Here are the most-viewed reports, articles and commentaries of the year Your most-viewed reports, articles and commentaries of the year 1. Tax Reform Options to Improve Wisconsin’s Competitiveness By Katherine Loughead A new report from the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute offers five comprehensive tax reform options to enhance Wisconsin’s tax competitiveness. 2. Wisconsin’s Criminal Justice System Failing For the people who need it most — poor residents of Milwaukee, families and victims of particularly violent crimes, children in schools where politicians won’t allow police, and almost anyone awaiting a verdict — Wisconsin’s criminal justice system is failing. 3. Toward Swifter Justice: Overburdened Prosecutors and Public Defenders Linked to Wisconsin Court Backlogs By Jeremiah Mosteller Wisconsin’s court system is plagued by massive delays and a growing backlog of criminal cases. It now takes more than a year for a court to resolve an armed robbery charge, 14 months to resolve a sexual assault case and more than 15 months to resolve an allegation that someone committed a murder. 4. This is not four years ago By Mike Nichols Robin Vos, fresh off a victory that seals his role as Speaker of the Assembly and now coming on 30 years in local and state politics, threw out a couple olive branches at Gov. Tony Evers Thursday on both talk radio and in a conversation with me. 5. Parents don’t have to settle for a race to mediocrity Scarlett Johnson is a suburban Milwaukee mother of five and one of the organizers of an effort to recall members of the Mequon-Thiensville School Board. 6. Policy Brief: Forgiving Student Loan Debt By Scott Niederjohn Debt forgiveness amounts to spending $1 trillion from the federal Treasury exclusively on people who went to — and in most cases graduated from — college. This essentially punishes Americans who didn’t go to college and, because of that fact, are more likely to need government help. 7. How “Free” Federal Money Costs Wisconsinites Control Over Their Government By Mike Nichols & Mark Lisheron Approximately 30% of the revenue in Wisconsin’s current two-year budget comes from the federal government — and that doesn’t include billions and billions of dollars sent to the Badger State to ostensibly get us through the pandemic. 8. Eleven Years Later, Act 10 Takes Down a Onetime Union Stronghold By Mike Nichols WEA Trust, the teachers’ union-created insurance company that once had a lock on hundreds of school districts in Wisconsin, just announced it is terminating its health insurance business by the end of this year. 9. Ensuring Opportunity: Altering Wisconsin’s Safety Net to Encourage Upward Mobility By Angela Rachidi For decades, the federal government has assumed a larger role in funding and running safety net programs, leaving states with little ability to address flaws such as employment and marriage disincentives and little power to make changes. State leaders must work to change this. 10. Billions in federal spending in Wisconsin unaudited; results never measured By Mark Lisheron Twenty months after Congress passed a bill that rained $2.53 billion down on Wisconsin, the governor’s office in sole charge of administering the funding, as well as legislative audit and budget officials, have almost no idea of how all that money is being spent. 11. Local pols filling old budget holes with massive COVID aid By Mark Lisheron Using billions of emergency pandemic bill dollars to plug gaping holes in their budgets, local governments across Wisconsin and the country are setting themselves up to ask for tax increases or slash services as basic as police and fire protection when the federal funding runs out. 12. A Flat Tax in Wisconsin Can Deliver Tax Relief for Everyone By Katherine Loughead There are numerous ways Wisconsin could move to a flat income tax while benefitting Wisconsinites across the income spectrum. The most obvious solution is to flatten the rate while increasing the standard deduction, as proposed by the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute in the July 2022 report Tax Reform Options to Improve Wisconsin’s Competitiveness. 13. “Such a blessing” Elita Williams and Brielle King sat down for a Q&A with veteran journalist Marilyn Krause to talk about the benefits of being able to choose a school and education program and the key role the choice program plays in providing access and funding to attend a private school. 14. School choice helps family rebound after tragedy At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Wishkub Kinepoway faced two family crises with some crying, some praying and a lot of determination. A member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and a Shawano County transplant, Kinepoway knew she needed to make a change for her children. She also knew that change wouldn’t come without school choice. 15. Wisconsin Losing Ground to Tax-Reforming Peers By Katherine Loughead In Wisconsin, comprehensive tax reform that prioritizes gross state product growth and personal income growth ought to be a top priority for policymakers, especially given the recent reforms made by many of Wisconsin’s regional and national peers. 16. Lessons in liberty By Patrick McIlheran It’s time to start treating families more justly by living up to another bedrock American principle: All children are created equal — even the ones who by sixth grade show the gumption to opt for a better education. 17. Next time, listen to parents By Patrick McIlheran While authorities faced no resistance to closing schools early in the pandemic, parents raised questions as the closures dragged on. So, as Madison and Milwaukee and many other districts stayed out as the 2020-21 school year began, many parents judged — correctly, we now see — that the costs outweighed the benefits. 18. Wisconsin didn’t ‘buck national trends’ By Patrick McIlheran Right after scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, came out, Wisconsin’s chief public school regulator, state Superintendent Jill Underly, issued a press release headlined, “Wisconsin elementary school students buck national trends in ‘National Report Card’ release.” This is not true. 19. What else are they wrong about? By Patrick McIlheran The big test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, found that not once in the past two decades have Wisconsin’s public schools managed to make more than 41% of 8th-graders proficient in math. 20. How to Future-proof Wisconsin’s Highway Funding By Robert Poole & Benita Cotton-Orr Every credible projection shows the gas tax is fading as a revenue source as federal mandates and consumer tastes prompt a shift toward electric vehicles and, among remaining gas-powered ones, much more efficiency. More and more vehicles won’t be paying for their share of pavement. Wisconsin needs a replacement for the gas tax. 21. Wisconsin’s Economy: A Comparative Study By Andrew Hanson Nationally, Wisconsin ranks as the 29th most productive state (including the District of Columbia) as measured by GDP per capita and the second lowest among seven Midwestern states. This is a marked change from 2011, when Wisconsin was the fourth most productive Midwestern state per capita. 22. Occupational Licensing: Get Out of the Way of Work Wisconsin’s politicians prohibit over 1 million citizens from working unless they have government permission. This is the root of the scandalous backlogs plaguing Wisconsin’s occupational licensing bureaucracy, which is forcing many people to sit on the sidelines after they move to our state or graduate from their training, unable to work in their chosen field. Thank you, and Happy New Year Share This Email Share This Email Share This Email Invest in the Badger Institute For 35 years, the Badger Institute, formerly known as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), has been at the forefront of the fight for school choice, right to work, welfare reform, tax restructuring, limited government, civil society and so much more. If you appreciate the Institute’s legacy and want to support free markets, opportunity and prosperity, please consider donating $35, $350 or $3,500 today. Your support will help the Institute continue to advocate for conservative principles for the next 35 years – and beyond! The Institute never has, and never will, accept government funding. We gratefully welcome your online donation or email Angela Smith, Vice President of Development. The Badger Institute is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Support Freedom   Badger Institute | 700 W Virginia St, Suite 301, Milwaukee, WI 53204 www.badgerinstitute.org Unsubscribe [email protected] Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected] in collaboration with Try email marketing for free today!