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The Mississippi Center for Public Policy has appointed Hunter Estes as the Director of Communications. In his new role, Estes will oversee and coordinate all marketing and outreach efforts for the organization including social media output, press relations, video production, and more.

Regarding the appointment, Estes stated, “I am incredibly excited to take on this new role. It has become increasingly important to elevate a rejuvenated and vigorous defense of the freedoms that bind us as Mississippians. In order to successfully push for liberty-minded policies that advance prosperity for our state, we must win the battle of ideas and that all starts with effective communications strategies.”

MCPP President Douglas Carswell noted, “Hunter understands how communication has changed and is brilliant at getting our message out to a mass audience. We are honored to have him leading our outreach efforts.”

Carswell continued, “For our organization, outreach means having a hearts and minds strategy. To move the dial in Mississippi, we need to reach out and make the moral case for free markets and limited government to the rising generation. With Hunter in this role, we will.”

Estes has served as the development manager for the organization since January of 2019. In this role, he coordinated all fundraising efforts by communicating with donors, working with foundation partners, and developing a range of new programs including the expansion of digital donation opportunities and the launch of the 1798 Society, our major donors club.

Estes also serves as a community leader on the board of the Jackson chapter of America’s Future (previously America’s Future Foundation), a networking organization for liberty-minded young professionals. Furthermore, Estes joined the Mississippi Army National Guard in October of 2020.

Before moving to Mississippi, Estes worked as an intern under former Speaker Paul Ryan, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senator Ted Cruz, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

He holds his Bachelor of Science in International Relations from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

For comments or questions about the appointment, please reach out to Hunter Estes at [email protected].

Part I: The 2009 ARRA

Over the past 10 years, hundreds of millions of federal dollars have flooded into Mississippi with the stated aim of extending broadband Internet connectivity into underserved and unserved, mostly rural areas of the state. It is vital that the distribution and use of these monies be subject to close scrutiny. The federal funds themselves were drawn out of thin air via deficit spending, so it is doubly important that the real-world return on these massive investments (which are being replicated nationwide) be maximized and any potential for misuse, abuse, or waste minimized.

Federal dollars for rural broadband first flowed into Mississippi and around the nation via the 2009 American Restoration and Reinvestment Act (the Obama stimulus). The total was nearly $110 million ($133 million adjusted for inflation 2020). A decade later, theCoronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 would bring another $1.25 billion into Mississippi. State lawmakers earmarked $275 million of that money to broadband and distance learning, with $75 million going to rural electric cooperatives and privately owned rural Internet providers (via a dollar for dollar matching grant).

Of the 2009 money, more than $70 million was allocated to the Mississippi Education, Safety and Health Network (MESHNet) project to deploy a 700-megahertz interoperable public safety wireless broadband network to every public safety agency in the state.

Another $32 million was administered by a contractor, Contact Network, Inc., for two projects.  The South Central Mississippi Broadband Infrastructure Project intended to build 635 miles of fiber optic middle mile broadband infrastructure and lease another 223 miles of existing commercial fiber. These two efforts sought to expandhigh-speed Internet access in underserved areas of 16 counties in southern and central Mississippi.

The Mississippi Delta Broadband Infrastructure Project was approved to deploy a 550-mile broadband middle mile network throughout 12 Delta counties. This was to enable community anchor institutions to complete a fiber network with the capacity to upgrade with increased demand. A second objective was to connect 16 public school districts to facilitate distance learning, video conferencing, and improved school security.

The fourth project funded through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration allocated $7.2 million to support creation and operation of the Mississippi Broadband Connect Coalition, a nonprofit public-private partnership focused on producing a comprehensive statewide strategic plan for improving digital literacy, increasing access to broadband, and enabling greater adoption of broadband in Mississippi.

The Quest for Universal Internet Access

Mississippi has been singled out as one of the worst states in the nation for Internet access and, especially, for failing to provide access to largely poor rural citizens. When you dig deeper, the picture is more complicated, especially in considering actual broadband adoption rates by households who already have access to broadband. (In fact, some people live happily without broadband and don’t choose to purchase it even when it is available.)

BroadbandSearch.net says a startling 41 percent have no Internet connectivity – the highest rate in the nation. Yet the firm also states that nearly all (statistically 100 percent) of Mississippi residents have access to wireless Internet, 87.3 percent can get DSL service, 67.8 percent can get cable Internet, and 21.5 percent have fiber Internet as a choice.  Over half of Mississippians have at least three Internet service providers to choose from.

Broadband Now, which has been manually collecting plan and pricing data from all U.S. Internet service providers every month since 2015, reports that Mississippi is currently among the 10 worst states for broadband access due to the relatively low statewide average download speed of 84.5 Mbps (thousand bytes per second) and the fact that over 16 percent of people remain without access to a high-speed wired broadband connection of 25 Mbps or faster, Yet, they state that 40 percent now have access to fiber optic service, which is well above the national average.  This contrast may be explained by current federal practice, which prioritizes broadband speed over broadband coverage.

Broadband Now also states that some Mississippi counties have widespread broadband coverage while others have less than 50 percent coverage. The bottom line:

These are significant numbers, but they do not tell the whole story.

One in 10 Americans do not use the Internet at all, with the elderly and high school dropouts most likely not to go online. The largest group of Internet nonusers are people who believe the Internet is not relevant to their lives or that it infringes on their privacy. Recently imposed restrictions by providers on Internet content, as well as questions about the extent to which schools are teaching various radical ideologies, may be signaling that a battle is coming about how government-funded Internet could be used to shape the hearts and minds of Internet users.

Another Pew Research report indicates that, “Only 36% of rural adults say the government should provide subsidies to help low-income Americans purchase high-speed home internet service, compared with 50% of urban residents and 43% of suburbanites.”

That said, in some rural areas, wireless Internet is both costly and interruptible. The lockdowns, lockouts, and home-based work and education brought about in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new sense of urgency to get the entire state “wired.”

The ARRA Brings Federal Dollars to the Broadband Buildout in Mississippi

Back in 2008, a Pew Research study found that “broadband adoption in the United States continues to exhibit steady growth,” with 55 percent of Americans having a high-speed Internet connection at home, up from 45 percent a year earlier. Another 10 percent had dial-up connections. The study also found stagnant growth in usage for low-income and African-American households, but rapid growth among Americans ages 50-64 and among suburban and rural Americans. Still, only 38 percent of rural Americans had broadband at home in 2008.

It is thus not surprising that, during his campaign to win the White House, then-Senator Barack Obama listed broadband rollout to rural areas as one of his top priorities. At the time, Congress was approving the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which directed the Federal Communications Commission to compile a list of geographical areas in the U.S. lacking any “advanced telecommunications” provider and to include population and per capita income data for each area.

Shortly after his election, President Obama included $7.2 billion for rural broadband in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the giant stimulus bill intended to jumpstart the nation out of the doldrums of the “Great Recession.” Distribution of the funds was split between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service ($2.5 billion) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ($4.7 billion). Nearly $110 million in ARRA funding came through NTIA to various projects in Mississippi.(The specific distributions to Mississippi entities from the Rural Utilities Service out of its ARRA allocation are still being researched.)

Obama’s commitment to public funding for rural broadband expansion was met with optimism in many quarters. Verizon official Link Hoewing encouraged grants to states to map out areas where broadband was not available, adding that “relatively small investments in broadband can encourage substantial returns in economic growth, new jobs, and innovation.”

But a 2011 paper by Jeffrey Eisenach and Kevin Caves confirmed prior research that had indicated that RUS broadband subsidy programs funded by the ARRA “were not cost effective and often funded duplicative coverage in areas already served by existing providers.” As Nick Schulz reported in Forbes, Eisenach and Caves looked at three areas that received stimulus funds, in the form of loans and direct grants, to expand broadband access in southwestern Montana, northwestern Kansas, and northeastern Minnesota.

In these three areas, where the median household income at the time was no higher than $51,000 and the median home price no higher than $189,000, the RUS-subsidized projects spent a whopping $394,234 per household, over twice the high-end median home price and nearly eight times the high-end median household income. A $49 million project in the state of Montana, in an area with only seven households lacking at least 3G Internet wireless, was the biggest boondoggle.

In the years following, broadband penetration in the United States continued its rapid expansion across the country. By 2018, roughly three-fourths of American adults had broadband Internet service at home and 90 percent were Internet users.

Even so, Pew Research found again that racial minorities, older adults, rural residents, and those with lower levels of education and income were less likely to have broadband service at home. These statistics, however, did not take into account that about 20 percent of American adults, largely younger adults, non-whites, and lower-income Americans, had become “smartphone-only” Internet users.

As the Mississippi Broadband Connect Coalition was winding down its federally funded activities in 2013, Jason Dean, then its managing director [he is now President of the State Board of Education], said regarding broadband availability in Mississippi: “There’s a lot of coverage if you take in cable and cell phones, but we’re trying to get more people to use it. Education, health care, government services, and workforce training have to create demand drivers.”

A 2015 order from the Obama Federal Communications Commission overturned laws in 19 states that had prevented local governments from attempting to build out and compete with privately held broadband networks. In the aftermath of that action, the Mississippi legislature enacted the Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act of 2019, overturning a 1942 state regulation that prevented electric cooperatives from offering anything other than electricity to their members. 

Part II of this report will discuss the Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act and the politics behind that. Stay tuned.

President-elect Joe Biden says he wants Congress to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour.

About time too, you might think, seeing as there’s not been an increase in the minimum wage in over a decade.  If everyone in America has to be paid at least $15 an hour, it would boost pay checks and reduce poverty, right?  Wrong.

What sounds like a good idea in Washington DC might actually be bad for Mississippi – and here’s why.

Passing a law to force every business to pay everyone at least $15 per hour does not suddenly make every employees worth $15 per hour.

If a local business is currently paying one of their new entry level staff say $12 or $14 per hour, raising the minimum wage will mean one of two things;  either the employer takes the loss and pays someone more than they are worth, or they let them go.

Making it more expensive to hire people means that fewer people will be hired.  Instead of a bigger pay check, for some there will be no pay check at all.

Right now in Mississippi, according to federal estimates, around 4 percent of people are on the minimum wage.  Studies suggest that these tend to be employees coming into the labour market in entry level positions.  In other words, they are likely to be on the minimum wage for only a short period of time before they progress up the pay scale and earn more.

Far from helping employees, doubling the minimum wage would make it illegal for some people to sell their services to a local employer.

“But businesses can afford to pay more” I hear some people say. 

Really?  Some businesses will be able to, not because they have a magic supply of money, but because they will be able to pass on the costs to the customer. But what about some of the smaller local business where you live? 

Thanks to Covid, many smaller firms in the retail and service sectors are already struggling.  Many simply won’t be able to afford higher wages, or pass on the costs to their customers. 

Do we really want to introduce a measure that will hit small, independent businesses hardest?  There are plenty of local ministries in our area that are going to struggle with higher costs, not to mention start-ups. 

Wealth doesn’t come from passing a law that gives one group of people a legal right to resources.  It comes instead when entrepreneurs are free to bring people and ideas together and give customers what they want.  If the minimum wage is set too high, it makes it harder for that to happen.

Imposing a $15 per hour minimum across the whole country makes no allowance for the condition of the local economy.  Insisting that a uniform rate apply right across America, in Mississippi as well as Massachusetts and Michigan, just doesn’t make sense.

If there is to be a minimum wage at all, then we should at least allow different states to set the rate according to the condition of their economy.  That way we could see the effect of the different rates in each state.  If one state set the rate at say $16 per hour, with no discernible downsides, we could follow suit.  If, on the other hand, a high rate in one state led to higher unemployment and business failure, we would know not to do the same.

Washington seldom gets things right when it imposes a one size fits all plan.  It’s time to let each state decide on this for itself.

This article first appeared in the Madison County Journal.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy has appointed Lesley Davis as its Executive Vice President. Davis previously served as the Interim President & CEO, during which time, the organization conducted a global search over multiple months that ultimately led to the selection of Douglas Carswell, Brexit leader and former Member of British Parliament, as the new President & CEO.

To this new position, Davis brings a passion for her fellow Mississippians as well as extensive policy, legal, and development experience. She will play a critical leadership role through strategic planning, policy advancement, and development.

Regarding the appointment, Davis said, “I’ve loved and supported this organization for almost 22 years, and to have this chance now to support her mission from the inside with this incredibly talented team is a dream come true.”

She went on to note that, “[a]s a lifelong Mississippian, who went to public school and college here, met her husband here, and raised three sons here, I love this state and its people deeply. Nothing would bring me greater joy than to be able to help make Mississippi freer and more prosperous.”

MCPP’s new President & CEO, Douglas Carswell, stated, “I am absolutely delighted that Lesley will be staying on as our Executive Vice President.  Her commitment to our organization and to free market ideals is exemplary.  Her energy and enthusiasm are a major asset to our team.” 

Davis has also served MCPP as a board member and policy leader since February 2019. Her deep respect and appreciation for the fundamental freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution have fueled a lifelong interest in law, public policy, and political philosophy. 

She received her BA in political science with a minor in English from Mississippi State University, where she served as Executive Director of the College Republicans, President of the Pre-Law Society, Student Association Attorney General, and Campaign Director for Senator Trent Lott’s senatorial campaign on the MSU campus. She was a starting guard for the MSU Women’s Basketball team and was voted MSU’s Homecoming Queen.  

Davis received her Juris Doctorate from The University of Baltimore, where she was President of the Christian Legal Society and Executive Director of the Republican Law Students. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Arlin M. Adams, United States Office of Independent Counsel in Washington D.C. (previously U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Third Circuit) and was later hired as an OIC Prosecuting Attorney. She continued her career as a partner in a well-respected Baltimore law firm, where she focused on toxic tort and medical malpractice defense litigation. 

Since returning home to Mississippi, Lesley has served on the Advisory Committee of the Mississippi Justice Institute, the Executive Committee of Bully Bloc,  the Board of Directors for the Cline Centers, the MSU Alumni Advisory Board, the Board of Directors of the MSU Shackouls Honors College, the Board of Directors of Delta Gamma— Jackson, the Young Life Executive Committee, the Jackson Preparatory Global Leadership Institute Board of Directors (currently the Board Chair), and as a small group leader and large group teacher/speaker in women’s ministry at First Presbyterian Church Jackson, where she is a member. Lesley lives in Flowood with her husband, John, and their three sons: Jack, Charlie, and Will.

For comments or questions about the new appointment, please reach out to Hunter Estes at [email protected].

2020 proved to be one of the deadliest years in Jackson history. Records suggest that 130 homicides took place by the end of December. The previous high is believed to be in 1995 when 92 recorded homicides occurred.

A WLBT investigation revealed that, among 20 major cities, Jackson had the second-highest rate of per-capita homicides, only surpassed slightly by St. Louis last year. This startling statistic put Jackson ahead of Baltimore, Memphis, and New Orleans. It also reveals that Jackson’s homicide rate was close to three times higher than Washington DC and Chicago.

Justin Vicory of the Clarion Ledger noted, “[i]n a city with a population of roughly 164,422 residents, the 130 homicides equates to one violent death for about every 1,200 residents. It equates to a homicide in the state's largest city just under every three days.”

The violence represents part of a deadly larger pattern as 2018 and 2019 both proved to have incredibly high homicide numbers as well. Each of those years set an individual record for the highest rate of per capita homicides to have taken place in Jackson.

This startling three-year trend of escalating violence has left many residents concerned. The per capita murder rate continues to rise as Jackson’s population continues to decline and many city residents have sought to flee the enduring violence.

The fact is that Jackson’s crime problem continues to impact its population and hinder potential economic recovery for the city.

As I wrote in 2019, “If Mississippi aims to seriously contend with the existing brain drain, then it must explore the root of what is driving so many young people to leave the state. 

According to a recent Nielsen study, millennials are drawn to cities at greater rates than previous generations. Older Americans once sought suburban withdrawal, but Nielsen reveals that millennials are tending to seek life with more subways than driveways. Compared to surrounding states, Mississippi has less to offer in regard to urban life, a point that is heightened by Jackson’s continued decline.

To begin drawing in residents again (especially millennials), the state must prioritize urban renewal for the city that was once considered a “gem of the south,” and it ought to start by making its residents feel secure again. A fully funded crime center equipped with expanded technological capacities to monitor and respond to crime around the city (as was promised) would be a potential major step forward.”

Since that piece was written in the summer of 2019, the violence has only continued to get worse. It is increasingly difficult to imagine younger generations, who prefer urban living, to seek out Jackson as a destination when continued violence discourages long-term residency.

Many of Jackson’s downtown business sections continue to remain largely boarded up. The facades of businesses that once thrived and brought life to the area stand deadly silent now. As Jackson’s homicide rate continues to rise, it becomes increasingly difficult to sell private businesses on reinvesting in “The City with Soul.”

“What happened in our nation’s capital yesterday was wrong”, said Judge James Herring, Board Chairman, speaking on behalf of the Board of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. “Those ugly scenes in our legislature should sadden every American patriot.” 

“The Mississippi Center for Public Policy stands to advance the constitutional ideals of liberty.  It can never be consistent with those principles to resort to mob violence”, he added. 

“As a leading Conservative think tank in Mississippi, we believe America is at her greatest when she remains true to her Founding Ideals and to the Constitution.”  

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy is very excited to announce that Douglas Carswell has been appointed as its new President and CEO.

Carswell was a Member of Parliament in Britain for 12 years. He was re-elected every time he stood for election, and in 2014 he achieved one of the largest swings in any election in British history.

He co-founded Vote Leave, the official campaign that won the Brexit referendum. He was instrumental in helping to ensure that a Brexit vote was held and then won. He switched parties and forced a by-election to help put the issue at the top of the political agenda.

Carswell has also served as an advisor to the United Kingdom government on trade as a non-executive director at the Department of International Trade.  He believes that free trade helps drive human progress.

He was personally inspired by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Milton Friedman when growing up, and Carswell is knowledgeable and passionate about free-markets and individual liberty.  He is the author of four books, as well as numerous papers and articles for leading free market think tanks.

A Fellow at the John Locke Institute, Carswell sits on the Advisory Council of one of Britain’s leading think tanks, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has published works by no less than twelve Nobel Prize laureates.

Carswell received a degree in history at the University of East Anglia, before reading for his Masters’ degree at King’s College, University of London. 

Regarding his desire to move to America, Carswell noted, “I believe in American exceptionalism.  Americans flourish when they are free.  The US is the greatest republic the world has ever known because she is the most successful experiment in freedom that there has ever been.

It is because I was not born American that I appreciate what sets this great country apart.  America has been sustained by a set of ideals enshrined in the Constitution; liberty, respect for private property, the rule of law, and equality before the law.

During the press conference, Interim CEO Lesley Davis stated that, “[t]he appointment of Douglas as the new CEO is an incredible win not only for the Center, but for Mississippi as a whole. Douglas is an international leader in the fight for freedom and a generational talent with a tremendous vision for both our organization and the state.”

In his announcement, Carswell noted the importance of MCPP and Mississippi’s leadership on public policy issues, “[t]he best way to win the fight for freedom again is to take the initiative here in states like Mississippi, not to look to what is happening in Washington DC.

The great genius of the American system that the Founding Fathers created is that it is decentralized, with different states free to trial various policy approaches.  Good ideas come from where ordinary Americans are, not inside the Washington ‘beltway’ where politicians happen to congregate.

By advancing the ideas of liberty at the state level, led in our state by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we can win this fight for freedom.”

Mississippi has some of the most consumer friendly laws in the country when it comes to buying and using fireworks.

You have probably noticed temporary firework stands set up near your house in the past couple weeks and that is because Mississippi has a defined selling period. Retailers can sell fireworks during the two busiest seasons; from June 15 through July 5 and from December 5 through January 2. And what retailers can sell and you can purchase is largely wide open. 

But while state law provides for much freedom, many municipalities limit the use of fireworks in their city limits. Though not exhaustive, here is the rundown of whether fireworks are legal or illegal in Mississippi cities. 

Fireworks are legal in the following cities:

Bay St. Louis, Horn Lake, Jackson (as of 2011), Natchez, Nettleton, Waveland.

The use of fireworks are banned in the following cities:

Aberdeen, Amory, Biloxi, Columbus, Corinth, D’Iberville, Diamondhead, Flowood, Fulton, Hattiesburg, Hernando, Laurel, Long Beach, Meridian, Moss Point, Ocean Springs, Olive Branch, Oxford, Pascagoula, Pass Christian,  Petal, Poplarville, Ridgeland, Southaven, Starkville, Tupelo, Vicksburg, West Point.

Disclosure: These regulations are based on recent news stories. Check with local authorities for most updated ordinance. 

The default appears to be illegal, while it is largely legal in unincorporated portions of the counties. 

One of the most common refrains from limiting fireworks is safety concerns and injuries caused by fireworks. But a 2017 report from the U.S. Consumer Safety Commission says “there is not a statistically significant trend in estimated emergency department-treated, fireworks-related injuries from 2002 to 2017.”

Rest assured, you are more likely to get injured from children’s toys then from fireworks-related injuries. 

Noise is the other big complaint concerning fireworks, particularly after a certain time. Of course, municipal noise ordinances can and already do police that issue.  

So as you celebrate the day which marks our freedom from the tyranny and oppression of another country, make sure you don’t run afoul with our own government regulators that have taken it upon themselves to limit your freedoms.

I’m Matthew Nicaud, the Tech Policy Analyst at MCPP, and your host for the Tech Talks interview series. In our Tech Talks, we engage with tech leaders, policy makers, and entrepreneurs to discuss the tech world in the Magnolia state and promote public thought on key tech issues.

For this edition of Tech Talks, I recently had the privilege to talk with Tim Mask. Tim is an advocate for economic tech development in Mississippi and the CEO of Maris, West, & Baker marketing firm in Jackson, MS. In our conversation, we explore key questions. How can Mississippi grow its tech economy? What are the challenges? Where has the state made headway?

Let’s hear from Tim Mask….

I was born here, and I've made a career here. Socially and economically, I also am the owner of a company. The prosperity of my company depends on the economy of our state doing well and particularly organizations and businesses that are largely either service or knowledge-based type companies. But it's not just for the well-being of my company, it is for the well-being of myself and my family. And then for those people that work for this company, the state needs to do well, the state needs to do well in certain sectors. And that's really where my passion in this lies.

I'm a strong advocate of free markets. I have seen where public-private partnerships can and do work particularly in being able to provide  some aid to entrepreneurial endeavors. And that's probably even more important in a state like ours, where we have less available investment in venture capital than a lot of other places. This goes into part of the reason that some of our entrepreneurs ended up leaving for other places that have more ready access to venture capital. So the idea is that in some instances, the government is able to “prime the pump," and then the private sector uses that to take it from there.

I'm not for zero government participation in the start-up culture and economic development. But I also think that the private sector can, in most cases, do things better and more efficiently than the public sector can.

I think we lose a lot of potential when we're losing talent, particularly the kind of talent that we've traditionally been losing. There's also the component of talent attraction. You can argue the numbers from different aspects, but I've always said that you can't argue against the fact that talent attraction policies play a huge role in this.

I think Mississippi generally has a good business operating environment. And I think most of the research and the studies show that. So, it’s not that we don’t have a good business operating environment. We look at Silicon Valley, Austin, or the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and what these tech hubs have in common is a really strong research university component. With this is an almost ferocious tech transfer effort. This means getting that theoretical technology and development that goes through the research university system, into a practical form and out into the private sector.

We have some good research universities in Mississippi. In the past, they tended to work more in silos outside of the economic development community. This is changing pretty rapidly, but it hasn’t been that great from a tech transfer standpoint. But I think we are now seeing the research universities cooperating more amongst themselves. And you're seeing that economic development community at the state level work closer with those research universities. So these efforts are not disjointed anymore. I think that is a very encouraging development that we are recently seeing in the state.

I would say the biggest issue is access to venture capital. It is mostly a venture capital issue. I'm generalizing here, but there are “five guys” that everybody goes to in Mississippi when they want an angel investment or when they’re seeking some start-up money. There are five guys. They're all guys, and they're getting increasingly older. These guys can only fund so many ventures, and this lack of available funding makes it difficult for start-ups to get off the ground. There is also the lack of a strong unifying network of Mississippi incubators and accelerators, which is a contributing barrier for entrepreneurs.

I think the flag was an issue, and I think we did what we needed do there. I think it was overdue, and I think it was necessary. I think that removed one of the biggest barriers, maybe the biggest one.

I don't want to say that some of the other policies aren't ever looked at by the tech community, but I also don't want to say that these policies make a meaningful difference. I think some companies may look at these conservative social policies, particularly certain industries such as the entertainment industry. Some of these things are issues for some industries but are not an issue for others. But generally speaking, I don't think that these things are a real barrier for venture capital coming into the state. And we're not necessarily trying to attract entrepreneurs to the state. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. We're trying to retain entrepreneurs in the state. I think that is where our focus should be.

When you want more of something, incentivize it, when you want less of something, tax it. So, it's all well and good to attract a paper mill. There is a model for doing that, and it may or may not work out, depending on the deal. But when you talk about incentivizing people, you are incentivizing the skills that those people bring to the table versus just incentivizing the industry. It is a whole lot cheaper to incentivize a person than it is to incentivize industry, such as a plant.

Also, you've probably got good jobs at that plant, but a plant that employed 3,000 people 25 years ago now probably employs 300 and may soon employ 30 because of automation. That's been going on for half a century.

Additionally, most jobs at that plant are going to top out at a certain pay rate. That puts a ceiling on us. But I think it's an artificial ceiling. It doesn't have to be there. When you talk about people-incentivized economic development, you are talking about investing in individuals instead of industries. It is a lot cheaper to invest in individuals than it is to invest in whole industries. This leads to less overall investment in the incentives -which is good for the taxpayer. You are talking about not putting a ceiling on the earning potential of individuals who are staying in the state or who you are attracting to the state. This investment in a knowledge-based economy, is a formula to raise the state's per capita income, which should be the goal of every economic development program. Bringing industry to the state is not the goal.  Bringing in talent to the state is not the goal. These things are just means to the end. The goal is to raise the per capita income of the citizens of the state.

As a state with only about 3 million people, it’s not going to take much to start moving the needle of higher per capita income. Especially when we talk about underserved communities, it's not going to take that much to get this ball rolling. And then when it does, you have a snowball effect, because you are bringing in business here. You are retaining the type of individuals and entrepreneurs here that then spin off other ventures, other products, and other companies. So when you get that cycle going, it is the same model that has seen so much success in places like Silicon Valley.

I'd say making sure that our entire economic development ecosystem has a unified game plan. For the most part, we should be moving in the same direction, from the very top down to the local level through Chambers of Commerce. That doesn't mean all areas of the state are going to be trying to do the same exact things, but its a cluster approach that strategically moves us all to a targeted goal. That's what we're starting to see now. So it's extremely encouraging.

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