No matter where in the country you are reading NRO, there is probably an activist group or think tank near you that is helping to propel the rebirth of American conservatism. Here’s just a smattering of recent events and releases you may have missed:

• The Common Sense Institute of New Jersey and the Manhattan Institute have just released a paper examining the effects of Massachusetts’ property-tax cap on school spending and achievement trends there — and how a similar cap would benefit the taxpayers of New Jersey. “The Bay State has shown that it is not necessary to be the national leader in school spending to be the national leader in school outcomes,” the report concludes.

• This Friday, July 31, would have been Milton Friedman’s 98th birthday. For several years now, the Friedman Foundation has helped coordinate commemorative events throughout the world that celebrate the great economist’s contributions to the cause of liberty. Just about every American state has at least one event scheduled for the 31st, and many states have more than one. You can visit the Foundation’s list of Friedman Legacy of Freedom events to find the one nearest you. If there’s more than one, then I guess you’re free to choose.

• In Hawaii, the Grassroot Institute just published a study demonstrating that the state could help reduce unemployment by liberalizing the state’s licensing and certification laws that make it too expensive for jobless residents to change professions. This is a significant impediment to the efficient operation of labor markets in most states, by the way.

• In California, a state agency has voted to shut itself down — and for the very best reason of all, that it wasn’t performing a necessary government function. The Pacific Research Institute explains the details. Perhaps it will become a trend.

• Michigan continues to have one of the weakest economies in the United States. Still, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and some other state politicians think the proper response to recessionary budget deficits is to raise sales taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars in 2011. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has been explaining to the governor, in a tone more patient than I could muster, that “tax hikes kill jobs and tax cuts create them.”

• Speaking of sales taxes, the John Locke Foundation has just issued a study outlining a comprehensive plan for reforming North Carolina’s sales tax. Like that of most other states, it is a bewildering mixture of exclusions, confusions, penalties, and multiple layers of taxation. JLF recommends a plan to simplify the tax, applying a single rate to a broad base of retail purchases.

If you live in a state I didn’t mention and would like to know what’s happening in the world of public policy, visit the State Policy Network and click on your state to find a conservative or libertarian group near you.