Week in Review: Tax Day Alert

Do you know where your tax dollars are going?

Tax Day is looming, and government is spending record amounts of your hard-earned money. But instead of looking for ways to cut back on waste amid sky-high inflation and turbulent economic headwinds, unelected government bureaucrats are funding divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) schemes that mandate discrimination in public universities and government agencies—on the taxpayers’ dime.

The figures are striking. A staggering $83 million poured into DEI by Oklahoma’s public university system. $34 million in Florida. $30 million down the drain in just a single year at the University of Michigan.

Goldwater is spearheading the fight to dismantle DEI, scoring victories against this discriminatory practice in Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa.

But it’s not just schools. In Gilbert, Ariz., the Office of Digital Government— tasked with monitoring online speech to enforce adherence to a progressive agenda—is devouring over $1 million in taxpayer money in salaries alone every single year, as a Goldwater Institute/AZ Free News investigative report revealed.

This Tax Day, as you calculate your contributions to the government purse, consider where your money is truly going. It’s time to end DEI and reclaim our tax dollars for the good of our communities and future generations.

Read more here.

Victory in AZ! Goldwater Reins in Bureaucratic Power

It just got easier for Arizonans to get to work in their field of choice after the Goldwater Institute this week enacted the Workforce Expansion Act.

Supported by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the Arizona House and Senate, the law reins in unelected bureaucrats’ power to impose burdensome restrictions on the Right to Earn a Living. It stops Arizona’s regulatory agencies from using vague, inconsistent, and subjective “moral character” requirements to keep workers from obtaining, or even applying for, an occupational license.

About one in four jobs nationwide requires an occupational license—a government permission slip to work. But Goldwater is breaking down barriers to work across the nation. In Arizona in 2019, we passed our universal recognition of occupational licenses law that allows experienced professionals to quickly get back to work when they move to a new state. Nearly 10,000 Arizonans have been granted a license to work under the law—and Goldwater has since enacted this landmark reform in more than half the states in the nation.

We’ll keep working to ensure economic opportunity for all is not merely a promise, but a reality.

Read more here.

I Taught Hundreds of College Students. We Need to Dismantle DEI

After five years on the faculty of the Lewis Honors College at the University of Kentucky, Goldwater Institute Senior Constitutionalism Fellow Timothy K. Minella is sounding the alarm about the pernicious spread of DEI.

DEI initiatives “promote division, discrimination, and distrust,” he writes in the State Journal in Kentucky, adding that “DEI offices advance a narrow ideology that divides the world into the binary categories of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed.’”

The result? Misguided policies like the University of Kentucky’s online form where students can anonymously turn in their peers or professors for any deviation from the script of political correctness, including “offensive” books and unpopular opinions expressed in the classroom.

That’s not all. Employees at the University of Kentucky’s DEI offices cost taxpayers a whopping $10.5 million a year just in salaries, only to “provide yet another layer of bureaucracy that adds no value to the institution,” Minella explains.

It’s wrong.

“Real education only happens when students and teachers commit to the pursuit of truth free from dogmas and ideological blinders,” Minella says. “We should renew the promise of higher education…by removing this barrier to excellence and opportunity.”

Read more at the State Journal in Kentucky.