Senate Bill 2062, sponsored by Sen. Briggs Hopson, and SB 2022, sponsored by Sen. David Jordan, would lower the compulsory education age from 6 to 5 and move the age clock from September 1 to August 1.
Mississippi, like every state in the nation, has compulsory school attendance laws that require a student to be in school, whether public or private, or to be homeschooled, beginning at a certain age and through a certain age, at a minimum.
In Mississippi, the mandatory compulsory age is 6. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, exactly half the states in the country have the same age for compulsory attendance. Even Massachusetts, the father of compulsory education, is 6 years old. Thirteen states set the mandatory age at 7 and two, Pennsylvania and Washington, set it at 8. The remaining ten states, plus the District of Columbia, set the mandatory age at 5 as this proposed bill would do.
The bill would also add this definition to school: “Relative to kindergarten-age children, school shall mean any licensed public, parochial or nonpublic school kindergarten program or legitimate homeschool kindergarten program which promotes services that address the cognitive, social and emotional needs of five-year-old children.”
As we write in Governing By Principle, parents, not the government, are responsible for the education and upbringing of their children. While most families choose to send their children to kindergarten, the decision should be still left to the parents. We should be expanding parental freedoms, rather than expanding the powers of government.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it violates our principles and therefore must be opposed.
Track the status of this and all bills in our legislative tracker.
Senate Bill 2127, sponsored by Sen. Angela Hill, will exempt eyebrow threaders from the state’s cosmetology licensure law.
Eyebrow threading is a safe and simple technique that uses just a single strand of cotton thread to remove unwanted hair. It does not involve skin-to-skin contact between the threading artist and customer, does not reuse the same tools on different customers, and does not involve the use of sharp implements, harsh chemicals, or heat.
Currently, eyebrow threaders are required to take at least 600 hours of classes and pass two exams. Yet, not a single hour of classes covers eyebrow threading. Essentially, eyebrow threaders are required to spend thousands of dollars to learn nothing they want to learn and everything they don’t.
The Mississippi Justice Institute, the legal arm of Mississippi Center for Public Policy has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dip Bhattarai. Bhattarai grew up in Nepal, where threading is a way of life, and learned how to thread at a young age from her family. She came to Mississippi after receiving a scholarship to attend Mississippi University for Women, where she saw an opening in the market for eyebrow threading.
She was pursuing her version of the American Dream, until the state shut her down.
This bill would allow Bhattarai and others earn a living.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported.
Read the bill here.
Track the status of this bill and all bills in our legislative tracker.
In this episode of Unlicensed, Brett and Hunter kick off the legislative session with talk about the desire of the Board of Cosmetology to increase the time it takes to become a nail stylist and the antiquated alcohol policy that is Mississippi. We also discuss the newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame and whether Curt Schilling is being held back because of his politics.
An autonomous delivery service, otherwise known as a food delivery robot, has arrived at Ole Miss.
The robots, which are a product of Starship Technologies, are in operation at over 100 college campuses, but Ole Miss is the first school in the Southeastern Conference to have the robots, according to the school’s press release. There will be 30 robots serving Ole Miss.
To get your food delivered via a robot, you download the app, place your order, and it can then be delivered to any point on campus by simply dropping a pin in your desired location.
The electric robot looks like a cooler on six wheels, along with lights and a tall orange flag. It combines cameras and artificial intelligence to navigate from beginning to end point.
The app will unlock the lid to access your food. If you tried to steal food from the robot, an alarm will sound, the operator can speak through two-way speakers, and the cameras can photograph the would-be thief.
“We’re honored to be able to help make lives a little bit easier for Rebels across the Ole Miss campus by offering the world’s leading autonomous delivery service” said Ryan Tuohy, senior vice president of business development at Starship. “Whether it’s getting breakfast delivered in the morning or having a late-night snack, our robots are here to serve students, faculty and staff at all times of the day.”
The robots officially debuted Wednesday, January 22.
It would be harder for a nail stylist to work in Mississippi than in almost any other state in the country if the Board of Cosmetology gets their way.
Nail technicians in Mississippi are currently required to complete 350 hours of training before they can practice in the state. Licensing is required in 49 states, with Connecticut being the lone holdout that does not require licensing or certifications for nail technicians, according to the National Association of Complementary and Alternative Medicines.
Mississippi’s 350-hour requirement is in line with the national average of 368. But a bump to 600 hours would be the second highest burden, which is shared by eight states. Only Alabama’s 750 hours would be greater.
But Sharon Clark, the executive director of the Board, made her push for expanded licensure in a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, arguing that it was a sanitary issue and this will help protect the public. Because teachers don't have time to teach cleanliness in the first 350 hours.
If you’ve heard one licensing pitch, you’ve heard them all
The Board has admitted that the current licensing regime is not working well. We agree. But instead of increasing the regulations as the Board wants, the state should move to do away with the license for nail technicians and allow voluntary or non-regulatory options that help entrepreneurs start and run businesses while providing the maximum options for consumers.
What would that look like?
This begins with market competition, the least restrictive option. Without government imposed restrictions, consumers have the widest assortment of choices, thereby giving businesses the strongest incentives to maintain a reputation for high-quality services. When service providers are free to compete, consumers can decide who provides the best services, thereby weeding out those that do not.
Quality service self-disclosure is a fancy term for customer satisfaction. Think about all the common sites people can leave reviews such as Yelp, Google, Facebook, specific industry sites, etc. Finding out which location is providing a good customer experience is easier than ever, providing users with more complete options.
Voluntary, third-party certification allows the provider to voluntarily receive and maintain certification from a non-government organization. One of the most common examples is the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) designation for auto mechanics. No mechanic is required to receive this certification, just like you may or may not care if a mechanic has it hanging on their wall. But it sends a signal to the consumer that the location with that designation is committed to quality service. Again, if that matters.
If you would like the government to still be involved, you can continue with inspections or you may choose to require registration, as they do with hair braiders. Hair braiders previously needed to take hundreds of hours of irrelevant cosmetology classes. Now they register with the state and pay a small fee. This discourages “fly-by-night” providers, while still only creating a small barrier for providers.
Licensing makes sense in certain – and limited – fields. But if we want to encourage economic growth, we need to start trusting the free market.
Senate Bill 2004, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Blackwell, holds any party that contests a Certificate of Need, or CON, application liable for the legal costs of the applicant should their contest fail, and the CON be approved.
Essentially, this disincentivizes interested parties from attempting to have a CON denied, ultimately allowing more of these applications to be successful and lowering the cost burden for those wishing to provide healthcare solutions in Mississippi.
CON laws originated from federal legislation that was fully repealed in 1986. Thirty-five states, including Mississippi, still have CON laws in state legislation.
Many states issue moratoria on specific medical facilities, practices, and materials through CON laws. Mississippi’s CON law requires health care providers to seek approval from the state Department of Health to build a new facility, add beds or diagnostic equipment to an existing facility, or any other capital-related project. The regulated areas include:hospital and nursing home beds,Inpatient psychiatric beds for children, beds in chemical dependency centers, and home health services.
CON laws inevitably grant monopolies to existing medical providers with facilities already in an area and only stifle the ability of new facilities to open up. This often eliminates the possibility of competition in the medical industry between providers, keeping costs up, and quality of service down.
While the overall goal should be full repeal of CON laws, this is a step in the right direction.
MCPP has reviewed this legislation and finds that it is aligned with our principles and therefore should be supported.
Read the bill here.
Track the status of this bill and all bills in our legislative tracker.
As lawmakers propose new laws that would limit consumer options concerning vaping, which would inevitably lead to a larger black market, the federal government has confirmed that vaping related illnesses are largely from the black market, not products legally purchased in stores.
According to a new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), those with illnesses were linked to marijuana vapes – not nicotine – and, at least 85 percent of those were purchased somewhere other than commercial sources. Still, even that number may be lower than the actual statistics.
Regardless, the CDC has now removed language from their website suggesting people refrain from all vaping products. Instead, they suggest you avoid purchasing products from “informal sources,” more commonly referred to as the black market.
Yet, proposals to limit vaping products would do just that.
Because of this “outbreak,” we are told we must do something, such as ban vaping and e-cigarettes. Legislation is likely in Mississippi this year. This would be just the latest example of unintended consequences.
First, the potential bans ignore the fact that e-cigarettes have proven to help tobacco smokers quit. Since 2007, these products have helped an estimated three million Americans quit smoking and a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that e-cigarettes and vaping devices were “twice as effective as nicotine replacement at helping smokers quit.”
The Royal College of Physicians proclaimed in 2016, “in the interests of public health it is important to promote the use of e-cigarettes, NRT (Nicotine Replacement Therapy), and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.” We can presume that would apply in the United States as well.
And there is a cost savings benefit from current smokers switching to the replacement devices. A 2017 study by R Street Institute found that taxpayers could save $2.8 billion in Medicaid costs per one percent of enrollees over 25 years if users switched from combustible cigarettes.
A ban also ignores the question of where current users, particularly the teen vapers lawmakers are particularly interested in saving, would turn. After all, teen vaping is surging.
Yet, sales of e-cigarettes have been prohibited to those under 18 since 2016 and they are now illegal to those under 21, so minors are already turning to the black-market. That should be our first clue that bans don’t work. Because the black market is the problem, as it usually is. Not the products adults are legally purchasing today.
So, because teens, who are already prohibited from purchasing these products, have resorted to the black market, we must ban adults from being able to purchase these products, at least when it comes to the fruit and candy flavors that most prefer (whether we are talking about teens or adults trying to kick the cigarette habit). This will only lead to a larger black market, and more illnesses, and more deaths. All the things those in favor of banning the products seemingly are trying to prevent. Or maybe it will just push more users back to tobacco products, which, coincidently, are at an all-time low among minors.
We’ve played the prohibition game before. It doesn’t end well. During alcohol prohibition, individuals made their own liquor that was often much more dangerous than what you could legally buy prior to prohibition. Today, many people roll their own cigarettes in locales that have absurdly high taxes. Again, these are often more dangerous as you can get more nicotine by leaving out a filter.
And when it comes to vaping, teens can turn to YouTube for do-it-yourself videos on raising nicotine levels. This won’t change if and when any of these proposals to regulate or eliminate vaping or e-cigarettes becomes law.
The bans won’t provide an alternative to current cigarette smokers, nor will they stop teens from vaping. Instead, they will only increase lawlessness.
Mississippi's laws that limit who can sell alcohol and where you can purchase it need to be modernized.
Let me paint a picture with a short story: The year is 2020, on a sunny day (so not today, but maybe some day in the future) you decide to stop by the grocery store on the way home to pick up a bottle of your favorite wine. Unfortunately for you, Mississippi grocery stores aren’t legally allowed to carry wine.
No worries, you decide to drive across the county line (because your county bans the sale of liquor) to the liquor store and grab the bottle there. Unfortunately for you, every liquor store in the state is forced to go through the one government distributor for alcohol that exists in all of Mississippi, and their warehouse didn’t order enough of your brand this month.
No worries, you’re willing to wait for a few days, so you go home to order the bottle online and have it shipped to you. Unfortunately for you, the state of Mississippi is one of a slim handful of states that legally bans the shipment of wine into the state.
Thus, in the year 2020, in an age where people around the world are connected digitally in unprecedented ways, in a time that you can order a ride, groceries, fast food, and almost everything at the click of a digital button and have it in minutes, you can’t even get a bottle of wine you like.
What is the reason for this tragedy?
Look no further than the tyrannical imposition of government into affairs that it has no due right to be involved in. The common denominator throughout this series of beverage procurement failures is the over-restrictive nature of our state apparatus. Prohibition is alive and well in Mississippi, because the government controls our intake of alcoholic beverages at a rate unparalleled in the rest of the country.
What good reason is there to stop grocery stores from selling wine? Why can’t we have private alcohol distributors? Why does all liquor and wine need to be run through a single government-run warehouse in Madison? Why can’t I ship wine to my door like almost every other citizen in the country?
If you’re asking these questions like me, then you’re also probably frustrated. Apparently our state leaders think that they can run our lives better than we can. It is important to recognize that the tools of excessive regulation are not implemented solely to control alcohol. Our government has created a vast web of intrusive regulatory policies which limit the supply and impact the sellers in a variety of industries, including healthcare, food sales, and even children’s lemonade stands.
It’s worth recognizing just how much of our inflated prices and our slim range of choices is nothing more than a product of government control. Frustrating, isn’t it?
A group of physicians in Mississippi responded to the Mississippi State Board of Health’s resolution opposing medical marijuana. A ballot initiative will be in front of voters in November after Mississippians for Compassionate Care gathered more than 105,000 certified signatures.
“Sick people all across our state have waited for a long time for this option to be made available to them,” said Jamie Grantham, Communications Director for Mississippians for Compassionate Care. “The Board of Health is telling them to keep waiting, but with the medical research that’s been published concerning medical marijuana as well as countless patient testimonials across the country in the 34 other states that have medical marijuana programs, there’s no reason these patients in Mississippi should suffer any longer. They deserve better.”
The response from a group of physicians says the resolution is “filled with misinformation and outdated arguments.”
“As you know, the initiative does not require physicians to treat patients with medical marijuana, the response says. “The initiative, that was signed by more than 105,000 Mississippians, simply gives doctors in our state the opportunity to certify its use from regulated treatment centers. Your resolution offers no compelling reason why the ten members of the Board should try to stop the more than 5,700 physicians in our state from using our experiences, training, and research to consider treating our patients with medical marijuana.
“While medical marijuana is certainly not a cure-all, Mississippians with debilitating medical conditions deserve to have this option available to them. The experiences in 34 other states show that it can be effective, and we believe the benefits of medical marijuana make it a viable treatment option for many in our state who are suffering.”
The physicians signing the letter then provide a point-by-point response to the issues raised by the Board.