ALEXANDRIA, VA – The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) today announced the launch of an enhanced State Sovereignty Project devoted to persuading all 50 states to aggressively exercise their authority to serve as a check on the ever-growing and often extra-constitutional power of the federal government. CFIF’s State Sovereignty…

“This is a courageous step forward for California’s future.” Those were the words recently uttered by Jim Wunderman, a man who must be accounted an optimist given the general consensus that “California’s future” is something of a bear market. The occasion for Mr. Wunderman’s remarks, however, reveal him to…

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker isn’t the only Midwestern governor to facedown a recall threat after altering the balance of power between the state teachers union and local taxpayers.  On September 24, 2011, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a simple reform that could save taxpayers as much as $1 billion within the next decade…

How’s this for a Hollywood pitch?  A retired California city administrator drawing an annual public pension of $540,000 pleads guilty to misappropriation of funds.  His former associate tries to justify making $1.6 million in one year. The crusading Speaker of the state assembly wants to abolish the city after fifty years of corruption…

Advocates of federalism – the belief that, consistent with the Tenth Amendment, as much responsibility for public policy as possible should be given to the states rather than the federal government – have long embraced the notion of the states as “laboratories of democracy.” As originally enunciated by Supreme Court Justice…

What happens when a herd of school lunch crusaders runs roughshod over the taste buds of 700,000 grade school students?  In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the result has been thousands of lunches thrown away by dissatisfied students at a huge loss to taxpayers. Not that everyone doing business with L.A. Unified is complaining. …

Question: When is a lawsuit also a campaign tool?  Answer: Whenever losing enrages a voting bloc and winning rewards them at the ballot box.  On Monday, the Obama Administration participated in oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Perry v. Perez, a lawsuit over a Texas redistricting map that has been litigated and appealed but never…

With California’s new budget that went into effect on July 1, one question comes to mind about the unsustainable method of governing employed by California’s Democrats: Why on earth can’t these people understand that in order to afford the welfare state a government must first concern itself with economic growth, and only then with…

Like so much else that is wrong in California, the United States Supreme Court’s order to release up to 46,000 felons shows that there are real life consequences to saying yes to a good idea, and then failing to adequately fund it.  Critics of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Brown v. Plata are right to be outraged at…

Democratic Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to balance California’s budget through tax increases is based on a familiar – and flawed – theme:  Let the people decide.  The lynchpin of Brown’s proposal is to let voters choose whether to extend expiring tax increases for an additional five years.  On its face, the…

California Governor Jerry Brown’s budget cutting proposals are exciting howls from his liberal base as well as many pro-business Republicans.  But amid the outcry over slashing services and extending tax increases, one voice for substantive reform is cautiously optimistic. For Assemblyman Chris Norby (R-Fullerton), Brown’s call to…

With federal stimulus money drying up and accounting gimmicks exhausted, several cash-strapped states are setting their sights on taming the most voracious budget animals: public employee unions.  Notably, newly elected governors from the Rustbelt are stepping into the center ring.  Armed with eight years as Milwaukee County executive where…

Technically, the recently concluded session of the Alabama legislature was not a lame duck session.  Since it was called by term-limited Republican Governor Bob Riley to address specific issues after the regular session ended, it’s known as a “special” session.  Indeed it was.  Charged with passing the nation&rsquo…

California’s intensifying economic tremors are widening the divide between two approaches to government: retrofitters and façades.  With the fiscal “big one” likely to strike all levels of the state’s administration in the next year, each response will be judged by how well it braces for the coming seismic collapse…

In this age of fiscal sophistry, the language of public finance is riddled with economic alchemy. The federal government moves $877 billion from Washington’s coffers to those of its most favored interest groups and calls it “stimulus.” The Speaker of the House declares that unemployment benefits serve as “one of the biggest…

Chris Christie doesn’t seem like a man prone to idol worship.  In less than five months as New Jersey’s governor, the iconoclast-in-chief has thrown most of the state’s sacred political cows on the grill, from teachers’ unions to a derelict legislature.    It may come as a surprise, then, to note that the Garden…

Americans in the other 49 states can be forgiven if they don’t understand what the big deal about California is. Sure, the Golden State is a land of movie stars, sun kissed beaches and endless innovation. But it’s also a place perched on the edge of bankruptcy, strangled by public-sector unions and radical environmentalists and prepared…