A recently published survey showcased overwhelmingly strong support for allowing wine to be sold in grocery stores across the state of Mississippi.

The Looking For Wine coalition, in conjunction with Spry Strategies conducted the poll which found that 75 percent of Mississippians support the policy change.

The survey comes as further testament that Mississippians are in favor of increasing alcohol freedom in the Magnolia state and rolling back prohibition-era policies that limit the economic freedom of both buyers and sellers.

Furthermore, the survey also found that 48 percent of respondents would be more likely to vote for a House or Senate candidate who supported reforms that would allow grocery stores to sell wine in addition to beer, while only 17 percent would be less likely to vote for said candidates.

Fascinatingly, exhibited by the survey was the fact that well over 70 percent of respondents who identified as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all supported the ability for grocery stores to sell wine. This indicates the broad, non-partisan nature of the vast coalition of supporters.

It is abundantly clear that most Mississippians want change. They are tired of having the government make life decisions for them and would prefer that they have the ability to decide if, when, and where they purchase wine.

If our state political leaders want to secure a major bipartisan win, then alcohol freedom is the place to start. After all, how often do we have an issue that 75 percent of people across all political parties agree on?

With a range of bills having been introduced this session, there are a range of good policy options available, including the sale of wine in grocery stores, raising the business license cap, reforming the wet-dry county process, and more. Mississippi truly has the chance to make this the year for alcohol freedom in the state.

Rural states, even with more heavily-regulated alcohol marketplaces, tend to have higher death rates from alcohol-related car crashes.

Conversely, states with more of their population in urban areas and less heavily regulated alcohol marketplaces tend to be on the lower end of the scale when it comes to alcohol-related car crashes. This is according to an analysis of data from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, rural states tend to have higher overall driving death rates than more urban ones, because of a variety of factors including a smaller number of trauma centers, higher rates of texting while driving and lower seatbelt usage rates. 

Of the top five states for alcohol-impaired driving deaths from 2004 to 2014, three are control states for alcohol and all but one (Mississippi allows the sale of wine in liquor stores) permit the sale of wine in grocery stores. All three average about 1.963 million in population.

A control state is one where states are in charge of the sale of distilled spirits and sometimes even wine and beer through state agencies at the wholesale level. 

The Mississippi Department of Revenue regulates the sale of alcohol in Mississippi through the licensing of retailers, taxation at both the wholesale and retail levels and wholesaling of both liquor and wine. The Magnolia State is one of five states that wholesale both wine and distilled spirits.

The states with the lowest death rates from alcohol-related incidents are more heavily populated (8.5 million average population) and all but one (Utah) are non-control states, which means private distributors handle the wholesaling of distilled spirits, wine and beer.

Parsing the data further, the average alcohol-related traffic deaths per 100,000 residents was 40 for the 43 states that are non-control states and 45 for the 17 that are.

In 2017, the Arkansas legislature allowed the sale of wine in grocery stores via the passage of Act 508. In 2018, there were 516 traffic fatalities in the state, up from 493 the year before the legislation passed but considerably less than the 10-year average of 528.

Giving someone weight loss advice, ideas for healthy recipes, and grocery list recommendations can land you in jail for six months with fines totaling $1,000, according to the Mississippi Department of Health. 

Donna Harris learned that first hand when the Mississippi State Department of Health threatened to throw her in jail for offering weight-loss tips to happy customers.  But now, working in partnership with the Mississippi Justice Institute (“MJI”), a non-profit constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Donna is fighting back against the Department’s unconstitutional ban on speech about weight loss.   

“Conversations about the best ways to lose weight are as old as modern civilization itself,” said MJI director Aaron Rice. “The government does not have the power to stop people from speaking about this common, everyday topic.  If anything, the government should be encouraging these conversations, especially when our state is struggling with such high rates of obesity.”

Donna has a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and is a certified personal trainer. Her life passion is sharing information about nutrition and physical fitness.  After leaving the workforce to raise her daughter at home, Donna was looking for a new career that would allow her to balance her work and her life as a busy mom. 

As a local fitness instructor, she had already attracted a loyal following. Her clients knew Donna was passionate and knowledgeable about nutrition and physical fitness, so many began turning to her for weight-loss advice. Some even suggested she start private classes, offering to pay for her services. So, Donna decided to make the plunge. She would become an entrepreneur. 

She began offering an eight-week weight loss program at the beginning of 2020 and had 70 participants signed up immediately. 

“When I learned I would have to cancel my weight-loss class, I was devastated,” said Harris.  “People were counting on me and they were so excited about learning how to lose weight in a healthy way, and they were so disappointed when I told them I was not going to be able to go through with the program. I felt like my dreams had been crushed.”  

Donna’s website included disclaimers that she wasn’t a registered dietician, and that she would only be providing weight loss strategies and would not be offering information to treat specific medical conditions.  And Mississippi law specifically exempts people offering “general nutrition information as to the use of foods, food materials, or dietary supplements” from the licensure requirements. 

The department claimed that Donna and others are only allowed to provide government-approved guidelines, such as the Food Pyramid and myplate.gov, not provide the advice she was offering.

To satisfy the state, and avoid jail time and fines, Donna would have to complete 1,200 hours of training that she doesn’t need or have the time to complete as a busy mom. 

”In Mississippi, we should be encouraging people like Donna to follow their dreams, start businesses, create jobs, and teach people how to eat healthier,” said Rice. “We shouldn’t be putting unconstitutional red tape in their way.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi. 

With multiple states passing legislation and 20 more states considering similar bills, college athletes are going to be compensated for the use of their names, images, and likeness - in one form or another. This is no longer a debate.

The NCAA and its conferences are the legal, economic cartels entrusted with negotiating and distributing revenue from media and sponsorship partnerships to their members. A patchwork system of multiple jurisdictions depending on state, public or private institutions will create an unprecedented level of complexity and chaos. Such a system will be not only be rife with recruiting chicanery, it will create an employee/employer relationship at the collegiate level, which essentially eliminates the amateur athlete designation in any of the revenue-generating sports. A federal solution is required if the NCAA wants to continue to maintain control.

In response to these recent state laws and the changing public perception of the function of the student/athlete, some interesting ideas have been floated, including one from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, proposing to create a separate division of large revenue schools to compete independently of the mid-tier and lower-tier programs. All of the suggestions we’ve seen so far have focused either on redistributing existing revenue sources or on giving athletes the right to seek compensation from corporate sources and/ or from the sale of licensed apparel bearing their likeness. One of us works at one of the biggest college basketball schools in the nation and the other one works in a state dominated by college football. We’ve both worked extensively within the framework of the business of collegiate sports. The notion of allowing college players to seek compensation directly from “sponsors” and alumni bases is the same system upon which slimy college boosters and AAU coaches have long been preying and thriving.

We propose a different solution. One that doesn’t require redistributing existing revenues, breaking up conferences, eliminating non-revenue sports, or inviting unprecedented levels of recruiting violations and booster tomfoolery. There are ways to use technology and the unmatched market for college athletics to solve this problem. Working with Congress to draft federal legislation, the NCAA could ensure fair athlete compensation while protecting its status as an amateur sports organization. The answer lies in the data. 

When the Supreme Court’s decision in 2018 ended the federal moratorium on the states determining how to regulate sports gambling, a new revenue source was opened to all leagues – professional or amateur. According to estimates from Bloomberg News and Forbes, the NBA will generate over $300 million for the next six years and the NFL twice that. The four, major sports leagues are each reportedly generating over $200 million per year for their data and rights. The NCAA has two of the biggest gambling subject sports in college football and March Madness. Reuters estimates that over $8.5 Billion is wagered on NCAA basketball alone and the upcoming National Championship of college football between LSU and Clemson, both undefeated, should generate unprecedented interest. With such assets, the NCAA could easily generate over $500 million a year for its data and rights. 

There are 15,000 D-I men’s football and basketball scholarship players. Would an extra $30,000 a year make players more likely to enjoy their college experience? Or, if the NCAA passed out $200 million to the 347 Division I basketball schools, then each school could recruit and pay the players of their choice, allowing for all schools to have a good shot at acquiring talent and remaining competitive. Otherwise, if the NCAA waits too long, it will no longer have the ability to determine its own future.  If the NCAA leadership is not careful, state legislatures will create an environment where the alumni at schools like Duke will sell out of the $25,000 Zion Williams commemorative jerseys and Ole Miss business owners will pay $100,000 to feature the Rebels’ starting offensive line in a promotional video…all in the name of allowing student athletes to be equitably compensated for their names and likenesses.

By acknowledging that sports gambling is a legitimate and legal pastime enjoyed by millions of its fans, the NCAA could leverage substantial incremental revenue into a solution that compensates athletes while maintaining the amateur status upon which the NCAA business model and its core value system rests. Ironically, the NCAA, which has been so vocally opposed to gambling for years, might now need to embrace this legal pastime to save its identity, mission, and business model.

This appeared in Sports Business Journal on March 2, 2020.

Over many decades in America, we’ve observed a great shift in the manner by which society attempts to solve problems. Despite a governmental system designed by founders who were suspicious of centralized government power, we continue to fund a larger and more complex system of government.

And while a lot of that complexity and bigness has grown in Washington, D.C., we can’t deny the same cancer has infected our states. One of the biggest problems, and there are many, with allowing the size, scope, and cost of government to expand is that we surrender our personal responsibility in the process. In so doing, we abdicate our legal and moral rights to live our lives as we see fit. We disempower ourselves as individuals and our communities of the liberty and responsibility we own naturally.

From Lord Acton to Reinhold Niebuhr, theologians have agreed that the consolidation of power into higher-level organizations should only be done as a last resort. In Christianity and Social Order, Archbishop William Temple described the idea of the individual’s value succinctly: “the State exists for its citizens, not the citizens for the State.” Temple goes on to write, “one of our first considerations will be the widest possible extension of personal responsibility; it is the responsible exercise of deliberate choice which most fully expresses personality and best deserves the great name of freedom.” On this idea rests the culture of our inherited civilization and the promise of what America is to be.

Many Catholics are familiar with the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization if it can be done well instead by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity that can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is central to the American ideals of limited government and personal freedom. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task. He wrote that the welfare state was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. In the pope’s words, “this leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

For those of us interested in economics, a core principle of economic efficiency is that goods and services are produced and allocated to their most valuable uses, with as little waste as possible. When we think of how we help society, there are really two paths. We can give a growing, bureaucratic, centralized government our funds through ever-increasing taxes to work on societal problems in our stead, or we can choose to give our time and money to private, local institutions, like families, churches, and nonprofits, to address societal problems in the local community. If efficiency is our goal, it seems the latter path is the obvious choice. Which path is consistent with theology and with our founding?

Similar to the ideas written by Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, which were heavily influenced by the essays of John Locke, the Dutch Reformed theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper argued Protestants have a principle he called “sphere sovereignty.” Slightly different than Jefferson and Locke, though, Kuyper put forward the principle that the State derives its authority from God, but families, churches, businesses, local social organizations, and other private institutions have a sovereign right to maximum liberty and ultimate authority to regulate their own affairs that preceded the State. Only when the State can prove the need to resolve a conflict between these spheres of sovereignty should it intercede.

Locke wrote (not under his own name at the time owing to the rebelliousness of his ideas) that the individual possesses rights from the creator, and government has been given the responsibility to protect and defend those rights only through the consent of the people — in his words, “to protect the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate.” These ideas, which should be considered both libertarian and Christian, were the ones that fueled the American Revolution and inspired people all across the globe to value liberty. But over the ensuing centuries, many authors, some judges, and more than a few progressive professors have claimed that Locke was a deist and that his revolutionary ideas were rooted in a godless rationalism and inspired by reason alone. I would argue that reason and theology are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, are born of the same father — truth.

A better way to connect Locke’s ideas on limited government and Christian theology is to read his own words. Repeatedly, Locke references God and the Old Testament in his Second Treatise on Government, which is considered by many to be the most influential document on political philosophy in the history of modern government. One of the best accounts of Locke’s views on liberty and God can be found in a meaty and well-researched book entitled John Locke: Philosopher of American Liberty, writtenby Mary-Elaine Swanson. In the book, the author uses Locke’s original text to methodically destroy the notion of Locke as a godless rationalist philosopher and restore the Lockean ideas at the heart of America’s founding, ideas underpinned by a conviction to reason and God’s revelation.

Today, as a consequence of our complex and powerful government, we have weakened the application of the principles of subsidiarity, sphere sovereignty, and natural rights. We have sacrificed our personal responsibility in a Faustian trade with government officials who claim they will be happy to attend to the common good on our behalf. By giving more power to central government to solve more social problems, we’ve not only made the process of resource allocation less efficient; we’ve also removed the moral authority and the personal relationships that exist in local communities.

When we try to replace a personal relationship, in which the dynamic of mutual accountability is present, with a government solution, we weaken the bonds in a community connected by the common good. It’s in the best interest of all in a local community when a person or family in need is helped. And when we address temporary problems at the local level through personal relationships, those problems don’t become permanent ones because it’s in the best interest of both parties that they do not. The opposite is true of government. As Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” We also need to realize that we hold the power to make a difference in our own hands and in our own communities. We possess both liberty and responsibility. We don’t need a massive, indebted bureaucracy or an all-powerful leader in Washington to do it for us. Our founders, standing on the shoulders of others and guided by the words of God, have already provided the way.

This appeared in American Spectator on March 1, 2020.

At a meeting of the Ways and Means Temperance Subcommittee Wednesday, legislators heard about the advantages and disadvantages of removing some of the nation’s most restrictive laws on alcohol.

There is building momentum to change the state’s antiquated policies enacted after the state was the last one nationally to end prohibition in 1966 after allowing the sale of beer in 1933. 

Ocean Springs Mayor Shea Dobson said he supports wine in grocery stores because of economic development, increased product availability, and its ability to possibly attract millennials. 

Mississippi Department of Revenue Commissioner Herb Frierson told the subcommittee that he supports allowing package stores to sell lottery tickets. He also said that any attempt to bring wine to grocery stores would cause them to want to sell liquor as well.

His agency supports spinning off the state’s massive liquor and wine warehouse to a public/private partnership like the Mississippi Lottery. He said pure privatization would result in higher costs for consumers (since the state acts as the distributor and contracts shipping to an outside firm) and would cost the state $80 million in revenue annually from giving up the warehouse.

There is popular support for changing state law to sell wine in grocery stores. According to a telephone poll of 700 registered voters by Spry Strategies, 74 percent say they would support such legislation and 48 percent said they’d be more likely to vote for a legislative candidate who’d support the sale of wine in grocery stores. 

Wine sales in grocery stores are legal in 39 states, including Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana.

The poll was commissioned by Looking For Wine, a coalition that seeks to bring the sale of wine to grocery stores.

There are 600 permits issued for package stores in the state and 2,000 permits for restaurants and bars statewide.

According to the DOR, the warehouse’s damage rate is only 0.11 percent and it boasts an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent.

Victor Pittman is the president of the Mississippi Hospitality Beverage Association and owner of a package store, Silver Leaf Wines and Spirits, in Ridgeland. His organization has defeated efforts to bring wine to grocery stores in the past few years. 

 “Out of state retail corporations harvest money that could be recirculating in our local economies,” Pittman said. “Online retailers leave nothing for recirculation in the economy. Municipalities and our state lose because the tax base shrinks. Direct shipments would be disruptive and a disaster.” 

He told the subcommittee that allowing grocery stores to sell wine would largely put the state’s package stores out of business since most of their money comes from wine sales. He said increasing the number of permits would only dilute market share because of the state’s declining population. 

He also said any change to the state law — which by Mississippi counties and cities are “dry” and sales of alcohol are forbidden barring a local election to change a municipality or county to “wet” — would be an imposition upon the dry counties in the state.

“Big out-of-state grocery and box retailers have had years of practice of profiting off the destruction of public health in other states,” Pittman said. “Alcohol markets are unable to regulate themselves without being destructive to public health and safety. Any increase in consumption places an undue burden on taxpayers, public safety officials and the health care industry.” 

He also claimed that alcohol-related vehicular fatalities would go up if the state liberalized the sale of wine and spirits.

Subcommittee chairman and state Rep. Hank Zuber (R-Ocean Springs) asked Pittman if his organization would be willing to reach a compromise on allowing additional permits per entity to allow outlets like Costco and Trader Joes (which rely heavily on alcohol sales as part of their business model) to have multiple stores in the state. 

Pittman said his organization would open to a possible compromise.

Among the bills being considered by the legislature include:

- House Bill 979 would end the flip the default setting of “dry” to “wet.” If an area wants to go back to being dry if this bill became law, it’d have to hold another election.

- House Bill 4 would increase the maximum number of package retailer permits from the present one to three.

- House Bill 1088 and Senate Bill 2533 would allow individuals to purchase wine from an out-of-state winery and have it shipped to a package retailer in Mississippi. Right now, Mississippi is one of only five states to ban the direct shipment of wine to a consumer.

- House Bill 1381 would allow the sale and consumption of alcohol at athletic events at a public school, community college or university. It also “brings forward” code sections related to alcohol that could allow the legislature to enact further changes to state law.

- Senate Bill 2534 would authorize the direct shipment of wine to consumers.

The state is a control state, which means the state controls the distribution of wine and spirits. Even wine and liquor made in Mississippi have to go to the state’s warehouse in Gluckstadt before they can be shipped out to package stores, restaurants and bars statewide.

House Bill 1200, sponsored by Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, would create the FORUM Act to expressly permit all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, speeches and guest speakers, distribution of literature, carrying signs, and circulating  petitions.

Schools would not be able to create specific "free speech zones" and they may not deny a religious, political, or ideological student organization any benefit or privilege available to any other student organization, or otherwise discriminate against such an organization, based on the expression of the organization.

This, unfortunately, is needed in Mississippi.

A former student at Jones County Junior College is suing the school for infringing on his free speech rights, and the U.S. Department of Justice is supporting his suit. 

Michael Brown was stopped twice by campus police for trying to inform students about the political club he was involved with, Young Americans for Liberty, without prior authorization from the school’s administration, according to the complaint filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. 

Brown was stopped by campus officials early last year about an inflatable beach ball, known as a “free speech ball,” upon which students could write messages of their choice and again in the spring for polling students about marijuana legalization. 

An administrator told YAL that they weren’t permitted on campus since they hadn’t sought permission from the college.

The current regulations at JCJC require at least three days’ notice to administrators before “gathering for any purpose.” The student handbook also puts even more restrictions on college-connected student organizations, which must schedule their events through the vice president of student affairs. The school administration also reserves the right, according to the handbook, to not schedule a speaker or an activity.

The DOJ statement says that these restrictions operate as a prior restraint on student speech and contain no exception for individuals or small groups, and grant school officials unbridled discretion to determine about what students may speak.

MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported. 

Read HB 1200.

Track the status of this bill and all bills in our legislative tracker. 

A bill in the legislature would create the Mississippi Millennial Commission to study issues affecting millennials. Knowing the general pace of government, this would likely be completed by the time millennials are nearing retirement.

But it's not an unworthy topic. So in this episode of Unlicensed, MCPP's Brett Kittredge chats with special guest and friend of the movement Anja Baker about this proposed commission while providing their thoughts on what the state can do to stem the tide of a shrinking population. 

House Bill 989, authored by Rep. Charles Busby, would make several changes to the way school districts report their financial information to the Mississippi Department of Education and prohibit some districts from increasing their budgets.

The bill would add some guidelines for financial reporting for the state’s school districts.

They include:

• The state funding formula budget calculation for each district.
• The amounts and funding sources for all revenues.
• The average daily attendance and base student cost for each school district.

MDE publishes an annual report on K-12 education with financial information, such as revenue reports and administrative costs and this would add more transparency to these reports.

This would also prevent any school district with a budget greater than 100 percent of the state funding formula for granting an automatic increase in the property tax rate. This would only happen if the millage rate (the amount per every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value) required to generate revenue for the school district’s budget request is equal to 55 mills or less and the amount requested doesn’t exceed the preceding year’s property tax revenue by more than four percent. 

Under current law, school districts have to contribute at least 28 mills worth of property tax revenue to operating revenue alongside state funds and can contribute up to 56 mills in additional tax revenues.

Understanding the state’s Mississippi Adequate Education Program funding formula is an exercise in futility for the average Mississippian. The formula calculates a base student cost which isn’t needs based and is rigged to increase every year. The legislature is not legally required by the state constitution, like in Louisiana, to appropriate the full MAEP budget request. 

The legislature has only done so a few times since the difference between the MDE request and what appropriators are willing to outlay is often hundreds of millions of dollars. 

While the amount of taxpayer funds appropriated under MAEP to school districts is a huge chunk of the state’s spending on K-12 education, it isn’t the only component, along with special state funds and local property taxes.

In fiscal 2020, Mississippi taxpayers will spend $2.246 billion in MAEP funds alone, which are provided to each school district via a base student cost calculated by the formula. Just the state funds for general education programs add up to an additional $233 million and vocational and technical education is an additional $81 million in state funds.

HB 989 would increase the transparency of financial reporting for each school district in the state and would also put limitations on the ability of school district boards to automatically raise property taxes.

MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported. 

Read HB 989.

Track the status of this bill and all bills in our legislative tracker.