Week in Review: Taking Out the Trash

Arkansas business owner Steven Hedrick poured his heart and soul into his small business, and every week Steven, who rents out roll-off dumpsters for large projects, gets calls from customers needing help. But as Steven recounts in a new Goldwater Institute video, he can’t help. That’s because the government is running him out of business by forcing residents to use a government-owned competitor.

Not if Goldwater has anything to say about it: this week we sued the city of Holiday Island for trampling on Steven’s constitutional right to earn a living.

Last year, the city imposed a mandate banning Steven and everyone else from picking up and disposing of solid waste—except for a specially chosen government entity. “The city has prohibited me from doing business,” Steven says. “You shouldn’t have to ask permission to put food on your table.”

But the Goldwater Institute is the nationwide leader in safeguarding Americans’ right to earn a living, passing our landmark Right to Earn a Living Act in multiple states and successfully fighting bureaucratic overreach on behalf of numerous Americans. “It almost feels like they came in to rescue me,” Steven says of the Goldwater Institute’s help. “I can’t thank them enough for this.”

Watch the new video and read more here. 

Beware the Government’s Healthcare ‘Truth’ Peddlers 

The Biden administration just seized even more power to censor truthful and scientific speech that it deems “misinformation” in healthcare—and the consequences for patients could be detrimental.

“The same agency that seeks to police ‘misinformation’ has, for years now, routinely challenged and limited the ability of manufacturers to share truthful and scientific information about uses of their treatments for populations or medical indications for which they haven’t yet received FDA approval,’” Goldwater Senior Fellow Naomi Lopez and former Trump administration domestic policy adviser Joe Grogan write in the Washington Examiner. Worse yet, the FDA just obtained the power to completely ban “off-label” uses of medicine.

Such restrictions stifle scientific research and limit physicians’ toolbox of potential treatments. And they underscore the importance of Goldwater’s landmark reform, which we’ve already passed in Arizona and Tennessee, to safeguard the free speech rights of manufacturers to share truthful and scientific information with physicians and payers about the off-label use of FDA-approved medicines. Now other states—and Congress too—should follow suit so that more patients can get the right care at the right time.

“There is no prescient government agency or arbiter that should have sweeping authority to regulate misinformation,” Lopez and Grogan write.

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner. 

Yuma Sneaks Property Tax Past Voters—Goldwater Fights Back

The Yuma County, Ariz., government is using backroom maneuvers to bypass the will of the people and illegally ram property taxes down residents’ throats. Now Goldwater is demanding officials follow the law, which requires the government to obtain voter approval before imposing a new tax.

For the past two years, the Yuma County Hospital District, a governmental body, has been sending its budget straight to the county Board of Supervisors so that the board can directly impose property taxes on residents without voter approval. This is blatantly illegal—but the district is trying to do it again anyway. That’s why Goldwater sent a letter to the Yuma County Board of Supervisors, demanding the board stop imposing taxes on residents without their approval.

Goldwater is spearheading the charge to protect Arizona taxpayers. From defeating Prop 208’s unconstitutional tax hike on small businesses, to passing the nation’s lowest flat tax rate, to reinforcing Arizona’s ban on doling out taxpayer funds to private companies, Goldwater is committed to ensuring Arizonans can keep more of their hard-earned money.

And we’ll keep working to make Arizona the freest, most prosperous state in the nation.

Read more from Goldwater Staff Attorney John Thorpe at In Defense of Liberty.