Beware of politicians who want to ban things.
What would you most like to see Mississippi’s elected lawmakers do during the current legislative session?
Action to eliminate the reams of red tape holding our state back, maybe? Further tax cuts, perhaps? With so many other southern states moving ahead with school choice, you might wish that our lawmakers would do something similar.
I doubt that a bill to ban “squatted” trucks is your top priority. Yet, that is precisely what one bill in our state legislature aims to do.
I’m not about to invest a lot of effort into opposing this bill, but I do think we should be wary of politicians in the business of banning things.
Typically, politicians resort to banning things when they don’t have any other ideas. The impulse to ban things is driven by their search for validation and purpose.
Those in favor of a ban on “squatted” trucks are quick to tell us that action is urgent given how dangerous these trucks are. I can think of a lot of things that could be deemed dangerous.
Do conservatives really want to get into the business of banning things because they are dangerous? Once you start, where do you stop? If trucks are to be banned for being dangerous, wait ‘til you hear what progressives have to say about guns.
Under this proposed law, anyone caught driving a vehicle whose front ends are raised more than four inches above the height of the rear fender faces a $100 fine. Will police officers pull people over to measure their fenders? Should the guy with a truck raised a mere 3 inches expect to get pulled over every time?
As the parent of a teenager, I’ve discovered how adding a young person to your insurance policy can make your premiums soar. This is because the insurance system is good at assessing risk. Higher risk = higher premiums.
If squatted trucks really were the danger that the detractors claim, surely it would be reflected in raised insurance premiums to the point where they became prohibitively expensive.
In a free society, there must be an overwhelmingly good reason to use the state’s monopoly of force to restrict something. It is not enough to ban something because we disapprove of it. Or. as I fear, disapprove of the people that drive “squatted” trucks.
Once politicians form the habit of seeking out things to ban for the benefit of the rest of us, they won’t stop. Next will come a ban on certain types of vapes. Or, as in California, certain food additives and Skittles. If they can ban one type of truck, why not another?
If you want to see where relentless banning leads, take a look at my own native Britain. Despite having had notionally conservative governments, politicians across the pond have relentlessly banned things from certain breeds of dog to plastic drinking straws. From the ability to use email lists for marketing to self-defense pepper spray. From disposable cutlery and gas water heaters to the internal combustion engine (from 2035).
On their own, none of these restrictions have proved to be a catastrophe (although the ban on internal combustion cars, once it comes into force, may yet prove to be). Collectively, however, the blizzard of bans has been devastating by infantilizing British society.
Treated like children, more and more people behave like children. Denied responsibility, society grows irresponsible. Britain today feels utterly demoralized as a consequence. This is what happens when you put politicians in charge of deciding what’s best for everyone else.
Banning tilted trucks won’t be the end of the world for Mississippi. It will be the end of a little bit more liberty.
The impulse to ban things, I believe, comes from what H.L. Mencken called “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.” Let’s leave Mississippi truck drivers alone.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
The University of Florida just fired all their DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) staff. The University closed the office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and terminated DEI-focused contracts.
Florida is not alone in taking decisive action against the ‘woke’ mind virus that has been running rampant on US college campuses for years. In Alabama, a bill (SB 129) to ban DEI programs in all state institutions, including colleges, was recently voted through the state legislature. The University of Arkansas has decided to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion division.
Here in Mississippi, meanwhile, crickets…... No executive orders. No legislation. Why?
Senator Angela Hill presented a bill to eliminate DEI programs in any state-funded institution (SB2402). So, too, did Representative Becky Currie in the House (HB127). Yet both bills died in committee.
Saying that the bills “died in committee” makes it sound like they were victims of some freak accident. Neither bill, of course, was struck by lightning or afflicted by some random misfortune. The bills failed to come out of committee because those that chaired the relevant committees to which each bill had been referred decided not to allow the bills to proceed.
In the Senate, the two committees in question were Accountability, Efficiency & Transparency, and Universities, chaired by Sen David Parker and Sen Nicole Boyd respectively. I doubt that Parker or Boyd would have killed the anti DEI bill without approval from Senate leader, Delbert Hosemann.
In the House, the committee out of which the bill failed to emerge is chaired by Rep Donnie Scoggin.
“But is an anti DEI bill actually necessary?”, I hear you ask. “Is there really that much DEI here in Mississippi in the first place?”
If any member of the legislature spent more than a couple of minutes browsing the University of Mississippi’s website, they would see that it is an institution run by people 100 percent committed to DEI. Do those lawmakers that killed the anti DEI bill approve?
DEI dogma not only influences the way Ole Miss is run. DEI seeks to shape what young people are taught there. Ole Miss’s “Equity in Action” plans, for example, increasingly touch upon almost every aspect of university life.
Concealed behind innocuous jargon in the university’s “Pathways to Equity” strategic plan, Ole Miss has an active DEI program that impacts everything from teaching practices, course content and student evaluation. The way I read it, Ole Miss even seems to endorse the hiring of some faculty on the basis of race, rather than merit.
Without any action from the state Senate or the IHL, this is all being done on your tax dollar. We know this thanks to Shad White, our State Auditor.
Shad White is one of the few leaders to actually show leadership on this issue, and he has tried to calculate how much all this is costing Mississippi taxpayers.
White’s recent report showed that Mississippi universities spent over $23 million on DEI from July 2019 to June 2023. Nearly $11 million of state taxpayer funds went to DEI programs, most of which was spent on salaries for DEI employees. Without any action from our state leaders, DEI spending soared almost 50 percent since 2019.
In case anyone needs reminding why DEI needs to be rooted out of our public universities, here’s a quick reminder.
The United States is founded on the revolutionary idea that all Americans are created equal. America might have produced some laws and leaders that failed to live up to that high standard. But as a principle, it has never been bettered.
DEI overturns America’s founding principle, promoting instead the idea that each of us is defined by our immutable characteristics. This is not just profoundly un-American. DEI ideology takes us back to a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment idea that we are defined by what we are born. It is a profoundly anti-Western ideology.
It is not a coincidence that the ‘woke’ mobs that appeared on Ivy League college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks last October seemed to side with America’s enemies. DEI proponents are hostile to America and the West.
DEI demoralizes Americans. It teaches the young to believe that their country is always in the wrong. It demands that history be rewritten to press the past into a narrative of exploitation.
How regrettable that conservative leaders in this conservative state should do so little about it while leaders in states all around us take action.
Did you know that Mississippi spends a higher share of our overall wealth on healthcare than almost any other state in America? Yet despite this, we still have some of the worst health outcomes in the country.
Source: AFP Mississippi report on Certificate of Need, James Bailey
Some believe that the answer is to spend an even larger amount by expanding Medicaid. Mississippi’s House of Representatives has just voted to do precisely that.
The debate over Medicaid expansion now appears to hinge on whether under the expansion scheme there will be any realistic work requirement. Critics fear that without a robust requirement for recipients of free health care to be in work, Medicaid expansion is little more than a something-for-nothing system of soft socialism.
It remains to be seen if the Senate will support the House’s bill – and if it will do so by a large enough margin to overturn any future gubernatorial veto.
There is, however, another proposal that has attracted far less attention that really would improve healthcare in our state.
Healthcare in Mississippi is deliberately restricted by a set of laws known as Certificate of Need, or CON, laws. These laws require anyone wanting to expand existing services or offer new services to apply for a Certificate of Need permit. By not issuing permits to new operators, competitors are kept out of the market - which suits the existing providers.
Our recent report on Certificate of Need reform shows how harmful this red tape can be. If we removed this protectionist red tape, we would get far more bang for our buck, however much the legislature decided to spend on Medicaid.
Florida, Tennessee and both North & South Carolina have all recently removed their CON laws – and they each have significantly better healthcare as a consequence.
Now there is a chance that Mississippi might do something similar. Rep Zuber’s excellent bill (HB 419) opens the possibility that some CON rules could be repealed.
Of course, now that the bill is before the House, every sort of parasitic vested interest is frantically lobbying to kill the bill.
Why? CON confers on existing providers a means to legally exclude the competition.
Imagine in the search engine Yahoo! had been able to use CON laws to shut down Google? Or if Friends Reunited could have used CON laws to prevent Facebook? Or if the folk that made DVDs could have used CON to prevent Netflix from taking off? CON laws have been doing precisely this to healthcare in our state.
CON laws in Mississippi are one of the last vestiges of the good ole boy system that has held Mississippi back.
Conservatives have a massive majority in the Mississippi state legislature. Are they about to deliver real conservative policy? Or will we see the implementation of a soft-left, progressive-but-slower agenda to expand government?
When it comes to education, a blizzard of bills has just appeared which suggest that we might actually see something authentically conservative soon.
The Mississippi Student Freedom bill (HB 1449) is the most exciting piece of legislation I have seen in the House in three years.
It would give families the right to have their child’s share of state education tax dollars paid into their child’s own Magnolia Scholarship Account. Each family would then be free to allocate that money to meet their child’s needs.
Think how transformative it would be if every mom and dad were allocated $8,000 - $10,000 tax dollars to spend on their child’s education, be it public, private, charter school or home school?
The Mississippi Student Freedom bill would establish a system of school choice similar to what Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has implemented over in Arkansas. Eligibility would be phased in over time, but the end goal would be to allow universal school choice.
“But what if lots of students from failing school districts tried to move to successful school districts?” some will ask.
The bill anticipates precisely this concern. School districts will not be compelled to take kids from out of area if schools in those districts are already full.
Unsurprisingly, various vested interests that currently get to spend your education tax dollars are bitterly opposed to allowing families to have control. No prizes for guessing why. Turkeys might not vote for Christmas, but that does not stop Christmas from happening.
A second bill in the House, the Opportunity Scholarships bill (HB 1452) proposes a similar system of school choice, but one that would only be available for those in failing school districts. Good, if not quite excellent.
Then there is the INSPIRE bill (HB 1453), which offers a complete overhaul of our antiquated school funding system.
Mississippi's current school funding formula, the MAEP, was created in 1997. MAEP stands for Mississippi Adequate Education Program Funding, but it has proved to be anything but adequate.
The MAEP funding system is Soviet in its complexity. Over the past quarter century, it has proved pretty useless at getting your tax dollars where they are supposed to go: the classroom. We ought instead to have a formula that funds students, not a system.
This is precisely what the INSPIRE bill would do. Every child in Mississippi would get an amount weighted to reflect their own needs.
For years, policy makers have talked (and talked) about change. Now, there is a plan to make it happen.
What is so significant about all these bills is that they have been sponsored by the House’s new education committee chairman, Rep. Rob Roberson. He has made a remarkable start in the role.
It is clear, too, that Speaker Jason White is also a driving force behind these excellent reforms. If he is successful, Mr. White will transform our state’s education system for the better. Every family in the state should rally behind him. Indeed, every Mississippian who wants to see our state doing better should be with him 100%.
Mississippi is now surrounded on every side by school choice states that have either implemented or are implementing these kinds of changes. Here is our chance to be a leader, not a laggard.
Mississippi voters have elected an overwhelmingly conservative legislature. It ought to be possible for them to make these mainstream conservative policies happen.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Mississippi's current school funding formula, the MAEP, was created in 1997. However, a generation later, it's time for a fundamental overhaul of the way we fund education. The MAEP is hideously clunky and complicated, and few even understand it. We need a transparent and easily understood system that is tailored to meet individual student needs.
An individualized funding system means weighting the amount that every student gets above a base amount, depending on every child’s circumstances. For example, the amount ought to be adjusted to reflect the fact that a child might have special needs or be especially gifted. There needs to be some weighting for low income and concentrated poverty, perhaps, and some career and technical weighting would also help prepare young Mississippians for the workforce.
Tennessee recently showed how a weighted system can work, and now Rep. Rob Roberson’s excellent new INSPIRE bill (HB 1453, “Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education) proposes an alternative to the MAEP, rather than just some amendments to it. By adjusting the different weights for the formula, it is now perfectly possible to implement a new system in which every district is a winner, as well as the students.
Mississippi needs a new funding formula, not just a band-aid on a system that is long past its sell-by date. Last year, Mississippi’s Senate voted by a clear majority to replace the MAEP, and now there's a clearly thought-through alternative to it. Let's start over with a formula that people believe in and will fund.
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to host a packed lunch with Senator Roger Wicker and leading foreign policy strategist, Michael Pillsbury.
Drawing from his bestselling book about China, “The Hundred Year Marathon”, Michael Pillsbury explained just how easy it is for China to gain access to top-secret American defense plans.
Pillsbury explained how under President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, America initially took a pro-China approach, seeking to engage and assist what was then the world’s most populous country.
China, Pillsbury suggested, has learned our strategy all too well and is able to take advantage of it. Even today, America’s administrative state continues to assist China is ways that are not always in America’s best interest.
Pillsbury went on to suggest that America should adopt a Reagan-era approach of achieving peace through strength, building up our military capability in the hope that we never need to use it.
China, some believe, has made plans to invade Taiwan within the next few years. America needs to prepare for every eventuality.
Wicker went on to emphasize the importance of the US navy and the need to ensure the navy had sufficient strength and capabilities.
Taiwan, both Wicker and Pillsbury agreed, should be strengthened in a way that resembles the defense of a porcupine. While not a proactive threat to anyone, a porcupine’s needles ensure than anything that attacks it risks incurring serious pain. Taiwan, they suggested, can be strengthened to a point where China would reconsider making any move on the island state.
Not enough people in Mississippi work. Out of every 100 working age adults in our state, 46 are not in the labor force.
Nearly half of working age Mississippians are not in formal employment – and they aren’t actively looking for employment either.
At the same time, there are a record number of jobs available. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October last year there were 80,000 unfilled jobs across the state.
Not only are there lots of jobs available in Mississippi, but according to new research a record number of people are now moving to Mississippi to take up those opportunities. 2022 saw a net inflow of 12,000 (often young) people to our state, coming largely from Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida.
A combination of labor market deregulation, inward investment and tax cuts seems to be transforming Mississippi for the better. Our state is no longer a place that people leave, but somewhere people move to in search of new opportunities. What can we do to ensure that more people in Mississippi take full advantage of those job opportunities?
It is not enough to merely talk about opportunities. With 80,000 job vacancies right here, right now, there are opportunities to work all around us. The issue is why some folk aren’t taking the opportunities that are there.
Some have suggested that we hire more career counsellors in high schools. I am certain that career counsellors do a wonderful job, but if that is the only policy solution, I suspect labor force participation will remain low.
If we are going to increase workforce participation, we need to ask difficult questions about welfare. Does welfare create disincentives against work?
Mississippi has a population of 2.95 million. Approximately one in five (19 percent) live below the poverty line (calculated as the minimum income needed to get by with the bare essentials.)
The way in which the myriad of assistance programs impacts the half a million plus people below the poverty line matters, and needs to be properly understood if we are to improve workforce participation.
Welfare programs can have unintended consequences, and one of them is the creation of so-called ‘benefit cliffs’. A benefit cliff is what happens when someone loses benefits if their income increases, but the benefits they lose outweigh the additional income gained.
Given the maximum income thresholds allowed, we know, for example, that if someone’s monthly income went from $400 a month to $410 a month, they would no longer qualify for some Temporary Assistance programs.
If your income rose above $1,215 a month, you could lose the right to claim Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). When your income per person goes over $19,392 a year, you may no longer qualify for Medicaid (although the ‘cliff’ cut-off is not always as abrupt as is sometimes supposed).
Take into account the different benefit cliffs, and you could have a powerful range of disincentives.
Even if a person was notionally better off when holding down a 35 hour week job, the time and effort it would take for a relatively modest increase in income might leave some feeling having a job was not worth it.
It has been suggested that benefits do not create a problem of ‘cliffs’, but of straight forward dependency. They point out, for example, that those on food stamps are not those hovering on the edge of the labor market, but full-time welfare dependents. There may be some truth in that, too.
So, what is the solution?
The answer to benefit ‘cliffs’ is not to increase welfare payments in order to remove disincentives, but to institute more stringent work requirements for those on welfare programs.
In Arkansas under Sarah Huckabee Sanders, anyone that fails to accept a suitable job within five days of being offered one, or who fails to show up for job interviews without notice, can now lose their benefits.
If we are serious about increasing workforce participation, we may well need to implement something similar.
Today is officially Ronald Reagan Day in Mississippi!
Governor Tate Reeves has signed a proclamation making February 6th, the date on which the 40th President was born, Ronald Reagan Day.
“Ronald Reagan was born on this day in 1911,” said Douglas Carswell, President & CEO of the Mississippi. “I believe he was one of the greatest leaders America has ever had. He defeated Soviet communism, revived an ailing economy and renewed America.”
“America needs another Ronald Reagan and his sense of optimism”
Thirty three years ago, the Soviet Union fell apart. A Marxist-Leninist system that had stood in competition with the Western way of life for half a century was no more.
Unfortunately, in that moment of triumph, Western leaders made a grave error; they started to believe that there had been an inevitability about Western success.
If the Soviet Union had ditched communism in favor of free markets, everyone else would become more Western, too, right? Wrong – and nowhere more so than with regard to China.
At the turn of the century, when China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization, all the clever people at the State Department assumed it was only a matter of time before China’s emerging middle class would make the country more like us.
Under Deng Xiaoping and immediately after, China had permitted private enterprise, and the country’s communist rulers had imposed limits on their power. China’s provinces enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, with Hong Kong even having her own legal system, currency and democracy.
Deng’s leadership, we can now see, did not represent a new direction for China, but a brief interlude. Under Xi, China has reverted to the Ming tradition; authoritarian government, overzealous control, the targeting of anyone independently wealthy.
Rather than becoming part of the international system, China seems to be a threat to it. Democracy has been crushed in Hong Kong. Military bases have been built in the south China sea. Taiwan is at risk of invasion.
If China is behaving like she is in competition with the Western way it is because she is. We need to recognize this and act accordingly.
Just as there was never anything inevitable about the success of the West, nor is there anything inevitable now about the rise of China.
In fact, China faces serious demographic decline. Ruled by an innovation-sapping authoritarian regime, China may not be destined for global hegemony the way we have been told. But that may not make the Chinese government any easier to deal with.
At the same time, rather than becoming more Western, many parts of the world besides China – such as Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt - seem less Western than they were.
The West itself is becoming less Western, with Europe undergoing dramatic demographic change. Having prevailed against a Marxist-Leninist system in Russia, Western leaders allowed a Marxist-Identitarian system to incubate in our universities. Many US universities no longer teach Western Classics and have in effect abandoned the European Enlightenment.
The West needs leaders willing to set aside post-Cold War assumptions. Rather than presume Western success, we need leaders who recognize that it is tough and difficult to stand up for Western interests – but also essential.
Above all, we need leaders that appreciate that Western culture is the product of ideas and insights that did not arise in a vacuum. The Western way needs safeguarding not just aboard, but on college campuses here in the United States, too.