The Inflation Reduction Act does nothing to reduce inflation. Seldom in America’s history has there been a piece of legislation put before Congress so inappropriately named.

If the Inflation Reduction Act was really about tackling inflation, you might expect it would say something about monetary policy. Nope. Or maybe it would change the Federal Reserve’s terms of reference. None of that.

What the Act does do is spend $739 billion. Add that to the $1.9 trillion that this administration has already spent in the name of COVID recovery, and we’re talking some serious money.

Over half ($369 billion) of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $739 billion spending will go to “fighting climate change”. The Act seeks to reduce CO2 emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.

According to an analysis by Princeton university’s Zero Lab, the bill would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6.3 billion metric tons over the next 10 years. It would do this by subsidizing a massive increase in solar and wind power production. The amount of energy that the US produces using wind and solar power is set to increase from 15 GW of wind and 10 GW of solar in 2020 to almost 40 GW of wind and 50 GW of solar by 2025 – 26.

“Great!”, I hear you thinking. “America would, at last, be producing lots of cheap, renewable energy”.

It won’t be cheap. Unless the Act is able to change the laws of physics, the cheapest way to generate electricity will remain through burning oil, natural gas or coal. If wind and solar were cheaper, the federal government would not be having to spend billions subsidizing the switch.

Here in Mississippi, energy companies are able to charge consumers what it costs them to produce electricity, plus a profit margin (of about 10 percent). In other words, producers do not really have much incentive to produce electricity as cheaply as possible when they know they can pass the cost on to their captive consumers.

Having the local Public Service Commissioners rubber stamp the price fixing process is no guarantee that it is done in the interests of consumers.

What Biden’s latest boondoggle will do is offer local Mississippi energy companies even more incentive to open solar and wind production plants, safe in the knowledge that they can benefit from the federal subsidies and that they can continue to pass on additional costs to ordinary Mississippi households. Various vested interests must be salivating at the prospects.

“But what about the new jobs the bill will create?” some will ask. Lobbyists for various vested interests in our state will be quick to point out that the Inflation Reduction Act will create thousands of clean energy jobs.

The idea that this Act will ‘create jobs’ is a fallacy. As Daniel Hannan recently pointed out in the Telegraph, back in the mid-nineteenth century Frédéric Bastiat used the ‘broken window’ argument to show that you do not make a town rich by smashing up its shop windows. Breaking all the windows might generate lots of economic activity as the shopkeepers rush to employ every available glazier. But what that would do is merely divert labor and capital from other more productive activity. So, too, with Biden’s new Act, which will divert labor and capital from more productive activity and engage them in activity that is inherently expensive and wasteful.

The Inflation Reduction Act represents another step toward the steady socialization of America.

For the past 20 years, Europe has subsidized a switch away from oil, gas and coal toward solar and wind. Renewables have been subsidized and oil, coal and natural gas production are often outright banned.

Today it is becoming increasingly clear that this has been a disaster. Not only are solar and wind simply unable to generate enough energy to keep Europe warm, what they do produce is hideously expensive. So expensive that much of Europe’s manufacturing plant is likely to have to shut down for periods of the coming months.

At the precise moment Europe’s energy disaster starts to unfold, the Biden administration seems determined to emulate it. America deserves better.

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Mississippi is now the world’s leader in putting people behind bars — more inmates per capita than any state or nation, including China, Russia and Iran, according to the World Population Review. 

“Is there a political price to be paid for foolishly sticking with a failed system that’s made us the world capital of mass incarceration?” asked Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. “What’s it going to take for Mississippians to realize that the mass incarceration we have carried out for decades has made us less safe, rather than safer?” 

Across the U.S., the number of those in prison in the U.S. is 16% lower today than before the pandemic, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, but Mississippi’s rate is skyrocketing, rising more than 1,500 in less than six months. That population now exceeds 18,000 — the highest rate since April 2020. 

“We have perfected throwing people away for long periods of time,” Johnson said, “and yet after decades and decades of this approach, Mississippians are more fearful about violent crime than any time I remember.” 

In September 2013, Mississippi had as many as 22,490 inmates behind bars. In the years since, reforms and an aggressive Parole Board, headed by a veteran law enforcement officer, reduced the number of inmates to the lowest level in two decades. On Feb. 7, that population fell to 16,499, according to MDOC. 

But with Gov. Tate Reeves’ new board chairman, a former Chevron executive he put in charge in January, that trend has reversed itself. 

On Aug. 1, the prison population hit a high of 18,080. 

If this current trend continues, Mississippi would top 19,000 inmates before the end of the year and would surpass 22,000 inmates before the end of 2023. 

That additional prison population would cost taxpayers more than $100 million a year, based on the $53.72 per-day cost computed by the state’s legislative watchdog. 

“We’re stuck in this futile cycle of throwing more money at prisons,” Johnson said. “Even with the Department of Justice breathing down our necks, we can’t handle the people we have.” 

The Justice Department began investigating the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman in 2020 after MCIR and ProPublica reported on the increases in grisly violence, gang control and subhuman living conditions. In April, the department reported that the prison’s conditions violate the Constitution. 

The department is investigating other prisons as well. 

Promises, Promises in Prison Reform 

When Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, signed House Bill 585 into law in 2014, the measure drew widespread praise from conservatives and liberals alike because it promised to reduce the prison population, save millions —  $266  million, to be exact — and reinvest some of the money into programs for offenders. 

Instead, all of those savings went back into the state’s coffers, helping to pay for huge phased-in corporate tax cuts enacted in 2016, because the state was struggling to meet revenue estimates. 

Last year, Reeves signed legislation aimed at expanding parole eligibility to 3,000 more inmates, believing it could be a “net positive for Mississippi.” He later bragged about the significant reduction in inmates at Parchman. 

“I believe in second chances,” he said in an April 22, 2022, tweet. “I trust my Parole Board appointees to make wise decisions.” 

But since his appointment of a new chairman in 2022, the numbers of paroles have declined. 

When Steven Pickett chaired the board between 2013 and 2021, he said about six of every 10 inmates who appeared before the Parole Board earned their release. The board typically saw about 5,000 inmates a year. 

Now the board is rejecting far more requests. So far this year, about three-fourths of inmates who have appeared before the board have been rejected for parole. 

At the same time Mississippi is filling up its prisons, the state is lagging in programs that would help ensure that inmates don’t return. 

“The Mississippi Department of Corrections can’t have a rodeo or enough GED classes, because we don’t have the staffing,” Johnson said. “We probably can’t support more than about 12,000 incarcerated, but we’ve got 18,000.” 

Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain convinced state lawmakers to raise salaries of correctional officers in the 2022 legislative session. 

While hiring officers has proved a struggle, he said Tuesday, “We’re gaining ground. We’re going to show the Justice Department we’re moving along.” 

By fall, he hopes to have 80 schools for inmates to gain certification in engine repair, plumbing, welding, carpentry and other fields. 

By doing this, “we’ll reduce recidivism, and we’ll reduce violence,” he said. “About half of the 4,400 inmates we release each year will have a skill or trade.” 

He ran a similar program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary and saw the recidivism rate drop to less than 10%. 

He called Mississippi’s program “way more intense. We’re meeting a need.” 

Rather than hiring teachers on the outside, he’s using inmates certified in these fields to teach, he said. 

He praised the Parole Board. “We don’t want gangsters getting out,” he said. 

With this new training program for inmates, “we’re going to turn the curve,” he said. “We already have people from Alabama coming to see how we do things.” 

Alternatives to Prison Part of the Solution 

Cain has also started an alcohol and drug program at the once-shuttered Walnut Grove Correctional Facility that houses 32 inmates in a 90-day addiction program. 

Pickett said such programs play an important role in treatment for Mississippi inmates, three-fourths of whom are battling alcohol or drug problems or both. 

For example, he said, if a parolee is caught with meth and has failed to report to his parole officer for two months, what should the Parole Board do? 

Send him back to prison? Or to treatment? 

Locking him up in prison for a year won’t cure his addiction, Pickett said. “All we are doing is putting him in a place that’s dangerous. Meth is just as prolific in prison as it is on the streets. It’s very, very sad.” 

The other option would be the Technical Violation Center. 

State Public Defender Andre de Gruy said the state needs to do a better job of utilizing this center. 

“Now that we’re number one in mass incarceration,” Johnson said, “we ought to stop and take a collective timeout and have a long conversation about whether we’re satisfied and whether we’ve had a good return on the billions we’ve invested. 

“Are we locking up more people because there’s something about Mississippians that make them morally deficient or more likely to commit crime? Or is there something more to this story?” 

Email [email protected]. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. 

This report was produced in partnership with the Community Foundation for Mississippi’s local news collaborative, which is independently funded in part by Microsoft Corp. The collaborative includes the Clarion Ledger, the Jackson Advocate, Jackson State University, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Mississippi Today. We’re also making it available to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting through a Mississippi Poverty Reporting Collective funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and managed by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. 

Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization that is exposing wrongdoing, educating and empowering Mississippians, and raising up the next generation of investigative reporters. Sign up for our newsletter. 

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A little-known provision in Mississippi law allows for state and local agencies to seize private property.

The process, referred to as civil asset forfeiture, is advertised as a way to deprive drug dealers and criminals of their ill-gotten gains, but the truth is deeper than that.

While it’s true that civil asset forfeiture allows for cash, cars, and guns connected with criminal activity to be forfeited to the state, the law is structured to allow for the seizure of all types of property – regardless of whether the owner was convicted of a crime.

In fact, Mississippi’s law allows for law enforcement agencies to take property from individuals who are never even charged with a crime. Once property is seized, it can be auctioned or sold, and the seizing agency retains the majority of the proceeds, creating a direct financial incentive for agencies to pursue asset forfeitures.

Mississippi’s laws regarding asset forfeiture open the door to abuse and undermind private property protections in the state. These provisions earned Mississippi a grade of D for asset forfeiture according to Grading Justice. Grading Justice rates the state’s progress on criminal justice issues and assigns Mississippi’s asset forfeiture policies a low score due to its lack of protection for property owners. The scorecard provides an overview of forfeiture policies in the Magnolia State and how they could be improved.

Mississippi’s laws regarding asset forfeiture were some of the worst in the country prior to reforms implemented 2017. Lawmakers implemented a transparency provision, requiring that all forfeiture be publicly reported in an online database. This reform also implemented a requirement that seizing agencies obtain a seizure warrant from a judge before proceeding with seizing property. These changes moved the state from a score of F to D. More work remains to be done to ensure that innocent property owners are protected.

While other states have required that individuals be convicted of a crime before property can be forfeited, Mississippi has no such protections. The law also doesn’t require a hearing following the sezire of property, and there are no exemptions on low-dollar amounts.

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