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.”
“Too many boards and commissions in our state have far too much power to decide public policy."
“Drain the swamp!” How often have we heard this phrase bandied about by politicians seeking to signal that they are on our side?
Those that we send to Washington often refer to DC as “the swamp”, a place full of federal bureaucrats making public policy with little reference to the public. But what about the swamp closer to home?
Before complaining about the federal fat cat agencies in Washington, we ought to acknowledge that there are plenty of self-serving bureaucrats right there in Mississippi.
A new report, “Drain the Swamp – the administrative state in Mississippi,” published by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy shows that Mississippi’s bureaucrats are out of control. Of the 222 agencies and boards that we reviewed, we found that only a tiny minority are headed by a directly elected official. Of those that are appointed, the state Senate confirms only a small minority.
The administrative state in Mississippi is able to make public policy and spend public money with too little accountability to the public.
Of course, there are plenty of departments and boards that are essential to effective public administration. But Mississippi has dozens of agencies and boards that we could probably do without. I have no doubt that plenty of good people work for the Auctioneer Commission or the Board of Physical Therapists. But other states seem to cope without such entities. Might Mississippi be able to manage without an Interior Design Advisory Committee?
When Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980, he famously observed how “When you create a government bureaucracy, no matter how well-intentioned it is, almost instantly its primary priority becomes the preservation of the bureaucracy.”
The Gipper was absolutely right back then, and the problem has grown much worse since.
Too many boards and commissions in our state have far too much power to decide public policy. Often this is the fault of the legislature that has delegated to these agencies broad powers. But it is also, as Reagan understood, in the nature of bureaucracy to expand unless it is kept in check.
Our report makes a number of suggestions to make more of Mississippi’s public officials better accountable to the public. We propose reining in the wide discretion that the legislature has foolishly granted officials. We suggest sunset provisions to ensure that bureaucracy does not continue to expand long after it has served its initial purpose. Our report considers giving the legislature more effective oversight over the bureaucracy and how it spends public money. We even suggest that it might be time to eliminate some agencies altogether.
Many of these agencies and commissions have become a source of patronage. They are run in the interests of vested interests. Instead of economic freedom, they have spawned a cartel economic system in our state, in which someone’s permission is always needed to do something.
The key to achieving economic prosperity in Mississippi is to overturn this cartel economic system and eliminate our home-grown version of the administrative state. Our report shows how.
The report can be accessed on our website, mspolicy.org.
This editorial, written by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy CEO & President Douglas Carswell, was featured in Y'all Politics on May 31.
For the first time in twenty years, Americans will commemorate Memorial Day this year in peacetime, and in the shadow of the two longest wars in U.S. history. As we honor and remember those from all of our wars who did not make it home, we should also view those veterans who did in an accurate light.
For many veterans, Memorial Day is a time of mourning that brings difficult memories of losing friends. It can bring feelings of guilt for surviving when those friends did not. It can even bring reminders of other painful events experienced on the battlefield.
While they have endured physical and emotional suffering, we should recognize our veterans not just for the burdens of the fight, but for having emerged from it even stronger. They are warriors, not hapless victims.
After I lost friends in Iraq and was injured there, people often told me things like: “If it was going to happen, it couldn’t have happened to a better person. You had the strength to overcome it.” This appears to be the conventional wisdom about trauma: that it is almost always harmful to a person and usually produces lifelong misery and maladjustment, but that a brave few are naturally endowed with enough resilience to face life-altering adversity and overcome it. Hollywood, politicians, and the media fuel this stereotype, often portraying veterans as fragile, psychologically damaged victims.
But I see it differently. Retired four-star general and former secretary of defense James Mattis does too. “There is one misperception of our veterans and that is they are somehow damaged goods,” said General Mattis, speaking at the Marine Memorial Foundation in 2014. "I don't buy it."
To be clear, many veterans have indeed been damaged by war. Some are even at risk of homelessness or suicide. They deserve the support and care of a grateful nation. But the veteran-as-victim trope portrays veterans as fragile and deserving of pity, which is not how veterans feel – even those struggling with the physical and mental wounds of war.
Despite the indisputable grief and personal loss experienced by many veterans, most return home and build a new life – a life with a noble purpose that would honor the sacrifices of their fellow service members who did not get that chance. Their experience points to a different conclusion: that human beings are naturally resilient.
Most of us grow from losses and find meaning in them. Everyone talks about post-traumatic stress, which of course is very real and difficult. But, as General Mattis reminded us, “there is also something called post-traumatic growth, where you come out of a situation like [combat] and you actually feel kinder toward your fellow man and fellow woman; that you are actually a better husband, father; you actually have a closer relationship with your God.” While stress after combat or any traumatic event is inevitable, it can be the precursor to growth. Overall, “you come back from war stronger and more sure of who you are,” Mattis said.
Many of us fear we could never overcome tragedy because we would never choose it willingly. But when the illusion of choice is taken away, we find that we can not only survive it but even grow from it because that is our only path forward. And human beings are wired to survive and move forward.
General Mattis has a theory about why so many want to paint veterans as victims. “While victimhood in America is exalted, I don't think our veterans should join those ranks,” he said. Given the coveted status
of victimhood today, it is no surprise that well-meaning people would seek to bestow that special status upon veterans. But our veterans want no pity. And the truth is that it would only hold them back. They already have the growth and meaning that comes from serving a noble cause and overcoming real tragedy. They know that seeking pity, from themselves or others, would only hinder their ability to succeed in their new life missions.
This Op/Ed was published in the Clarion-Ledger on May 29.
Aaron Rice is an Iraq War veteran and a Purple Heart recipient. He is also the director of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a nonprofit, constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Mississippi’s administrative state has a major democratic deficit, according to a new report published today.
Of the 222 state government bureaucracies reviewed in the report, only 5 percent are headed by a directly elected official. The state Senate only confirms a small minority of appointees to other key positions.
According to the report, published by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the administrative state in Mississippi has the ability to spend money and decide on public policy without reference to the public. 81% of bureaucratic spending comes from agencies run by appointed leaders with very little regulatory accountability.
The report acknowledges that certain departments or boards are essential to the success of Mississippi, but that there are dozens of agencies the state could probably do without. Might not Mississippi be able to manage without an Interior Design Advisory Committee?
“When people talk about ‘draining the swamp,’ they usually mean Washington D.C.,” explained CEO & President Douglas Carswell. “Our research shows that there is a ‘swamp’ here in Mississippi that needs dealing with, too.”
In order to assess the entire administrative state of Mississippi, we analyzed four elements of 222 state boards, agencies and commissions: accountability, spending power and size, regulatory power and function. Our findings reveal that while much of the state bureaucracy is unaccountable, it is well-resourced and has expanded in terms of its regulatory remit.
“We reviewed 222 state-based bureaucratic organizations here in Mississippi, and we discovered that there is a serious accountability deficit,” Carswell said. “Big, powerful bureaucratic organizations are able to impose rules and spend public money without meaningful accountability to the public.”
What should we do about the administrative state of Mississippi? How can we hold these bureaucrats accountable, and how can we better manage the regulations and functionality of these boards? We at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy have some suggestions.
1. Rein in the broad discretion given to bureaucrats by laying out parameters for regulations and requiring routine audits
2. Establish more grassroots accountability through elections by expanding the amount of elected, rather than appointed agency representatives
3. Look at the possibility of term limits for high-level officials to help remove the problems that can come from a system of career-centered bureaucrats
4. Consolidate or eliminate certain entities to save taxpayer dollars
5. Put in a sunset provision that requires any new regulation to be automatically repealed after a certain period of time if not extended, in order to eliminate the overbearing regulatory authority
6. Require all unelected regulators to submit annual public reports to the legislature outlining enforcement actions, subjecting these entities to higher scrutiny
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy believes “draining the swamp” would have a positive impact on the state by eliminating unnecessary agencies that negatively hold back citizens, while also ensuring those in power do not have an overabundance of money and control.
You can read the full report here.
For media inquiries, please contact Tyler B. Jones, [email protected].
Here are five specific actions Mississippi legislators could take that would cut crime in Jackson.
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy has hired Tyler B. Jones as its new Communications Director
Tyler B. Jones, a native of Vaughan, Mississippi, will serve as the Mississippi Center for Public Policy's new Communications Director. Through this position, she will aim to raise the profile of MCPP to the public, as well as manage all digital media and produce content to engage viewers.
Jones studied journalism and public relations at the University of Southern Mississippi and recently graduated from Mississippi State University with a Master of Public Policy and Administration degree. During her time at MSU, Jones worked as a bureau news reporter for The Commercial Dispatch, covering Starkville and Oktibbeha County local government.
"I am absolutely delighted that Tyler is joining our growing team,” said Douglas Carswell, President & CEO. “Tyler has a background in local journalism and has a first-class understanding of the media landscape across our state. As Mississippi’s free-market think tank, our output is read and watched by tens of thousands each month. Tyler will help expand our reach in Mississippi and beyond”.
Jones' first day was Monday. She is passionate about education reform, free speech and defending the safety and integrity of law enforcement. She has lived in Mississippi since she was five years old and has great love and pride for the Magnolia State.
"I'm so thrilled to be working at MCPP," Jones said. "With my background in communications and knowledge of policy, I intend to bring new ideas to the organization, while hopefully making a lasting impact on our state."
