Policy Analyst, Frontier Group
Started on staff: 2016
B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, University of Kansas
R.J. focuses on data privacy issues and the commercialization of personal data in the digital age. Her work ranges from consumer harms like scams and data breaches, to manipulative targeted advertising, to keeping kids safe online. In her work at Frontier Group, she has authored research reports on government transparency, predatory auto lending and consumer debt. Her work has appeared in WIRED magazine, CBS Mornings and USA Today, among other outlets. When she’s not protecting the public interest, she is an avid reader, fiction writer and birder.
Nebraska, like my home state of Kansas, is landlocked. There are no beaches with washed up garbage and no sea turtles mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish – reasons that citizens in places like California have come together to ban plastic bags. But Nebraskans, it turns out, have good reasons to ban the bag as well – even if those reasons aren’t always immediately obvious, even to those of us who were born and raised in the Midwest.
In the years since the Great Recession, a torrent of cheap and easy credit has washed over car showrooms and used car lots. Many have compared this recent free-for-all in the subprime auto market to the housing market right before the 2007 collapse of the housing bubble. But few have talked – until now – about the effect this influx of cheap money has had on Americans’ transportation choices.
The dominating influence of large political donors shapes elections from beginning to end – from an individual’s decision to run for office, to a candidate’s ability to get his or her message out to the public, to the makeup of the people with whom a candidate spends time while running for and serving in office.
Real tax filing simplification wouldn’t look like a postcard. Measures such as electronic filing and pre-prepared returns would do much more save Americans time, money and stress.
My home state has spent the last five years as a laboratory test for the kinds of tax policies being considered at the federal level now. Congress would be foolish to ignore the results.
