You know you’ve seriously annoyed progressives when you get singled out for a hit piece in the UK’s Guardian newspaper by one of their New York-based columnists. According to Arwa Mahdawi writing in today’s Guardian, I am a “toxic politician” whom the UK was able to "successfully export."
What was it that prompted Miss Mahdawi, whom I don’t believe I have had the pleasure of meeting, to launch such a highly personal attack on a private citizen in a national newspaper? (Besides Brexit, of course).
Her tirade seems to have been prompted by the fact that I had the temerity to point out that the United States is more prosperous and innovative that Europe.
Well let’s consider the facts, for a moment. Here is a table showing how the richest countries in Europe compare the US states in terms of GDP per capita. Germany, Europe’s richest country, ranks below Oklahoma, the 38th richest state in America.
The UK is poorer that Arkansas and West Virginia. Even my own state, Mississippi, ranks above Italy and Spain. If you break the UK down by regions, Mississippi is more prosperous than much of the UK outside of London and the south east.
According to Miss Mahdawi, the US can’t be more successful because she lives in New York, where she “pays way more” for her “mobile phone plan and internet than she would for comparable services in the UK or anywhere in Europe.
Apparently the relative cost of her New York phone bill proves the Europe is better than America. Or something.
Perhaps if Guardian columnists made a little more effort to try to understand what those they write hit pieces on actually thought, they might recognize that free marketers favor more free markets.
But if they did that, then they might be forced to acknowledge that one of the reasons why certain sectors of the US economy have become cartels, without enough consumer choice and competition, is precisely because America is currently led by an administration that seeks to expand the role of government and make America more European. Much easier to make childish insults.
The interesting question to ask is why so many of Europe’s elite feel the need to lash out at anyone that suggests that the American model works better that the European.
In the UK, it is constantly implied the America’s health care system is vastly inferior. Really? Five years after diagnosis, only 56% of English cancer patients survive, compared to 65% of American patients. Poorer Americans in poor states often have healthier outcomes that many in Britain.
But again, these facts are overlooked. Anyone with the temerity to mention them gets vilified (“toxic”). And the many shortcomings in the US system are cited as evidence that nothing good ever happens stateside.
When Europe’s elites talk about America, often what they say – or won’t say – tells us more about them, than anything happening over here. The reality is that by most measures the United States gives ordinary citizens far better life chances than the European Union is able to provide for her people.
Deep down Europe’s elites know this. And they fear that their own citizens know it, too. So they constantly put America down in order to maintain their own status across the pond.
Mississippi’s regulatory code is a massive body of laws with thousands of pages and about 8.9 million words. Unsurprisingly, such a large amount of rules has immense potential to burden Mississippians, inhibit economic growth, and continually increase the size of the government.
While it can be easy to get lost in the specifics of potential reforms, one basic proposal could help to simplify the deregulation process and put the state on a path to better and better reforms. This proposal would require that for every new regulation implemented by the state government, there would have to be two regulations removed.
While this is a seemingly simple proposal, the federal government applied this rule to federal regulations in the Trump Administration starting January of 2017. In turn, the federal government saw a relatively low amount of new regulations in the Trump administration. In January of 2021, President Biden repealed the rule. Thus, although the rule is no longer in effect on the federal level, states still have the opportunity to apply the rule in a state context.
Such prior success on the federal level suggests that an effective approach to deregulation is to recognize that business regulations do not occur in a vacuum. If a company does not have to deal with one specific regulation but faces burdens and obstacles from other regulations, the company may be in just as bad a position as it was before. Thus, while incremental deregulation is effective in some circumstances, the true way to see economic prosperity from deregulation is to implement broader reforms that do not just apply to a specific line of legal code.
Furthermore, while regulatory burdens can substantially affect businesses of all sizes, it is also important to note the particular burden that a strong regulatory environment can have in the Mississippi context. With a large percentage of small businesses, the weight of even one or two additional regulations could be just enough to tip the scales against many such businesses in the state. At the same time, having a regulatory model that proactively removes burdensome regulations could spell the difference between stagnation and growth for businesses across the state.
Using a one-in-two-out model, Mississippi could see a reduction in the total amount of regulatory burdens imposed on Mississippians. While the state has been effective at repealing many of the burdensome regulations, such a policy would help place a statutory cap on the amount of regulations. This is significant so that the state does not find itself incrementally growing the regulatory burden with every passing year of lawmaking.
The legislature should continue to take the lead on removing the regulatory burden in the state. While specific repeals of certain regulations can be an effective method of cutting down red tape, broader deregulation policies could make a real difference in the Magnolia State.
If there is anything we must learn from the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal, it is that throwing policy at a wall to see what “sticks” is never a good idea. This is especially true when those policies involve trillions of dollars.
When FDR put forth his plan to save the nation, the problem in his approach was that policy did not have an indicated, narrowly defined purpose and cost the nation greatly. Coming out of the Covid pandemic, we are facing a similar situation with Biden’s Build Back Better strategy, which would ultimately cost $3.5 trillion despite the president’s insistence that it will cost nothing. Biden believes this because his assumption is that the money will be returned when we “invest in America” in areas such as climate and providing a social safety net for families and small businesses. The irony is that some in his own party do not agree as such a bill will likely add to the already daunting inflation rate.
The reality is that virtually none of the solutions that Biden offers in this strategy is actually free. A study from the University of Pennsylvania confirms this. In fact, the national debt is said to increase by 25 percent over 30 years if Biden’s plan comes into effect.
Mississippi should not follow suit in this approach of governance. As tempting as it is just to throw money or ideas at the wall to try to fix a problem. Good policy must have a specific purpose and not operate on assumptions that “we will just make our money back.” That may be a byproduct, but it is a substantial risk that taxpayers often cannot afford if it falls through. Prudence is key.
This is why the narrative that the government is going to “invest in America” is so dangerous. For one, the government is not an investor as if it has generated its own money. The government only has money because the people have been forced to give it money. The second problem is that “investing in America” is so vague and broad that it boils down to just flowery rhetoric, yet it is treated as some profound justification for large spending. This was FDR’s strategy and it ultimately led to several lawsuits in which the Supreme Court granted relief and put back the nation several years back in recovering from the Great Depression.
Throwing money at a wall to see what sticks might help if you have unlimited resources and no consequences; however, neither President Biden nor the Mississippi government has this luxury. If effective and positive change is to occur, we must depart from this “investing in America” narrative and support the American economy by making government smaller, not bigger.
The individual states that make up our nation are at a crossroads. The recent wave of federal funding to states across the country has triggered questions about the extent of federal involvement and the impact of federal funding on state sovereignty and public policy.
From the specific Covid grants issued by Congress, to the bureaucratic matching system for federal programs such as Medicaid, nearly every federal dollar has something attached to it that carries the will of Washington into the states. While not all of these dollars are a precursor to bad federal policy being imposed on the states, an increasingly leftist federal government is tying more and more strings to these dollars. States need a strategy to press against such actions.
This expansion of federal control using federal money has been pushed in multiple sectors. In healthcare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has imposed a vaccinee mandate on hospitals that receive federal funding through Medicaid and Medicare. In the education sector, the Department of Education has asserted an increasingly leftist agenda through its programs, while openly asserting on its own website that “any state that does not want to abide by a federal program's requirements can simply choose not to accept the federal funds associated with that program.”
Thus, we see that while the federal government has increasingly asserted its power over the states, much of the state sovereignty issues are ultimately questions of what dollars the state will accept. The beauty of American federalism is the ability of the states to stand against federal overreach by simply refusing federal funds or agreeing to take them only under certain terms.
Such a stance has been effective in recent months. In April 2021, the Department of Education announced its intention to prioritize the teaching of Critical Race Theory as it awarded civics and history education grants to the state education systems. In response, the state of South Dakota went so far as to directly reject all federal dollars tied to such federal civics and history grant programs. In an earlier response, 20 states had voiced their opposition and the federal government largely backed down after the pushback.
This success presents an important strategy that states can use to press against the whims of Washington. This strategy is twofold -with defensive and offensive elements. As a defense, states should not enroll or expand their involvement in any federal funding program that locks the state in and subjects it to whatever future terms the federal government may impose. On the offensive side, states should directly reject any effort by the federal government to impose damaging policies that are “sugarcoated” with optional federal dollars.
Until states collectively recognize their ability and duty to refuse funds that will impose bad policies on their citizens, the federal government will likely continue down a path of brazen overreach. Conservative state legislatures should reclaim “the power of the purse.” They should consciously reject any attempt by the federal government to wrongly manipulate public policy using the power of federal dollars. The future of these United States depends on it.
In 2020, the Mississippi legislature passed a bill that included a provision to implement a digital driver’s license program that allows citizens to keep a copy of their license on their smartphones. The program is expected to roll out soon. However, there are still some unanswered questions that could pose a threat to individual liberty if not addressed.
In the first place, there must be an understanding of how most digital license programs work. The text of the bill, HB1371, specifies that the Department of Public Safety “shall develop and implement a driver's license or driving permit in electronic format as an additional option for license or permit holders. Acceptable electronic formats include display of electronic images on a cellular phone or any other type of electronic device.”
For most of the states that have implemented a digital license, the license is stored via encryption on a government-sanctioned smartphone app. Mississippi’s program development has followed this model. When the digital license is requested by law enforcement, store clerks, or others, they can scan the smartphone to verify the license's authenticity. After authenticity has been verified via cryptography, the driver’s license information is shared with the individual requesting it.
At first glance, this concept of a digital driver’s license might seem to be a fairly straightforward advancement for the digital age. To a certain degree, this is true. There is nothing inherently wrong with implementing a digital license option in addition to the traditional plastic driver’s license. However, digital licenses bring a level of complexity that is not quite there for physical licenses, and this complexity must be properly addressed.
In the first place, it is important to consider the potential threats to individual liberty that can occur if a digital license program is poorly designed and does not have the proper protections in place for citizens. There are several essential issues to consider.
For instance, consider the circumstances where a driver’s license might be requested. Such examples might include traffic stops, certain purchases, and entrance into restricted buildings. Under traditional circumstances, the physical card would be presented, and there is no centralized reporting structure that logs when and where the license is used. However, in the context of a digital license, this could change.
If the digital license app was programmed to report to the DMV as it was used, such data could be compiled to track citizens' actions. Depending on how the app is designed, this data could include the date, time, location, and the circumstances of the digital license being presented.
Instead of having such a system, any digital license should have authentication protocols that can operate offline without reporting the license usage details to the DMV. This is essential to prevent a digital license from being a tool of systematic state government surveillance.
In addition, there have been plans made in Mississippi to eventually expand the proposed digital driver’s license app by allowing citizens to also include additional state-issued documents such as hunting licenses, real estate licenses, and concealed carry permits. This brings in the question of how much data centralization could eventually be placed into the digital license app.
While the concept of a voluntary centralized digital wallet for government-issued licenses is one thing, there is a potential slippery slope. Already, some in the state have proposed including non-licensing information, such as Covid vaccination cards. At this time, officials have insisted that the option to include other documents in the digital wallet in addition to a standard driver’s license would be strictly voluntary. However, it is important to maintain in the future that the digital ease of adding additional information to a digital wallet should never lead to even more data being requested or digital wallets becoming mandatory.
These are complicated matters that require careful thought and analysis. Yet, despite all of these complexities, the state has had a relatively low amount of public communications on the eventual parameters for the digital license program. For something as fundamental as license identification protocols, and something as complex as mobile app technology, the state should be entirely transparent on the final procedures for development and implementation.
It is essential so that the personal liberty of Mississippians is never compromised for the sake of digital technology. The concept of license digitization comes as no surprise in an increasingly digital world. But the proper guardrails must be in place to ensure that such digitalization is never a precursor for the erosion of individual liberties.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Justice Institute and its client, Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, have halted the Biden administration's unconstitutional vaccine mandate for private employers.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, on Saturday, temporarily blocked enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) mandate pending further review by the court, finding that there is "cause to believe that there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate."
The Mississippi Justice Institute (MJI) represents Gulf Coast Restaurant Group – the corporate family of restaurants such as Half Shell Oyster House and the Rackhouse – in the litigation challenging the vaccine mandate for private employers. Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, like many other businesses, is already struggling with labor shortages and believes that the vaccine mandate will lead to further staffing reductions and harm to its business and customers.
"We are grateful that the court recognized the serious constitutional concerns raised by this mandate and has stayed its enforcement pending further review,” said MJI Director, Aaron Rice. “We will continue fighting to put a permanent stop to this unprecedented federal overreach."
"We are delighted to hear this news from the court,” said Kevin Fish, Vice President of Gulf Coast Restaurant Group. “We know that hard-working Mississippians who were worried about potentially losing their jobs can take a huge sigh of relief."
Attorney General Lynn Fitch represents the State of Mississippi in the lawsuit. "I encourage everyone to consider vaccination, but the decision is yours and the President should not force anyone to vaccinate for fear of losing their jobs, especially not on the cusp of the holidays," said Fitch. "I appreciate Gulf Coast Restaurant Group and the Mississippi Justice Institute standing with me on behalf of the 84 million American workers who will be impacted by this mandate."
This temporary stay represents a major initial victory in the challenge to the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers. MJI and Gulf Coast Restaurant Group look forward to continuing the fight in court.
Please direct all media inquiries to Stone Clanton, [email protected].
Imagine if you were required to shop for groceries in a particular store because of where you happened to live? What if folk living in on zip code had to use a particular branch of Kroger’s, and not any other?
Such a system would be absurd, yet this is pretty much how the public education system is run in Mississippi – and across much of America.
Unless a family is able to afford to move to a particular zip code, or afford to go private, moms and dads have little choice over where to educate their kids. In fact, most families in America have more choice when it comes to where they buy groceries than they do over their children’s education.
Without parent power, moms and dads anxious about some of the things that their children are being taught – such as Critical Race Theory – have found themselves powerless to do much about it.
This week’s election results in Virginia suggest that this could be about to change. The Virginia contest saw conservatives unequivocally committed to school choice and parent power win state-wide contests for the first time in twelve years.
Not only does it turn out that school freedom – when properly presented – is wildly popular. It turns out that millions of ordinary Americans are not that keen on having their kids indoctrinated into believing that their country is intrinsically racists either.
The conservative movement is at a pivotal moment. We have an extraordinary opportunity to achieve fundamental change in the America education system – but if we are to seize this chance, we need to take a new approach.
For as long as anyone can remember, school choice in many states has been synonymous with Charter Schools. Here in Mississippi, for example, we have long tended to put all the school choice eggs into the Charter School basket. And it has not got us very far at all.
Paid for with public money, but run independently, Charter Schools are wonderful. They are a brilliant way of giving lots of kids opportunities that previously only rich people had. Charter schools have an extraordinary record elevating education standards and ensuring young Americans from every background get a great start in life.
The trouble is is that there just aren’t enough of them. To date, here in Mississippi there are a mere seven.
Clearly there is not a shortage of demand for Charter Schools. Those that I have visited here in Mississippi are buzzing with enthusiastic teachers, cheerful students and supportive parents. Demand for places at Charter Schools exceeds the places available.
Nor is there a shortage of people wanting to set up Charter Schools. In June this year it was announced that new applications had come in for a batch of new schools across our state.
The problem is that none of these applications got approved. When the Charter Schools Authorizer Board met recently, they failed to approve any new applications.
To be fair to the Board, too, the legislation we have in our state does not mandate the Board to incubate would-be applicants to get them over the line. But surely the Board could be a little more proactive? The Board needs a more can-do approach - and Mississippi needs a greater sense of urgency about the need for change.
Right now, anyone wanting to create a Charter School not only needs approval from the Authorizer Board. Unless they are located in a failing school district, they have to have permission from their local school board, too. Why?
How can it possibly be right to give the local education bureaucracy the power to prevent moms and dads having more choices for their kids? If your local school board really does a good job, why are they afraid of allowing families an alternative?
We would not tolerate it if companies were granted the power to ban competition and force customers to use only their services. So why are we prepared to allow school boards to do precisely this using our tax dollars?
School choice advocates need policy responses that address all of these problems. Charter schools have a critical role to play in making school choice a reality. But we also need to do more that focus on supply-side reform. We need a demand-side revolution – and Virginia suggests that the demand for real change in public education is there.
Rather than just Charter Schools, we need to advocate for a comprehensive school freedom program, including open enrolment. Most vital of all, we need to frame the debate about school freedom in a way that ensures that it resonates with millions of ordinary Americans concerned about the way in which ultra-left wing ideologues have invaded their children’s classrooms.
If we present school freedom as a way of ensuring that every American child has not just a good education, but a broad and balanced one, our movement will become unstoppable.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Justice Institute – a non-profit Constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy – filed suit today to challenge the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers.
The mandate, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), requires private companies with more than 100 employees to ensure that all of their workers are either fully vaccinated by January 4th, 2022, or subject to weekly testing and mask-wearing. OSHA says "fully vaccinated" means that the employee has received two doses of Moderna or Pfizer's vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. The companies are subject to fines well over $13,000 per day for each employee that does not comply.
The Mississippi Justice Institute (MJI) represents Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, a corporate family of restaurants including Half Shell Oyster House and the Rackhouse. Attorney General Lynn Fitch represents the State of Mississippi in the suit. The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of states, including Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Utah, as well as private employers in several of those states.
“The Mississippi Justice Institute is proud to represent Gulf Coast Restaurant Group, and to partner with Attorney General Lynn Fitch to challenge this extraordinary federal overreach,” said MJI Director, Aaron Rice. “While we and our client are grateful for the development of the COVID vaccines, we cannot stand by while the federal government brazenly exceeds its constitutional authority and infringes on the individual liberties of Mississippi businesses and workers.”
"While I am personally pro-vaccination, I completely disagree with this policy,” said Kevin Fish, Vice President of Gulf Coast Restaurant Group. “It is completely arbitrary. This policy will place an unfair and unreasonable burden upon my staff simply because of the number of employees I have."
In addition to turning employers into federal vaccine enforcers, the regulation will also result in many leaving the workforce entirely. This would accelerate a trend that has devastated the nation’s economic growth in the wake of pandemic.
"The federal government has no business forcing Mississippi workers to get vaccinated or forcing Mississippi businesses to fire their employees,” said Rice. “This is still a free country. In America, we have presidents, not kings."
The lawsuit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Please direct all media inquiries to to Stone Clanton, [email protected]
Retirement is one of the critical financial elements in the lives of thousands of Mississippi. With many Mississippians being employed by the state and local governments, the status of the state’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is extremely important.
According to numbers provided by PER, approximately 13 percent of the total workforce members in the state are active members of the PERS system. This equates to approximately 150,000 Mississippians. Additionally, the system has approximately 112,000 retirees. According to the United States Census Bureau, 488,000 Mississippians are over 65 years of age, and about 11 percent of them are PERS retirees. In all, about 1 in 10 Mississippians are either active members or retirees under PERS. Despite the importance that PERS carries for so many Mississippians, it has not done very well.
The structure of the Public Employee Retirement System is based on a system of Defined Benefit Plans. Under this structure, government employees have a defined percentage of their income directed to the PER system (currently 9 percent). The government entity the employee works for also contributes to the fund via a match that is calculated as a percentage of the employee’s income (currently 17.4). In return, PERS invests the funds and guarantees that the employee will receive defined retirement pension benefits, even if the funds do not provide a good return on investment.
From a limited viewpoint, it may appear that PERS is doing relatively well with its investment returns. The fund saw a 32 percent increase in investment value from June 2020 to June 2021. However, it is important to note that the stock market was in a rebound from the historic effects of 2020 Covid. Thus while the fund saw large increases in 2021, annual investment returns in 2020 were only 3 percent. Furthermore, these increases are not enough to fully address the systemic issues that have caused a gap between the fund’s obligations and actual investment returns.
According to PERS 2020 fiscal year report, the fund had assets with a market value of $28.4 billion and total liabilities of $47.4 billion. This means that the investments were only supporting 61 percent of the total retirement liabilities. According to a recent report issued by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the state retirement system is the 15th most underfunded in the nation on a per capita basis. The state also has the highest amount in the country for unfunded liabilities as a percentage of GDP.
Although the policy issues surrounding the system are extremely complex, some fundamental reforms could be made to help address the level of underfunded liabilities. In addition, the state should also consider reforms that will provide government employees with greater retirement flexibility.
In the first place, it is important to consider the issues surrounding the assumed rate of return utilized by PER. In states across the country, an increasing amount of retirees and major market fluctuations such as the 2008 Crisis and the Covid impact in 2020 have shown many of the assumed rates of return to be higher than the actual annual averages. In light of this, some have called for PER administrators to lower the assumed rate of return to better account for the element of investment risk.
This alternative model that directly factors in risk is known as “risk-adjusted discounting.” Indeed, most of the retirement systems in states across the country have been all but forced to lower their assumed rates of return due to volatile market conditions. However, best practices have these changes implemented in the assumed rate of return without being forced to do so by the market.
Furthermore, rather than centralizing all pension investments into one centralized state agency, Mississippi should consider implementing reforms that would allow government employees more freedom with their retirement contributions.
Some states, such as Utah and Michigan, allow their government employees to opt to allocate funds to a 401(k) style Defined Contribution Plan. This gives state employees flexibility on what they would like to invest in for retirement if they choose to opt out of the standard Defined Benefit Plan. While 401(k) type plans do not have the same guaranteed return, employees have the benefits of greater growth potential, more portability, and the ability to have more personal responsibility over their retirement future.
Fiscal responsibility, good government, and sound public policy are important in ensuring that the public retirement system can best serve government employees. By implementing balanced reforms, the state could see a healthier retirement system that can serve its employees for years into the future.