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Parent Power: Local mom, Amanda Kibble, with Douglas Carswell from the
Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Rankin county mom, Amanda Kibble, is celebrating an important win for her family.  Her victory could also help military families throughout the state.

Earlier this year, House Bill 1341 was signed into law by Governor Tate Reeves.  The new law allows families of military personnel to transfer their children to any traditional public school in the state, assuming receiving school has capacity.  It means that military families effectively now have school choice within the public school system.

“When this bill was passed” explains Amanda “it meant that we would be able to keep our little boy in the school we really wanted him to be in”.

“Last year, we were so excited when the bill passed.  It meant our son, who has a dyslexia diagnosis, could get some stability.  As a military kid, he’s already experienced enough difficulties and instability.”

However, the good news did not last.

“At the beginning of the year, we were told that we had misinterpreted the bill” Amanda explained.  “House Bill 1341 was, they said, not for National Guard families. It was only for Active Duty personnel.”

“This was a real blow to our family.  At his current school, my son grew so much in confidence.  I was really anxious that would all be lost if we were forced out of the school of our choice”.

Amanda reached out to local Senator Josh Harkins – and contacting the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, which fights for school choice.

Now the Attorney General has issued a formal opinion stating the National Guard AGR families are included in the legislation after all.  National Guard families can have school choice.

“We are ecstatic to have won and to have the opportunity to let my son stay in his school for the rest of the year.  However, while we have won a huge victory, our family will have to move next year.  We want to see a change so that school choice is a reality for all families”. 

“The Attorney General’s opinion applies specifically for National Guard Active Guard Reserve (AGR) but does not yet apply to Traditional Guard Members or those on Active Duty for Operational Support (ADOS) orders or Title 32 orders.  This needs to change”. 

“Senator Harkins was wonderful and did so much to help” she added. 

“This is good news for Amanda and her family – and its great news for Mississippi military families” explains Douglas Carswell from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

“Any families in a similar situation should get in touch with us”, he added. 

“Thanks to HB 1341, which was passed this year, military families – including those in the National Guard – more families can have more school choice from public school to public school.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that demand to take advantage of this scheme is high”, he added.

“But why not let every family have the right to choose?  Provided that schools have capacity, parents should be able to send their kids to a school in a different district, or even a different school within the same district”.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy, which helped Amanda fight her case, has a legal division, the Mississippi Justice Institute (MJI).  MJI successfully litigated to defend Charter Schools, and has a successful track record of litigating in support of school choice in our state. 

“Parents have a right to expect the best for their child and school choice would give moms like Amanda control over their child’s education”, Douglas added.

There’s a real chance we could see school choice in Mississippi. Thanks to our new school funding formula, each public school student in our state now has a personalized budget designed to meet their individual education needs. Why not let families take their personalized budget to a school of their choice?  
 
That is precisely what families can now do in three of our neighboring states, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama.  So, why not Mississippi?
 
One of the obstacles standing in the way of school choice in Mississippi has been the ridiculously misnamed “Parent’s” Campaign.  For years, the “Parent’s” Campaign has lobbied lawmakers to prevent parent power. Nancy Loome, who runs the “Parent’s” Campaign, was at it again recently.  In “The Lie of School Choice”, she recycled various tired myths and misinformation about what parent power really means.
 
Myth One was the claim that school choice takes money away from public schools.  It doesn’t. Now that every child in the public school system in our state has a dedicated budget, we are proposing that they be allowed to take their share of state funds to a public school of their choice.  Any family that prefers not to take up their child’s place within the public school system, because they opt to go private or to home school instead, would receive a tax credit to off-set the fact they are currently paying for their child’s education twice. It is factually wrong to claim that any of this would divert public money away from public schools. 

Myth Two is that school choice means some hidden agenda to deny admissions. Under our proposals, each school district would have the power to define capacity.  This is precisely in line with what Lieutenant Governor, Delbert Hosemann, has said publicly he would support. Schools must have strong safeguards that allow them to reject applications from those out of district with a history of disciplinary problems.
 
Myth Three is that school choice is somehow unfair because it doesn’t provide transportation costs. We don’t propose paying for transportation costs for a very good reason.  The point of school choice is to raise standards in failing districts, not to facilitate the transfer of kids from failing districts into good performing districts.  
 
Myth Four is that school choice is all about benefiting private schools, rather than raising standards in public ones.  Again, this is false. Private schools in our state are doing fine.  Since 2021, the number of kids enrolled in private schools in our state rose from 49,000 to 56,000.  It is public schools, where enrolment fell 12 percent over the past decade, where school choice in most needed. We want school choice in Mississippi not because we are against public schools, but because we support them and want them to thrive.

Myth Five is the claim that “Mississippi’s public schools are delivering impressive results”. Some districts achieve good results.  Most do not. One in four students in the public school system in our state routinely skips school.  Four in ten fourth graders lack the basic reading standard required to read this sentence.  Eight in ten eighth graders are not proficient in math. Mississippi’s accountability system may indeed only rate a handful of school districts as D or F.  That says more about the inadequacies of the accountability system than it does about the quality of education. 

If public schools were doing so well, why are the number of kids enrolled in public schools in decline? If school choice is unnecessary because standards really are so excellent, as Nancy and co claim, why do they fear the consequences of giving parents more power? Finally forced to come out and say in public they’ve been whispering to lawmakers at the Capitol for years, the anti-school choice campaigners’ arguments don’t add up.  Exposed to scrutiny, the anti-school choice lobby has all the credibility of the Flat Earth Society. Actual parents across Mississippi, as opposed to campaigners claiming to speak for parents, know this.
 
At his excellent Policy Summit this week, House Speaker Jason White, shared with the 500+ attendees the results of his recent polling.  Not only was there massive support for tax reform, but the slide on school choice showed overwhelming support for parent power. 

73 percent of White voters and 65 percent of Black voters support allowing parents a more active role in choosing their children’s education.  84 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Independents agreed.  Here is an issue that Mississippi can unite behind.
 
Time may be up for those that have spent the past decade quietly killing off anything that looks like parent power in various legislative committees.  Actual parents aren’t on your side, and the anti-parent power lobby may be about to find that out. 

What’s the biggest challenge America faces? 

You might think it is $35 trillion of national debt?  Or maybe you imagine its uncontrolled immigration?  How about inflation, which is still stubbornly high? These are all really important problems, but they are not impossible to solve. If there is the political will, we could cut government spending dramatically to close the deficit. Who says we need to have all those federal agencies and welfare programs?

Immigration laws could actually be enforced if the federal government put its mind to it.  What do you think Japan does to illegal migrants who outstay their welcome? Inflation can be tamed.  Ronald Reagan showed this was possible back in the early 1980s.

What America cannot do is fix these problems if young Americans grow up thinking the worst about their country.

Over the past generation, the radical left has slowly marched through America’s institutions.  They have captured many colleges and classrooms, promoting an extreme intersectional ideology. Young Americans have been taught that their country is always in the wrong.  Instead of celebrating this country’s history, they have been invited to judge everyone and everything that happened by the standards of today. This has demoralized America, and is sapping the country’s confidence.

That is why the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, as part of a national movement to push back against the ‘woke’ tide, runs the Mississippi Leadership Academy. This two-part course aimed at high school students is the perfect antidote to ‘woke’ with courses on: 

•               The moral case for the free market. 

•               Ethical Leadership.

•               Opportunity and our state. 

•               How the legislative process works.

•               American Exceptionalism.

•               The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence. 

Previous speakers have included Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, State Auditor, Shad White and leading academics.  Our Academy is designed to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective change agents in our state. Those that take part have the opportunity to meet state leaders, and in previous years, a number of those that graduated went on the intern with state leaders.

Do you have children or grandchildren that would benefit from taking part?  Please forward this email to them with details on how to sign up below! The two-part course will take place at our Jackson offices on Saturday October 12th and Saturday November 9th, between 10am and 3pm.

Hurry to apply now before places fill up! 

Apply Here!

Education is the number one thing we need to improve in Mississippi.
That’s why MCPP just launched “Move Up, Mississippi”, a campaign aimed at changing our education system for the better.

Mississippi education is only going to improve if we accept the truth about how things really are:

Rather than getting better, the rate of chronic absenteeism in Mississippi schools has got worse.  
 
In 2022-23, over 100,000 students regularly skipped school, up from 70,000 in 2016-17.

So, what’s the solution?
 
What we need is school choice.  Mississippi is now surrounded by states that have school choice.  It is transforming education for the better.  Let’s not get left behind…..

School Choice would mean every family gets to decide where their share of the state education budget is spent.  It would mean that the values being taught in your child’s classroom would have to align with the values of Mississippi families.

To find out what school choice would mean for you and your family, visit moveupms.com

Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama have done more to improve education in 12 months than Mississippi has achieved in 12 years.  Sign up and join our movement if you believe it is time to change that!

Tax reform is on the agenda.  This is excellent news for our state!

To prosper, Mississippi must create a tax environment that is friendly to both businesses and families.

We have moved in the right direction in the past three years.  According to the Tax Foundation, Mississippi now ranks as the 20th most business-friendly state in terms of tax.
 
This improvement in our state’s tax competitiveness is a consequence of the Reeves-Gunn tax reforms.  Under Governor Tate Reeves and Speaker Philip Gunn, Mississippi passed legislation to cut the state income tax to a flat 4 percent and allowed businesses to fully expense capital spending. But the tax burden in Mississippi is still too high. 

Our state is surrounded by states, such as Tennessee, Alabama and Texas, that have a lower tax burden than we do.  Even Louisiana manages to tax less than us.

Fortunately, we have some state leaders that recognize this.  Speaker Jason White is hosting a Tax Policy Summit in September to look at what might be done.  Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann has announced a study group in the Senate to look at fiscal policy, with the ultimate goal, he says, to “lower the tax burden and ensure taxpayer dollars stay in taxpayer pockets”.
 
Mississippi’s House of Representatives also has a select committee on tax reform, which had its first hearing this week.

To be blunt, the House select committee hearing the other day was a big disappointment, especially seeing as we are a supposedly conservative state. Much of what I heard sounded like special pleading from vested interests to increase taxes, not cut them.  I wondered at times if Bernie Sanders was in the room. 

The hearing on tax reform began with a witness making the point that Mississippi needed to spend more money to build more road infrastructure.  The conversation then became about the best way to do so; raise sales tax, tax gas more or charge motorists per mileage. 
 
Not raising tax revenues was described as a “failure to invest”.  Spending more tax dollars would pay for itself, it was asserted. Any serious review of tax policy in our state should not start with special pleading.  It should start with the basic facts about the shape of Mississippi’s public finances. 

The number one fact about Mississippi public finances is that we have a substantial budget surplus.  That is to say politicians in our state have more of our tax dollars than they currently know what to do with.
 
How could we change the tax system to allow people to keep more of their own money before politicians figure out ways of squandering the surplus?  That is where the select committee ought to have started. 

What kind of tax reforms are feasible depends on the extent to which our budget surplus is cyclical or structural.  In other words, is the budget surplus a temporary phenomenon, caused by growth at this stage in the economic cycle?  Or is the surplus a surplus not withstanding fluctuations in economic performance?
 
This matters because if the surplus is temporary, tax reform will need to be phased in carefully to avoid having to put taxes back up again, as did Kansas. Failure to consider if our budget surplus is a blip or a longer term phenomenon allows those opposed to significant tax cuts to lazily claim Mississippi cannot afford more tax cuts.   (Note how when the Senate Leadership was trying to water down the Reeves-Gunn tax cuts in 2022 they were able to get away with the claim that we would be ‘like Kansas’.)

Having established what Mississippi can - and cannot - afford in terms of tax cuts, the select committee should then consider what type of tax cuts. 
 
One possibility would be to cut the grocery tax.  This would be a relatively small but symbolic cut, which is why it tends to be favored by the Senate Leadership which is lukewarm about any significant reduction in the size of government in our state.

Another possibility would be to phase out the income tax altogether.  This would be a big and bold step, and would need triggers and thresholds to ensure it was not done ‘like Kansas’.
 
“But who will pay for our roads, Carswell!”, I hear you say.  “The witness who said we need to invest in infrastructure had a point, no?” I agree. 

There are some things, like roads, that our state government does need to do. As and when we need to raise tax revenue for specific projects, like road building, then our lawmakers should propose ad hoc tax increases to pay for it.
 
Arkansas asked voters to approve a specific increase in sales tax, for a ten year fixed period, to pay for key state infrastructure.  In other words, tax revenue was raised for a purpose.  Taxes were not raised on the pretext of special pleading and then kept at the elevated level forever. What is very odd is to allow the special pleading of vested interests to be used as an argument for raising the tax burden, in a conservative voting state, and in front of a supposedly conservative-run House committee.
 
If Mississippi is going to achieve meaningful tax reform, those considering it need to be less Bernie Sanders, and more Ronald Reagan.  The lobbyists might not like it, but the voters will.

Waiting for my suitcase in the arrivals hall at Jackson airport the other evening, it occurred to me that the luggage carrousel was a pretty good metaphor for Mississippi politics. Like suitcases on a carrousel, many leaders simply sit on the conveyor belt of state politics, waiting their turn to get moved along to the next role.

Too often leaders are carried along by time and process, rarely offering any vision as to what our state should do differently. 
 
This explains why Mississippi conservatives have achieved less in 12 years than Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama have accomplished in the past 12 months.  Louisiana did not even have a Republican governor this time last year, yet they’ve already passed universal school choice.

Things could be about to change if House Speaker, Jason White, has his way. 
 
This week, White announced that he will be hosting a Tax Policy Summit on September 24th to take a deep dive into the prospects for Tax Reform. 

My friend, Grover Norquist, will be speaking, as will Gov Reeves, as well leading conservative figures from the state legislature.

Having a conversation in public matters because in the past the leadership in our state Senate has done what it can to head off tax cuts.  Bringing the facts of what can and cannot be done into the open makes it far harder for anyone to keep finding new excuses to oppose actual conservative policy. 

Sunshine is the best disinfectant against the putrid politics of backroom deals.  We have seen far too many backroom maneuvers used to kill off good conservative policy in this state. 
 
Back in 2022, Mississippi passed a law to cut the state income tax to a flat 4 percent.  This $525 million tax cut, driven forward by Speaker Philip Gunn and Gov Reeves, benefited 1.2 million taxpayers and their families.  But we must not forget how some in the Senate fought against it – not in the open, of course. 

Weak Senate leadership has a history of opposing conservative proposals in our state.  Seldom do they have the courage to come out and explicitly kill off conservative measures.  Instead, they do it on the sly. 
 
The Senate leadership maneuvered to stop anti-DEI legislation in 2024.  I don’t recall anyone coming out and explaining why they opposed anti-DEI law.  They just killed it in committee with a nudge and wink. 

For three years in a row, the Senate leadership has killed off attempts to restore the ballot initiative.  Again, those against resorting the ballot lack the courage to say they are against it.  They killed that, too, on the sly. 

Rep Rob Roberson’s excellent school funding reform bill, perhaps the only big strategic achievement of this year’s session, passed despite attempts to scupper it by some in the Senate.  (Part of the backroom deal to get the bill passed was to change its name.  It really was that petty.)
 
When the Senate leadership wants to oppose an authentically conservative policy, they follow a now familiar pattern. 

A reason is cited as to why what is being proposed can’t be done.  School choice, we were once told, would be unconstitutional.  An anti-DEI law, it was implied, was unnecessary because there was no DEI on campus.

Once that excuse is shown to be nonsense (there is no constitutional bar to school choice, DEI is rampant on campus), another excuse is promptly conjured up.  And on it goes.

Each time the Senate leadership opposes conservative policy this way, I wonder what their alternatives are.  The answer is that most of the time there are none.  It is pretty low grade to oppose ideas simply because they are not your own. 
 
Eventually, of course, a suitcase that sits on the carousel for too long ends up in lost luggage.

As a direct consequence of the 2022 Reeves-Gunn tax cuts, Mississippi is now starting to see a flood of inward investment into the state.  

Every time you hear about a new factory opening up in our state, remember who and what helped make it happen. I am very optimistic that this Tax Summit could see further progress to make our state more competitive. 

Great news!  The University of Mississippi has just announced it will be closing its DEI department, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.  
 
The University’s DEI department has been the driving force behind “Pathways to Equity”, a five-year university wide strategic plan committed to equity and racial justice. 
 
Under “Pathways to Equity” everything at the university – including curriculum content – has been increasingly managed through the prism of intersectional ideology.

According to public records requests that MCPP submitted, Ole Miss is still spending millions on its various DEI initiatives.  The head of the Division of Diversity, Shawnboda Mead, alone is on $246,881 a year.
 
If Ole Miss really is going to dismantle the apparatus of woke ideology, great.  I fear, however, that what we have here is merely a rebrand.
 
Chancellor Glenn Boyce, who made the announcement about the name change in an email, must surely sense that the political climate is changing.    Alumni are increasingly reluctant to donate to what they perceive as ‘woke’ academics who despise their values. 

Boyce seems to be trying to head off anti DEI legislation.

Until now, Mississippi’s liberal Senate leadership has been able to block various bills that would tackle DEI in our public universities.  However, the Senate leadership is increasingly weak, if not yet a lame duck.

Mississippi’s weak Senate leadership failed to block school funding reform in the last session, despite every effort.  The weak Senate leadership will only grow weaker in 2025 and may not have the strength to keep blocking anti DEI law.

Boyce perhaps senses this, and has cooked up a deal with the good ole boys to try to head off the anti DEI legislation we need.

Governors in many nearby states have taken effective action against DEI ideology, issuing Executive Orders.  Curiously our Governor has chosen not to take any action against ‘woke’ ideology despite mountains of evidence action is needed.  This is puzzling.

I suspect this may change.  The urge to appear on Fox News or get noticed by Team Trump may soon exceed the desire to keep in with university bureaucrats. 

The rising generation of Republican leaders in our state, such as State Auditor, Shad White, are clear that they want to see an end to using public money to promote divisive, race-based DEI ideology. 
 
Chancellor Boyce’s move seems to me as much an attempt at deflection, as it is a serious effort to root out woke ideology.  What the university really wants is to head off legislation that would outlaw the promotion of an ideology that is increasingly commonplace among third rate academics in our public universities.  

University administrators across America have made a Faustian bargain with their ultra progressive faculty.  They tip toe around the cultural Marxists on campus, allowing them to promote extreme leftist ideology, in return for a quiet life.

University administrators have appeased the ‘woke’ monster in the hope that it might eat them last. 

This is why the Division of Diversity might be going, but it is to be replaced by a new Division of Access, Opportunity, and Community Engagement.  The new Division will be run, it has been reported, by the same head who ran the old one.  
 
Mediocre academics at the Department of English will, I suspect, continue to “embrace diversity, inclusion, and equity as central to the scholarly mission” while “recognizing the ongoing legacies of systemic inequity within the institutions of our academic field”. 
 
Nothing in Boyce’s announcement suggests he is about to get serious about rooting out ultra leftist academics that hold tenure.  If there is any new commitment to ensuring intellectual diversity at Ole Miss, I must have missed it.  Far easier to keep feeding the monster, rather than confront it. 

If Boyce was serious about ending DEI, he would commit to running the university on the principle of equality – treating every person equally – not equity – the idea that outcomes should be manipulated to tackle perceived or historic disadvantages.

What is encouraging is that Boyce and his team are not seeking to defend DEI from first principle. 
 
In just three years, DEI has become indefensible. 

Here at MCPP we will keep punching the bruise until this deeply divisive, extremist ideology is no longer being pushed on young minds using your tax dollars.  The moral case for discriminating against some of today’s students because of what happened before they were even born has collapsed. 

Mississippi’s weak Senate leadership might not appreciate our efforts to end DEI, but so what?   The values we teach the next generation of young people in America are vastly more important that the feelings on any ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politicians.

I am not convinced that rebranding the DEI department is going to be enough to stave off legislation. I doubt that all the free tickets to all the football games will be enough to prevent change.

In order to fix a problem, you first need to accept that you’ve got a problem. In order for families in our state to get the education their children deserve, we need state leaders to recognize that right now they aren't getting a good enough education.
 
Instead, what we get is propaganda about the Mississippi education ‘miracle’. The other week the Mississippi Department of Education published the results from the 2023-24 Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP). Relying on this data to tell you about education in Mississippi would be like leaving it to your child to mark their own homework.
 
Sure enough, having marked their own homework, the Mississippi education bureaucracy told us that “student achievement has reached an all-time high” in math, English and science. Just as you get inflation in the economy, you get grade inflation in the education system. MAAP scores are used to help rate schools and districts A-F. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of D and F rated districts in recent years. This is not because those districts are no longer failing, but because even failing districts get given better grades.
 
A more credible measure of student performance is the national benchmark, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This data tells a less flattering story. 

Education standards are bad - and they are not getting better! The claim by the Mississippi Department of Education that Mississippi “students have made faster progress than nearly every other state” is ridiculous. The truth is that during the COVID lockdowns, standards as measured by the NAEP plummeted in other states, but barely changed in ours. This meant our relative position rose, but without any significant improvement in outcomes. 
 
Officials know all this, yet still present a misleading picture of what has happened in the belief that you will be impressed. Equally implausible is the idea that we should celebrate record high school graduation rates. One in four Mississippi public school students is chronically absent from school. Worse, the number of kids regularly not showing up to school has skyrocketed from 70,275 in 2016-17 to 108,310 in 2022-23.
 
Honesty about the true state of education matters because self-congratulatory propaganda is one reason things don't get fixed. Mississippi has been run by supposed conservatives for over a decade.  In all that time, we have seen remarkably little progress towards the kind of big strategic changes we need. In 12 months, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana made more progress towards school choice than Mississippi managed in 12 years. Why?

A lot of it is down to leadership. Politicians merely looking to progress along the conveyor belt don’t need any vision. They simply aim to “go along to get along”. Mississippi is now surrounded on three sides by states that have universal school choice. In every case, change took courage and vision, not self-congratulation. One of the reasons why Arkansas’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and Texas’ Greg Abbott are regularly on Fox News and are emerging as conservative leaders with a national profile is because they have shown the tenacity to fight for school choice in their own states.

Another part of the problem is that too many have an interest in exaggerating the impact of those reforms that have happened. This may be understandable, but laws passed almost a decade ago are not enough to improve education outcomes today.

Our job at MCPP is to push forward conservative policies based on true conservative principles, not dubious press releases. We aim to ensure that conservative leaders in this state finally commit to universal school choice. We are on a mission to ensure that anyone telling you that there has been an education ‘miracle’ looks ridiculous. Only school choice will do.

Elections are underway for the Mississippi Supreme Court.  Five candidates are competing for a seat in the Central District, some of whom I heard speak at the Neshoba County Fair recently.  There’s a similar election taking place in south Mississippi. It’s easy to take it for granted that ordinary people are able to elect judges in our state.

Judges have to decide complex legal questions dispassionately.  This sometimes encourages commentators to ask if we should allow ordinary voters to elect judges in the first place.
 
“Do voters know enough to elect Mississippi judges?” ran one headline last week.  Given all the complexities and the fact that most voters have only a limited understanding of the law, surely it should be left to experts to decide who is best qualified to sit on the Mississippi Supreme Court?

If you want to know why ordinary people in Mississippi ought to retain the power to elect their judges, look across the Atlantic.  On a brief visit to my native Britain, I was appalled at what’s been going on.
 
There have been widespread riots in towns and cities across England over the past couple of weeks following the murder of three young girls in Southport at a Taylor Swift dance class. 

The UK authorities are now alarmed that a sizeable number of Brits are extremely agitated about mass (often illegal) immigration.  Tens of thousands of illegal migrants have been allowed to flood into the country on small dinghies from France.  1 in 27 people now living in Britain arrived in the past two years.  4 in 10 foreign-born people in Britain have arrived in the past decade.

More ominously, perhaps, millions of Brits seem to have lost confidence in what many see as a “two tier” criminal justice system.  There’s a widespread sense that the police and the judiciary in Britain routinely apply different standards to different groups, including Muslims.
 
When, for example, (non-Muslim) Roma immigrants rioted in the city of Leeds last month, the police seemed to stand back.  A mere handful have been charged. Contrast that to the way police this week arrested and charged people for saying obnoxious things online.  In Cheshire, the police arrested a woman for an inaccurate social media post.  

The official in charge of public prosecutions in Britain declared that he has a team of “dedicated police officers scouring social media” to arrest people for posting things that are “insulting” or “abusive”.  He even threatened to extradite people to the UK for sharing such material online.
 
Unable to police the streets against violent robbery, the clowns running Britain today are arresting people for being rude online.  Having failed to keep illegal immigrants out, they are threatening to import foreigners into the country against their will for what they re-tweet.

How did Britain end up in such a sorry state?  To a large extent it is a story about the corruption of Britain’s judiciary.
 
Mass immigration has become an explosive issue in Britain because judges have routinely thwarted attempts by successive governments to control it.  In 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 the British people voted overwhelmingly to cut immigration to less than 100,000 a year.  This has not happened because judges have systematically prevented elected governments from controlling the country’s borders. 

British judges only ever seem to rule in favor of those who enter the country illegally being able to remain, ruling on the basis of what they think the law should be, not the laws Parliament has passed.
 
Britain, a once orderly, high-trust society, has become increasingly lawless because judges have routinely failed to apply sentences that ordinary Brits would regard as just.  It is so commonplace for violent robbers and rapists to be given community sentences, rather than go to prison, it is seldom even reported anymore.  Only last month, it was announced that even violent offenders would be released from prison after serving 40 percent of their sentences.

Why are British judges so awful?  Because they are unaccountable to the public.

In Britain, judges are appointed, not elected.  Until 2006, at least the appointments were made by an elected minister, meaning there was at least some degree of democratic oversight.
 
Since 2006, Britain’s judges have been appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission, a body obsessed about diversity, equity and inclusion, rather than justice.  Liberty and order in Britain are collapsing as a consequence. 

Back in Neshoba, it was refreshing to watch wannabe judges having to connect with the people that they wanted to serve.  They talked of their record of service.  They gave the audience a good sense of their values.  Watching the process of judicial elections, I realize it would be impossible for Mississippi, with elected judges, to end up in the absurd situation Britain is now in.
 
Keep it that way.  Elect your judges to safeguard your liberties.   Bar some very exceptional circumstances, such as when a city descends into dysfunction (Jackson?), elected judges are better than the alternatives.

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