Category Archives: Politics

What’s different about this $1 trillion?

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Winter has arrived, and squirrels everywhere have enough to eat because they stored up food when it was more available in the warmer months.

We could learn a lot from those little rodent-sized brains. Instead of squirreling away our savings, we pig out on today’s and tomorrow’s resources.

This year, the federal government will run a deficit of about $970 billion, or 4.6 percent of the gross domestic product, despite a warm-weather economy that has been expanding for almost a decade. As a recent headline by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told us, “The deficit has never been this high when the economy was this strong.” Continue reading What’s different about this $1 trillion? →

Tom Cotton and criminal justice reform’s FIRST STEP

Politics, U.S. Congress

Tom CottonBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In politics, it’s often not about who’s right and who’s wrong. Instead, it’s often about who’s more right. Which brings us to Sen. Tom Cotton and the FIRST STEP Act.

President Trump signed the criminal justice reform act into law Dec. 21, a day after the House passed it 358-36. Previously, the Senate had passed it 87-12. Cotton was the most vocal opponent among the 12 (and the 36). The rest of Arkansas’ congressional delegation voted yes.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Advocates across the political spectrum supported the law, including Charles and David Koch, the ultra-wealthy, conservative activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union. President Trump supported it, but according to insider news reports, it was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the son of an ex-federal inmate, who really pushed it. Continue reading Tom Cotton and criminal justice reform’s FIRST STEP →

The year’s top posts

Health care, Inspirational, Legislature, Politics, Uncategorized

Happy new year! Here are independentarkansas’ most-read posts from 2018.

Jim Hendren Joyce Elliott

How to disagree agreeably about the NFL anthem controversy. Here’s how Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, a conservative Republican Senate leader, and Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, who grew up in segregated schools, handle their differences on that hot-button issue. By far the year’s top-performing post.

Your pharmacist doesn’t want to see you now. Read how changes in pharmacy benefit manager disbursements left Arkansas druggists struggling to turn a profit. Legislators later met in special session to address the issue, but you can bet it won’t go away.

Why five legislators are going to jail. Another one has since been indicted, and the investigation is continuing.

Project Zero

How one video changed a life. A report by KTHV’s Dawn Scott led one couple to provide a home for a young man who needed a family. It’s the fourth-biggest performing post despite being online less than three weeks.


11 expectations, but not quite predictions, for the new year

Politics

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

This is the part of the calendar when columnists sometimes make predictions for the new year. Let’s be up front about one thing: I can’t predict the future.

That said, here are 11 expectations for 2019.

– Tax cuts. They’re happening in Arkansas. Gov. Asa Hutchinson wants to cut the top rate from 6.9 percent to 5.9 percent. He sees it as a competitiveness issue with other states. On Dec. 7, he told the Arkansas School Boards Association that the governor of Massachusetts “gasped” when Hutchinson told him how high our state’s rate is.

– Health care. The big controversy in Arkansas is over the requirement that some recipients of the Arkansas Works health insurance program must report they are working or engaging in other productive activities. That controversy will end early next year when a federal judge rules against that requirement. He’s already ruled against a similar one in Kentucky. If that happens while the Legislature is debating funding the division that runs the program, opponents will use it as ammunition to try to kill it, as they have in the past. But ultimately, Arkansas Works will be funded.

– Highways. The Legislature will refer to voters a ballot initiative for 2020 that primarily relies on raising diesel taxes and extending the half-cent sales tax funding the Connecting Arkansas Program. Continue reading 11 expectations, but not quite predictions, for the new year →