All 122 seats in the state House of Representatives will be on the ballot in November, with Republicans looking to expand their current two-thirds majority. 

With Rep. Nick Bain of Corinth switching parties before he qualified for re-election earlier this year, Republicans now hold 75 seats in the House. (It’s technically 74 with a vacancy in a Republican held seat.) The number of Democrats also dipped when Reps. Angela Cockerham of Magnolia and Steve Holland of Plantersville opted to run as independents, forgoing potentially challenging Democratic primaries. 

Here is what we know

Heading to November, Republicans nearly have a majority just in terms of the number of seats Democrats failed to field a candidate. There are 55 seats with no Democratic candidate. There are 42 seats with no Republican opponent. Translation: There are very few competitive seats on the ballot. 

Here are the remaining races with both an R and a D:

After winning by two points in 2015, Rep, David Baria (D-Bay St. Louis) opted against a run at a third term in the House this year giving Republicans their pickup best opportunity. District 12, despite being in Oxford, is still a slight Republican district. With Rep. Jay Hughes (D-Oxford) running for higher office, this is another potential opening, though certainly more challenging. 

The only other competitive Democrat seat is District 75, currently held by Rep. Tom Miles (D-Forest). It’s a Republican-leaning district, but Miles has done just fine at the ballot box. He defeated Vance Cox, who he is facing again this year, 63-37 in 2015. 

Democrats are challenging a dozen or so Republican incumbents, yet the territory isn’t that great. Every district held by Republicans is a “Republican” district based on a partisan voting patterns. District 40 may be shifting away from Republicans, but Rep. Ashley Henley (R-Southaven) did win 69 percent of the vote in 2015. District 102 certainly entices Democrats, yet Rep. Missy McGee won nearly 68 percent in a 2017 special election – in a district Democrats targeted and spent money on. 

Regardless of where Democrats look, they will need to win in districts where statewide and national Republicans generally win 60 plus percent of the vote. Can Cathy Grace defeat Rep. Shane Aguirre in Tupelo? Can Shanda Yates topple Rep. Bill Denny in Northeast Jackson? Perhaps, but the numbers aren’t on their side. 

Because right now, if you want to defeat a Republican incumbent, your best chance to do so is in the Republican primary. 

Independent’s Day

We may see two independents elected for the first time in nearly two decades, though both Holland and Cockerham took divergent paths to their current efforts. 

Holland is facing a challenge from Rickey Thompson, a former Lee County Justice Court Judge, who was removed from the court four years ago for various judicial misconduct violations. Thompson, who is black, made this a racial issue, as did his supporters. Holland, who was first elected in 1983, choose to avoid a Democratic primary that is overwhelmingly black. 

Cockerham was one of two Democrats to land a committee chair four years ago and is in line for another powerful spot if she returns. Her willingness to side with Republicans has put her at odds with the Democratic leadership, and she is in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. She escaped a primary four years ago despite her close relationship with the Speaker. She was unable to do so again, so she decided to run as an independent. 

Best case scenario

For Democrats, you need a net 15 seat pickup for the majority. That’s not happening so you really have to be happy with a couple seats and knocking the Republicans out of their “supermajority” status. 

For Republicans, you need 7 seats for 82, which would be a two-thirds majority. That's likely impossible, this year, or ever, just based on the districts, so you want to see your incumbents win and pick up District 122, and then knocking off Miles and picking up District 12 would be a bonus.   

The Mississippi Association of Educators, one of the state’s teachers unions, has made various endorsements of statewide and legislative candidates.

They endorsed Jim Hood, Jay Hughes, Johnny Dupree, and Jennifer Riley-Collins; the Democratic nominees for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.

They made numerous legislative endorsements earlier this year. Here is a review of endorsements among those who have general election opponents. 

MAE is relatively small in Mississippi, with less than 5,000 members and no collective bargaining rights. But they are part of the larger National Education Association, who is no stranger to delving into virtually every left-wing political issue.

At their recent convention, NAE affirmed a new business item that reads:

“The NEA will include an assertion of our defense of a person’s right to control their own body, especially for women, youth, and sexually marginalized people. The NEA vigorously opposes all attacks on the right to choose and stands on the fundamental right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.”

This is a sharp change from prior years when they attempted to walk more of a middle ground on abotion, saying they support “reproduction freedom,” not abortion, while bragging about not spending money in regards to pro-abortion legal services.

As we have seen with the left, abortion has moved from “safe, legal, and rare,” to legal until the moment of birth and funded by taxpayers. And if you disagree with that you are evil, anti-woman, and essentially support violence against women. 

But the bigger question is, is it necessary for the NEA, or its affiliates, to take a position on abortion? NEA is certainly a left-wing organization, that has never been in doubt. But, what does abortion have to do with education or teachers? 

One might presume a rejected item that calls for a renewed emphasis on quality education would be more in line with the NEA. That read:

“The National Education Association will re-dedicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning in every public school in America by putting a renewed emphasis on quality education. NEA will make student learning the priority of the Association. NEA will not waiver in its commitment to student learning by adopting the following lens through which we will assess every NEA program and initiative: How does the proposed action promote the development of students as lifelong reflective learners?”

But, alas, the union rejected those ideas. 

All 52 seats in the state Senate are on the ballot in November, though there will be very few seats that are actually competitive. Republicans currently hold a 32-20 majority in the chamber. 

The fact that so little attention has been given to the Senate, or the House, is probably a good indication that Democrats will be hard-pressed to make any gains and may actually lose a couple seats if things break in the GOP’s favor on election day. 

Here is what we know

Democrats have 13 seats where they are running without a Republican opponent. Republicans have 23 seats where there is not a Democratic candidate. So that’s our base. 

Here are the remaining races with both an R and a D:

What seats are competitive?

Republicans are defending open seats in Districts 3, 9, 22, and 31. Districts 3 and 31 are overwhelmingly Republican and would constitute a major upset if Democrats were to pick up either. District 9 is a Republican leaning district, though anything around Oxford might make you nervous if you are a Republican. 

But the other open seat Republicans are defending is the newly redrawn District 22, courtesy of a federal lawsuit. Lawmakers adopted a new district, which increased the black voting-age population from 51 to 58 percent, giving Democrats a much greater chance of picking up this seat. (And their best chance overall.) The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the implementation of the district. 

In District 10, Sen. Neil Whaley will have his first general election battle with an R next to his name. He won a non-partisan special election in 2017 in a district that is slight lean for Republicans, at best. It was previously held by a Democrat. 

Democrats are defending open seats in Districts 5, 8, 37, and 48. District 48 is open because Gary Fredericks defeated longtime incumbent Deborah Dawkins by almost 20 points in the primary. Dawkins had never won more than 53 percent of the vote and the opening gives Republicans a clear path in a seat they have long targeted, only to come up short. And while it doesn’t always translate, the district had about 4,500 votes in the GOP primary compared to 3,600 voting in the Democratic primary. It’s the most Democratic Senate seat on the Coast, but still leans Republican. 

District 5 is an overwhelmingly Republican seat that is historically Democrat, a once-common trend that is now almost extinct. The difference is that this year many of the local officials switched to the Republican Party. While not quite as Republican, Districts 8 and 37 also lean GOP. 

Best case scenario?

For Republicans, District 22 may be lost, but all other open seats and all incumbents hold. You then pick up the four Democrat-held open seats, giving Republicans a gain of three seats for the night and a 35-17 advantage, which is a two-thirds majority. 

Republicans are teetering on the edge of capacity in the Senate. That would likely do it.

For Democrats, you split the four Democrat-held open seats and pick up Districts 9, 10 and 22 from Republicans. That would give the Democrats a gain of one seat on the night, though they’d still be deep in the minority. 

The Mississippi Department of Health worked with a pro-abortion group to distribute literature and helped the non-profit perform a voluntary study on pregnant women at 14 county health clinics around the state.

In an August 9 letter requested by state Sen. Angela Hill (R-Picayune) to the legislature’s watchdog, known as the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review or PEER Committee, the Mississippi Department of Health detailed its relationship with the non-profit Provide, a pro-abortion group.

According to Guidestar, a non-partisan charity monitoring group, Provide’s mission is ensuring access to safe abortion for all women in the United States.  

Provide was involved to assist the MDH with compliance with the requirements of a $286 million federal family planning program called Title X. In June 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducted a site visit and found the state not in compliance with requirements for options counseling, which included abortion.

According to the letter, Provide gave training to MDH employees in late 2017 and early 2018 to facilitate implementation of a corrective action plan. There were no contracts between state officials and Provide, according to an examination of the state contract database.

In addition to training, Provide was approved by the Institutional Review Board to issue several iPads loaded with a voluntary client survey to several county health clinics statewide. The survey was intended to gather data on services received, quality of option counseling (which included abortion) and demographics. 

In an August 9 letter to the PEER Committee, MDH claimed that no publication or information from Provide was used to counsel patients. 

That response contradicts one email from MDH.

In one email sent on April 25, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said that he had ordered the Provide educational materials from county health clinics removed months ago. He also said several complaints had been received about some clinics still having the material on hand. He ordered them to have the materials removed by May 1.

According to its 2018 IRS Form 990 tax form, Provide is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based 501 (c)(3) group that “focuses on making sustainable improvements to abortion access where it is needed most in rural communities in the South and Midwest.”

The group said in the 990 that it held training sessions at 630 health and social service sites in states where “women seeking abortion face particularly high barriers to accessing care.” The organization also said that its goal was to increase “trainees’ intention to provide referral for abortion by 69 percent.”

The states listed, in addition to Mississippi, included Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. 

Provide’s involvement with the MDH was ended because of a rule change in the Title X program by the Trump administration. The new rule which prohibited grant money going to programs where abortions are performed.

On June 20, the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals granted the Department of Health and Human Services’ request for a stay on several injunctions issued by district courts in three states that temporarily halted the Trump administration’s new rule. MDH stopped the study the same day. 

The entire 9thCircuit is taking up the case and oral arguments were held on September 23, with a decision likely forthcoming.

MDH/Provide timeline

• June 2017 – After a site visit by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the state is found not to be in compliance with Title X regulations regarding option counseling (including abortions).
• Last quarter of 2017 and first quarter of 2018 – Pro-abortion group Provide helps train state officials and county health department workers in options counseling.
• April 19, 2018 – Study conducted by Provide on options counseling administered voluntarily to pregnant women using services at several county health clinics begins.
• February 2019 – The Trump administration issues a new Title X rule that prohibits the provision of grant money to abortion providers.
• April 25, 2019 – Dr. Dobbs instructs MDH employees to not hand out Provide educational materials since they aren’t state-approved.
• June 20, 2019 – The state ends the Provide study after a decision by the 9^thCircuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals keeps the Trump Title X rules in effect. 

In this episode of Unlicensed, we talk about Mark Zuckerberg's recent speech in defense of free speech in the midst of political attacks by many who want to be the next president of the United States. And we spend a few minutes talking about the early days of Facebook.

Over the past year, a steady stream of op-eds have appeared in the Daily Leader and other media outlets promoting either Medicaid expansion or something called Medicaid reform.

These terms are not being accurately used, creating a false dichotomy for the uninformed reader. In order to have a balanced dialogue about both Medicaid expansion and Medicaid “reform,” we should begin by defining what is meant by both.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state health insurance program mostly controlled by the federal government. Most important, federal law determines the baseline for eligibility. States, however, are somewhat free to add additional coverage populations and services. The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) attempted to force every state to expand Medicaid coverage to include able-bodied childless adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

The Supreme Court nullified this expansion as unconstitutionally coercive in a 2012 decision, NFIB v. Sebelius. Thereafter, states were free to decide for themselves whether to expand Medicaid to able-bodied childless adults. To date, 14 states, including Mississippi, have declined to expand Medicaid.

When policymakers debate “Medicaid expansion,” they are properly considering whether to expand Medicaid to able-bodied childless adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. For some reason, the ACA deemed this population as most worthy of coverage, offering a 90 percent funding match. No other population is eligible for this match – not children, not the disabled, not the elderly.

Medicaid “reform” is a little bit harder to define. Some on the Left want to “reform” and “expand” Medicaid by creating a “Medicaid for All” program. Some on the Right would “reform” Medicaid by eliminating it altogether. In all fairness, neither the complete expansion nor the complete contraction of a program is a “reform.” In common parlance, a “re-form” implies the preservation of the form of the existing thing, even if that thing undergoes an extensive overhaul.

Seen in this light, it is clear that – contrary to a recent op-ed, “A conservative vote for Jim Hood” – allowing Mississippi hospitals to act as another managed care provider is not a reform. This is not to comment one way or another on whether the “Mississippi True” plan is sound or not.

It is simply to let people know that adding another managed care provider to the Medicaid insurance marketplace is a lot like adding another fast food provider to Brookhaven’s current offerings. Whether its McDonald’s or Burger King or Taco Bell, they pretty much all do the same thing and aren’t going to bring about a “reform” of anyone’s eating habits.

The second usage of the phrase “Medicaid reform” refers to a plan promoted by the hospitals called Mississippi Cares, which includes the hospital-run managed care plan. This plan would be based on a program signed into law by Mike Pence when he was governor of Indiana.

Over the past few years, the “[insert state] Cares” plan has made the rounds in Republican states. Another recent op-ed – “Medicaid reform needed in Mississippi” – tells us that what Tate Reeves calls Medicaid “expansion” is actually what the hospital association calls Medicaid “reform.”

In fact, the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP 2.0) is both an expansion and a reform, albeit a very mild reform. Five years in, HIP 2.0 is showing the limits of what states can accomplish by tinkering around the edges of Medicaid. To begin with, Indiana’s Medicaid work requirement is being challenged in court, as are similar requirements in other states. Second, the copays are quite low, albeit higher than traditional Medicaid.

For these and other reasons, the plan is not paying for itself. In 2014, Pence’s office explicitly promised that “HIP 2.0 will not raise taxes and will be fully funded through Indiana’s existing cigarette tax revenue and Hospital Assessment Fee program, in addition to federal Medicaid funding.”

Yet, in 2019, Indiana increased taxes on several fronts in order to help pay for higher than anticipated Medicaid costs. Indiana lawmakers also came very close to tripling the cigarette tax because, as the Indiana Hospital Association now readily admits, “The hospitals’ share [of HIP 2.0] is increasing at an unsustainable rate, and increasing the cigarette tax can help provide necessary relief to hospitals.”

Perhaps worst of all, Indiana’s health care costs for employer-based insurance plans are so high that out-of-state companies have adopted the mantra of “ABI: Anywhere But Indiana.” As a January 2019 report demonstrates, not even millions in profits from Medicaid expansion is preventing hospitals from shifting costs to consumers with private insurance.

Indiana’s experience with Medicaid expansion is the same as every other state’s: expensive and of arguable value for anyone but the hospitals. There is no reason to expect different results for Mississippi, even if expansion is cloaked in a veneer of “reform.”

This column appeared in the Daily Leader on October 20, 2019.

Those hoping to have the opportunity to cultivate hemp in Mississippi are keeping a close eye on the Hemp Cultivation Task Force. 

The task force was created by the legislature earlier this year and will provide their findings on hemp in Mississippi prior to the 2020 legislative session. The group has held two public meetings, with a third scheduled for late November. 

Since the time the legislature passed on legalizing hemp in Mississippi earlier this year, a number of states have chosen to move forward. We’re at the point where virtually every state – 47 total – have ok’d hemp cultivation. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily harvesting hemp right now. Just that they have begun the process.

Today, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Idaho are the holdouts. 

States where hemp is legal

We don’t know what the task force will recommend. But no one should be surprised to see the deliberate process continue.  

While farmers might want the state to legalize hemp, the tone of the task force hasn’t necessarily been positive. And the legislature can still do their own thing, though it might be odd to create a task force and then do something beyond what they recommend. But it’s possible.

Keep in mind that the House is already on record of removing hemp from the controlled substance list in Mississippi thanks to a floor amendment from Rep. Dana Criswell (R-Olive Branch). Attempts to make the change in committee had previously been killed, and obviously the House language was watered down to a task force when it hit the Senate a month later.

Meanwhile, South Dakota and Idaho are both preparing to act next year. 

The South Dakota legislature legalized hemp last year, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Kristi Noem. They also have a Hemp Study Committee and are working on legislation for 2020. Same story in Idaho. Republican leaders have promised farmers they will be able to grow hemp next year. 

So we shall see.

For now, the question is who will be the 48th state to legalize hemp? And will any state still make hemp illegal by the end of 2020?

Mississippi has more than 117,000 regulations on the books. It would take the average person 13 weeks to wade through the 9 million words of administrative code on record.

This data is from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. They have been combing through the data on regulations among the 50 states. For various reasons they were only able to get results from 46 states, but it does provide a picture of what everyone is doing. 

So what do we know? 

Virtually every state has a regulatory problem. The average state has 131,000 regulations, putting Mississippi slightly below the average. But the bigger you are, the more regulated you are.  

The most regulated state is California, which would come as a surprise to very few people. It has nearly 400,000 regulations. The other states in the top five are New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas.

South Dakota, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota are the least regulated. South Dakota had just 44,000 regulatory restrictions. Idaho, who is in the middle of a population boom, is the largest state among that group with about 1.7 million residents.

Why do we care?

Regulatory growth has a detrimental effect on economic growth. We now have a history of empirical data on the relationship between regulations and economic growth. A 2013 study in the Journal of Economic Growth estimates that federal regulations have slowed the U.S. growth rate by 2 percentage points a year, going back to 1949. 

A recent study by the Mercatus Center estimates that federal regulations have slowed growth by 0.8 percent since 1980. If we had imposed a cap on regulations in 1980, the economy would be $4 trillion larger, or about $13,000 per person. Real numbers, and real money, indeed. 

On the international side, researchers at the World Bank have estimated that countries with a lighter regulatory touch grow 2.3 percentage points faster than countries with the most burdensome regulations. And yet another study, this published by the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found that heavy regulation leads to more corruption, larger unofficial economies, and less competition, with no improvement in public or private goods. 

Mississippi’s regulatory burden, by agency

There are actions a state can take to free their citizens of this burden. One of the most common reforms is the one-in-two-out rule where every time a new regulation is added to the books, two must be removed by that agency or department. Similarly, sunset provisions require the legislature to determine whether a regulation is necessary and if it should remain.

Currently, regulations are written in the code and stay on the books in perpetuity. That isn’t good.

Simply because Mississippi is closer to the middle (rather than being among the worst) does not mean the state should be comfortable with our regulatory burden. In a state in need of economic growth, rather, we should find a way to remove unnecessary barriers and inhibitors. 

Taxpayers are providing the funding for a seminar this week in Hattiesburg that features an education professor who co-wrote a book with Bill Ayers, the controversial Weather Underground radical leader and education professor.

According to Mississippi Department of Education spokeswoman Patrice Guilfoyle, Crystal Laura will be paid $5,000, plus travel costs, from federal funds. Laura will be one of the keynote speakers at Transforming Schools: Meeting the Needs of All Learners workshop that started Tuesday and ends Wednesday in Hattiesburg. 

Laura, who is an assistant professor of educational leadership at Chicago State University, cowrote You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones! And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers Unions and Public Education with Ayers in 2018 and has written other books, including Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline in 2014.

The event is designed for educators from districts identified by MDE as at-risk and require more professional development, additional funding, and other assistance. 

This program is part of the Every Student Succeeds Act that was signed into law by President Obama in 2015.

The event was sponsored by the MDE and the Mississippi State University Research and Curriculum Unit. 

Laura’s seminar was to instruct seminar participants on the “equitable literacy skills required for Mississippi educators to better support the learning needs of vulnerable and/or minority students.” This would help educators attending the seminar “build their capacity to provide equitable and culturally responsive teaching.” 

The other keynote speaker is Robert Jackson, a former NFL player and former teacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools. His session dealt with strategies for educating black and Latino males.

Ayers is a retired University of Illinois at Chicago professor and was the former leader of the Weather Underground. This leftwing domestic terror organization from the late 1960s and early 1970s performed bombings of the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon in addition to other targets in New York and Chicago. 

Thanks to illegal tactics by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during its investigation into Weather Underground activities, a federal grand jury declined to indict Ayers and other group members over the bombings and other illegal activities.