Category Archives: Politics

Medical marijuana: Skip the growers?

By Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

It’s been 18 months since Arkansas voters passed the medical marijuana amendment, and the drug is still not available – legally under state law, anyway. It may not be available for a while, now that a judge has put a halt to awarding growers’ licenses.

But there could be a way to change that. First, the Medical Marijuana Commission could follow the governor’s advice and award growers’ and dispensaries’ licenses the same way alcohol permits are awarded – through a lottery. Meanwhile, the amendment’s sponsor says growers aren’t really needed yet anyway because dispensaries can meet current demand. Continue reading →

Dark days for deficit hawks

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawksWhat label do you assign yourself politically? Liberal? Conservative? Something else? Some of us consider ourselves to be “deficit hawks.” And for us, these are dark days.

For deficit hawks, reducing the federal budget deficit is a top priority, even amidst all the other priorities that clamor for attention. Some of us believe that if something is worth having, then it’s worth paying for ourselves rather than sticking our grandchildren with the credit card bill.

There obviously aren’t many of us in the nation’s capital. The national debt, which was $5.7 trillion on Sept. 30, 2000, surpassed $21 trillion on March 14. It has almost quadrupled in less than 18 years.

That $21 trillion divided by 327 million Americans equals $64,348 per each of us – as of 6 p.m. Monday afternoon. By the time you read this, all of those numbers will be bigger. Continue reading →

On lawsuit limits, Family Council, lawyers on same side

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s opponent, and vice versa. Which helps explain why the Family Council, one of Arkansas’ most visible conservative groups, will be allied with trial lawyers and opposing the Chamber of Commerce this year.

It’s because of Issue 1, the tort reform amendment.

Referred to voters by the Legislature last year, Issue 1 would limit punitive damages (which punish wrongdoing) to the greater of $500,000 or three times compensatory damages, though not if the defendant intentionally caused harm. It would limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) to $500,000, or $500,000 for all beneficiaries when the victim dies. Economic damages based on the victim’s income would not be limited, so the more the victim makes, the higher the potential award. It also would limit lawyers’ contingency fees to one-third of the judgment and let the Legislature change the state Supreme Court’s own rules.

A lot of money is at stake, so a lot of money will be spent in the campaign by November. Continue reading →

Will the Republican red tide flood Arkansas’ county elections?

Alabama, blue wave, school boards, Hixson, Breanne, red tideThe most compelling races in Arkansas this November won’t be the big ones – governor, Congress, etc. Republicans probably are going to win all of them, and most of them easily.

Instead, the county races may be the ones most worth watching. That’s because this could be the election cycle where Republicans become the majority party in Arkansas.

Republicans now control every U.S. congressional office, all statewide races, and about three-fourths of the Legislature. And it’s mostly happened since 2010, the election following the election of President Obama. Before that, Arkansas was a one-party state – in fact, one of the nation’s one-partiest – controlled by Democrats.

But for all of their dominance at the state and national levels, Republicans still hold only a minority of partisan elected seats statewide, according to their own count. GOP Chairman Doyle Webb says that of 1,524 partisan offices ranging from justice of the peace up to the major state and national offices, Republicans control 620, or only 41 percent.  Continue reading →

Five options to fix the world’s oldest democracy

It’s obvious that American democracy isn’t working. The question is, how do we fix it?

Consider these two examples.

The national debt has tripled in the past decade and a half to $21 trillion, even though we all know that no entity can spend more money than it collects forever. Not a family, not a business, and no, not the government, either. And we’re headed in the wrong direction. As was announced by the Treasury Department this week, the recent tax cuts and spending increases made February’s budget deficit the worst it has been for that month since 2012.

Meanwhile, Congress can’t create a solution for the 1.8 million young people brought to America illegally as children “through no fault of their own,” as even immigration hardliner Sen. Tom Cotton describes them. That’s happening despite the fact that the compromise solution is fairly obvious: Give the young people a path to legal status while strengthening border security and immigration enforcement.

So what’s next for the world’s oldest democracy? Here are five options. Continue reading →