Did you know that Mississippi is now one of the fastest growing states in America?  Only two states saw real GDP rise faster than it did here in the third quarter of 2024.

Were you aware that personal income in our state rose more here than almost anywhere in the US this past year? 

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that Mississippi is on the up.

For as long as anyone can remember, Mississippi has ranked 50^th out of 50.  Not for much longer, perhaps.  According to this new data, ours’s was one of the top performing states in 2024. If we keep growing for the next few years the way we did in 2024, we won’t be bottom of the class for much longer.

Mississippi’s success is not an accident.  It’s a consequence of a number of key free market reforms:

• Labor market deregulation, with an Occupational Licensing law in 2021.
• Tax cuts with legislation to cut the state income tax to a flat 4 percent in 2022.
• Further tax reform to make it more tax efficient for businesses in 2023.
• Education funding reform as a step towards school choice in 2024.

These reforms have begun to energize our state.  They make it easier for people to get ahead, for businesses to invest, and for families to spend their income on their priorities.  They draw in inward investment, which is changing our state for the better.

If Mississippi is not to lose this momentum, we need to go even further.  That is why MCPP has just published a Blueprint for Mississippi – a list of the ten key reforms that would lift our state to the top of the economic table.

The number one reform we need to prosper is school choice.  Why?  School choice is the only way to be certain of raising standards.  The better job we do of educating young people, the greater their chances of leading a prosperous, fulfilling life.

Our Blueprint sets out how we can accomplish school choice, giving every family in our state the choices that today only the very rich enjoy.

To prosper, our state needs less regulation and less government.  Our Blueprint sets out proposals to cut taxes further and dismantle the costly, leftist bureaucracy that seems to be in control no matter who you vote for.  

Decades of crony cartel politics has stifled innovation in our state.  Years of lobbyists cutting cozy deals in the Capitol that commercially advantage their clients has held Mississippi back.  A lot of the intentionally restrictive laws that limit health care provision simply need to go.  Our Blueprint sets out how to make this happen.

MCPP has been a driving force behind many of the key free market reforms that have helped energize our state.  But at every opportunity, crony cartel politics has tried to prevent change.

The crony cartel will try again.  It’s what self-serving cartels do.  Already they are mobilizing half-baked arguments against school choice.  They are lobbying to maintain intentionally restrictive laws that hold back the healthcare economy.  Brace yourself for politicians explaining why we can’t afford tax cuts despite a healthy surplus.  

In politics, nothing moves unless it is pushed.  MCPP won’t just publish our Blueprint. We will push and push hard.  Mississippi’s future is too important to let bad politics get in the way.  

Mississippi could be on the cusp of transformative changes.  If we keep going, we will not only no longer be 50^th, but we could become – like Tennessee or Alabama – a state that young people want to move to, not leave.

Download a copy of our blueprint here!

Imagine a world in which the President of the United States could prevent you from reading a story about incriminating emails found on his son’s laptop?

Actually, that’s what happened.  When the New York Post ran a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, administration officials put pressure on media outlets to prevent you from reading it.

Envision an America in which articles about the origins of Covid could be taken down by administration officials during the pandemic?  You don’t have to imagine.  That’s literally what they did.
 
If you are appalled at the prospect of powerful politicians trying to suppress awkward opinions, I suspect you’d be concerned at any attempts by some in our state to restrict debate and discussion on certain topics, too.

Unfortunately, some state officials seem to think they can bully organizations like MCPP in order to shut down what we say.  This seems to be the case with school choice, an issue on which every conservative ought to agree.  Some evidently don’t agree and are mad at us for promoting change.
 
MCPP is 100 percent committed to parental choice as the only certain way to raise standards and counter left- wing values in the classroom.  We relish the opportunity to listen to those with different ideas and engage with those that have a different viewpoint.

Anyone is free to disagree with us.  But no one that disagrees with our stance should ever try to shut down our advocacy the way Biden’s gang shut down the Hunter laptop story. 
 
Here’s why we won’t be cowed.

First, it’s a question of credibility:  MCPP is a conservative think tank.  That means we’re cheerleaders for conservative policies, but not for any politicians.

 
To be sure, we probably agree 90 percent of the time with most elected state-wide officials.  But when we disagree, we won’t hide the fact.  Instead, we will do so openly, honestly and dispassionately (maybe even using a little humor from time to time ….) A think tank that shied away from asking state leaders questions that they’d rather not answer wouldn’t be worth a dime. Why would anyone take such an organization seriously?
 

Second, you are the media:  Biden’s gang, like politicians down the ages, tried to bully media organizations into ignoring inconvenient stories.  That tactic doesn’t work anymore since Musk set social media free.

 
Each week, MCPP reaches tens of thousands of folk across our state.  We do so with published articles and media appearances.  But the single biggest way we reach people is directly, the way I’m connecting with you now. Our email list has tens of thousands of subscribers, and a phenomenal open rate.  This Wednesday, I uploaded a short video in the morning.  By lunchtime it had been viewed 48,000 times.  As of now, it’s been seen over 130,000 times – a high percentage in Mississippi.  Thanks to Elon Musk’s X, we reach several million people every month, again many in Mississippi. Unless anyone has the power to shut down our social media operation, we are going to keep going. 
 

Third, and most important, School Choice is right:  School choice is, as President Trump has said, the civil rights issue of our time. 

 
It's more than about school standards.  The case for giving families control over their child’s share of tax dollars is moral.  MCPP has outlined a three-step strategy to achieve universal school choice in our state.  We are surrounded on three sides by conservative led states that have adopted school choice.
 
People are free to disagree with us.  So, too, are state-wide officials who can vote against school choice or kill it in committee (like some did with the ballot initiative, and anti DEI legislation and much more besides). But equally organizations like MCPP are free to explain to the public who is supporting school choice and who is trying to kill it.  We won’t be cowed. 
 
Of course, what made the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop so explosive was not what was on the laptop.  It was the realization as to what some were prepared to do to suppress stories they didn’t like.  Nothing perhaps could be more ruinous the reputation of any politician.

What do you most like about your job?  For me, it is being invited to speak about the work the Mississippi Center for Public Policy (MCPP) is doing to try to improve our state.  Typically, I get a couple of invitations each month to talk at Rotary Clubs, schools or the Kiwanis.  Just the other week, I received one such invitation from the North Jackson Rotary Club.
 
As invited to, I talked about some of our policy goals, such as school choice, deregulation and tax reform.  Ever sensitive to the fact that good folk have different opinions about things, I meticulously avoided saying anything even remotely partisan.  Rotary Club lunches are enjoyable precisely because they are committed to building goodwill and understanding.  
 
As I sat down after speaking, however, up popped Luther Munford, someone I had only met on my way into the event.  Mr. Munford proceeded to attack school choice – and at times I almost felt, me - at length, all under the guise of asking a question.  Fair enough, I thought.  Free speech and all that, although Mr. Munford did not sound very big on goodwill.  In fact, he sounded borderline rude.  
 
I thought no more of the incident until I read Mr. Munford’s recent newspaper article in which he appears to have continued the attack he started at the North Jackson Rotary Club. Curiously, for an article purporting to be about school choice in Mississippi, he launched his article with an attack on Brexit.  Aware as he is of my role as one of the founders of the official Brexit campaign back in my native Britain, Mr. Munford perhaps thinks that by attacking the way 45 million Brits voted he is somehow getting at me.  Whatever.  
 
Once Mr. Munford gets around to attacking school choice, rather than me, he makes a series of erroneous assumptions that deserve a rebuttal.
 
Mr. Munford says school choice is unpopular.  This is just not true.  Polls show that more than 7 in 10 Mississippi voters, including a majority of Democrats, want school choice. Mr. Munford seems especially vexed by the idea that parents given the choice might want their children to attend a religious school.  Assuming I have understood him correctly (his syntax is a little garbled) school choice would mean that “the problem of funding truly racists religious beliefs becomes even greater”.  
 
Any suggestion that Mississippi private schools are full of “racist religious beliefs” will no doubt come as a surprise to anyone that attends or teaches at one.  Mr. Munford then attacks private schools on the basis that “no one knows how well Mississippi private schools are doing because they are not subject to any form of public accountability”.  
 
Again, plain wrong.  Private schools are hyper accountable to fee paying parents.  It is the public school accountability system that is failing, giving A grades to school districts where many kids can’t read properly.
 
Mr. Munford then proceeds to attack school choice on the basis that it would take money out of the public sector.  Allowing each public school student to take their base share of state funds (about $6,600) to a public school of their choice (assuming the public school has capacity) would not impoverish the public sector.  It would reallocate the money, forcing failing schools and underperforming districts to raise their game.
 
Our plan for a Mississippi Parents’ Tax Credit for those that choose not to take their place at a public school, because they prefer to home school or go private, would be capped at $150 million.  It is not draining money from public schools but supporting families that are currently paying twice.
 
What I find hardest to understand about Luther Munford’s attack on school choice is that he sent his own children to one of the most expensive private schools in our state, St Andrew’s.
 
Luther Munford is on record as saying he “believes strongly in public education”.  But not strongly enough to send his own kids to public school.  
 
Mr. Munford attacks putting money into private religious schools because of the risk of “racist religious beliefs”.  I presume there were no such beliefs at St Andrew’s Episcopal School when his own kids went there?  He attacks private schools for not being accountable.  When he was a parent at St Andrew’s was there not sufficient accountability to him as a parent?  
 
Perhaps if one were to ask why, as an advocate of public education, Mr. Munford did not take the opportunity to send his own kids to, say, Murrah High School, he might have an explanation as to why his family circumstances were different.  Anti school choice activists need to recognize that every family’s circumstances are different.  That’s why families need to be able to make choices about their children’s education that currently only people like Mr. Munford are able to make.
 
Sending a child to St Andrew’s today costs about $20,000 a year.  We should all support parents’ 100 percent if they are blessed enough to be able to send their children to such an awesome school.  But we should at the same time help local families that cannot afford that to allocate their $6,600 of state funding to a school they can get into.  To do anything else could be called hypocrisy.  

Local mom, Amanda Kibble, is celebrating an important win for her family, and for school choice.

Earlier this year, Governor Tate Reeves signed HB 1341 into law.  This new law gives military families in Mississippi the right to transfer their children to any traditional public school around the state, assuming that the receiving school has capacity.  Early indications suggest this is extremely popular, with lots of military families using school choice to switch schools.

Amanda, and her family, found out the hard way that the law might not apply to those who serve their country in the National Guard.  There was a real risk that Amanda’s son might lose his place at his preferred school.
 
That’s when Amanda approached MCPP, and we took up her case.  MCPP has a long history of fighting for school choice, and our legal arm, the Mississippi Justice Institute has successfully litigated in defense of school choice.
 
I am delighted that Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, has now issued an opinion that the new school choice law for military families also applies, at least in part, to those in the National Guard.  Three cheers for the AG!

If military families now have public-to-public school choice, why shouldn’t everybody?  That is exactly what our “Move Up, Mississippi!” campaign aims to achieve. 

This week’s win for school choice makes it all the more disappointing that the new State Superintendent for Education, Lance Evans, took a sideswipe at school choice recently.
 
Speaking at a lunch in Jackson, Evans criticized school choice, suggesting that if a single dollar of public money went into private schools, those private schools should be subjected to the regulatory oversight that public schools are subject to.

Those that oppose school choice, and indeed I suspect Mr. Evans, know full well that extending state oversight across the private school sector would be untenable – which is why they suggest it.  But it is not the clever argument against school choice that they might imagine.
 
Giving every family in our state the right to choose a public school, as military families are now able to do, would not transfer public dollars into private schools. 
 
Amanda Kibble and those military families that now have school choice are not taking money out of public schools.  Does Lance Evans oppose their right to choose a school for their child?
 
MCPP proposes that under a separate program, families that attend private schools, or who home school, could get a tax credit reflecting the fact that they are already paying for a place at a public school that they are not taking.
 
Evans attack on parent power was not the worst of it.  More disappointing was the plodding presentation that preceded it about how amazing education is in our state. 
 
Evans trumpeted the fact that about a third of districts were rated D or F in 2016.  Now only a handful are rated D or F.  This, he implied, was evidence of progress, rather than a reflection of a broken accountability system. 
 
When officials invoke the broken grading system as evidence of improvement, it is not just the credibility to the grading we should question.
 
How bizarre, that in a solidly Republican-run state, we have somehow ended up with an anti-school choice official in charge?  Are the nine-member State Board of Education aware of Evans’ anti-school choice position?  Are the various state leaders that appointed those members of the Board? 

Since 2000, the number of students in America has increased by 5 percent.  The number of teachers by around 10 percent.  The number of education administrators, however, has shot up by 95 percent.

No wonder the education bureaucrats don’t want mom and dad to have control over where their child’s share of the education budget goes.  They might start to demand that it goes into the classroom.
 
Lance Evans talked about making private schools accountable.  Private schools already are accountable to every fee-paying parent.  The issue is how to ensure that public schools are made similarly accountable, too. 
 
We need to give every family in our state the public-to-public school choice that military families now have.