Centennial Institute Policy Briefs
As Colorado Christian University’s think tank, we draw on the expertise of CCU Faculty, Centennial Institute Fellows, and other skilled policy analysts to provide background and recommendations on current issues facing policymakers in Colorado and the nation. We do not lobby on specific bills or take sides in elections for candidates and ballot questions.
The Centennial Institute Policy Briefs are distributed online and on paper, free of charge, to a wide audience of citizens, public officials, journalists, and thought-leaders – Americans who can make a difference.
The Policy Brief series is one more way in which we pursue the CCU strategic objective of seeking to “impact our culture in support of traditional family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, a Biblical view of human nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original intent of the Constitution and Western civilization.”
Policy Brief No. 2013-2 * April 10, 2013
You Want Affordable Care? Common Sense from a Practicing Physician
By Dr. Jill Q. Vecchio, MD
Editor: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s prescription for reforming American health care, could not be more misleadingly named. As the public is beginning to realize, with its full implementation now upon us, the PPACA law neither protects patients – who face rationing, shortages, and delays – nor guarantees affordable care. It only guarantees higher premiums, higher taxes, and worst of all, degradation of care for many in the most vulnerable groups – older people under Medicare and lower-income people under Medicaid. And now Colorado is about to further overburden its already dysfunctional Medicaid system by massively expanding the rolls with what is perceived as “free money” under PPACA. This policy brief is an attempt to step back and see the big picture on what has made health care unaffordable to so many, and how we can start making it more affordable once again – especially for America’s poor.
Policy Brief No. 2013-1 * February 13, 2013
Weapons of Mass Obstruction: How the Environmental Lobby Stymies Energy Production and Hurts America
By Kelly Sloan
Editor: The militant environmental lobby has developed a successful playbook for using legal strategies to deny, delay, and deter energy production on public lands in Colorado. Known as “the Colorado Model," it is now being applied across the country. Its impact is to curtail domestic energy production, slow the onset of American energy independence, block job creation and economic growth, and drive up costs for both consumers and taxpayers. This policy brief looks three case studies of the model at work in western Colorado, illustrating how the environmental lobby deploys its "weapons of mass obstruction." We conclude with a menu of recommended policy solutions.
Policy Brief No. 2010-2 * December 1, 2010
Much Better Schools on Much Lower Budgets
By William J. Moloney
Editor: Colorado public education is the most important communal undertaking for our state’s future. It is also the most expensive obligation for taxpayers. But as we enter 2011, education faces both a budget crisis and an identity crisis. Legislators will take up another round of unwelcome spending reductions come January. At the same time, school districts from the gritty urban neigh-borhoods of Montbello to the affluent greenbelts of Douglas County are mired in controversy over the very meaning of education. Centennial Institute asked former Education Commissioner William Moloney, who was Colorado’s chief state school officer under Democratic and Republican administrations from 1997 to 2007 and has worked on education policy in a number of other states and nations, to think outside the box about realistic solutions. Here are his analysis and recommendations.
Policy Brief No. 2010-1 * September 20, 2010
No Political Oversight of Private Colleges
By Krista Kafer
Abstract: Should private colleges and universities be subjected to adversarial oversight by politicians in 50 state capitals? The Education Department is set to mandate more government control over a private-sector accreditation process that has served higher education well. To what purpose? The new regulations offer little benefit to these institutions, their students, or the taxpayers. Abuses by a few unethical, for-profit colleges do not justify a power grab against 6,000 nonprofit schools. If states politicize their authorization process, colleges may face the choice of compromising their mission or closing their doors. In a nation founded on the free exchange of ideas, that’s wrong. Policymakers should withdraw the proposed regulations.