Oxford Rotary Club hosted a lunch meeting with Douglas Carswell, President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy on Tuesday.

A former Member of the British Parliament, Carswell talked about American exceptionalism – and why respect for the US Constitution was so important.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy announced the launch of the Mississippi Leadership Academy today. 

The Mississippi Leadership Academy is a six-step program designed to equip college student leaders with the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective change agents within the state. The program will run out of the MCPP offices, conveniently located in the capital city, beginning in fall 2022 and ending in May 2023. 

The Leadership Academy is a way to inform, educate and connect the rising generation of Mississippians to the free market and the realm of policymaking. It will introduce participants to some of the key institutions and individuals that impact public policy in the state, as well as gain experience and see real-world government action. 

“Mississippi needs change if we are to stop being 50th out of 50,” MCPP CEO & President Douglas Carswell said. “Our Leadership Academy aims to help us achieve policy change by supporting future leaders for our state. We have put together an exciting program that introduces participants to the key challenges we face.”

Students can apply for the academy through the MCPP website at mspolicy.org/leadership-academy. 

We have an impressive lineup of speakers for the program, including State Auditor Shad White, Chip Pickering and several leading academics, opinion formers and policy experts.

Upon graduation, students will have made connections with student peers, as well as our state’s preeminent thought leaders, and will graduate from the program better prepared to defend American principles, enter the workforce and lead. Aside from learning about policymaking in our state, a key aspect of the program is to encourage and inspire young Mississippians to stay, live and work in the Magnolia State.

“Mississippi has had a conservative super majority for a number of years,” Carswell said. “The Leadership Academy aims to foster a shared sense of mission and purpose as to how we might use the majority to deliver real change.”

For media inquiries, please reach out to Tyler B. Jones, [email protected].

The U.S. Supreme Court just finished its term, and the left could not be angrier. Gun rights were upheld when the Court ruled that the government does not get to decide why people can carry guns, religious freedom endured when the Court ruled that a coach has the right to privately pray on the football field, and the ability to protect the right to life was returned to the states when Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

Now, House Democrats have introduced legislation to expand the Court to create a liberal majority. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Supreme Court “illegitimate.” The call is growing louder to completely abolish the Supreme Court in its entirety. As also shown by the push to abolish the electoral college and the Senate filibuster, when the left does not get its way, its solution is to change the rules to ensure that they do next time. 

However, there is a way to be pro-abortion and anti-Roe or anti-gun but agree with the Court’s pro-second amendment ruling. In fact, some of the justices of the Supreme Court might have just given the states the green light to enact laws with which they personally do not agree. All opinions on abortion, guns, prayer, or any other political issue are irrelevant in deciding a case. What matters is constitutionality. 

Is Mississippi’s abortion ban after 15 weeks constitutional? The Supreme Court ruled that it is in part because the Constitution never mentions abortion. It ruled that New York’s gun law, which required that gun owners prove their reasoning for owning guns, was unconstitutional in part because the Constitution clearly enumerates and protects the right to keep and bear arms. The same can be said about prayer.

Article I of the Constitution gives the legislature the ability to make laws. Because the left cannot sell the public on their radical ideas, they rely on unelected jurists to carry out their agenda for them. That is how the three liberal justices routinely rule. However, Article III of the Constitution lays out clearly that the Supreme Court is meant to interpret the law, not make the law. As then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett said, “It’s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law.”  

Along with the federal government, the scope of the Supreme Court has grown too big. It issues national decrees, barring states from making their own laws based on inferred rights found nowhere in the Constitution, such as abortion. In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Court has the power to strike down unconstitutional laws, which is called judicial review. This power, when used correctly, safeguards states’ and citizens’ rights from a tyrannical government. When misused, however, it bypasses people and their votes to create de facto legislation. Thankfully, the Court is just now beginning to undue faulty precedent and return power to elected lawmakers and localities. 

If you disagree with a law that does not specifically contradict the Constitution, do not depend on the Supreme Court to make it go away. Instead, vote for whomever most closely reflects your values to the legislative branch of government, the ones who make the law. 

(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Center for Public Policy has hired Michelle Brodsky as its new Investigative Researcher/Journalist 

Michelle Brodsky, a native of Pennsylvania, will serve as the Mississippi Center for Public Policy’s new Investigative Researcher/Journalist. Through this position, she will conduct primary research on energy policy, healthcare and education and works with the Director of Communications to assemble her findings in a cohesive and succinct manner.

Michelle is a graduate of the University of Hartford where she studied history, psychology, and economics, launching her journey in conservative politics. She will be attending Cornell Law School this coming fall and hopes to eventually become a criminal defense attorney or a civil rights attorney.

“Michelle is a first-class writer who will produce in-depth research and analysis," CEO & President Douglas Carswell said. "I am excited to have her as part of our team, taking on the cozy cartels that hold our state back and advancing the cause of liberty.”

Monday was Michelle’s first day on the job. She will primarily be working virtually. Her first research article, published Thursday, can be found here. 

As a first-generation American whose parents escaped the communism of the former USSR, Michelle is particularly passionate about ensuring that the United States does not end up like the former Soviet Union. Along with freedom of speech and gun rights, Michelle's top issues are school choice, education reform and election integrity.

“I am really excited to work for MCPP as an investigative reporter because I will have the opportunity to conduct primary research on issues that deeply affect all Mississippians and Americans,” Brodsky said. “In a world that relies on sound bites, it has become increasingly important to dive into the facts and draw original conclusions.”

When running for President in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden promised to “defeat the NRA” by banning assault weapons and enacting other radical gun control measures. After recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, President Biden signed gun control legislation into law, but did he deliver on his campaign promises? 

The latest ‘red flag’ law being debated in Washington increases mental health funding, closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which aims to prevent unmarried domestic abusers from acquiring guns, and most controversially, incentivizes states to adopt “red flag laws.”

Red flag laws allow citizens to go to court to seek an order permitting law enforcement to seize the weapons of a person who has exhibited behavior indicating they might be a threat to themselves or others. Conservatives, wary of big government abuse and overreach, say red flag laws could be used to target people over political beliefs. For example, someone’s leftist ex-girlfriend could pursue a court order against them for posting a picture with guns or sharing a “dangerous” opinion on social media, and if one judge deems it appropriate, those guns could be taken away for some period of time. 

Yes, this new law is another step in the left’s march toward stronger gun control laws, but it does not ban assault weapons or deliver any other major progressive “wins” that President Biden promised. Biden admitted this himself, saying that “this bill doesn’t do everything I want.” Other members of the President’s parties have made even more extreme gun control promises than Biden. Texas Governor Candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has lost two elections within the last four years, famously said “hell, yes” in response to whether certain guns should be taken away by law-abiding gun owners. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that she is prepared to enact gun control so extreme that her state will “go back to muskets.” 

Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the presidency, but they still cannot deliver on their anti-second amendment crusade. As their political capital diminishes, their promises become increasingly vague, from an assault weapon ban to “common sense gun reform” to simply “doing something.” This catch-all phrase is designed to create the façade that something truly special has happened thanks to the President’s leadership when, in reality, that is nowhere near the truth. 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has struck down a New York law that required citizens to show “proper cause” to get a concealed carry gun license. According to the left, the right to bear arms is dependent on if the anti-gun government thinks the specific reasoning for doing so is good enough. Thankfully, the Supreme Court can recognize an unconstitutional infringement when it sees one.  For the past thirty years or more, the anti-gun lobby has promised a lot. But they don’t have an awful lot to show for it.

America is a democracy where voters get to decide public policy, right? This is a free-market country where those that own capital are able to invest in it, yes?

Alas, things no longer seem quite so simple. Proper democracy and capitalism seem to be dying in America. They are being replaced not with socialism, but with ‘managerialism’ – or rule by managers.

Voters still get to cast their ballots in elections, but the process of deciding public policy is in the hands of a class of public policy administrators. 

Think I exaggerate? Why, for example, does a state like Mississippi, where voters have voted conservative in state-wide elections for years, have a Department of Education that actively encourages the use of Critical Race theory in the classroom? Mississippi’s Department of Education website encourages teachers to use teaching resources offered by, for example, the Zinn Project. 

It is not what the voters want that determines public policy, but what the management – or bureaucrats – want that counts. 

Were you surprised like I was when Disney went ‘woke’? 

Disney seemed to almost revel in taking positions that might offend some of their customers, including families from places like Mississippi, many of who will have saved hard to be able to afford to go to Disney World.

The kind of people that manage Disney seems to me to have been more concerned about what other members of the corporate management class think. Among America’s corporate management class, ‘woke’ ideology is often seen as a badge of sophistication, up there with an Ivy League degree as a way of differentiating oneself from anything a little too ‘country’.

Big businesses have become ‘woke’ because it is increasingly the ideology and belief system of the management class. 

In a properly functioning capitalist system, when management makes bad decisions, you would expect to see the shareholders to intervene, but some of Disney’s biggest shareholders are firms like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard.

These three fund managers oversee a combined $22 trillion of assets, giving them enormous clout over corporate America. Of course, these fund managers don’t actually own the money that they manage either.

This helps explain why in recent years many fund managers have started to apply non-financial factors as part of their analysis process when allocating capital. For example, some have used ESG – or Environmental, Social and Governance – criteria to decide where to put the money that they manage. The trouble is that these criteria are often so subjective that it leaves the fund managers in effect investing other people’s assets on the basis of their own political preferences. The notion that the managerialist elite makes purely empirical decisions based on reason is a myth. 

The rule of administrators in both business and government has had lots of negative consequences. It has fueled an intense antipathy toward ‘the swamp’.  It has seen bureaucrats making all kinds of policy errors on everything from the setting of interest rates to the public education system. It has driven bad investment decisions – with the oil and gas sector, for example, starved of investment.

Rule by management is not only undemocratic. It does not work very well. America’s next generation of conservative leaders needs to offer an alternative that will pass power away from the administrative elite back to the people.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. 

Public money, according to many on the left, should not be spent on private education.

Only the other day, here in Mississippi a lawsuit was filed by Parents for Public Schools, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and others, claiming that allocating public funds to private schools violated the Mississippi Constitution.

The lawsuit specifically challenges legislation passed during the 2022 legislative session that awarded $10 million of pandemic relief funds to K-12 private schools and $10 million to private colleges and universities in the state.

The lawsuit cites that our state constitution outlaws “any funds…to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”

This local lawsuit seems to be part of a wider move by many of the left across America to attack the idea of spending public money on private education providers. A few moments of reflection reveal how absurd an idea this really is.

Every week, many Americans on low incomes receive food stamps. This allows them to buy the provisions that they need to feed themselves and their families. Does anyone really suggest that food stamps should only be redeemed in government-owned and operated grocery stores? Of course not.

This year, the Department of Defense will commission contracts with private technology companies and defense contractors worth billions. According to a 2021 study by the Brown University Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, one-third to one-half of the $14 trillion the military spent since 9/11 went to private contractors. According to the logic used by the left when it comes to education, these contracts should only ever be awarded to government-run businesses.

Medicaid provides health services for those with low incomes. But Medicaid does not insist that those covered by the program only use government-owned hospitals. On the contrary, it allows privately-owned clinics and hospitals to provide health care, without which millions of Americans not be treated at all. Does anyone on the left suggest that Medicaid is somehow unconstitutional?

The principle of spending public funds on private education providers is well established. The Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Act allows Mississippi parents to send children with special needs to private schools in the state. The Mississippi Department of Education, an agency funded by taxpayers, even allows for public spending in private entities. The Child Care Payment Program provides tuition to Mississippi parents for pre-schooling, giving parents the freedom to choose any child-care program in the state, most of which are privately-owned facilities.

Having public funds going to pay private providers can help ensure that those public funds are used effectively. Without the involvement of the private sector, our country – and our state – would be much worse off.

Why then is the left attempting to challenge the idea of using public money for private providers when it comes to schools?

It is a measure of the left’s intellectual weakness and moral bankruptcy. Alarmed at growing pressure across America to reform education funding so that we fund students, not systems, the left is painting itself into a corner. To try to head off the implications of education funding reform, the left wants to ensure that your kid’s tax dollars can only ever be spent in the public education system. Let’s hope that they fail.

Read a letter to Mississippi elected officials, sponsored by several of the state's think tanks, alliances and unions, on the need for income tax elimination here.

Mississippi has made some big policy changes for the better – that was the message Douglas Carswell delivered to a meeting at the Heritage Foundation in Nashville this week.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy CEO & President Douglas Carswell spoke at the annual Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting, a convention comprising several think tank professionals, community leaders and elected officials from across the country who hope to create change and leave a positive impact. 

Speaking during the “Winning in the States: Highlighting 2022 Victories” session on Thursday, Carswell discussed several of MCPP’s wins throughout the past year, including the Mississippi Income Tax elimination plan, occupational licensing reform and the removal of public school Critical Race Theory teaching practices. Due to these achievements, Carswell, along with three other think tank members across the country, spoke on the successes of conservative policies. 

MCPP helped push the idea of an income tax elimination throughout the 2022 Mississippi legislative session, with lawmakers settling on a four-year phase-out plan beginning in 2023. Removing a bureaucratic barrier that kept skilled newcomers from making a living, the Occupational Licensing Reform law allows people who move to Mississippi from out of state to maintain their license, something MCPP achieved by working with multiple state entities. The Critical Race Theory bill, written by MCPP, ensured that Mississippi public schools and universities do not teach that any one group is superior or inferior to another. 

Carswell said he was delighted to speak at the conference about these topics, expressing that the liberty movement is rebuilding and winning at the state level. 

“I loved sharing with the audience how Mississippi is leading the way with a flat income tax, occupational licensing bill and a new law to combat Critical Race theory,” Carswell said. “These are big wins, and they’re getting national attention.”