Week in Review: Fear Should Not Drive Our Response to COVID-19

The headlines are alarming. Arizona is seeing a spike in coronavirus cases, and that’s prompting understandable concern in the state. But though COVID-19 is a serious situation, fear should not drive our response.

In a new article, Goldwater Visiting Fellow Dr. Rafael Fonseca analyzes the facts on the ground in Arizona and explains why conclusions about next steps in state and local policy shouldn’t be reached without considering all the available data.

Click to read more on our In Defense of Liberty blog.

A Respected Psychologist Wins Her Freedom to Work in Arizona

Nineteen wildland firefighters were dead, burned alive when the flames washe over them near Yarnell in central Arizona.

Carol Gandolfo was there for the survivors in the wake of the 2013 blaze, the deadliest in the state’s history. She was a volunteer member of the Northern Arizona Critical Incident Stress Management team, where she found herself face-to-face with the firefighters still grieving the deaths of their comrades.

There is so much more that Gandolfo might have done. By the time of the fire, she had spent more than a decade as a licensed psychologist in California. But the state prohibited her from practicing psychology, even though she was a skilled, licensed professional — until now.

Read how the Goldwater Institute helped Carol win her freedom to work in a new report by Goldwater National Investigative Journalist Mark Flatten.

A balloondooggle you won’t believe

Taped on the door of a multimillion dollar facility in Tucson is a simple, misspelled paper sign that announces simply, “closed until further noted.” It’s a sad and all-too-predictable end to one of the silliest and most wasteful examples of politicians trying to gamble on the market with other people’s money.

The idea was crazy to begin with: Pima County, Arizona, would spend $15 million to build a brand-new, tailor-made facility for a private business called World View, which would take rich tourists on rides to the stratosphere in specially modified weather balloons. This was supposed to somehow spur the economy and create jobs. 

The problem is, the county violated state law in giving away taxpayer dollars, and the Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers challenging this wasteful and unjust practice. The balloons didn’t take off, the jobs didn’t come, and now — as the nation enters one of the worst economic crises in its history — that money is floating away to Florida.

Click here to read more about how county government illegally blew through millions of taxpayer dollars and what’s happening next in this incredible “balloondooggle.”