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Mississippi has a small inflow of cigarettes that are smuggled from other states. A decade earlier, prior to raising taxes on cigarettes, the state has a small outflow. 

That is according to a new analysis on cigarette smuggling from the Tax Foundation. 

Cigarette taxes are one of the easier targets for lawmakers looking for additional revenue as you combine a large network of health advocates pushing for the tax and a shrinking, unsympathetic demographic of smokers.

That is why cigarette taxes have routinely been floated in the legislature since the last increase in 2009. Even though we know the unintended consequences, particularly with a massive hike such as the 221 percent increase that was unsuccessful last year. 

Mississippi has a mild inflow of smuggled cigarettes at 3.32 percent, according to a new analysis from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation. That means for every 100 cigarettes that are consumed in Mississippi, three are smuggled from other states. That is 29th highest in the country.

Mississippi is surrounded by states to the north and east that have lower (though slightly lower in some cases) taxes, including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. Each of those states actually have a positive rate of outbound smuggling, ranging from 2.5 percent in Alabama to 17.1 percent in Missouri.

In a review of cigarette smuggling in 2006, prior to the most recent tax hike, Mississippi had a small outbound rate of 1.7 percent. 

The estimate is built around a statistical model which measures the difference between smoking rates published by the federal government for each state and legal paid sales. There are often yawning gaps between the two — the amount of cigarettes that should be smoked based on sales and the amount of smoking that actually occurs — and that difference is probably explained by smuggling.

The model can be used to make “what-if” estimates based on proposed changes in tax rates, as compiled by the Mackinac Center last year. At an excise tax of $2.18 per pack, as proposed in 2019, smuggling would leap from the current rate to 35 percent of the total market. That is, of all the cigarettes consumed in Mississippi after such a tax hike, 35 of every 100 cigarettes would be smuggled. 

The model also reports that 21 percent of all consumption would be a function of “casual” smuggling. Casual smuggling is represented by individuals who typically buy lower-taxed smokes elsewhere for personal consumption.

The evidence from around the country and elsewhere tells us that relatively high cigarette excise tax rates can produce every sort of mischief, including undermining the very health goals such taxes were adopted to address.

The Mississippi legislature released its proposed fiscal year 2021 budget Wednesday, which will cut $93.7 million from last year’s total in state funds.

Last year, lawmakers appropriated $6.36 billion on the state budget, a figure that balloons to $21.52 billion when federal funds are considered. 

This year’s proposed 2021 budget would reduce that to $6.27 billion (state funds) and $21.19 billion with federal funds included. 

These funds include the general fund, Education Enhancement, Health Care Expendable, and Tobacco Control funds. Just the general fund alone is $4.9 million less than last year’s appropriations.

Legislators will also have $100.3 million more to appropriate, as the state’s tax revenue collections as evidenced by the November revenue report, are $135.5 million above the revenue estimate for this year’s budget.

Among the recommended appropriations in the proposed budget include:

The JLBC also recommends that the state defund most vacant positions and delete 3,406 of those unfilled jobs while reducing funding for travel and contractual services. The state’s so-called “rainy day” fund, known as the Working Cash Stabilization Reserve Funds, is up to $678 million. 

By law, lawmakers have to set aside two percent of state tax revenue each year to keep the fund filled and protect vital government services from revenue shortfalls during economic downturns.

The 2021 proposed budget would provide a slight increase for K-12 education ($9.54 million or 0.37 percent) from last year’s outlay and reduce the appropriation for the state’s universities by $18.1 million (2.56 percent). 

Community colleges would also take a $9.1 million cut from the 2020 budget (3.61 percent cut).

The recommendation by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee isn’t binding and the real number won’t be known until the session’s end in May, when the appropriation bills for each agency are passed into law by the legislature. The fiscal 2021 budget won’t go into effect until July 1.

In Mississippi, the way the budget process works is state agencies submit budget requests by August 1. 

The JLBC meets every September to hear agency heads make their pitches for their budget requests and to also receive estimates of the state’s tax revenues.

The JLBC meets in November to put together a budget and later releases the budget blueprint in December

The governor also submits a proposed budget as well.

The Jefferson County School District is suing Juul, arguing that the e-cigarette maker is deceptively marketing to teenagers. 

The district in Southwest Mississippi, which is home to about 1,100 students, is the first in the state to file suit. Attorneys are hoping to have it certified as a class-action suit on behalf of all school districts in the state. 

“Defendants’ marketing strategy, advertising, and product design targets minors, especially teenagers, and has dramatically increased the use of e-cigarettes amongst minors, like the student body in Jefferson County School District,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants’ conduct has caused many students to become addicted to Defendants’ e-cigarette products. Plaintiff, and similarly situated school districts in Mississippi, redirected resources to combat the deceptive marketing scheme of Defendants and to educate the school children of the true dangers of e-cigarettes.”

The lawsuit also names Altria, Philip Morris, and Nu Mark as defendants. 

The lawsuit says that the “vaping epidemic” has plagued the school district, leading to new costs, and a redirection of time for faculty, staff, and security. According to the lawsuit, security has to supervise students in the bathroom to ensure they are not vaping. 

The school district is seeking an unspecified amount of money to pay for counselors and various education programs, damages, and attorney fees. 

While this may be the first lawsuit from a school district in Mississippi, this is a rising trend across the country. School districts in Kansas, Missouri, New York, and Washington are among those filing suit, making a similar claim concerning new costs. 

Much like combustible cigarettes, minors are prohibited from purchasing e-cigarettes. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is coming out in support of a former Jones County Junior College student who is suing the school for infringing on his free speech rights.

The DOJ issued a statement of interest in the case of J. Michael Brown, a former JCJC student at the school who is now at the University of Southern Mississippi. 

It says that college campuses shouldn’t be mini police states and that the college shouldn’t wait for a court to steamroll it into compliance, but comply voluntarily with the First Amendment.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed a complaint in U.S. District Court on September 3. The complaint says that Brown was stopped twice by campus police for trying to inform students about the political club he was involved, Young Americans for Liberty, without prior authorization from the school’s administration. 

The DOJ statement compared the school’s regulations regarding public speech from their handbook to the tyrannical state of Oceania in the George Orwell’s “1984.” The statement also says the college has an obligation to comply with the First Amendment. 

These regulations requires at least three days’ notice to administrators before “gathering for any purpose.” The student handbook also puts even more restrictions on college-connected student organizations, which must schedule their events through the vice president of student affairs. The school administration also reserves the right, according to the handbook, to not schedule a speaker or an activity.

The statement says that these restrictions operate as a prior restraint on student speech and contain no exception for individuals or small group and grant school officials unbridled discretion to determine what students may speak and about what they may speak. 

The DOJ urges JCJC to revisit and revise its speech policies. In May, FIRE wrote a letter to Jones Count Junior College President Jesse Smith offering to help the community college bring its policies into compliance with the First Amendment. The school didn’t respond to the letter.

Brown was stopped by campus officials twice, once in February about an inflatable beach ball, known as a “free speech ball,” upon which students could write messages of their choice and the second in April for polling students about marijuana legalization. 

An administrator told YAL that they weren’t permitted on campus since they hadn’t sought permission from the college.

According to Brown, he and another student held up a sign polling students on marijuana. Campus police took him and another student to their office after telling a friend who wasn’t a student to leave and escorted off campus.  

The lawsuit seeks declaratory judgement to strike the free speech restraints from the student handbook, a permanent injunction against the school to restrain their enforcement of unconstitutional policies and practices, monetary damages and attorneys’ fees.

Alabama’s resistance to providing taxpayer money for passenger rail service between Mobile and New Orleans could put the project on hold.

At a meeting of the Southern Rail Commission on December 6, commissioners discussed how to get Alabama leaders to agree to provide taxpayer money to get twice-daily passenger trains that could cost at least $65.9 million in capital outlays.

The service between Mobile and New Orleans would cost each state $3.045 million annually to operate and Mississippi and Louisiana have already committed to providing their shares. Alabama leaders, including Gov. Kay Ivey, are balking about providing taxpayer funds. 

“When you start a new rail line, you have to grow ridership. The cost of operating the train the first two or three years is why we need a source of funding,” said John Spain, an SRC commissioner from Louisiana.

Alabama’s resistance could prove to be the project’s undoing, as Federal Rail Administration grants for restoration and enhancement for rail infrastructure could be reduced or even scrapped for 2020. 

John Robert Smith, former Meridian mayor and Transportation for America chairman, told the commission that there’s no guarantee of an appropriation for 2020 Restoration and Enhancement grants. 

Mississippi has already committed about $15 million in state taxpayer money to the project, with Louisiana adding $10 million. The commitments, according to Smith, would be due a year after the first trains began operation.

The Federal Rail Administration — under the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program (CRISI) — is providing up to $32,995,516 in taxpayer funds for improving crossings, bridges, sidings and other infrastructure along the route and adding a railroad station in Mobile. 

These funds would also pay for preliminary engineering and federal environmental reviews needed for another project of the SRC, passenger service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The federal grants that would be provided to enact Amtrak service are meant to get the service online. The first year, the grants would provide 80 percent of the operating costs, declining to 60 percent in the second year and 40 percent in the third.

The SRC says the rail service is the final piece of the puzzle for the Gulf Coast’s post-Katrina future.

“We’re sitting in millions of dollars of investment made after (Hurricane) Katrina that is really starting to pay off,” said Knox Ross, commissioner for Mississippi and former Pelahatchie mayor. “You see cities that have leveraged federal investments from Katrina recovery funds that give them downtowns where people want to walk around in, want to live in. 

“One piece of the puzzle that is missing is a way to get people here, get them around. That’s what the train is about and it can get people to the downtowns of the cities while connecting the bookends of our coast, Mobile and New Orleans.”

A 2015 Amtrak study says that a twice-daily train between Mobile and New Orleans would draw 38,400 riders annually. Similar routes have existed from 1984 to 1985 and 1996 to 1997, but both ended because state taxpayer funds were no longer appropriated for that purpose. 

A similar passenger train, the Hoosier Line, received $3 million annually from Indiana taxpayers to provide four days per week service between Indianapolis and Chicago. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb cut the money from his proposed two-year budget that was approved in April after ridership fell 18 percent from 33,930 rides in fiscal 2014 to 28,876 in fiscal 2018.

Already, other federal money is being earmarked for needed improvements on the existing tracks, which are owned by freight carrier CSX. Service between Mobile and New Orleans was ended in 2005 before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Another CRISI grant of $8 million for rail infrastructure is going to the Port of Pascagoula, where it will help provide transportation for wood pellets from a soon-to-be built mill near Lucedale.

A 13-year-old earmark from late Sen. Thad Cochran of $846,000 would help Pascagoula build a platform for the potential service.

Commissioners also said there will be another Amtrak inspection train running along the Gulf Coast route within 24 months. The last one ran in 2016.

Commissioners also discussed a study done by Jacksonville State University concerning passenger rail service between Birmingham and Mobile. Operating such a train would cost between $12 million and $32 million to operate annually and would result in $23.6 million per year in additional tourism spending.

The study used similar methodology to a study by the University of Southern Mississippi that said that restoring passenger rail service could generate $282.58 million for the Magnolia State’s economy.

The SRC is an Interstate Rail Compact created in 1982 by Congress and consists of commissioners appointed by governors from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

More than 40,000 Mississippians have moved off food stamp rolls over the past year, representing a decline of almost nine percent in the state. 

According to the most recent data, 446,420 Mississippians were on food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in August. In August 2018, that number was 489,938. Mississippi’s 8.8 percent decline was sixth highest nationally, behind only Georgia (14.4%), Indiana (14.1%), Kentucky (11.7%), New Hampshire (11.6%), and Delaware (9.6%). 

Over the past several years, Gov. Phil Bryant and the legislature have moved to restore work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults who receive food stamps. This has the bonus effect of moving individuals into work and off dependency, while reducing the taxpayer burden of such programs. 

A recently released report by the Foundation for Government Accountability says that work requirements have saved taxpayers $93 million since Bryant restored them in 2015 for able-bodied, childless adults who participated in SNAP.

Food stamp enrollment, according to the report, began to drop immediately in Mississippi and had fallen by 72 percent by October 2018. The drop isn’t unprecedented, as two states, Arkansas (70 percent reduction) and Florida (94 percent) posted similar numbers after instituting similar work requirements for SNAP.

Also, since 2016, the average amount of time spent in the SNAP program for able-bodied recipients in Mississippi has dropped by 60 percent.

The study shows that work requirements have decreased dependency on taxpayers by able-bodied, childless adults. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 85 percent of these adults on food stamps weren’t working at all in Mississippi in 2015.

Those former SNAP recipients received jobs in 716 different industries and only 23 percent of them are still working in entry-level jobs such as fast food or retail. Their incomes grew by 64 percent within three months of leaving welfare. 

After a year, those incomes increased by 98 percent within a year and 121 percent for those who’d left the food stamp program 18 months before.

“Conservative policies are working, and Mississippi is continuing to reap the benefits of welfare reform,” Bryant said on Twitter. “After implementation of food stamp work requirements we have seen significant improvements.”

Bryant’s administration launched a study to track results of the work requirements, as the Mississippi Department of Human Services worked with the state Department of Employment Security, the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center at Mississippi State University, and FGA to track wages and the industries entered by former welfare recipients.

Up until the mid-1990s, there had been little effort at the national level to end dependence on welfare.

In 1996, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the Federal Welfare Reform Act. It transitioned a permanent entitlement program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children to a temporary block grant program known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families or TANF. 

The new law also established work requirements for SNAP, which were later watered down as the federal government granted waivers for states to eliminate these rules for some segments of the population.

In 2015, Bryant restored the work requirements by ending the work requirement waiver. Those able-bodied childless adults who met the work requirements could stay on the program, but those who failed the meet the standard were terminated from the program starting in the first quarter of 2016.

More reforms for the state’s welfare system were still to come.

In 2017, Bryant signed into law House Bill 1090, also known as the Act to Restore Hope Opportunity and Prosperity for Everyone. Authored by state Rep. Chris Brown (R-Nettleton), the law required eligibility monitoring for Medicaid, TANF, and SNAP and required the state agencies to share eligibility data. It also enshrined the end of the state’s work requirement for SNAP into state law. 

It also mandates that state agencies administering welfare programs verify residency and immigration status and bans the use of the EBT cards at ATMs at liquor stores, strip clubs, casinos, and other questionable businesses.

Thirty states still have partial time limit waivers for the food stamp program, while Mississippi is one of 17 states that have no waivers.

State Auditor Shad White ordered Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Executive Director John Dowdy to pay back $30,122 to taxpayers over compensatory time buy-backs and a clothing allowance.

The auditor’s office issued the routine compliance audit Thursday and the crux of why Dowdy will have to pay back the money is whether he is a sworn law enforcement officer. The MBN says that because he was sworn in as director, he is able to enforce the state’s laws and carry a firearm. 

The auditor’s office says that he hasn’t met the certification standards granted by the Board of Law Enforcement Standards and Training to be considered a law enforcement officer. He never graduated from a law enforcement academy and was supposed to complete his certification a year from his hiring on November 1, 2016.

A formal finding by the MBN and the Department of Public Safety on Dowdy’s status is due a week from the audit and any amounts due to the state would have to be repaid in a week. If the MBN finds that Dowdy is not a sworn law enforcement officer, the DPS will have to reimburse the state for $313,261 for employing the director after he failed to receive certification. 

Dowdy ordered his staff to buy compensatory time on five separate occasions. This is paid time off earned for working past traditional work areas. Agencies are allowed to pay employees for compensatory time in lieu of time off from work.

Sworn law enforcement officers are allowed up to 300 hours, according to DPS regulations, of compensatory time, while other, regular employees are limited to 100 hours. Dowdy, from May 31, 2017 until December 14, 2018, accrued 529 hours of leave, 129 hours more than the standard of a law enforcement officer and 429 more than those for regular employees.

According to state law, the public safety commissioner (MBN is a branch of the DPS which includes the state’s crime lab and state trooper force) has to authorize the buy backs and only one of those times did Public Safety Commissioner Marshall Fisher provide permission via a memo. 

The buybacks added up to $27,662 and were done over the objections of several on the MBN staff. 

Dowdy also spent $2,450 in state funds on clothing, which was against the law according to the audit since he isn’t a certified law enforcement officer. Law enforcement officers are authorized a clothing allowance by state law.

Dowdy’s spending included:

The auditor’s office also chastised the department for its accounting practices, reporting that MBN didn’t perform a proper monthly reconciliation for the nine bank accounts the agency holds outside of the state treasury. 

Also, the department bought higher-grade gasoline on 10 percent of purchases, which goes against state regulations, which only allows regular unleaded or diesel fuel to be bought with the state Fuelman credit cards.

Five MBN employees were allowed to use agency vehicles for commuting, including Dowdy and the department didn’t record fringe benefits for the employees. This added up to $3,720 in fringe benefits in 2018.

The audit isn’t the only controversy weathered by the agency in recent months.

Former MBN chief of staff and counsel Allison Killebrew resigned on October 8. In her resignation letter, she said “I lost in faith in your (Dowdy’s) ability to do the right thing for the employees of MBN and the state of Mississippi many months ago.”

It has become increasingly clear that our economy is undergoing a seismic shift, similar to that previously seen during the industrial revolution. Once again, technology is fundamentally changing how we do business as a society.

Technology stocks are on pace for a record year. For the past decade, the tech sector has led the bull market. While the overall S&P 500 has enjoyed a 24 percent increase in 2019, the S&P’s tech sector is on pace for a 41 percent gain this year. Big tech controversies, private data use, tariffs, and free speech debates aside, investors are convinced that consumer demand, creativity, competition, and private capital will continue to feed strong revenue and earnings. 

While certain sectors in tech will do better than others and some tech stocks will surely falter, it is clear that tech innovation is going to be a big part of our future, no matter where we live. Why should this matter to Mississippi or Jackson? Because nothing has the potential to dramatically improve our economy like tech innovation. 

Last month, a conference on technology innovation was held in Jackson. The conference featured AOL founder and billionaire Steve Case, who shared the stage with Jackson’s own Jim Barksdale. They told some fascinating stories about their decades working together through the AOL’s acquisition of Netscape and the eventual merger with Time Warner. But the most valuable information came from Case. Now a venture capitalist, Case provided some sage advice about where he’s putting his money and why, and he gave Mississippi’s political leadership some very specific direction about the future.

Case recently announced the establishment of Rise of the Rest Seed Fund II, a venture capital fund led by his investment firm, Revolution. This is his second fund designed to support entrepreneurs, start-ups, and early stage tech companies in underserved areas in the United States. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also backs the fund along with a host of highly successful entrepreneurs, like Spanx founder Sara Blakely. Blakely says, “geography should not be the reason bight ideas don’t come to life.” 

Partly due to overvaluation in places like Silicon Valley and partly due to a wide distribution of talents and ideas across America, Case is looking in cities and states outside of the traditional tech incubation zones. According to Case, roughly 85 percent of all venture capital investments are made in three states – California, New York, and Massachusetts.

His message to the leaders in Mississippi was a hopeful one. He chided lawmakers to eschew the normal corporate welfare and incentive hunting competition and instead think about better ways to get sustainable economic growth – like encouraging tech innovation. 

He suggested policy makers in Mississippi should think about how to permit tech innovations, rather than how to protect incumbent industries. He spent some time discussing how tech innovation could lead to a faster economic recovery than anything the government could try to orchestrate. He even suggested a robust tech innovation sector in Mississippi could be the antidote to brain drain, causing a “boomerang effect,” bringing talented and ambitious Mississippians back to the Magnolia State for jobs, opportunities, and improved quality of life.

At the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, our job is to recommend evidence-based policy ideas to help our political leaders make prudent decisions. This is why we are beginning an effort to encourage leaders to adopt a “permissionless innovation” policy. We should welcome and encourage creative disruption and work to reap the benefits of technological progress. We must not let existing or new regulatory policy act as a barrier to tech innovation. We recognize that long-term economic growth and human flourishing necessitates the promotion rather than the diminution of technological innovation. 

To accomplish this, we ought to seek equally innovative policy solutions, which can jumpstart local entrepreneurship and economic growth. Our goal should be to build into our regulatory code a presumption of net good when dealing with new technologies and innovation. 

In so doing, it is our belief that we can energize the existing marketplace and encourage businesses and entrepreneurs to see Mississippi as a more friendly state for risk-taking and creative disruption…and perhaps encourage some of our best and brightest to come back home.

This editorial appeared in the Clarion Ledger on December 5, 2019.

Today, on December 5, in the year 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, officially ending the thirteen year nationwide prohibition on alcohol and leaving future regulation to the states. However, prohibition did not find its death in Mississippi until 1966, at which point it was the last dry state in the union.

Mississippi has a long history of attempting to control alcohol consumption. It was the first state to pass some form of prohibition in 1908, and then was the first state to ratify the 18th amendment, creating a federal prohibition in 1918.

While prohibition inspired some great blues songs and classic literary characters it was bad public policy. For years before 1966, many establishments openly sold alcohol to customers, and the state even placed a 10 percent tax on the sale of alcohol, essentially making a mockery of its own prohibition laws.

Public policy ought to be rational and easily comprehendible by the public. Our modern laws governing the control of alcohol are anything but that, and continue a long tradition of excess government control.

We have over empowered individual counties to define their own laws, and in so doing have created a chaotic state of regulation, difficult to understand by the average residential citizen, let alone internal and external businesses hoping to sell.

Furthermore, the state has retained an egregious amount of control of the distribution process. Mississippi has decided that, rather than allow private businesses to control the market, it will run a large warehouse in the central part of the state which will have a complete monopoly over the distribution of all spirits and wines.

As the Department of Revenue states on its own site, “the ABC imports, stores, and sells 2,850,000 cases of spirits and wines annually from its 211,000 square foot warehouse located in South Madison County Industrial Park.”

This warehouse consistently operates at capacity, and government leaders are considering a $35 million expansion. Perhaps our politicians ought to consider giving the free market a chance?

There is no reason that our government should be so deeply involved in controlling the distribution for a product. They hike up prices by a tremendous rate, limit access to the product, and determine which brands are allowed to sell in the state, leaving businesses in the dark and unable to control their own wares.

Private businesses are barred from distributing alcohol in Mississippi. While UberEats, DoorDash, and GrubHub have created thousands of jobs in other states through their delivery systems, our legislative leaders have shut down this opportunity for individuals to order alcohol with their delivery.

And while a variety of companies sell and ship wine, whiskey, and other alcoholic beverages around the country, our legislative leaders have determined that we shouldn’t have this freedom of access.

If you’re shopping for a Christmas gift, you might find yourself looking at a wine basket, such as those at Wine & Country. However, upon checkout you will be met with the embarrassing notification that your state is one of only three in the entire nation that completely bars the shipment of any wines.

The excess regulation has made Mississippi last in the nation for craft beer development. For comparison, craft brewers currently produce $150 per capita in Mississippi, while they produce $650 per capita in Vermont. Imagine the difference such an industry could make in our state. This is thousands of tangible new jobs which are being discouraged from coming into existence by our government.

Existing policies have led Mississippi to have the largest shadow economy in the nation (referring to the exchange of products that are not taxed or recorded) at 9.54 percent of GDP. Moonshine is either produced or is available in every single county, which many link to the strict regulation of the alcohol industry. Our egregious taxation of alcohol products displayed here by the Department of Revenue has encouraged many companies such as Costco and Trader Joes to avoid opening locations in the state due to the lack of revenue potential on alcoholic products.

Prohibition is alive and well in Mississippi. Our government has decided we apparently can’t be trusted to make basic purchasing decisions for ourselves, so they must control what alcoholic drinks we’re allowed to have access to, how we’re allowed to receive these drinks, and from whom we’re allowed to purchase these drinks.

Be not fooled by the government “do gooders” who proclaim that they carry out policies like this for our own protection. Too many of our political leaders refuse to give freedom a chance, and instead have decided that they know better than we do when it comes to running our lives.

The fact is that while Mississippi prides itself on having a relatively low income tax, it finds dozens of other ways to tax and control its citizens.

Companies are discouraged from entering into business in the state because we have established covert taxes which discourage entrepreneurial risk taking.

Mississippi controls, regulates, and taxes alcohol worse than New York or California, so imagine what other discrete ways it is shutting down job opportunities and discouraging new business.

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