I’m getting a lot of flak in recent days about a report we did in April adding up the amount of money each legislator spent as part of the appropriations process during the last legislative session. We called it the “Big Spender Report.” And I was content to ignore the whining until a few days [...]
Larry Grant makes a point in his column last week that should not go ignored: Grant, the chairman of the Idaho Democrats, noted that the State Board of Education voted last month to continue enforcing its mandate that full-time Idaho college students purchase insurance. Grant thinks he’s exposed an example of hypocrisy — with state [...]
The critics the American Legislative Exchange Council would have you believe that this non-partisan free-market organization hangs out in the shadows of our Statehouse and of state capitols nationwide, manipulating lawmakers to do its evil bidding. These ALEC critics would also have you believe that ALEC writes most of Idaho’s laws through an elaborate and [...]
Yet another disappointing legacy of the 2012 legislative session is the licensure of massage therapists in Idaho. Gov. Butch Otter signed the bill without comment, but his spokesman, Jon Hanian, told IdahoReporter.com that because the bill “was brought by the individuals in that profession as a means of self-policing and self-governing their own profession, the [...]
Like winning was for Vince Lombardi, it turns out that great teaching isn’t the most important thing—it’s the only thing. This was made crystal-clear recently in a Harvard University study quantifying how important good teaching is to society. In Idaho and everywhere else we need to ask ourselves: What are we doing to ensure our [...]
The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), a government watchdog and free market think tank based in Boise, has released the final ranking of its “Big Spender” legislators from the 2012 legislative session. The 2012 Idaho Legislature voted on 75 appropriation bills during the session, with total spending authority of nearly $6.25 billion granted to state agencies, [...]
