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The Centers for Disease Control recently announced a moratorium on evictions across most of the United States, in light of Covid. This order places restrictions on evictions in areas with high or moderate levels of Covid infections.

This move has been applauded by some as a way to stabilize housing and help those who are struggling financially due to Covid. But the evidence speaks directly to the contrary. The government imposing its control over rental properties is highly problematic, with repercussions for both tenants and property owners.

A policy that forces property owners to provide temporary housing without recourse during Covid is not too dissimilar from the government handing out checks that are encouraging people not to work. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the median rent in the United States is $909 a month, slightly lower than the median mortgage of $975. Consider the following statistics:

While some might view these facts as good news for tenants, it ultimately leads to bad outcomes. Indeed, without having the recourse of eviction in the event of non-payment, many landlords are raising their approval criteria. On this factor alone, it will likely be harder for the tenants who didn’t pay rent during the moratorium to get approved by future landlords if they chose to go to a different rental home post-pandemic. 

Thus, a ban on evictions for the failure to pay rent is ultimately just another piece of the puzzle that encourages Americans not to work and causes collateral effects as well. The only difference is that instead of the federal government using taxpayer dollars to write checks, property owners are forced to foot the bill until the moratorium is over and they can get their rent payments back.

This places many property owners at great financial risk if rental properties are not bringing in income. Approximately half of all rental units are owned by small investors, referred to by HUD as “mom and pop landlords.” The average rental property owner receives 31 percent of their annual income from their rental properties. With so many small business owners already struggling, such a dip in income has led to even more financial hardship, leading to increased debt and even rental property foreclosure.

Government interference in the economy has a consistent track record of generally causing more problems than it solves. The government’s recent move hurts tenants and property owners in untold ways. Only time will tell what the major repercussions will be from such government overreach.

Attacking our recently published Fat Cat Report, the Columbus Dispatch invoked Babe Ruth. Curiously, they cite the fact that a legendary baseball star was once paid a lot of money to justify the soaring salaries of education bureaucrats in Mississippi today.   

Babe Ruth was indeed once handsomely paid. But he was paid a lot because he possessed rare talents, for which there was tremendous demand. It isn’t quite so obvious what rare talents many of our school district superintendents on six-figure salaries have. 

Babe Ruth famously justified being paid more than the US President on the basis he’d “had a better year.” The same can hardly be said of the school superintendent in the Dispatches’ own Columbus district. Despite the superintendent getting $150,000, the school district was D-rated. 

The Dispatch insists that school superintendent salaries are market-driven and competitive.  Really? If such salaries were market-driven why was F-rated Holmes County’s superintendent paid $170,000, while A-rated Lafayette county’s school superintendent was paid $42,000 less?   

How does a competitive salary process explain the fact that the superintendent of Corinth’s district with 2,645 students enrolled was paid $210,000, while Jackson Public School district with over ten times the number of students was paid $39,000 less? 

The Dispatch suggests that our report hurts Mississippi’s image.   

No, what really harms our state are cozy cartels running public services without accountability to the public, and local newspapers doing nothing to expose the consequences. 

The Dispatch suggests that our report is “another attack on K-12 education.” 

Perhaps what really harms public education are underperforming education bureaucrats, who are able to carry on presiding over mediocrity as some in the local media look the other way. 

The Dispatch glibly dismisses our finding that dozens of education bureaucrats are paid more than the State Governor on the grounds that it has been this way for decades. So why has the Dispatch not exposed the fact? What have they been doing for all those years as top public sector salaries soared, but teachers’ pay stagnated? It’s hardly Woodward and Bernstein when it comes to holding the powerful to account, is it?  

The Dispatch claims that we are calling for “state-level approval for any local school district salary that exceeds that of the governor.’  Nowhere in our report do we propose that.   

What we do suggest is that “parents living within the School District should have the power to trigger a public vote at the board meeting to confirm or reject any portion of the salary over and above that of the State Governor.”   

Having attacked our report for calling some officials ‘fat cats,’ the Dispatch criticizes our report for not calling others ‘fat cats.’  If you read our report, we take care to say that not every highly paid official is a fat cat. We present the facts and compare what top officials are paid to what teachers, nurses, state troopers, and average Mississippians make. We let the reader decide who deserves their salaries, just as we believe the public has a right to know what public officials are paid.   

In our report, we make it very clear that our report does not cover university salaries, which lie outside its scope. In their haste to attack, the Dispatch uses this omission against us. Perhaps if they had spent a few minutes researching the topic, they would have discovered that university pay was the subject of a very detailed 50-page report we produced last year. 

Perhaps one fact that we did not include in our report but should have is that the per-person income in Columbus, where the school superintendent was paid $150,000 a year, is less than $25,000.   

Public interest journalism should have no problem in pointing that out, and certainly not attack those that do. 

We think most folk in Columbus and Lowndes County would agree. 

Mississippi is ripe with economic opportunity. With abundant natural resources, two deepwater ports, a low cost of living, and a central location to much of the nation, there is ample potential for growth.

Before the 2000s, Mississippi ranked 14th in economic growth at 2.1 percent. However, this growth has slowed. How can Mississippi get back on track?

Private sector growth carries the greatest potential for state economies, with private-sector job growth being one of the key measurements for economic growth. But in Mississippi, state and federal government have taken the helm as the top sectors in the state. Altogether a poor job has been done in cultivating an environment that promotes economic growth.

The Clarion Ledger reports that in Mississippi, federal, state, and local government spending amounts to 55 percent of the economy. This is the fifth-highest percentage in the nation. This is not an environment that breeds growth. To get Mississippi back on the map economically, limited government and free-market capitalist principles should take the forefront by reducing the government’s size and spending.

According to a study conducted by the Legatum Institute, Mississippi has failed to achieve satisfactory standards of prosperity, especially when compared to other states throughout the United States.

Mississippi has consistently ranked in the ten lowest states over the last ten years in terms of economic quality. This is considering factors such as financial stability, productivity and competitiveness, dynamism, and labor force engagement.

Mississippi’s economic situation has caught national attention as the US News and World Report has similarly ranked it and neighboring states at the lowest in the United States. Many local economies have experienced no growth as employment opportunities, and major industries have dwindled in size. In addition, limited educational resources have made the possibility of innovation stagnant.

The Daily Journal estimates that 19.6 percent (nearly one out of every five residents) of the Mississippi population live below the poverty line. This is the highest poverty rate in the country.

But there is an exciting tomorrow for Mississippi if the right steps are taken. The near future of the state is promising as it leaves the world of Covid. The state’s gross domestic product is expected to rise by 2.8% this year. Such growth has not been seen since before the Great Recession; however, it is expected to plateau within the next few years.

This does not need to be the case. If policy makers want to change the trajectory of their state, it might be time to harness this economic momentum and give the opportunity for economic growth back to the citizens of the state.

Economic growth can only occur if government refrains from drowning it. If the state wants more available capital, encouraging the private sector to grow through tax cuts and regulatory reform, could effectively lower poverty levels -this just might be a better strategy than expanding the government sector.

Before Mississippi blindly accepts the checks flowing from the politicians and bureaucrats of Washington as benevolent gifts from Uncle Sam, it is vital to scrutinize federal monies that include conditions to bring problematic federal policies to our state.

It’s no secret that the federal government has expanded its spending at exponential levels in recent years. Much of this spending has gone to the states in the form of grants and direct payments, while other funding proposals are built into state programs with a combination of state and federal oversight, such as Medicaid. 

Granted, there are several key channels that the federal government uses to distribute monies to the states. Many of these channels are perfectly legitimate functions that reflect the normal processes of a federal system of government. 

For example, states are not constitutionally expected to provide for their military security independently. In light of this, the federal government provides adequate funding to build military bases and other defense assets.

One could also argue that because the federal government has jurisdiction over interstate commerce, it should additionally provide a sizeable portion of the major road infrastructure funding. But what about the myriad of other federal funding mechanisms that trickle down money to states like Mississippi?

According to the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor, the Mississippi state government had $10.1 billion in federal funding expenditures for the fiscal year in 2020. To put this into perspective, the total Mississippi general fund receipts for the 2020 fiscal year derived from state-based taxes were approximately $5.6 billion. The influence of federal funding is far-reaching and carries a large portion of the government funds that flow through the state. 

Of the billions of dollars and federal funding, much of it is not subject to direct oversight from the state legislature. Instead, most of this money goes through the state bureaucratic system. 

Compounded with this, the priorities of the federal grantors are often out-of-touch with the needs and priorities of the state. Though coffers of state bureaucracies could fare nicely from such grants, certain non-mandated federal priorities should not just be accepted so that state agencies can “qualify” for more federal money. For it is essential to recognize that from critical race theory education grants to the funds that come through Medicaid expansion, the potential for damaging federal dollars abound. 

All of these facts point to the necessity of state legislative oversight and accountability. All federal grants going to state agencies should be subject to as much legislative and statutory oversight as possible. This is vital so that practically every dollar of federal money coming into Mississippi is accountable to the citizens' elected representatives.

With Washington pumping out policies that are dominated by the priorities of big government, the state legislature must maintain its responsibility to protect Mississippi’s public policy from being polluted by the poisoned wells that dot the landscape of federal funding. 

(Jackson, MS): Mississippi has some of the highest paid public officials in America, despite being the poorest state, according to a new report out today. 

Published by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the Fat Cat Report offers a summary of the top 50 highest paid public officials in the state along with further data analysis.

The report reveals:

The Fat Cat report compares what top public officials make to the salaries of average nurses, State Troopers, and workers across the Magnolia state.  

“Mississippi taxpayers have a right to know how much their top public officials earn,” explained Douglas Carswell, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. Clearly some officials produce value for the money they are paid. But many don’t.”

“How much should public officials be paid, and who should decide? The key is public accountability.”

“Our report suggests that officials appointed by boards tend to have the most inflated taxpayer-funded salaries. Officials that are either elected, or in close proximity to taxpayers, generally have lower salaries.”

“This suggests to me that direct accountability to the taxpayers is the best way of ensuring that public officials give taxpayers value for money, and our report makes some suggestions on what we could do to ensure that Mississippi taxpayers don’t get taken for a ride.”

Read the report in full HERE.

For more information or to request an interview with Mississippi Center for Public Policy CEO Douglas Carswell, please reach out to Hunter Estes, [email protected].

Mississippi Center for Public Policy CEO Douglas Carswell appeared on Fox News’ The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton to discuss our major new investigative report.

You can watch the full interview and discussion of the report here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMGbAo318Xo&t=3s

The report has a range of interesting findings, including:

You can read the full report here: https://mspolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Fat-Cat-Report-2021-Final.pdf

There is little debate that America’s infrastructure plays a critical role in the economy. Roads, bridges, shipping facilities, airports, the energy grid, and other vital industrial elements all play a crucial part in the ability of the nation to produce and deliver goods and services in the most efficient way possible. 

Despite this importance, some in Washington have asserted that Americans must also pay for unrelated energy policy proposals if they want better infrastructure. 

Amid negotiations for a massive infrastructure improvement package, political leadership on the Left has insisted that the infrastructure bill include provisions to implement President Biden’s energy policy agenda. One such proposal in this agenda is a call to expand federal energy regulations through the reduction of carbon-based fuels.  

A key stated goal is to reduce carbon and other greenhouse emissions to approximately half by 2030. An additional proposed mandate is that the nation’s electrical grid completely transitions away from carbon-based fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil by 2035. In light of the high cost of transitioning from carbon fuels, such federal mandates would be detrimental to the state of Mississippi. The state’s economy and citizens are highly dependent on affordable energy.

From the economic angle, it is important to note that Mississippi has the 2nd highest level of energy expenditures per dollar of GDP. This means that Mississippi’s economy needs more energy than most other states to produce its economic outputs. Mississippi also has the 8th highest amount of carbon output per dollar of GDP. This carbon output makes sense. Many of Mississippi’s top industries, such as agriculture and manufacturing, have very high energy consumption and utilize affordable carbon fuels such as natural gas and coal. 

These economic factors would cause Mississippi’s economy to be disproportionally affected if the federal government mandates a reduction in the use of carbon-based energy fuels. Meanwhile, other states with less energy-intensive sectors (such as finance and administration) would be less affected. Thus, Mississippi would be in a competitively disadvantaged position at the hands of a federal carbon-reduction policy.

On top of the macroeconomic effects of more expensive energy, raising the cost of energy by requiring more costly fuels with a lower carbon output could be devasting for some Mississippians on an individual level. According to the Energy Information Administration, the state of Mississippi ranks among the highest in the nation for its consumption of energy per person.  

As a predominately rural state with many in poverty, Mississippi’s energy consumption per person is an important factor to note. A study found that the rural poor spend a high percentage of their income on heating and cooling their homes since many rural homes are not as well-insulated as their suburban and urban counterparts. An additional study found that when energy costs go up, many of the poor reduce their heating and cooling to save money, with resulting health issues and the accompanying medical expenses. 

Mississippi and its citizens should be able to utilize the most affordable and efficient energy sources without the heavy hand of federal overreach. Instead of using infrastructure negotiations as an opportunity to impose unprecedented restrictions on carbon-sourced energy, leaders in Washington should focus on the nation's infrastructure needs.   

America has faced plenty of external threats before.  Each time the United States came through triumphant and stronger.  

Today, however, we face a threat that is internal, rather than external; Critical Race Theory.  We need to work out how to respond to it as a threat to the American way of life.  

Critical Race Theory encourages Americans to lose faith in their own country.  Instead of celebrating America’s Founding Ideals, Critical Race Theory teaches young Americans that their nation is founded on hate.

Far from marveling at how people from every country, culture, and creed want to come to the USA, Critical Race Theory insists instead that America is inherently racist.  

We ought to applaud the progress that has been made towards achieving Martin Luther King’s vision of a country where people are defined by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  Instead, Critical Race Theorists want to racialize everything.

Critical Race Theory is a form of race-based Marxism.  Old school Marxists divided the world by class, capitalist oppressors Vs oppressed workers.  Critical Race Theory’s new variant Marxism divides America into oppressor Vs oppressed base on skin color.  Critical Race Theory specifically rejects the principle of equal protection under the law.  

Nowhere is Critical Race Theory more dangerous and destructive than in our education system.

In California, public schools have accused white teachers of being colonizers on stolen Native American land and told them “you are racist” and “you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.”  North Carolina’s largest school district launched a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces”—and encouraged teachers to subvert families and push the ideology of “antiracism” directly onto students without parental consent.

How do we ensure these this divisive ideology is not being advanced in public schools here in Mississippi?

Critical Race Theory in the classroom opposes meritocracy, and has caused some school boards in parts of America to abandon standardized testing.  It teaches young people that the government must actively discriminate against racial groups deemed privileged.

Most obnoxious of all, it advocates neo-segregation and turns schools into a race re-education program.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy believes these neo-racist theories have no place in the classroom.  What can we do about it?  

Step one is to find out how prevalent this kind of ideology-based teaching actually is.  Then we need action to ensure that public schools do not use public money to indoctrinate students about fringe racial theories that claim one race is superior to another, or that individuals should be treated differently on the basis of race.  We are working on producing a draft bill that we believe will go some way to achieving this.  Our think tank is leading the way on this.  

But tackling Critical Race Theory cannot be done just by passing a law.  Whether we like it or not, America is engaged in a battle for her future – and it is a struggle being waged for the hearts and minds of millions of young Americans.

Rather than simply forbid a divisive ideology being taught, we need to make a concerted effort to teach people why America is such an exceptional country.

Young people growing up today, like every generation before them, seek to make sense of the world around them.  Why, some will ask, are some people more successful than others?  How come some parts of America are prosperous yet others poor?  What explains the fact that America is so rich relative to most other countries?

Critical Race Theory offers a superficial, if deeply flawed, explanation.  We need to offer young people a better way of understanding the world.  It is an absence of freedom and liberty that explains why some societies are less successful than others, not any fringe theory about ‘white fragility’.    

As Mississippi’s free market think tank, we aim to educate tens of thousands of young Mississippians, through our online engagement, about liberty, limited government and the American Founding.  We seek to show the rising generation that it is individual character, not any intersectional identity, that matters most.

If you would like to learn more about our work combating Critical Race Theory, please sign up for our updates at www.mspolicy.org.

This article was first published in the Northside Sun.

At the Mississippi Justice Institute, one of our foundational causes is litigating to free workers from excessive licensing laws that make it exceedingly difficult for ordinary people to use their talents and earn an honest living.

We’re focused on this issue because we believe that there is inherent dignity in work; that opportunity is vital to a vibrant society; and that pursuing one’s calling is at the very heart of the American Dream.

Occupational licenses were originally intended for professions in which a mistake could pose serious health and safety risks to the public, like EMTs or school bus drivers. But they have also crept into many professions that pose no risk to the public, like florists and interior decorators. 

In the 1950s, only one out of twenty people required a government permission slip to do their job. Today, that number has skyrocketed to nearly one in three. And most of those licenses are for working class jobs. 

What has led to this explosion in occupational licensing? Counterintuitively, practitioners of various occupations lobby the government to impose regulations on them. In exchange, they gain a sense of legitimacy, monopoly use of a title, and expensive and time-consuming barriers to entry into their professions which keep many would-be competitors at bay.

The posterchild for licensing creep is the beauty industry. Because of the need for sanitation in any profession which involves touching customers, and because the work sometimes entails the use of sharp implements, chemicals, or heated appliances, practitioners of the profession claim that their work is dangerous and needs to be licensed and regulated. But the potential dangers are often wildly exaggerated by industry insiders and used to justify licensing burdens that are vastly disproportionate to the actual risks involved. 

The excessive and costly training that results from this scaremongering can make it virtually impossible for workers of modest means and young people to break into the beauty industry. A new report by the Institute for Justice shows that the average beauty school program costs $16,000 and takes about a year to complete. 

Beauty school students borrow an average of $7,100 in federal student loans, which is $600 higher than the average student. After all of that, beauty school graduates can expect to earn just $26,000 a year on average, less than restaurant cooks, janitors or concierges – none of whom are required by law to attend costly schools before working.

This type of excessive licensing has implications far beyond the beauty industry. Recent research indicates that excessive licensing laws cost our country an estimated 2.85 million jobs per year and over $200 billion annually in increased consumer costs.

Perhaps that is why reforming occupational licensing laws has become one of the few remaining bipartisan issues. In 2015, the Obama administration issued a report encouraging states to roll back unnecessary occupational licenses. In late 2020, former President Trump followed suit, issuing an executive order that similarly encouraged states to enact licensing reforms and outlined several principles for reform. And on July 9, 2021, President Biden joined the club, issuing a new executive order encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to ban unnecessary licensing restrictions. 

When President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden all agree that licensing creep is strangling the American Dream, it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re right. Mississippi is making progress in this area, but we need to continue working to eliminate anticompetitive licensing laws and let Mississippians shape their own destinies. 

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