Category Archives: Politics

Bring your IDs to vote on IDs

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas primaries, Goodson, photo IDBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

One of the issues on which you’ll be voting this election will be the act of voting itself.

Issue 2, referred by the Arkansas Legislature in 2017, would enshrine in the Constitution a requirement for voters to show a photo ID at the ballot box.

Yes, you already did that during the May primary elections. Legislators that year also passed a law that does the same thing and has already gone into effect.

Why both a law and a constitutional amendment? A previous photo ID law unanimously was declared unconstitutional in 2014 by the Arkansas Supreme Court. The majority opinion said it illegally added a new qualification to voters. Another three justices said the Legislature didn’t pass the law by the required two-thirds majority. Justice Courtney Goodson wrote that second, concurring opinion. Opponents have used that against her in her re-election campaign this year.

In response, the Legislature covered its bases.  Continue reading →

Who’s your daddy? Trump knows it’s not him

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

Say what you want about President Trump, but he’s accomplishing much of what he wants to do. Maybe that’s because he grasps a reality in today’s politics: The president is not our daddy.

That’s one role presidents have played since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created an activist government during the Great Depression, spoke to Americans through radio fireside chats, and shepherded the country through most of World War II. Before him, the president was a relatively remote part of Americans’ everyday existence. After him, presidents led the country through the Cold War. When the space shuttle exploded or terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, the president comforted the nation and led the response.

In political science terms, the president is the “head of state,” the face of the country. Unlike some other democracies, here the same person is also the head of government. Great Britain has a prime minister to wallow in the muck of politics, and a queen who sits on the throne above it all. Presidents have tried to temper their language and speak in unifying terms knowing they played both roles.

But now that the country has become more divided and doesn’t face a common enemy, it’s become harder to serve as head of state. There’s no point in trying to be America’s daddy, and besides, that’s not President Trump’s nature anyway. He’s about “winning,” not nurturing. Forty percent of the country is with him, about half is against him, and nothing much is going to change those two groups. He knows most of his 40 percent fear and dislike Nancy Pelosi more than they do Vladimir Putin. His presidency depends on holding on to that base, and that’s what he’s done. Continue reading →

Should the Supreme Court nomination be a lifetime decision?

Lake View, Supreme Court, Issue 1, KavanaughBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Regarding the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, you know as much as I do about what happened, or didn’t happen, so many years ago. Likewise, your guess is as good as mine as to what happens next. I hope the FBI investigation provides something definitive. I suspect it won’t.

If that’s the case, the few senators who haven’t made up their minds will be faced with a difficult choice. Do they appoint to the Supreme Court a man who may have once, or more than once, terribly abused another kind of power? Or do they keep a person out of office based on unproven allegations?

Instead of trying to answer questions that for the moment are unanswerable, let’s camp out on another aspect of this story: The fact that justices serve for life.  Continue reading →

The legislator without a party label

Mark McElroyBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Rep. Mark McElroy of Tillar says he’s “too conservative really to be a Democrat, but I’m too poor to be a Republican.” Earlier this year, he decided he didn’t want either label, and now he’s campaigning to see if his district’s voters will send him back to the Capitol as an independent.

McElroy spent 20 years as Desha County judge before winning election to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2012. He represents District 11 in Arkansas’ southeastern corner along the Mississippi River. He’s always been elected as a Democrat, but he didn’t really fit into either party. He didn’t like the national Democrats’ stand on social issues like abortion, but he believed the Republican Party’s policies favored the top 1 percent. He chafed at morning caucus meetings where he felt he was being told how to vote, regardless of his district’s wishes. He drew a primary opponent from his own party in the last election and did again this year.

Faced with all that, this spring he decided to leave the party and become an independent. He’s the only one in the Legislature.

“I don’t see why you have to fit in,” he said Tuesday after attending a meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees. “I don’t know why you have to be a label to represent your people.” Continue reading →

#BetterOffNow, but what about #Later?

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 triillion, #BetterOffNowBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s been good news and bad news lately when it comes to the way Congress spends your money (and your children’s and grandchildren’s). Which do you want first?

Let’s start with the good news.

On Tuesday, the Senate sent to the House an $854 billion bill to fund the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies. The House is expected to approve the bill next week.

How is spending $854 billion good news? Because Congress is actually doing its job in a somewhat orderly fashion by passing budget bills before the fiscal year begins. It’s also doing it in time to avert a government shutdown that would occur next month.

That counts as an improvement. In recent years, Congress has lurched from one manufactured crisis to another, often passing enormous up-or-down “omnibus” packages after the new fiscal year has already begun.  Continue reading →