Goldwater Institute

Arizona public school enrollment is projected to exceed one million students by 2013. Currently, Arizona ranks first nationally for highest capital outlay expenditures and second for interest on school debt expenditures, totaling nearly $2,000 per student. Arizona's private schools educate five percent of the state's K-12 student population. Developing policies that take advantage of existing and potential private school capacity could help ease the public school burden of educating significantly more students, while potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

In 2002, New Jersey's Carol Thomas made headlines after her teenage son used her 1990 Ford Thunderbird to sell marijuana to an undercover police officer. He was arrested, pled guilty and faced his punishment. However, that did not end the case. The government also seized Thomas' car, despite the fact that no drugs were found in the car, she was the sole owner, and she had no knowledge of her son's use of the car to sell illegal drugs. The government's action was pursuant to a legal doctrine-civil asset forfeiture-that allows police and prosecutors to seize and forfeit property without ever filing criminal charges against the property owner.

Sen. Barry Goldwater best articulated his legislative mission when he said, "if I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty"

In 1965, the University of Florida football team faced a potentially devastating enemy-dehydration. University doctors set out to make a drink that would keep the team hydrated and winning. The product they made is now known the world over as Gatorade. Not only did Gatorade energize dehydrated football players, but once licensed to a soft drink company, it reaped handsome profits for the University of Florida and sparked an ongoing race for universities to discover more profitable products.

Arizona wine consumers are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to buying wines they enjoy. A bizarre set of laws makes purchasing many wines impossible, despite the fact that such wines are widely available on the Internet.