Wow! What a start! Donald Trump began his Presidency with a blizzard of Executive Orders. He’s not holding back on advancing a conservative agenda. An emergency has been declared to secure the southern border. DEI hires in the federal government are being fired. The renewable energy boondoggle is over. Mass deportations have begun.
But what about Mississippi? Have our state lawmakers been using their time in office to deliver the change we need?
The good news is that two weeks into the 2025 legislative session there are some significant conservative bills at the Capitol under consideration.
SCHOOL CHOICE
HB1435 (Jansen Owen) offers public to public school choice. It would give every Mississippi family the choice options that last year the legislature extended to military families. HB1433 (Rob Roberson) would allow a limited form of public to private school choice in D and F rated districts. Shout out to Rep Owen and Rep Roberson! Both bills are vitally important, and we strongly support them. Also worth watching are bills to increase the number of Charter Schools and overhaul our phony district grading system.
INCOME TAX ABOLITION
The House has already passed HB1 (Rep Lamar, Speaker Jason White), which offers to eliminate the state income tax over the next decade. It would be truly awesome if this were to pass. There is an issue with the fact that the bill frontloads some tax rises early on, but I am confident that good conservatives can make this work. Kudos to Rep Lamar and Speaker White….
ANTI DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION
SB2223 (Sen Hill), HB1179 (Rep Currie) and HB1416 (Rep Currie) offer comprehensive legislative action to address DEI. This is timely given that President Trump has just repealed Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order mandating reverse discrimination. Also important is Sen England’s SB2182 bill, which would let sunlight in as an anti DEI disinfectant. Families would have a right to see what their kids are being taught in the classroom. Three cheers for Sen Hill, Rep Currie and Sen England!
BALLOT INNITIATIVE
There is also a bill in the Senate, SB2572, sponsored by Sen Boyd, to restore the ballot initiative. Well done, Sen Boyd. If you can make this happen, you will be a hero to many. Given that the Senate has been the place that efforts to restore the ballot initiative have usually gone to die, the fact that this has the sanction of some in the Senate might be significant. There is also a superb bill to reform Certificate of Need laws (HB922) by Rep Zuber and Rep Creekmore. A thousand cheers to both of them!
There are also some excellent proposals to allow Mississippians to buy wine online. It’s ridiculous we can’t already …
WILL ANY OF THIS HAPPEN?
These are all excellent conservative proposals, but we’ve been here before. Will our lawmakers make any of this happen? What has already happened to some of the anti DEI bills is instructive. Mississippi Lieutenant Governor, Delbert Hosemann, moved to kill Sen Hill’s anti DEI bill through a procedural sleight of hand. He did so by double referring the Hill bill, meaning that the chances of it progressing further are tiny.
Mr. Hosemann maneuvered to kill the anti DEI bill in Jackson the very week that President Trump issued Executive Orders to combat DEI in Washington.
Fortunately, lurking on the list of bills is a Senate bill (SB2515) called the REFOCUS bill (Sen Boyd). It proposes a long overdue review of our public universities, and it seems to include a section about tackling DEI. Or at least prevent public universities from maintaining a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion office.
We know that Ole Miss and others have already rebranded their Diversity departments, so the bill could just be symbolic. It might do nothing to counter leftist faculty, while allowing politicians to play word salad on SuperTalk. But depending on the language that Sen Boyd uses, her bill might actually be meaningful. This could be the kind of anti DEI bill we need.
Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we have built up a large audience across the state. Our weekly email goes out to over 80,000 people In Mississippi. Over the past week, more than ten million viewers across America and beyond saw our digital output.
As the House and Senate consider these conservative proposals in the weeks ahead, we will let you know who, like President Trump, has been actively on your side, and who continues to frustrate conservative reform.
How much do you imagine it costs to send a child to public school in Hinds County every year? $5,000 per year? Maybe $10,000? $15,000?
Actually, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education, when you divide the number of students attending school by the total expenditure, in 2023-24 Hinds County spent $16,589 per student.
That is more than twice the average private school fees in our state. Indeed, $16,589 is not far off what it would cost to send your child to a top private school.
Now ask yourself if each child in Hinds County is getting a top education for that $16,589? Of course not. A large chunk of the kids can’t read or do basic math. One in three of them regularly skip school.
So, why not give families in Hinds County the right to take a portion of that $16,589 and allocate it to a school of their choice?
It’s not just Hinds County. The same question could be asked in Madison ($17,037 spent for every public school pupil per year) or Rankin ($15,198 per pupil per year), or Canton ($18,683) or De Soto ($13,820).
Even if you take the Department of Education’s own more conservative figure for per pupil spending (which includes all the ‘no-show’ students), Mississippi still spends an average of $14,676 per student.
Despite all that money, 4 in 10 fourth graders in Mississippi public schools cannot read properly. Eight in 10 eighth grade kids in Mississippi were not proficient in math in 2022. One in 4 kids routinely skips school.
Nor has $14,676 per student spending translated into better teacher pay. Notwithstanding recent pay increases, our teachers still earn significantly less than they did in 2010, when you adjust for inflation.
If you happen to be one of the fortunate families happy with the public education options available, great. No need to change and no one is proposing any changes that will affect you. But why not allow those families unhappy how things are the freedom to take their tax dollars to a school that best meets their needs?
Suggesting this provokes outrage not from parents, but from various vested interests who like things the way they are. They like a system that puts the $14,676 they get for your child into their administration budget, rather than the classroom. School superintendents making more than the Governor want to keep control of their multimillion dollar budgets for a reason. It’s a boondoggle for bureaucrats.
School Choice will not impoverish public schools. The legislation that Speaker Jason White is proposing would allow families control over the state portion of funding, not locally raised revenues or federal dollars.
In Hinds County, for example, that would mean families being able to allocate no more than $6,700 of the $16,589 overall per pupil funding. (Rather than depleting Hinds County public schools’ budget, actually it would make Hinds County better off in terms of per pupil spend.)
Giving families control over $6,700 of the state funds will not mean a flood of kids coming into your well run school district. Why not? Because the legislation proposed specifically gives school boards the final say on capacity.
What anti School Choice campaigners really fear is not the “wrong” kids coming to your school. What they fear is that you start wondering what the heck they’ve been doing with the $14,676 they get for your child or grandchild every year.
All of the arguments we are now hearing against School Choice in Mississippi have been heard in each of the surrounding states that have since adopted School Choice.
Alabama’s new Educations Savings Account program, which has just opened for applications, has been wildly oversubscribed. The program provides $7,000 funding per student attending a participating private school, while those enrolled in home education programs are eligible for $2,000 per student.
Arkansas allows all K-12 students access to an Education Savings Account from 2025, into which the state government pays the state portion of per pupil funding ($6,600 per year). Families will be able to use this $6,600 money they are given to pay for their child education, including private school tuition. Arkansas also allows public to public school transfers, allowing districts to define capacity.
Louisiana’s GATOR program starts in 2025-26 and establishes an Education Savings Account for those on low incomes, with the details are still being finalized as the law only recently passed. Louisiana already has public to public School Choice.
Texas and Tennessee, too, are at this very moment debating legislation that would create a universal Education Savings Account for families in those states, too.
None of the scare stories we now hear in Mississippi materialised in any of these neighboring states. None of these states has been bankrupted like the critics claimed by letting mom and dad have parent power. Instead, all the evidence suggests School Choice has started to improve education outcomes.
Another week, another massive investment project was unveiled in Mississippi. On Thursday, Governor Tate Reeves announced that a $10 Billion data center is coming to Meridian. One deal alone isn’t proof that the economy is taking off, but it does add to a pile of evidence suggesting that Mississippi could be on the cusp of a new era of growth. If Mississippi keeps going the way data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggests we are moving, this state won’t be 50th out of 50 for much longer.
Is it too far-fetched to imagine young people wanting to move to Oxford, Starkville, Laurel, or the Coast, the way they currently want to go to Austin or Nashville?
Encouraging, too, is Mississippi’s political leadership at the start of the new legislative session.
Income tax abolition, essential if we are to be competitive, is now the number one priority for the Governor and the Speaker, Jason White. School choice, the only sure fire way to improve education standards and prepare young people for the world of work, is on Speaker White’s priority list for this legislative session. Removing red tape, particularly as it restricts the healthcare economy, is also being actively considered, with the State Board of Health firmly committed to change.
These changes are essential if our state is to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity. But even now the forces of inertia are trying to stop change. If they succeed, Mississippi will stall.
(Almost) everyone now says they support income tax elimination. Yet some are quite clearly only paying lip service to the idea, desperately seeking to avoid passing legislation this session that commits to actual elimination. At the same time, they talk up the idea of cutting the grocery tax as a deliberate distraction strategy, knowing full well that cutting the income tax would have vastly more impact.
While Mississippi considers school choice, we are surrounded by states that are actually doing it. Tennessee is in the process of passing the legislation this week. Yet the forces of inertia in Mississippi say we need more time to consider Education Savings Accounts. Really? Can you not look across the state line at Arkansas or Alabama to see how it is transforming education for the better? Perhaps your call for “more time” just an excuse?
Maybe, like the disgraceful School Superintendent in Madison County did this week, the forces of inertia circulate false claims about school choice? (No, public to public school choice does not take away local tax dollars, since it only involves the state portion of the budget. No, private schools do not lack accountability. They are more accountable than any public school.)
The sort of misleading claims made by the Madison School Superintendent are attempts to prevent change by those that think they, not pesky parents, know best for your child. The forces of inertia are also lobbying aggressively in the legislature to kill off reforms that will remove health care regulation that intentionally limits the number of providers. The truth is that for years all of those against lower taxes, less regulation and opposed to school choice in our state have been able to get their way. That is why Mississippi has not grown the way Alabama or Texas have. I’m optimistic that this time the forces of inertia can be overcome. Why?
Firstly, it is increasingly obvious that Mississippi could be doing things differently. You only need to look across the river at Arkansas under Sarah Huckabee Sanders (tax cuts, school choice, red tape removal), or Alabama (ditto), or at almost any southern state to see it. Secondly, Trump. The 47th President is committed to tax cuts, red tape reduction and school choice. This will help tilt opinion in our state.
Imagine for a moment that you are a local Republican party office holder keen to catch the eye of the new White House administration. Perhaps you want an appointment or some kind of endorsement? Do you really imagine Donald J. Trump would pick you out in such a crowded field if you have been anti-tax cuts? Do you honestly think Team Trump would say, “Yes, Mr. President, this local guy in Mississippi who killed off School Choice is our guy”? If nothing else, self-interest will move the dial towards the right agenda in Mississippi over the next four years.
Finally, I think inertia can be overcome because of Elon Musk.
Something weird has happened since Elon bought X / Twitter. Politics is now increasingly unfiltered. Even if you are one of a majority of folk that don’t use X, you will have felt the effect of this form of unfiltered politics. The forces of inertia can be petulant. They can lobby and bully to try to stop change. But they cannot any longer escape the consequences of trying to stop change. Cheer up! 2025 is going to be awesome. Mississippi is on the cusp a great change.
Did you know that Mississippi is now one of the fastest growing states in America? Only two states saw real GDP rise faster than it did here in the third quarter of 2024.
Were you aware that personal income in our state rose more here than almost anywhere in the US this past year?
New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that Mississippi is on the up.
For as long as anyone can remember, Mississippi has ranked 50th out of 50. Not for much longer, perhaps. According to this new data, ours’s was one of the top performing states in 2024. If we keep growing for the next few years the way we did in 2024, we won’t be bottom of the class for much longer.
Mississippi’s success is not an accident. It’s a consequence of a number of key free market reforms:
- Labor market deregulation, with an Occupational Licensing law in 2021.
- Tax cuts with legislation to cut the state income tax to a flat 4 percent in 2022.
- Further tax reform to make it more tax efficient for businesses in 2023.
- Education funding reform as a step towards school choice in 2024.
These reforms have begun to energize our state. They make it easier for people to get ahead, for businesses to invest, and for families to spend their income on their priorities. They draw in inward investment, which is changing our state for the better.
If Mississippi is not to lose this momentum, we need to go even further. That is why MCPP has just published a Blueprint for Mississippi – a list of the ten key reforms that would lift our state to the top of the economic table.
The number one reform we need to prosper is school choice. Why? School choice is the only way to be certain of raising standards. The better job we do of educating young people, the greater their chances of leading a prosperous, fulfilling life.
Our Blueprint sets out how we can accomplish school choice, giving every family in our state the choices that today only the very rich enjoy.
To prosper, our state needs less regulation and less government. Our Blueprint sets out proposals to cut taxes further and dismantle the costly, leftist bureaucracy that seems to be in control no matter who you vote for.
Decades of crony cartel politics has stifled innovation in our state. Years of lobbyists cutting cozy deals in the Capitol that commercially advantage their clients has held Mississippi back. A lot of the intentionally restrictive laws that limit health care provision simply need to go. Our Blueprint sets out how to make this happen.
MCPP has been a driving force behind many of the key free market reforms that have helped energize our state. But at every opportunity, crony cartel politics has tried to prevent change.
The crony cartel will try again. It’s what self-serving cartels do. Already they are mobilizing half-baked arguments against school choice. They are lobbying to maintain intentionally restrictive laws that hold back the healthcare economy. Brace yourself for politicians explaining why we can’t afford tax cuts despite a healthy surplus.
In politics, nothing moves unless it is pushed. MCPP won’t just publish our Blueprint. We will push and push hard. Mississippi’s future is too important to let bad politics get in the way.
Mississippi could be on the cusp of transformative changes. If we keep going, we will not only no longer be 50th, but we could become – like Tennessee or Alabama – a state that young people want to move to, not leave.
Download a copy of our blueprint here!
Remember when Japan was predicted to overtake America?
Back in the 1980s, Japan was the coming country. Japan’s economy had enjoyed decades of rapid growth. Her exports where everywhere, and with inventions like the Sony Walkman, it looked as though Japan was the technological future, too.
America looked like a power in decline. Forty years ago, many traditional US industries were failing. Crime seemed out of control.
By the mid 1990s, Japan’s GDP was 71 percent that of the US - and the gap looked to be closing. One “expert”, Herman Kahn predicted that Japan would surpass America as the world’s largest economy by 2000.
Today? Japan’s economy is a quarter the size of America’s. Japan hasn’t produced much innovation since the Tamagotchi (Don’t ask). Despite all the talk about Japanese electronic wizardry, the great digital innovations of the past few decades have happened on this side of the Pacific.
Today, of course, we’re told that the great ascending power is not Japan, but China. China’s economic growth over the past 40 years has been phenomenal. In industry after industry, Chinese exports have crushed the competition. China, unlike Japan, is not just an economic competitor but a strategic rival to the United States, pursuing an aggressively expansionist policy in the Pacific, south Asia and parts of Africa.
By 2021, China’s GDP was almost 80 percent that of the US and the experts were telling us China would overtake America within a couple of decades.
But look at what has happened since. China’s economy seems to have peaked as a percentage of US output. China has even more debt-induced malinvestment than Japan had during the 80s asset bubble.
Chinese demographics (current Total Fertility Rate 1.02) are in an even worse shape than Japan’s (TFR 1.30). And China’s fiscal position is unlikely to improve with all of President Xi’s imperial ambitions to fund.
As recently as 2008, Europe’s economy was about the same size as the United States’. Today, America’s economy is twice the size of Europe’s. Looking at the number of large companies established over the past 50 years on either side of the Atlantic. Home Depot, a single US company, eclipses all the new businesses created in the European Union since 1974.
So why are Japan, China and Europe all in their different ways underperforming America? Because each are, in their different ways, reverting back to a type of political economic tradition far less successful than America’s.
Japan, superficially Western in so many ways since 1945, has behind that façade a strongly corporatist political economy. A handful of well-connected conglomerates are able to dominate markets, but shielded from internal competition, they don’t innovate. (To appreciate how stifling this is, try to imagine what America might be like, for example, if IBM was the only computer company, with all the competitors kept out.)
China, after a brief move towards market liberalization begun by Deng Xiaoping, is reverting to what you might think of as a Ming tradition. Dissent is stamped on. A bureaucratic elite micromanages and controls. The sclerotic effects are already being felt.
Europe, repeated rescued from an indigenous form of autocracy by the Anglosphere powers (1704, 1815, 1914, 1944, Cold War), is tragically reverting to type. Today, a courtly elite enthroned in Brussels attempts to regulate and control ever more aspects of social and economic life across the Continent, destroying it in the process (Mercifully, Britain escaped from this in 2016 and might yet return to a more Atlantic tradition).
To flourish, the United States needs to stay true to the political and economic model envisaged by the Founders; limited government, lower taxes and liberty. The good news is that with the new administration in Washington, this may well be about to happen. Elon Musk is determined not only to cut federal spending (something America urgently needs to do to avoid bankruptcy). He is looking to turbo charge productivity growth, moving people from the public to the private sector, and radically cut red tape. Reports of America’s relative decline seem to me to be wildly exaggerated. If Musk and co deliver half of what they are promising, we might just be on the cusp of an extraordinary period of progress and innovation in America. The divergence between America and the rest of the world is only going to accelerate.
I feel an overwhelming sense of privilege to be onboard!
Imagine a world in which the President of the United States could prevent you from reading a story about incriminating emails found on his son’s laptop?
Actually, that’s what happened. When the New York Post ran a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, administration officials put pressure on media outlets to prevent you from reading it.
Envision an America in which articles about the origins of Covid could be taken down by administration officials during the pandemic? You don’t have to imagine. That’s literally what they did.
If you are appalled at the prospect of powerful politicians trying to suppress awkward opinions, I suspect you’d be concerned at any attempts by some in our state to restrict debate and discussion on certain topics, too.
Unfortunately, some state officials seem to think they can bully organizations like MCPP in order to shut down what we say. This seems to be the case with school choice, an issue on which every conservative ought to agree. Some evidently don’t agree and are mad at us for promoting change.
MCPP is 100 percent committed to parental choice as the only certain way to raise standards and counter left- wing values in the classroom. We relish the opportunity to listen to those with different ideas and engage with those that have a different viewpoint.
Anyone is free to disagree with us. But no one that disagrees with our stance should ever try to shut down our advocacy the way Biden’s gang shut down the Hunter laptop story.
Here’s why we won’t be cowed.
First, it’s a question of credibility: MCPP is a conservative think tank. That means we’re cheerleaders for conservative policies, but not for any politicians.
To be sure, we probably agree 90 percent of the time with most elected state-wide officials. But when we disagree, we won’t hide the fact. Instead, we will do so openly, honestly and dispassionately (maybe even using a little humor from time to time ….) A think tank that shied away from asking state leaders questions that they’d rather not answer wouldn’t be worth a dime. Why would anyone take such an organization seriously?
Second, you are the media: Biden’s gang, like politicians down the ages, tried to bully media organizations into ignoring inconvenient stories. That tactic doesn’t work anymore since Musk set social media free.
Each week, MCPP reaches tens of thousands of folk across our state. We do so with published articles and media appearances. But the single biggest way we reach people is directly, the way I’m connecting with you now. Our email list has tens of thousands of subscribers, and a phenomenal open rate. This Wednesday, I uploaded a short video in the morning. By lunchtime it had been viewed 48,000 times. As of now, it’s been seen over 130,000 times – a high percentage in Mississippi. Thanks to Elon Musk’s X, we reach several million people every month, again many in Mississippi. Unless anyone has the power to shut down our social media operation, we are going to keep going.
Third, and most important, School Choice is right: School choice is, as President Trump has said, the civil rights issue of our time.
It's more than about school standards. The case for giving families control over their child’s share of tax dollars is moral. MCPP has outlined a three-step strategy to achieve universal school choice in our state. We are surrounded on three sides by conservative led states that have adopted school choice.
People are free to disagree with us. So, too, are state-wide officials who can vote against school choice or kill it in committee (like some did with the ballot initiative, and anti DEI legislation and much more besides). But equally organizations like MCPP are free to explain to the public who is supporting school choice and who is trying to kill it. We won’t be cowed.
Of course, what made the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop so explosive was not what was on the laptop. It was the realization as to what some were prepared to do to suppress stories they didn’t like. Nothing perhaps could be more ruinous the reputation of any politician.
Parental choice is the only certain way to raise standards and counter left- wing values in the classroom. MCPP has a plan to make this happen in Mississippi.
Mississippi is already surrounded on three sides by states that have school choice. Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana have all now passed legislation to give families control over their child’s share of the education budget. However, perennial efforts to achieve something similar in Mississippi through Education Savings Accounts, or ESA's, have failed. Each time a universal ESA proposal has been attempted the legislation dies. We would love to see a universal program of publicly funded ESA's in Mississippi, which families could use to pay for school, but I believe the chances of such legislation passing anytime soon are slim.
That’s why MCPP is pursuing a different three step strategy to achieve universal school choice in our state:
- Step One – An individual budget for every student: During the last legislative session, MCPP spearheaded efforts to secure a school-funding formula in order that every public school student now has a personalized education budget.
We did so knowing that once each student has a personalized budget, it becomes much easier to argue that they should then be allowed to take their budget to a school of their choice. We have achieved this.
- Step Two – Public-to-public school choice: Thanks to a bill (HB 1341) passed in the last legislative session, military families, including those in the National Guard, are able to send their children to a traditional public school of their choice—if it has capacity.
We are openly pushing for legislation in the 2025 session to allow each student to take their personal budget to a public school of their choice, giving every family in Mississippi the right that military families enjoy. Responsible conservative policy means allowing school boards to have the final say over capacity and giving strong safeguards to school so that they do not have to take students with a history of disciplinary problems.
- Step 3 – Parental Choice Tax Credit: Tens of thousands of families in our state choose not to send their children to public school, either because they homeschool or they send their children to private school. We believe they should be able to claim a refundable income tax credit to help them with expenses, like tuition and fees.
We have a carefully costed plan for a Parental Choice Tax Credit that would achieve this, building on the tax credit system we already have. Interestingly, the Republicans in Washington, D.C., have indicated that they might pass a similar tax credit federally. These three steps would ensure universal school choice in our state—and give families in Mississippi the choices that families now have in neighboring states. The good news is that Mississippi is already halfway to making this happen!
Morton Blackwell, the great conservative activist, likes to say that “In politics nothing moves unless it’s pushed”. MCPP is happy to push – and to push hard …. even if it upsets one or two anti-school choice activists. It’s what we exist to do.
We are open about our goal and our strategy for achieving school choice because we know that sunlight is the best disinfectant. There’s no need for mystery and opaque maneuverings. Nor will we shy away from engaging directly those that might like to stop parental choice by stealth. If school choice is opposed by lawmakers that sent their own kids to private school, we won’t hesitate to ensure that Mississippi knows.
Over the course of the coming months as we head into the 2025 legislative session, I will be sure to update you on progress – and I’ll be sure to inform you who supports and who opposes parental choice! This is a fight we can win!
For as long as anyone can remember, the media didn’t just report politics. They shaped it. News anchors decided what was newsworthy, often ignoring stories that did not fit their narrative. Newspaper columnists fed us opinions. Politicians, to be successful, found they needed to cultivate the media in order to get a fair hearing. Conservatives were demonized. When digital media first emerged twenty years ago, I wrote a book about how this might change. Rather than being spoon-fed our opinions by an Ivy League elite, we might see a democratization of opinion forming.
Tragically, big tech spent most of the past decade colluding with government and the old media to clamp down on the digital revolution. Algorithms were programmed to suppress ‘wrong’ opinions. Twitter banned people for saying there are only two genders. They even took down the account of a sitting US President. Facebook closed the accounts of people who questioned the effectiveness of Covid lockdowns. Rather than dispersing knowledge, for a while it looked as if bad actors would be able to use digital tech to centralize control, China-style.
Then Elon Musk bought Twitter/X – and fired the leftist activists that had been censoring it. This is perhaps the most significant political event in decades, even if few yet realize it. Twitter/X is now the number one news source in most Western countries and growing rapidly. Able to host video and live broadcasts, Twitter/X is forcing other dishonest digital platforms to change their ways, or lose audience share. YouTube no longer feels so hostile to conservative views.
We saw the immediate impact of this during the recent Presidential election. The legacy media and corrupt digital platforms could not suppress and misrepresent the way they used to. Attempts to distort what Trump or JD Vance had or had not said no longer worked. Instead of relying on brazenly partisan news anchors to cross question candidates, candidates could go on long form shows, like Joe Rogan, and set out in detail their stance. Fifty million people watched Trump on Rogan alone. For decades, politicians have been able to get away with speaking in meaningless soundbites. Talking in soundbites no longer pays when you are doing deep dive interviews on a podcast.
Team Trump understood this. Long form podcasts were a key part of their election strategy. Kamala never engaged to the same extent and came second.
Here at MCPP, we like to think we have been ahead of the curve on this. While we don’t have the resources of a Rogan or Patrick Bet David, we do produce a weekly video and podcast in our humble studio, which gets tens of thousands of views a month. So far this year, what MCPP has posted online has been seen by MILLIONS (YouTube 200,000 plus, Twitter 22 million) – and that doesn’t include content we produce hosted by other platforms, like PragerU and others.
The counter reformation by the tech elite has failed. As Elon Musk says, we are the media now. Opinion forming is being democratized. Conservative think tanks have an unprecedented opportunity to win the battle of ideas. 2025 is going to be awesome!
What do you most like about your job? For me, it is being invited to speak about the work the Mississippi Center for Public Policy (MCPP) is doing to try to improve our state. Typically, I get a couple of invitations each month to talk at Rotary Clubs, schools or the Kiwanis. Just the other week, I received one such invitation from the North Jackson Rotary Club.
As invited to, I talked about some of our policy goals, such as school choice, deregulation and tax reform. Ever sensitive to the fact that good folk have different opinions about things, I meticulously avoided saying anything even remotely partisan. Rotary Club lunches are enjoyable precisely because they are committed to building goodwill and understanding.
As I sat down after speaking, however, up popped Luther Munford, someone I had only met on my way into the event. Mr. Munford proceeded to attack school choice – and at times I almost felt, me - at length, all under the guise of asking a question. Fair enough, I thought. Free speech and all that, although Mr. Munford did not sound very big on goodwill. In fact, he sounded borderline rude.
I thought no more of the incident until I read Mr. Munford’s recent newspaper article in which he appears to have continued the attack he started at the North Jackson Rotary Club. Curiously, for an article purporting to be about school choice in Mississippi, he launched his article with an attack on Brexit. Aware as he is of my role as one of the founders of the official Brexit campaign back in my native Britain, Mr. Munford perhaps thinks that by attacking the way 45 million Brits voted he is somehow getting at me. Whatever.
Once Mr. Munford gets around to attacking school choice, rather than me, he makes a series of erroneous assumptions that deserve a rebuttal.
Mr. Munford says school choice is unpopular. This is just not true. Polls show that more than 7 in 10 Mississippi voters, including a majority of Democrats, want school choice. Mr. Munford seems especially vexed by the idea that parents given the choice might want their children to attend a religious school. Assuming I have understood him correctly (his syntax is a little garbled) school choice would mean that “the problem of funding truly racists religious beliefs becomes even greater”.
Any suggestion that Mississippi private schools are full of “racist religious beliefs” will no doubt come as a surprise to anyone that attends or teaches at one. Mr. Munford then attacks private schools on the basis that “no one knows how well Mississippi private schools are doing because they are not subject to any form of public accountability”.
Again, plain wrong. Private schools are hyper accountable to fee paying parents. It is the public school accountability system that is failing, giving A grades to school districts where many kids can’t read properly.
Mr. Munford then proceeds to attack school choice on the basis that it would take money out of the public sector. Allowing each public school student to take their base share of state funds (about $6,600) to a public school of their choice (assuming the public school has capacity) would not impoverish the public sector. It would reallocate the money, forcing failing schools and underperforming districts to raise their game.
Our plan for a Mississippi Parents’ Tax Credit for those that choose not to take their place at a public school, because they prefer to home school or go private, would be capped at $150 million. It is not draining money from public schools but supporting families that are currently paying twice.
What I find hardest to understand about Luther Munford’s attack on school choice is that he sent his own children to one of the most expensive private schools in our state, St Andrew’s.
Luther Munford is on record as saying he “believes strongly in public education”. But not strongly enough to send his own kids to public school.
Mr. Munford attacks putting money into private religious schools because of the risk of “racist religious beliefs”. I presume there were no such beliefs at St Andrew’s Episcopal School when his own kids went there? He attacks private schools for not being accountable. When he was a parent at St Andrew’s was there not sufficient accountability to him as a parent?
Perhaps if one were to ask why, as an advocate of public education, Mr. Munford did not take the opportunity to send his own kids to, say, Murrah High School, he might have an explanation as to why his family circumstances were different. Anti school choice activists need to recognize that every family’s circumstances are different. That’s why families need to be able to make choices about their children’s education that currently only people like Mr. Munford are able to make.
Sending a child to St Andrew’s today costs about $20,000 a year. We should all support parents’ 100 percent if they are blessed enough to be able to send their children to such an awesome school. But we should at the same time help local families that cannot afford that to allocate their $6,600 of state funding to a school they can get into. To do anything else could be called hypocrisy.