Supreme Court won’t hear Mississippi NAACP challenge to legislative redistricting.

The Supreme Court won’t order new legislative elections in Mississippi over complaints about the timing of the state’s redistricting.

The Mississippi NAACP had challenged the state’s 2011 state elections because the Legislature did not immediately use the 2010 census to draw new district lines in 2011. The state House and Senate instead argued for several weeks before ending their 2011 session without adopting new maps.

The NAACP had asked for that election to be set aside and special elections to be held under a court-ordered plan. It said that using the old maps violated the one-person, one-vote principle by diluting African-American voting strength.

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Section 5 Should Go: Federal law is being misused to victimize black Mississippians

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann had the choice to bypass the normal Justice Department pre-clearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and go straight to a 3-judge federal panel in order to argue for approval of the state’s Voter ID bill. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that he should have chosen that route. Because, no matter what attempts are made by conservative southern states to improve the integrity and security of the voting process, the Obama Justice Department is going to fight.

While a few Voter ID laws have passed constitutional muster and have been enacted in states that aren’t forced to jump through the archaic and outdated Section 5 hoops, conservative southern states are seeing a backlash from Obama’s Justice Department. Never mind statistics that show minority participation actually increased following the implementation of Voter ID in some states in 2004 and 2008. This is about exploiting black citizens and keeping them in line for upcoming elections.

Over the past several years, a series of Supreme Court rulings and the resulting congressional actions have further solidified and narrowed the political and racial favoritism shown under Section 5. The provision has been bastardized into a heavy handed political tool to use against southern states. It keeps states like Mississippi in the racial “dark ages” and promotes distrust that continues to keep us divided.

It’s a core reason why race pimps like Derrick Johnson of the Mississippi NAACP can still use the bully pulpit to make charges of any number of perceived injustices, and Mississippi is immediately expected to prove our innocence. Through the prism of racial politics and churned up hatred, we are automatically presumed guilty.

It’s time for Section 5 to go. The provision has now become a device to racially discriminate against conservative southern states and to artificially boost the voting numbers of blacks in order that they will reward the Obama Administration by towing the line on election day.

The original intent of the provision has been altered beyond repair, and serves no purpose in the realities of the present or future. It is a remnant of a bygone era that some have a need to hold on to in order to defend against unkept promises and unflattering facts. These facts are problems we in Mississippi cannot come together to correct until we are all on equal footing to address them.

The Voting Rights Act has been in place since 1965. However, black Mississippian’s still find themselves battling against indifference and underutilized opportunity. Recently released numbers from the Mississippi Department of Education clearly show that black children, especially black males, have a serious culturally ingrained opposition towards taking advantage of education to better themselves. The distrust promoted by forcing large pockets of racially specialized voting areas doesn’t allow us to come together to fix those ingrained problems. It creates a division in our state that forces blacks to choose between race or recovery, between poverty or self-determination.

As a result, we’re not moving forward. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s War on the South, we are moving backwards.

For example, reforms in welfare on the federal level in the late 90’s showed that when expectations of self determination are raised, so is the level of achievement. That law resulted in a reduction of the poverty rate of single mothers by 30%, and the number of poverty among black children dropped to it’s lowest level ever. However, on July 12 of this year the Obama Administration waived the work requirement in the law, keeping up the effort to keep black southerners in despair.

The liberal position is that the only way blacks in the South can achieve success is through skewing laws and boosting public benefits. It’s a slap in the face of every black southerner. The idea that blacks can’t move ahead on their own without government help is insulting. That is the basis of many of the Section 5 rulings and maneuvers over the past decade, and it’s a core reason why Mississippi and other southern states are having difficulty moving past old divides and creating new successes.

There simply is no reason, in this day and age, Mississippi should have to ask permission to innovate and proceed into the future based on race. There is no reason black Mississippians need the federal government to “protect” them from their own state. And, there is no longer evidence that white Mississippians attempt to dilute the voting strength of anyone. If there is anything we have learned at this point in our history, it is that we prosper or fail together. A law that keeps us divided is one that keeps us poor and dependent.

Despite what many race-hustlers say, Voter ID laws are not about race. But they do allow for voter security and integrity, and that scares the pants off liberals who have long skirted election day laws in small Mississippi towns. It’s become an easy play since small polling places barely have the resources to manage the operation, much less watch out for fraud that is, in many cases, literally being bussed in.

The only way liberals can hope to maintain any control over the generations of black voters they have disappointed time and time again with poor policies is to scare them. Showing an ID is really not that scary these days. But, a group of powerful white people attempting to dilute black votes? Now that gets people in line!

Mississippi should join other southern states to participate in challenges to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and help end this madness. Two states have recently filed petitions to the Supreme Court, and four other states have joined in.

During the 2006 reauthorization of the act, Congress toughened the standards of Section 5. The argument before the Supreme Court beginning in October will be that the added requirements made the law unconstitutional.

No doubt, in becoming a part of the the push towards normalization, we would hear that such a move would be an unnecessary cost to the state. But, think of the costs if we don’t. Think of yet another generation of Mississippians trained by Justice Department scare tactics to live their life in hatred of where they come from, and who their neighbors are–another generation taught that the only way to win is to cheat. And, another generation taught that they can never succeed on their own merit, so why try?

Mississippi and the other nine states that have been subjected to the misuse of this law at the hands of holier-than-thou liberals have a right to move forward. Black Mississippians have a right to self determination without being used as pawns in a political game. And all of us should have an expectation that the power brokers at the Justice Department will stop playing politics with our future, and allow us to move forward together.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Related articles

• Texas Can’t Enforce Voter Photo-ID Law, U.S. Court Rules – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Salter: Early voting vs. Voter ID (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Voting Rights Act: The State of Section 5 (propublica.org)
• Hosemann visits HA, talks Voter ID. (mississippipep.wordpress.com)

Medicaid: Sad stories begin in time to try to sway election.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

I have always had a good relationship with Mississippi’s Associated Press reporters as a Political and Communications Strategist. But, not all AP writers are as ethical in the practice of their craft.

The media picture has become more muddied. The internet, community reporting from bloggers close to story makers, and the quickly growing trend to have an on-staff or contracted content producer for virtually every organization big and small means information is everywhere. It’s a good thing in my mind that no one entity controls the flow of information, as has been the case in the past. It’s how technology and the insatiable appetite of the public for information gave birth to the likes of . . . well, me.

Unlike some online producers, I don’t hide my name or my face when I write an article. That is a trend that will increase as online news becomes more a norm of everyday consumption. I stand behind what I write and we welcome the engaging conversation. I believe it leads to real dialogue, because it rejects the notion that you can say anything and get away with it.

In the drive to compete with smaller and more nimble content producers, large organizations like the AP have loosened standards. For 165 years those standards of neutrality have allowed local beat reporters to take a news article and fill in the local angle with follow up stories. But as we are beginning to see, that is coming to an end. It all started with the changing of the guard in 2008 at the AP, and has ramped up in 2012. A 2011 leaked AP memo called “The New Distinctiveness” laid bare the new rules.

Writer Michael Calderone published a piece in Politico in 2008 about the shift in thinking at AP when he wrote that the organization was

“scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians’ statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers.”

In other words, the AP is looking to compete with more opinion and analysis. But, not so much define it as such. Instead the analysis and the emotionally charged become part of the overall reporting. Some groups are beginning to take note of the leftward lean, and have even begun referring to the AP as the “Administration’s Propagandist’s”, referring to the number of pro-Obama articles that are appearing.

What is most troubling about this is the number of smaller news markets that are affected by it.

I am consistently surprised by the number of people who still don’t realize how much of the news coming from traditional local outlets is not the product of staff reporters. There are many people that pick up a paper or see a report online that just assume it’s from a local source, even if it is attributed to the Associated Press.

Case in point: a recently published article on the rejection of Medicaid changes by state governors in the Sun Herald, the lead dog of print media on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. While featuring Mississippi as one of the states, none of the named contributing writers were from Mississippi.

I’m not arguing they necessarily should be. But one can’t help but notice the “New Distinctiveness” from the AP in the article. The timing of it suggests a political lean to the left in order to affect upcoming elections, and they use emotionally charged stories to get to the reader.

Here’s an excerpt:

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough.

She makes about $15,000 a year, on which she supports her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she’d be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Then she heard her own governor won’t agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine.

“You fall through the cracks and there’s nothing you can do about it,” said the 52-year-old home health aide. “It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished.”

Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don’t qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That’s especially true in states in which conservative governors say they’ll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama’s health law.

In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.

Governors in those five states have said they’ll reject the Medicaid expansion underpinning Obama’s health law after the Supreme Court’s decision gave states that option. They favor small government and say they can’t afford the added cost to their states even if it’s delayed by several years. Some states estimate the expansion could ultimately cost them a billion dollars a year or more.

Sun Herald

The article goes on to praise the Obama administrations efforts while demonizing the Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan’s plans as damaging.

If there was ever an example of why online producers of content like Mississippi PEP should exist, then this is it.

Are these sad, heart-wrenching stories? Yes. But, I could find you a hundred stories that shows how government health care like Medicaid has ravaged peoples lives by restricting their choices. How many stories of abuse of the system could be dug up? Just as many.

My thanks goes out to the local AP reporters I have had the privilege of dealing with. Please don’t fall prey to this type of reporting. Let the pundits and politicos among us do what we do. We need you to keep the story steady.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Senator Giles Ward: Medicaid expansion costs would be too much.

Sen. Giles Ward, R-Louisville, brought up the June ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

“The ruling surprised a lot of people, including me,” Ward said. “But the Supreme Court got one thing right – this entire legislation is a tax.”

Ward went on to say the proposed expansion of Medicaid found in the law’s language was one the state couldn’t afford, saying nearly 400,000 people would be eligible to receive benefits from the expansion but the cost would be too much.

via MEDICAID EXPANSION | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com.

Related articles

• Governor Bryant on ObamaCare in Mississippi: “No money is free.”
• Mississippi Trial Lawyer advocates taxing internet purchases to participate in ObamaCare Medicaid expansion, shore up PERS system.
• Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013
• Medicaid Expansion: Who’s In? Who’s Out? (npr.org)

Governor Bryant on ObamaCare in Mississippi: “No money is free.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or more commonly called ObamaCare, has left many people asking what’s next – and what does it mean here in Mississippi.

While some people say ObamaCare will come as an economic boost with “free” money, the reality is simple: no money is free.

So let’s talk about the facts as they are in Mississippi.

During fiscal year 2012, the Mississippi Division of Medicaid – the agency in charge of operating most of the Medicaid program in Mississippi – required $3.62 billion in federal funds and $763 million in state funds to directly administer the Medicaid program. These figures don’t include funds used by other agencies to meet their own Medicaid program responsibilities.

That means the conservative total cost to operate the Medicaid program in Mississippi during fiscal year 2012 was more than $4.38 billion as of July of this year. Remember, federal tax dollars aren’t “free,” they are your tax dollars, so that’s more than $4.38 billion of your money spent on one year of Medicaid in Mississippi. This is without the expansions the Obama administration is attempting to force.

The federal government wants to give Medicaid to more people – more than what your money is already paying for.

The federal government also promised to initially pay 100 percent of the Medicaid expansion costs for the first three years of ObamaCare.

What you do not hear is how the cost burden increasingly shifts to Mississippi taxpayers.

According to a report requested by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, the total cost to implement ObamaCare in Mississippi is more than $1.6 billion over seven years. This expansion could result in one in three Mississippians being on Medicaid, with an additional cost starting at $68 million and increasing to $427 million annually.

That’s a large burden for the Mississippi taxpayer to assume.

There are also hidden expansion costs. Increasing the Medicaid rolls will immediately result in increased administrative costs.

In Mississippi, those costs would be about $17 million the first year and $36 million the second year. The Mississippi Division of Medicaid estimates the administrative cost to the state for the first three years of Medicaid expansion is $81 million.

What’s more, these expansion costs will be added to the enormous amount of money Mississippi already spends on Medicaid.

In fiscal year 2012, for every one dollar Mississippi spent to administer the Medicaid program, it spent about three dollars on K-12 education. If we expand Medicaid, that ratio will get smaller very quickly.

Also in fiscal year 2012, Mississippi spent more than seven times as much money on the existing Medicaid program as we did on economic development and most of our state public safety efforts combined!

No matter on what side of the political spectrum you align yourself, when you look at the bottom line of a potential Medicaid expansion in Mississippi, it is clear we cannot afford this enormous burden.

It would rob our resources for education, public safety and job creation and could very well result in tax increases. Undoubtedly, it would compromise our state’s resources and leave us with a bill we cannot pay.

Mississippi can do better, and there are real solutions to improving health care.

To start, each of us must assume personal responsibility for our own health and our own choices. Lifestyles that includes regular exercise and proper diets can help shrink Mississippi’s obesity rate and the chronic diseases like diabetes that accompany it.

Activities like smoking erode our health, and we must do all in our power to fight the epidemic of teen pregnancy – an issue that has far-reaching consequences for our state.

At the core of improved health care is job creation. We must continue working to create an environment where businesses flourish so Mississippians can secure sound employment and fund their own health insurance. We should also purchase health insurance across state lines and work to lower insurance costs by pooling employees of small businesses.

Mississippi can and will do better. As governor, I will fight to protect our future – our education, our safety and our jobs – and that means that I will resist any effort to expand Medicaid in this state.

Related articles

• ObamaCare Regulations of State Health Insurance Exchanges: Commissioner Mike Chaney decides to deal with the devil.
• Senator Chris McDaniel talks to Mississippi PEP about Obamacare and what he expects from the Supreme Court (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Obamacare: A few quick thoughts before the SCOTUS decision (mississippipep.wordpress.com)
• Conservative Governors Are Right to Resist Medicaid Expansion (johnmalcolm.me)
• SCOTUS Obamacare ruling-Mississippian’s react: Senator Michael Watson (mississippipep.wordpress.com)

Salter: In Mississippi, Medicaid is focus of health care ruling

The top drawer political reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the health care reforms known as “Obamacare” is one founded deeply in the 2012 federal election cycle and the inexorable grind of partisan politics.

But in Mississippi, the central focus of the decision for state policymakers in both the executive and legislative branches of government is what the majority of the Supreme Court said about how the federal government can enforce the expansion of the Medicaid program dictated by the Obama health care reforms.

On Medicaid, the court said that the federal government can’t threaten or withhold funding for the state’s existing Medicaid program simply because the state fails to expand Medicaid as dictated by the Obama health care reform act. That part of the ruling raised the Mississippi Legislature’s attention.

Medicaid in Mississippi is nearly a $5 billion annual proposition utilizing both federal and state dollars that serves some 641,454 Mississippians. Currently, the state offers Medicaid to citizens with an income up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level or $23,050 for a family of four.

It is also the most heavily subsidized Medicaid program in the nation. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011, for every $1 the state spent on medical care for the poor, the federal government spent $5.61. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012, the ratio dropped to $3 in federal funds for every $1.

For Mississippi, the court’s ruling mitigates what many Mississippi legislative leaders have predicted was the most expensive and difficult portion of the reforms for state government to finance – the expansion of the Medicaid program in the poorest state in the union.

via Desoto Times Tribune > Archives > Opinion > Editorials > In Mississippi, Medicaid is focus of health care ruling.

Related Articles

• Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013
• ObamaCare Regulations of State Health Insurance Exchanges: Commissioner Mike Chaney decides to deal with the devil.
• Chris McDaniel: Despite SCOTUS Ruling on Healthcare Law, “Right-to-Privacy” Contradiction Offers Glimmer of Hope for Mississippi Challenge

Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare constitutional, Mississippi, like every other state, is left with the option of expanding Medicaid.

Whether to do that will be a major focus of the upcoming 2013 legislative session, according to Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and two local Republican lawmakers.

“It’s terrible public policy, it makes no sense in the long-term for Mississippi taxpayers, said Reeves. ”So, we’re going to look at what our options are. I have staff members working right now with the Division of Medicaid, working with the federal government and others to try to determine what our options are going to be,” Reeves said.

“The federal government gives us $3, the state matches $1, but do we have the $1,” said Sen. Billy Hudson. “Can we afford it…that’s the big question,” he said.

“I’m not really in favor of expanding the program now,” said Rep. Larry Byrd. ”I think that it’s another one of those things that the government is going to send to us and then we’ll end up having to fund it on our own later and it just creates a struggle for our state,” Byrd said.

via Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013 – WDAM.COM – TV 7 – News, Weather and Sports.

Chris McDaniel: Despite SCOTUS Ruling on Healthcare Law, “Right-to-Privacy” Contradiction Offers Glimmer of Hope for Mississippi Challenge

BY: Chris McDaniel @senatormcdaniel

In the Supreme Court’s recent decision affirming Obamacare’s individual mandate, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended the mandate to carry health insurance, but then recognized that the Constitution still limited Congress from imposing other mandates.

“Other provisions of the Constitution also check congressional overreaching,” Ginsburg wrote. “A mandate to purchase a particular product would be unconstitutional if, for example, the edict impermissibly abridged the freedom of speech, interfered with the free exercise of religion or infringed on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.”

And so a small glimmer of hope still exists.

See other Mississippi PEP Contributors

In 2010, a group of Mississippi citizens, including Gov. Phil Bryant, filed the nation’s first private class action petition designed to challenge the new healthcare law.  It is the first to highlight a contradiction between the new law’s mandate and the zone of privacy first articulated by the Supreme Court decades ago.

It is a legal theory that still survives today, despite the Court’s ruling in June.

Although the Constitution does not mention a generalized right of privacy, the Court has issued a series of controversial decisions, including the disappointing case of Roe v. Wade, which fabricate a zone of privacy – one without clear contours, shielded by the so-called penumbra of a variety of provisions in the Bill of Rights.  Purportedly invented to protect individual rights, it encompasses a person’s autonomous decisions regarding private matters and the right to keep the intimate details of those private matters confidential.

Federal courts have provided legal protection to decisions relating to marriage, procreation, abortion, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, education, medical records and even homosexual sodomy.  It’s a notion of liberty that has been broadly defined with aspirational language such as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

So if the Court is to be consistent, an individual’s refusal to enter into a health insurance contract in the face of an illegitimate governmental demand is subject to some degree of protection.

Put another way, the doctor-patient relationship is one which evokes the so-called zone of privacy.  Public concern over the accessibility of health records has led to increasing efforts on the federal and state level to protect medical information.  Patient data, whether transactional or safety related, is protected by legal mechanisms to ensure confidentiality.

By compelling individuals to enter into a contract to purchase insurance from another entity, the law will require them to share private and personal information with the contracting party, forcing citizens to fully disclose medical conditions, treatments, habits and behaviors to corporate strangers.

Not only will an insurer be privy to all past medical information, Congress’s mandate will, by necessity, grant the compelled insurer access to present and future medical information of a confidential nature.  In other words, as Justice Ginsburg explained, it infringes “on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.”

If judicially enforceable privacy rights mean anything then medical details certainly merit protection, since information regarding one’s mind, body and health is a matter that the individual is ordinarily entitled to keep private.  A decision not to contract with an insurance company and disclose confidential medical information with an entity other than one’s physician should fall within a constitutionally protected area.

After his review of the Mississippi case, Adam Freedman, a writer for National Review Magazine, offered an optimistic perspective:  “Let us hope that Bryant v. Holder reaches the Supreme Court.  If there is any logic left to constitutional law, the justices will have a narrow choice:  either strike down the individual mandate or overturn the broad privacy right created by Roe and its progeny.”

It is what one might call a no-lose situation.

And perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates that the American people are not willing to give up without a fight.

About Chris McDaniel: Chris is an attorney, conservative commentator and a Republican politician in the Mississippi Senate who has represented the 42nd District, which encompasses part of South Mississippi, since 2008. He resides with his family in Ellisville, Mississippi. 

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Chicken Little Syndrome: Voter ID

BY: B. Keith Plunkett–@Keithplunkett

The chicks are all aflutter. It seems Voter ID in Mississippi and beyond is going to seriously hamper the ability of otherwise qualified individuals to vote. It seems that, despite the 62% of the people who voted for the initiative obviously don’t mind showing their ID to do so, this law is going to wreak havoc on our entire election system. There is only one problem: there is no real evidence to support that claim.

However, there is plenty of subjective treatment, leaps of intellect and illusions of complication to go around. There are plenty of “what if’s”, and plenty of references to little old ladies who have neither a birth certificate nor a photo ID. I’ll acknowledge, like Bigfoot, just because I haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But, like Bigfoot, I’m curious as to how they manage in today’s world to remain so hidden.

At best and assuming a few do exist, then as an overall percentage these “examples” are a fraction of the overall voting population that can be easily dealt with in implementing the law. At worst, they don’t exist, figments of “Chicken Little’s” creative imagination.

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As much as the hard working folks over at the Jackson Free Press want you to believe this will negatively affect Democrat leaning voters only, and the Republican “machine” is simply going to ignore the poor and indigents cries for help, the truth is the complications that must be dealt with cut across demographic and party lines. Furthermore, there is no shortage of voter registration groups working on behalf of both parties to help work out the details.

These “Chicken Littles” revert effortlessly, as they almost always do, to the obligatory reference to Jim Crow, to racism and the “notorious legacies” of southern states. They lean heavily on the fact that not all the nitty gritty details have been worked out between the Department of Justice and the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office as some sort of indication that something is amiss. They reference questionable numbers in Pennsylvania, cases in South Carolina–whatever it takes to continue the ridiculous narrative that the “po’ lil’ folks in Mis-sippy gonna be taken advantage of.”

Mississippi’s Law is patterned after Indiana’s Law.

Out of all of the hullabaloo and the feathers flying, there hasn’t been a great deal of reference from naysayers to the Indiana law. That’s the one that Mississippi’s law is patterned after according to the bill’s author Senator Joey Fillingane. It’s also the one upheld by the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Who wrote the lead opinion on that one? None other than the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

Despite the fact that both Georgia and Indiana’s photo ID laws were upheld 4 and 5 years ago respectively, the same dismissed arguments as to why they would have been an abomination are being retro-fitted for another round here in Mississippi. The arguments simply don’t hold water.

Both judges in the Indiana and Georgia cases rejected the claim that there were significant numbers of voters without an ID. Over the course of two years of litigation in those cases, the lawyers, the ACLU and the NAACP couldn’t produce a single person unable to vote based on the lack of ID. Where are these people we keep hearing about?

The shell game/straw man/red herring tactics employed by the chicks require now a quick move on to another point without addressing the first. So let’s move on shall we?

Another leap of the left: Disenfranchised voters  just won’t go to the polls rather than deal with the hassle.

Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Little, that chicken won’t fly either.

A national study of voting behavior from 2000 to 2006 by scholars at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Delaware concluded that “concerns about voter identification laws affecting turnout are much ado about nothing.”

Other studies back up that finding. A study by The Heritage Foundation in 2005 of the ’04 election found no reduction in turnout, including African American voters. An M.I.T. study in 2007 found that of a cross-section of 36,500 people across racial lines, only 23 could not vote because of ID requirements. A John Lott study found that ID requirements encouraged public confidence and increased voter participation.

When Georgia held its first presidential primary with the photo ID law in effect, the state had a record turnout of over 2 million voters, almost one million more than in its 2004 primary before the ID requirement was in effect. Voters who did not have any ID were less than 0.01 percent. The number of black Georgians who voted more than doubled from the 2004 election and there were 100,000 more votes cast in the Democratic than the Republican primary.

Indiana’s turnout in its initial elections after the photo ID law went into effect went up two percent overall. A study by the University of Missouri found no evidence that turnout of minority, poor, elderly, or less-educated populations was reduced, and in fact, the “only consistent and statistically significant impact of photo ID in Indiana is to increase voter turnout in counties with a greater percentage of Democrats relative to other counties.” When Indiana held its presidential primary on May 6, the turnout of Democratic voters quadrupled over 2004 and over 862,000 more votes were cast in the Democratic than the Republican primary.

So, little chicks will try as they may to raise a ruckus in the barnyard. Voter ID may have been a solution in search of a problem. That’s hard to know since we never had Voter ID before to know how much fraud may have actually been occurring. Ask Ike Brown. Mississippi voters, the ones that will be showing their ID, seemed to think it was a good idea.

But, the evidence clearly shows that it’s not going to disenfranchise voters, along racial or any other lines. That’s just talk of “the sky falling”.

Mississippi’s Voter ID law, based on Indiana’s law already approved by the Supreme Court, should be safe. That is, unless the Department of Justice ends up deciding to disenfranchise and play racial politics.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter  @Keithplunkett

Other Articles by Keith Plunkett

• Academia, ObamaCare, MAEP funding, and authority: The Illusion of Knowledge
• Obamacare: A few quick thoughts before the SCOTUS decision
• TEA Party catching flack for Legislative Report Card, but the root of the problem is in a lack of positive issue driven communication
• The Scattering Herd: Mississippi Republican Legislators
• Education Reform: Conservatives being slowly slaughtered by a million tiny cuts.
• Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing: Parent’s Campaign, Education Superintendent lobbying should worry parents and anger taxpayers

Academia, ObamaCare, MAEP funding, and authority: The Illusion of Knowledge

“Most of nature is inherently chaotic. It’s not rigidly determined in the old sense. It’s not rigidly predictable.”
Rupert Sheldrake

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

A few weeks ago I was introduced through a series of articles to a book about the concept of the “Illusion of Knowledge.” As a watcher of social behavior I was immediately interested in the concept. As a political communications geek, I am becoming more aware of it’s frequent use in the realm of politics, although until now I had no term to define it. Simply put, it is a tool used to create an aura of authority while confusing an audience with B.S.

None of us want to appear confused or ignorant of anything. Our brain categorizes things in such a way that confusion invites uncertainty, and uncertainty complication, complication leads to stress. In this day of instant and constant information, we who participate in the sharing of information need to keep a thumb on top of sources at all times. Yet there is still very little a single person can really truly know about many different things.

While advising others in the realm of communications I am sometimes called to give the very logical advice that it is never a good idea to launch into a discussion about something of which you are unaware or unread. You want to look like a real dummy? That will do it every time. It’s quite alright to say, “I don’t know.”

But, that advice is for someone who has to speak. What of those who simply want to listen? How do they know if what they are hearing is a line of crap or if it is absolute truth? How do they know that the constant references to studies, formulas or authoritative people aren’t just a reference to glorified an unproven theories and theorists? The answer is, if it sounds convincing enough, they don’t.

Whoever said “there aren’t any dumb questions” never sat in a room full of people and watched someone embarrass themselves with a question that everyone else in the room already knew the answer to. We convince ourselves from those experiences that we don’t ever want to be “that” person. Couple that with the unwillingness or inability to search out our own deeper understanding, and it means the general public is ripe for the picking by snake oil salesman of all stripes.

Enter: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare.

ObamaCare, when finally glued, patched and pulled together in 2009, had become a 2,700 page monstrosity. It was so thrown together that some of the copies provided to members of Congress still had corrections and notations handwritten in the margins. It was a moment of uncharacteristic and unscripted honesty when Rep. Nancy Pelosi excitedly said those now famous words, “We have to pass it, so you can all see what’s in it.” Translation: “It’s too damn complicated for any one person to fully understand.”

So how do we know it will do what it says it will do?

We don’t. Nobody does. It’s nothing more than a wish list of academia from decades past of the perfect utopian plan, and the added necessary perks to gain support. As we all know, Utopia doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. And, one person’s utopian plan is another’s nightmare scenario. We are about to create the largest federal bureaucracy ever known to human kind based on little more than good intentions.

Speaking of good intentions,

Mississippi has it’s own version of the illusion with the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP).

The MAEP formula is designed to be sure poor school districts get the necessary dollars to increase student achievement.

Read this through one time at normal reading speed:

The formula produces a base student cost, the amount that is required to provide each student an adequate education in a Mississippi school. Each district is required to provide up to 27% of the base cost through a local contribution made up of local ad valorem taxes. The state funds the difference between what a local community is able to provide (up to a maximum of 27%) and the total base student cost, and that amount is multiplied by the school district’s average daily attendance to get the district’s MAEP allocation.

The formula is recalculated every four years and is adjusted for inflation in the intervening years by multiplying 40% of the base student cost by the current rate of inflation as computed by the State’s economist.

Districts that have had a growth in enrollment in each of the three consecutive years prior to the appropriation are awarded additional “high growth” funding by adding the average growth for the three prior years to the district’s average daily attendance.

Did you get all that? My guess is no. But someone smarter than us made it up so they must know what they are doing, right?

Wrong. Mississippi is still on or near the bottom of virtually every positive education statistic in the country, and in some cases below a few third world countries in global rankings. But, instead of recognizing that the current system is broken, and that school choice is working in other areas of the country, government school proponents want to introduce complicated, unproven and questionable formulas designed to skim more money from the public coffers to place in a system that employs bait and switch protectionist tactics; and ratings systems that allows school districts to claim to be successful when in fact, the future of the children under their watch is being destroyed by their practices. To question the formula publicly is to blaspheme against all that is good and right with education, which brings me to the other type of illusion.

The well-respected and important personality or organization.

The other type of illusion is one that allows for the use of personal or political capital. In essence, someone gets to use their popularity to sell you a bill of goods.

In the public herd we roam together. No one wants to be the first one to step out and disagree with an obviously well thought of personality or organization. But in not doing so, we collectively allow ourselves to be railroaded into supporting an argument or a point of view that otherwise wouldn’t hold water. It’s how political parties “maintain party discipline”. It’s why conservatives in Mississippi continue to elect Thad Cochran to the U.S. Senate despite the fact that he stopped being conservative, and living in Mississippi, years ago.

It’s why a “respected” trial lawyer in Mississippi who writes a legal blog can predict a judges ruling in an upcoming decision in the “Admitting Privileges” abortion case, yet not once refer to the actual law in making his judgement. In the particular instance I write of, legal blogger Philip Thomas relied on polling data and the public pronouncements of politicians to make his claim that a judge will end up overturning the law.

Not once did Thomas even mention the law in his piece. Yet, a former newspaper man-turned Democrat political operative-turned newspaper editor referred to the piece and to Thomas’ reputation as the reason the opinion is worthy of repeating.

From a logic standpoint, Thomas’ argument doesn’t stand up. For example, if public pronouncements could be used in interpreting a legal decision, then the Supreme Court couldn’t have ruled the individual mandate of ObamaCare to be a tax and therefore constitutional. Because, every Democrat from Mississippi to the West Coast has been preaching the exact opposite for 3 years. Yet, with Thomas claims in the abortion case, he makes the argument and some people buy it because of his reputation. If he ends up being right what does that say about a legal system that looks at everything BUT the law in making the determination?

Simpleton’s need not apply.

Although the Illusion of Knowledge is a favorite tool of progressives, they don’t own the franchise. But, regardless of who uses it, when confronted, it folds like a cheap card table. You just have to ask a simple question. Because “simple” isn’t something these people can do. We saw the ridiculous comments from members of Congress when asked where they derived constitutional authority to meddle in health care. Despite the ruling, the  legal contortions from the Supreme Court did little to clarify that for the general public.

Simple questions of what gives a person authority to make claims, confounds the basic ideological academic stance that in order to be worthy, an opinion must be based in complicated theory, deep study or personal gravitas. To the self important, you have to be worthy to ask the question, and if you challenge the answer you prove your ignorance. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

The more complication that can be created, the more the sense of self-importance of the creator. But, ask a simple question that questions their authority on the subject to this type of illusionist, and you’ll see someone who is attempting to baffle you change subjects faster than green grass goes through a goose. It’s all about keeping the doubt and confusion alive.

A Facebook “friend”, and self-described progressive liberal who often comments on my page, enjoys sending me and others who disagree with him links to all sorts of reading material, studies and theories as to why he is right and everyone else is wrong. When asked the simplest of questions to back up his pronouncements, he insults the questioner and changes the subject. It’s a tactic that has been used over and over and over again. It has become ridiculously predictable, just like the tired arguments of utopians everywhere.

I am most aware that I will likely be labeled a simpleton for my inability to grasp such complexities of detailed formulas. I’ll probably hear charges of not being a team player from my Republican friends for daring to mention Thad Cochran in this post. And it will undoubtably be pointed out that I enjoy a small amount of political capital of my own that I am wasting on mundane matters of communication strategy. But like any good simpleton, I’ll continue to look to what makes sense and what doesn’t as a guide. And I’ll depend on experience and example of what works as the best test of outcomes.

What I see is that regardless of who we elect there remains a huge bureaucracy of agencies, sub-agencies and appointed positions that remain outside of the public’s ability to change. All the good intentions in the world haven’t so far negated the affect of those shadowy entities on the heart and souls of the men and women we put into office. If someone comes up with a formula to change that dynamic, I’m all ears.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter  @Keithplunkett

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