I used to laugh at the absurdity of "woke" academics. So much of what they advocated seemed so ridiculous.
I am not sure we should be laughing any more. "Woke" ideas have become dangerous, not merely daft.
Take, for example, critical race theory, which argues that the United States is founded on racial supremacy and oppression. This radical idea has spread out from college campuses into the workplace, government and even the military.
A form of Marxism, critical race theory divides society between the oppressors and the oppressed. But unlike old school Marxism, with its categorization by class, critical race theory categorizes Americans by race.
This ideology is obviously deeply divisive. But so long as only a handful of academics thought like that, we could largely ignore it.
The trouble is that the "woke" ideas are increasingly becoming a kind of belief system for many of America’s elite. They now permeate many aspects of life in America – and if unchecked they risk tearing the republic apart.
This week the Mississippi Center for Public Policy publishes a report that looks at how widespread these ideas are within the public education system in our state.
We then set out a series of practical steps we believe our leaders need to take to ensure that this extremist agenda is not promoted using public money.
The United States was founded on the ideal that everyone possesses their own "inalienable rights." That principle, however imperfectly applied, helped to define the United States as a country that respected people as individuals.
Critical race theory stands that ideal on its head, insisting instead that we define ourselves according to immutable characteristics. This ideology is profoundly un-American and anti-American.
America is such an extraordinary success story. The USA, while not perfect, is a moral as well as a material achievement.
Our report sets out how we might replace a bad idea – the notion that America is intrinsically racist – with a good idea – that America is "the last best hope of earth.”
The need for medical care has been highlighted by the pandemic more than ever before. As a way to expand their coverage and reach as many patients as possible, doctors from across the country poured into Mississippi over the internet. While this effort was successful, some long-term reforms can be made so that doctors can continue to serve their patients using this technology.
Like many technologies, the growth of telemedicine has been both a growth in innovation and growth in adoption. While the basic technology itself has existed since the 1990s, innovation and advancement have allowed for the technology to offer more and more to patients every year. During Covid, the technology has seen exponential development and growth.
In light of COVID-19, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure allowed out-of-state physicians to perform telemedicine even if they do not possess a Mississippi medical license. However, these physicians were only allowed to serve patients “with whom they already have a pre-existing doctor-patient relationship.” Furthermore, even this limited exception was allowed only “until action is taken to lift the [COVID-19] emergency.”
Given the expansive potential for telemedicine, official state policy should permit doctors to serve Mississippians regardless of the doctor’s geographic location and regardless of whether or not there is a pandemic ongoing. Under current law, an individual must be licensed in Mississippi to practice telemedicine in the state. Doctors from 29 other states can already have their medical licenses reciprocated and practice in Mississippi through the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLC). Despite this, current state policy does not permit telemedicine practice by doctors from the remaining 20 states.
Such a policy inhibiting Mississippians from receiving telemedicine care from these 20 states is a boundary to healthcare access. Several medical institutions with world-renowned expertise are located in states that are currently not included in the IMLC. Such institutions include Weill Cornell Medicine (New York), Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (California), H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center (Florida), and others. Yet, unless a doctor from these institutions happened to be directly licensed in Mississippi, they could not offer their services via telemedicine in the state.
Meanwhile, states like New Mexico enacted legislation all the way back in 2001 that instructs the state medical board to issue “a telemedicine license to allow the practice of medicine across state lines to an applicant who holds a full and unrestricted license to practice medicine in another state or territory of the United States.” (emphasis added). New Mexico saw the importance of telemedicine even in 2001 when the technology was far less developed and proven. Telemedicine proved its effectiveness during Covid. There is no reason why the Mississippi legislature should not enact the same policy -despite the unfortunate fact that it would be doing so over 20 years after New Mexico.
Mississippi's telemedicine policies are behind the technological curb. The state is long due for a reform that allows for the leverage of this modern technology so that no matter where they are in the country, doctors can serve Mississippians.
It can be easy to think about terms like “inflation” as theoretical ideas and not connect how much macroeconomics affects the lives of average Americans. But a recent development is an unfortunate example of just how much inflation actually affects average Americans. Retail chain “Dollar Tree” has recently announced it is raising prices above 1 dollar.
Dollar Tree raised prices in response to inflation that made it increasingly challenging to offer products within the one-dollar range. To combat this, the company is increasing many of its products from $1.00 to $1.25 and $1.50. This move to raise prices is ultimately a part of the greater increase in prices across the entire economy as the nation reels from the effects of massive government spending increases.
In early January 2020, the United States money supply was approximately $15.5 trillion, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Just over a year later, in September 2021, the money supply had increased to $20.9 trillion. To put this increase in perspective, a similar $5.4 trillion increase in the money supply had previously taken seven years. The money supply in 2012 was about $10.1 trillion, and it did not build up to $15.5 trillion until January 2020.
Such a drastic inflationary increase in the money supply has real effects. The more dollars that are in the economy, the less valuable the dollar will be. The changes at Dollar Tree are a practical indicator of this basic economic principle of supply and demand. When the government prints more money to “pay” for its spending wish list, the money supply increases, and it becomes less valuable.
Even without the massive inflation of the present day, in former days the nation saw the demise of penny candy, nickel postage stamps, and 50-cent cups of coffee. Yet, in today's economic environment, not even the dollar itself carries enough value to support a line of products. As the government continues down a path of disastrous policies, one can only speculate what else the recent wave of inflation has in its crosshairs.
As the federal government considers raising the debt ceiling, pushing forward massive spending plans, and increasing the deficit more than ever before, everyday Americans are just trying to live their lives and support their families. The policies of a big government are inevitably detached from the challenges that its people face every day. As more spending and debt is enacted in the marble halls of Washington, thousands of Americans will be handing the store clerk a bigger chunk of change at the local Dollar Tree.
Many on the Left claim to be supporters and advocates of blue-collar working families, such as farmers and ranchers. “Tax the Rich” they say. But an example of how untrue these claims are can be found in a proposed change to the capital gains tax that would hurt many family farms.
Biden has proposed an increase on the capital gains tax. The political optics of this proposal have sought to portray the tax increase as something almost exclusively towards the easy political targets, such as luxurious business tycoons and stock market billionaires. Noticeably absent from these portrayals of the policy are the farming families that would also be affected by the proposals.
As technology and automation grow, farms are growing in size as production costs go down and farmers can manage more land. For example, in 1920, the average Mississippi farm was 67 acres. Fast forward to the present day, and the average farm is 300 acres. This is a 350 percent increase in average farm size. Also, according to the 1920 Mississippi agricultural census, the state had around 272,000 farms and 29 percent of the Mississippi workforce were directly employed by agriculture.1 Today, the state has 34,700 farms and about 8 percent of the workforce is directly employed2 by agriculture. Despite this 87 percent decrease in the total number of farms, the number of cultivated acres has decreased by only 42 percent.
Less farms means that there are fewer farmers today, and the average farmer will own more land. This means that while the farmers of former days generally had less land and assets, today’s individual farmers will often have hundreds of acres that they can farm with relative ease because of modern technology.
This means many modern farmer’s estates have more value -value that the government can potentially tax upon their death through tax policy changes. Under current law, no capital gains taxes are imposed on the value of farms being sold by heirs. If a farmer buys land for $400,000 and the farm is worth $800,000 at the time of death, the heirs of the farm would not have to pay any capital gains tax if they chose to sell the farm.
But the Biden tax hike would change that. The proposal imposes capital gains tax on the sale of any estate valued at more than $2 million for all land and equipment.3 Such a measure fails to recognize the growing size of family farms. Such a change penalizes the increase in farm size that mechanization and innovation has enabled.
While Washington is putting trillions of dollars of debt on future generations, it adds insult to injury for those same leaders to tax the heirs of hardworking farmers. Farmers have the tools and technologies to produce more than ever before. An increase in the capital gains tax goes directly against these accomplishments and skims off of the fruits of American farmers’ productivity and increased success.
[1] This only counted actual farmers and does not include indirect agricultural employment.
[2] See footnote 1
[3] $1 million for single individuals
Since the advent of Covid-19, the subject has all but dominated the public discourse and debate. In the wake of such discussions, different opinions abound as individuals respond to new information and interact with old information. There have been true claims, false claims, and everything in between.
In the name of combating misinformation, the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure recently issued a new policy that vaguely prohibits medical misinformation from being spread by doctors, particularly on social media. There are several unanswered questions surrounding the policy that are unclear in the wording of the policy.
Under Section 73-25-29 of the Mississippi Code and other sections of the law, the different types of unprofessional misconduct that are grounds for disciplinary action against a physician are specified in fairly clear language. Such grounds could include narcotics violations, falsifying documents, conviction of a felony, and other clearly defined violations. While the Board is given a broad degree of discretion, the state Code is fairly specific.
Contrasting with this specific language is the vague use of misinformation as grounds for discipline, which becomes especially complex when the dynamic of social media is named in the written policy. The new policy states that physicians "must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven." Furthermore, the policy states that "physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action." This language is unclear, especially in the social media world of "Likes," "Shares," and "Retweets."
For instance, a physician might reshare, or even write, a Facebook or Twitter post containing content that would be deemed as misinformation by the consensus. However, the post might also have some helpful information that would not be deemed misinformation by the consensus. Could the physician be disciplined?
While some would have us believe that social media posts and general public discourse can be separated into nice, neat categories of "Accurate Information" and "Misinformation," it is not even remotely that simple. Rather, in a world of imperfect people, much of the content of social media and elsewhere is partially accurate and partially inaccurate, but free-thinking adults generally have the ability to discern between the two. Furthermore, even a casual review of the public discourse since the advent of Covid, would reveal that even the consensus itself has changed multiple times.
For instance, many will remember when the proposition that Covid leaked from a Chinese lab was officially labeled by many as "misinformation" and a wild conspiracy theory, leading Facebook itself to ban such content. But in a matter of months, investigations and Congressional testimonies suggested that this was a very real possibility. Facebook lifted the ban, follow-up investigations were initiated, and those who had been silenced were no longer labeled as distributors of misinformation.
If the medical Board had an officially written disinformation policy based on consensus, and it had actually disciplined a physician for spreading the lab leak theory, would it have had to walk back on its actions? Worse, would the Board give restitution to the physician for the financial losses incurred by the wrongly imposed discipline?
Covid is a relatively new virus, and the consensus has changed as new information is being discovered. It is not at all far-fetched to suggest that this will happen again, and some who are currently outside the consensus will be shown to be correct as new information is brought to light.
All of these questions and complexities are important factors to consider. Some may claim that defining misinformation could be accomplished on a case-by-case basis during disciplinary hearings. But the vagueness of the language should not mean that physicians have to face a disciplinary hearing before they even have a full clarification on whether or not the Board’s misinformation policy was violated.
Rather than issuing policies that leave so many unanswered questions, policies should be clear on what constitutes misconduct that would lead to discipline. These are challenging times, and no one has all of the answers. Public discourse should be permitted to have the input of multiple viewpoints, especially when no final consensus has even been established. Rather than leaving physicians with little clarity for their social media use by employing vague misinformation rules, public policy should be clear so that all parties have the foundation of a clear rule of law.
One of the most basic principles of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch; however, some people buy into the lie that the government can provide just that.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of the American way of life, but a major component of that change is how people respond to temporary economic hardship, cultivating an expectation for the government to solve their problems. In the midst of the pandemic, the government-imposed lockdowns brought about job losses, decreased spending, and economic hardship. As a short-term effort, the federal government issued direct payments to Americans. But many wanted this short-term effort to become permanent. In 2020, a Change.org petition arose, gaining support for making stimulus checks a permanent monthly occurrence. This demonstrates the apparent ignorance of what stimulus checks actually do and how they affect the economy.
As Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education contends, stimulus checks really do not stimulate anything. Instead, all that stimulus checks do is redistribute wealth that the government has already attained because it does not have the power of a mystical Santa Claus to grant money for everyone out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere, and it just so happens that taxpayers, the very people that receive the stimulus check, are the ones responsible for paying for it. However, the truth of how “free” money from the government really is not free typically gets overlooked. The immediacy and novelty of the concept of receiving the money you did not have to earn somehow entices people enough to want to continue.
The irony is that despite the intention of stimulus checks to stimulate the economy, they never actually did so. A report by the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker predicted that households earning more than $78,000 would only spend $105 of the $1400 stimulus check they receive. The whole purpose of the program was to get people to spend more so that the economy would continue to function at a somewhat normal capacity. However, many people took the stimulus check and instead saved it as the future of the pandemic remained uncertain at the time.
Thus, in effect, all that the stimulus check program provided was an immediate security blanket that will likely cost us much more down the road with inflation and other factors. In fact, Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute released a study indicating that the economic trajectory will likely lead to higher pressure on interest rates, higher inflation, and growing economic distortions, especially as the Biden Administration pushes for higher taxes and increased regulation.
This evaluation of the stimulus program gives us insight into how government and free markets operate. Whenever a national crisis arises, the government’s automatic reaction is to bring itself into the situation and try to remedy the problem with some artificial solution.
Long-term prosperity does not come from stimulus checks. Prosperity comes when free markets are permitted to ebb and flow. Instead of imposing economically restrictive lockdowns, and then redistributing taxpayer dollars when economic breakdown ensues, government should allow people to fix problems themselves as they create new and innovative ways to meet new challenges, build markets, and improve their lives.
California once epitomised all that was good about the United States. Those living in the Golden State enjoyed a standard of living and quality of life that was the envy of America, if not the world. It was a state of opportunity in a land of opportunity.
Silicon Valley in the 1960s was the cradle of the digital revolution. It was there that computers went from something owned by a handful of hobbyists to the smartphone in your pocket. The Golden State saw social revolution, too. From same sex marriage to billion dollar tech start-ups, things that might be regarded as outlandish elsewhere began in California before going mainstream everywhere else. It was a magnet for talent, and one of the most dynamic places on the planet. Where California led, America – and the world – followed. Or at least aspired to.
Let us hope that this is no longer the case because, if California is indicative of where the rest of America is going, the US is heading towards disaster.
California has been catastrophically mismanaged by a succession of Leftist leaders. Its personal state income tax is now the highest in America. While southern states like my own Mississippi are planning to abolish income taxes entirely, Leftist politicians in California have drawn up plans for a new wealth tax.
Once full of freewheeling entrepreneurs, California is now the most regulated state in the country, according to the Mercatus Center. Permits and licensing are required for almost everything. It is not just big name entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, who have had enough. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and businesses are fleeing, moving to Texas, Utah, Arizona and elsewhere. Last year, California’s population fell for the first time in recorded history.
Having served as an emblem of modernity, there is something almost pre-modern about the California that progressive politicians have created.
For a start, the lights sometimes go out. In pursuit of a renewable energy policy, California has not built enough power generating capacity. This has made energy prices among the most expensive in America. The supply is often so unreliable that the state government has been reduced to pleading with residents to switch off the power to avoid blackouts. (Boris, please take note).
Around one in ten Americans are Californian, yet the state has about a third of the country’s welfare recipients. San Francisco might be the richest post code in the country, but outnumbering the tech zillionaires is a growing army of low paid menial workers who can barely get by. The kind of wealth inequalities that exist in parts of California today are the kind you might have expected to see in Medici Florence or Tsarist Russia, not in a modern Western society.
Progressive politicians have managed to restrict the supply of new housing and at the same time imposed state-wide rent controls. The result is that California is now “home” to about a quarter of America’s homeless population. Iconic Venice beach has hundreds of people living in makeshift shelters.
California is also a warning of what happens when “woke” politicians are put in charge. Yes, they pursue policies that inhibit innovation and economic growth. Far worse is the effect they have on what it means to be American.
The United States was founded on the idea that each of us is defined as an individual in possession of what Thomas Jefferson called “inalienable rights”. Those that run California today would rather that we were defined instead by our immutable characteristics. Instead of being free individuals, equal before the law, Californians are increasingly governed by a woke elite that has an almost apartheid style obsession with not merely race, but gender and sexuality. The danger is that this will tear America apart.
“But why”, I hear you ask “if things are really that bad don’t Californians do something about it?”
Last week, Californians were given the opportunity to sack their current governor, Gavin Newsom, in a recall election. The motion to eject Newsom was not only defeated. Faced with a Trumpish Republican challenger to the incumbent, Californians elected to keep him by an overwhelming margin of two to one.
A Left-wing incumbent with a disastrous record was, it seems, preferred to a Trump-type alternative. If California shows us how Left-wing politicians can destroy a state, it also shows us how a certain type of conservatism can unwittingly let them get away with it.
Douglas Carswell is the president and chief executive of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, one of the leading free market advocacy organisations in the US.
This opinion piece originally appeared in The Telegraph
Happy Constitution Day! As we celebrate one of America’s founding documents, it’s worth asking: what made America so great?
When we declared our independence in 1776, America was just a fledgling experiment in self-government which the rest of the world expected to fail miserably. All of the wealth and power was in the Old World, with its palaces, empires, and powdered wig-wearing aristocrats. America was considered the boondocks, full of log cabins and fur cap-wearing farmers, trappers, and frontiersmen.
A few years later, America had fielded a Continental Army that defeated the largest military power in world history, and had become the freest and most prosperous country in the world.
America became great because the Constitution limited the power of government and empowered individuals to lead their lives as they saw fit. The framers of the Constitution did not know what America would look like 230 years in the future. But they knew they were tired of being subject to the whims of a king. They carefully constructed a government that had just enough power to impose civil order, protect citizens from foreign invaders, and secure individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but not enough power to violate those rights itself. To achieve this, the framers confined the powers of the federal government to those specifically listed in the Constitution and divided that power among three branches of government.
The framers also took a belt-and-suspenders approach to protecting the rights of the people. They added a Bill of Rights to the Constitution to ensure that certain important rights were never violated, even though the framers themselves said that the Constitution had not granted the federal government the power to violate those rights to begin with. Additional amendments were later added to the Constitution to extend its protection of rights to all people, regardless of race or gender, and to keep state and local governments from violating the people’s rights.
If you don’t recognize this strictly limited government, you would be forgiven. Today, politicians say they can do just about anything they want, except what is explicitly forbidden by the Bill of Rights, and even that is up for debate. When asked where the Constitution authorized a proposed law, one congressman admitted, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.”
The rest of Congress appears to feel the same way. Every detail of our lives is subjected to government rules. The Federal Register, which contains all proposed and final regulations issued by federal agencies, has published over 3.2 million pages. If it were printed and stacked, it would be taller than the Washington Monument. This does not take into account all the laws passed by Congress, or by state and local governments.
Because of all these rules, the cost of doing business in America is staggering, and startups and small businesses are at a competitive disadvantage to big businesses that can easily afford it. Those large companies can also afford to pay lobbyists to convince lawmakers to pass even more laws that keep new competitors at bay. All the while, countless Americans are prevented from pursuing their version of the American Dream.
Where did we go wrong? The framers envisioned the judiciary as the guardians of individual rights. But over time, the courts have become more interested in picking and choosing which rights to protect or neglect. In the process, they have invented government powers that do not exist. The result is that our government is far more powerful than the founders ever intended. You may have heard the term “activist judges.” We certainly don’t need those. But we do need an engaged judiciary that takes seriously its role in the system of checks and balances so carefully designed by the framers.
The good news is that we can all play a part in restoring the American vision. Courts will only take our constitutional rights seriously if we do. We need citizens who are willing to stand up for their rights, and attorneys who are willing to advocate for those people, simply because it is the right thing to do. At the Mississippi Justice Institute, we have made that our mission.
Economics policy and strong political leadership are not different worlds but rather two sides of the same coin. Political leaders must use wisdom to strike the right balance.
In 2011, a study was conducted by J. Brian O’Roark and William C. Wood that found that when it came to discussing (and eventually voting on) topics like the minimum wage, “members who majored in economics…were less likely to vote for the minimum wage increase than their colleagues. No other major had a consistent influence.”
It is interesting to consider this theory that ideas that Congress comes up with as a whole may not even be supported by the ones that are trained in that particular sphere. This is especially truth with handling economic policy like taxes, wages, tariffs, and the like.
The truth of the matter is that most politicians that support flawed changes to our economic system are likely not skilled in understanding or communicating the reason for the change. Rather, they simply stand as puppets for those that supposedly know how economics works. While advice is certainly a welcome help, following such instructions blindly can only lead to disaster.
Many leaders not very adept at learning about complex economic principles and communicating the rationale of their policy decisions. Perhaps the reason for this is that the theoretical world of economics is somehow conflicting with the pragmatic pursuit of politics. The reality is that many politicians just simply do not know or do not care about how various economic principles operate within the purview of their profession.
The issue is that economics and studying the language of markets is critical to run any political system. Markets are the backbone of any society. If someone is running a government structure and is not literate in how various policies like tax reform, tariffs, and other issues affect these markets, there can be damaging effects. Economic literacy is a key ingredient to establishing good policy.
Imagine how effective the government would be if most of our leaders were economically wise with their decisions and were able to communicate that wisdom with clarity and poise. The current situation is quite alarming, especially on the federal level, as politicians make decisions and spend money without any fiscal restraint as to how they might impact the economy and individuals down the road.
Economic literacy in the political sphere cannot inherently be achieved by some government policy. Rather, it is up to voters to elect leaders that are fiscally wise and understand the repercussions of their actions.
In fact, if good economic policy is what people want, there’s no better policy than allowing the free market to just grow the economy on itself through Reaganite trickle-down economics. The economy will boom if government just stands out of the way. That does not take any rocket science.