Announcements

• Americans for Fair Treatment made a splash in Connecticut with a roaming billboard.

• In Ohio, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants, National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Independent Women’s Law Center, and several other groups filed amicus briefs supporting The Buckeye Institute’s municipal income tax case.

• The Pacific Research Institute talked to Secretary Betsy DeVos about key education reform topics.

This Week on SPN.org

What Are Listening Sessions And Why Should Your Organization Host One?

Education freedom is the silent midterm issue

How do Americans feel about the term “liberty”?

Success Stories

• The Goldwater Institute highlighted how Arizona passed Right to Try 2.0—legislation that builds on the original Right to Try law and protects patients’ right to try to save their own lives by seeking treatments tailor-made for them that are not yet FDA-approved.

• Citizen privacy is now protected in 14 States. On the one-year anniversary of Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) v. Bonta decision, the Missouri Governor signed House Bill 2400 into law, which establishes the Personal Privacy Protection Act (PPPA) and will allow all Missourians—regardless of their beliefs—to privately donate to the nonprofits they support without fear of harassment or intimidation. In late July, the New Hampshire Governor signed the PPPA into law via Senate Bill 302 and will protect residents from government or private action to expose their support for causes they believe in. Read People United for Privacy’s statements on these important victories Missouri and New Hampshire. 

Solutions from the states: This week’s policy briefs

• The Mississippi Center for Public Policy released a report highlighting how unused oil wells within Mississippi could be harming residents.

• The Reason Foundation released a new K-12 Education Spending Spotlight that provides critical insight into key school finance trends across the country.

• New research from the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds shows how Texas’ electric grid problems were years in the making.

• The Washington Policy Center considers the effect of emergency-ordered school closings, learning loss, and mask mandates on children.

• The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) Director of Education Policy, Libby Sobic, is the author of Empower School Board Members With Policy Solutions, a new publication from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The rising tide of parent engagement and activism requires policy thinkers to turn their attention to the local level where school boards can debate and pass reforms that directly impact the classroom and address controversies around curriculum transparency and parental notification. Sobic highlights a number of the model school board policies WILL released in June 2022, part of the Restoring American Education initiative.

• Will Flanders and Dylan Palmer write about how Wisconsin stacks up against other states in K-12 education in WILL‘s report, The State of Education in Wisconsin, August 2022.

Policy News from the States

Education

“Such A Blessing”: A Milwaukee Mom’s Take on Why More Parents Need Educational Choice (Badger Institute)

Think Of Them As ‘Make Better Choices’ Schools (Badger Institute)

Education Exodus (California Policy Center)

Why Canceling Student Debt Will Set A Harmful Precedent (Center of the American Experiment)

Is There A National Teacher Shortage? (Center of the American Experiment)

Time For A Better Trade-Off On K-12 Testing (Empower Mississippi)

Our Education System Doesn’t Have a Funding Problem (Freedom Foundation of Minnesota)

Save Arizona’s Students, Preserve School Choice (Goldwater Institute)

Families Deserve School Choice, Not Student Loan Schemes (Goldwater Institute)

The Free Market Solution to Teacher Shortages (Libertas Institute)

Louisiana’s 2022 Leap Scores: Some Improvement, But A Long Way to Go (Pelican Institute)

How The Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program Works (Show-Me Institute)

Is the Sky Really Falling? Fact-Checking Claims about Parent Empowerment (Texas Public Policy Foundation)

Energy and the Environment

Polis Announces Push Back Against Looming EPA Mandates(Independence Institute)

Government Accountability

Lockdowns Should Never be Allowed Again (Caesar Rodney Institute)

COVID Related Recovery Fraud Is An American Embarrassment (Center of the American Experiment)

Pritzker Administration Failed To Report Unemployment Fraud Data (Illinois Policy Institute)

900 Days Of Emergency Orders With No End In Sight (Washington Policy Center)

Legislature Should Clarify Michigan’s Emergency Powers (Mackinac Center)

Healthcare

Why Medicaid Expansion Is A Bad Idea For Alabama(Alabama Policy Institute)

Housing

Think Outside the Box To Cut Permit Delays (Grassroot Institute of Hawaii)

First-Year Illinois Housing Costs Up More Than $12,717 Since 2019 (Illinois Policy Institute)

Austin-Area Governments are Making the Affordability Crisis Worse, Not Better (Texas Public Policy Foundation)

Inflation

Inflation: What Happens Next? (Center of the American Experiment)

The Inflation Reduction Act Will Barely Move the Needle on Climate Goals (Empire Center)

Inflation Cools While Food Prices Surge (Empower Mississippi)

How the So-Called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ Would Hurt Our Pocketbooks (Freedom Foundation of Minnesota)

Five Ways the Inflation Reduction Act Harms Americans (John Locke Foundation)

Inflation Reduction Act Nightmare Targets Life-Savings Meds (Pacific Research Institute)

What Will Inflation Reduction Act Mean for Health Care, Climate, and the Economy? (Pacific Research Institute)

Jobs And State Economies

Is Alaska a Good Place to Start a New Business? (Alaska Policy Forum)

Corporate Welfare, No Boost to Business Climate (Commonwealth Foundation)

GSI Analysis: New Jersey’s Job Recovery in Context (Garden State Initiative)

A Glimmer of Good Economic News? Maybe Not (Georgia Center for Opportunity)

People Are Migrating to Affordable, Low-Tax States Like North Carolina (John Locke Foundation)

Voting Against Subsidies Isn’t Killing Jobs (Mackinac Center)

For Families, Today’s Economy is ‘Death by 1,000 Cuts’ (Texas Public Policy Foundation)

State Budgets and Spending

Tax Revenues Continue To Soar (Center of the American Experiment)

Chicago Pension Funds Still Among Nation’s Worst Funded (Illinois Policy Institute)

Nebraska’s Property Tax Request Act And Truth In Taxation (Platte Institute)

Top 5 Things New Mexico Should Do with Its Largesse (And A Few They Shouldn’t) (Rio Grande Foundation)

Workplace Freedom

What Unions Don’t Tell You About Collective Bargaining (Americans for Fair Treatment)

Just 19% Of CTU’s Spending In 2021 Was to Represent Teachers (Illinois Policy Institute)

Government Workers Can Walk Away from Unions (Nevada Policy Research Institute)

Other

To Address the Childcare Crisis, MN Lawmakers Should Loosen Regulations (Center of the American Experiment)

Mississippi Receives Top Marks For Driver’s License Policies (Empower Mississippi)

Remembering David Mccullough: America’s Historian (Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation)

The Corruption of American Capitalism (Mississippi Center for Public Policy)

With No Word From South Carolina Supreme Court, The Palmetto State’s Faulty Asset Forfeiture System Rolls Along (Palmetto Promise Institute)

Think Tanks in the News

The Truth Behind Inflation And The Impending Recession (Alabama Policy Institute in Alabama Today)

It’s Back To (Nonpublic) School For Thousands Of Students (Bluegrass Institute in LINK Media)

Public And Private Sector Unions (Americans for Fair Treatment on Kevin McCullough radio.

A Legislative Staff Unionization Wave is Hitting Blue State Capitols (Americans for Fair Treatment cited at Route Fifty)

Ohio Must Stop Funding School Bureaucracy And Put Kids First (The Buckeye Institute in The Columbus Dispatch)

Hope For Education Freedom Deferred In West Virginia (Cardinal Institute in the Washington Examiner)

Families Need a Rein on Inflation, Not Shortsighted Spending Gimmicks (Commonwealth Foundation at RealClearPennsylvania)

The Inflation Reduction Act Won’t Reduce Inflation (Commonwealth Foundation in The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Reduce $31 Trillion National Debt With Tax Hike, Spending Cuts, CBO Says (Ethan Allen Institute in the Vermont Daily Chronicle)

Parents Want Education Freedom, Let’s Give it to Them (Frontier Institute in Lee Newspapers)

Expanding Medicaid Isn’t The Silver Bullet (Georgia Public Policy Foundation in the Dalton Daily Citizen)

The Left’s Hypocrisy On School Choice Is Evident In Their Support For Student Loan Debt Forgiveness (Goldwater Institute in the Washington Examiner)

Change How We Pick Judges (Independence in The Denver Gazette)

Illinois Retiree: Amendment 1 Could Cost Me My Home (Illinois Policy Institute in The Center Square)

What Is the Scope of a Warrant? (Libertas Institute in Townhall)

There’s No Union Boom — There’s Just A Union Bust (Mackinac Center in The Hill)

New Mexico’s Workforce Participation Challenge (Rio Grande Foundation in the Carlsbad Current Argus)

Causes And Cure To Today’s Inflation (Show-Me Institute in the Columbia Daily Tribune)

Education Freedom Is The Silent Midterm Issue (State Policy Network in the Washington Examiner)

Why We Must Expand Choice Within The Public School System (State Policy Network in the Washington Examiner)

Inslee’s Decision To Close Schools For COVID Caused Harm (Washington Policy Center in the Spokesman-Review)

Washington Ranks Among Most Expensive States To Hire Workers (Washington Policy Center cited in The Center Square)

Events and Opportunities

Please see SPN’s Network Calendar for a full list of events.