise designed to deny federal money to states that could afford to pay for their own COVID relief (if they put other policy priorities aside). But the Act doesn’t do that.
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by Victor Riches | Jun 3, 2021 | Opinion
By Victor Riches |
By dramatically decreasing the state’s income tax and simplifying its tax code, the governor can help ensure Arizona’s future ideological and economic success.
Now in the twilight of his gubernatorial career, Arizona governor Doug Ducey has the unique opportunity to make history on two fronts. First, if he simply remains in office for the next 18 months, he will become the Grand Canyon State’s first governor since Jack Williams — whose term ended in 1974 — to both enter and leave office during regular election cycles.
This peculiarity began with Raúl Héctor Castro, who succeeded Williams as governor. Castro happily resigned his post a few years later once President Carter had appointed him ambassador to Argentina. Since Arizona does not have a lieutenant governor, then–secretary of state Wesley Bolin ascended to the governorship by virtue of being the state’s next highest-ranking elected official — only to pass away six months later from a heart attack.
Arizona’s constitution stipulates that in such circumstances the third-highest-ranking official is next in line, meaning that the attorney general, Bruce Babbitt, also achieved the governorship without having to run for the office. And on it went. Since then, Arizona has witnessed a gubernatorial impeachment, two resignations, and three more secretaries of state extemporaneously gaining the governorship — making the office of secretary of state much more significant than its otherwise mundane responsibilities would suggest.
Governor Ducey is term-limited at the end of 2022 and so is primed to become Arizona’s first governor in nearly half a century to be both elected to the office and then to actually serve out his full term(s). While this accomplishment is an interesting piece of trivia for political-history buffs, it’s not much of a résumé builder for a politician who may have greater ambitions come 2024.
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