Category Archives: Politics

Medical weed: What images do you see?

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Unless Arkansas somehow becomes competitive in the presidential race, which it probably won’t, the state’s airwaves won’t be crammed with political advertising by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pity our unfortunate fellow Americans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida for that one. In Arkansas, the only race between candidates that might be mildly interesting is the one for U.S. Senate.

What we will have is a pretty good three-way debate about medical marijuana.

Arkansans likely will have two choices on their ballot: the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act and the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment. The act has already qualified, while the amendment is in the process of doing so.

Both would legalize marijuana for medicinal use, but they differ in substantive ways. The act would have the force of law, while the amendment alters the Arkansas Constitution, a more permanent statement. The act includes about 50 ailments for which marijuana could be prescribed; the amendment lists 14. Both would set up a network of dispensaries where patients could obtain the product, but the amendment’s would be for-profit enterprises while the act’s would be run by nonprofits. Only the act includes a provision allowing patients living too far from a dispensary to grow their own.

That last provision is the reason there are two ballot proposals. The leaders of the two groups,
the act’s Melissa Fults and the amendment’s David Couch, worked together in 2012 to convince voters to legalize medical marijuana and almost succeeded. Since then, they’ve split over “grow your own,” which Couch says Arkansans won’t accept. The split does not appear to be amicable.

Meanwhile, a campaign is forming to oppose both groups. On July 22, the Coalition for Safer Arkansas Communities held an informational meeting at the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce. The coalition will include law enforcement personnel, educators, medical providers and others. Gov. Asa Hutchinson is opposed to the legalization efforts, as is the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Greg Bledsoe. The State Chamber is opposed because it says medical marijuana will complicate workplace safety enforcement efforts and worker’s compensation claims.

The main speaker at the meeting was Henny Lasley, a Little Rock native now living in Colorado, which legalized marijuana medically in 2000 and recreationally in 2012. Now, she says, youth marijuana use in Colorado is the highest in the nation. There are more marijuana stores in Denver than pharmacies, Starbucks, or McDonald’s. Hundreds of marijuana products – including all kinds of fun-looking foods – are for sale in that state. She and Dr. Bledsoe say that, far from being harmless, marijuana is a dangerous plant with long-term effects and far higher concentrations of the mind-altering THC compound than it contained in the past.

Lasley said that all of the four states, plus D.C., where marijuana is now legal recreationally originally legalized it medically. She and the coalition’s campaign manager, Terry Benham, say the medical marijuana efforts are just Trojan horses hiding the marijuana industry’s true intentions, full-scale legalization.

Fults and Couch say this is not a Trojan horse. They say marijuana ought to be an option for doctors and patients in some circumstances, such as cancer and epilepsy, and that the Food and Drug Administration is dragging its feet on studying the drug for political reasons, including the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. Medical marijuana is now legal in 25 states plus D.C., but legal recreationally in only four states plus D.C., so most states have not followed Colorado’s lead in expanding its use.

This campaign, like many, will come down to images – the kind voters see on television and the internet, and the kind they see in their heads. What comes to your mind with the words “medical marijuana”? A cancer patient or an epileptic getting a little relief, or a teenager getting his hands on a now-available gateway drug? Do you see a small network of dispensaries responsibly providing a plant to a few who can benefit from it? Or do you see marijuana stores popping up on Main Street?

If you’re not sure, campaigns will be trying to help you form those images, one way or the other. This is an election, after all.

It’s been a good election – for liberals

Hand with ballot and boxBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

After four days of the Republican National Convention and two days of the Democrats, one thing is clear: Regardless of who wins in November, it’s been a lot better year for liberals than it’s been for conservatives.

For traditional conservatives, in fact, this election season has been tough, and a bit of an awakening.

The Republican Party has long been thought to be dominated by two factions – pro-business/less government types, and social conservatives. To maintain power, the party has had to appeal to Wall Streeters in New York and pro-lifers in Arkansas.

But it turns out that Donald Trump understood something that the data-driven party establishment didn’t: who really votes for Republicans, and why.

In recent years, the Republican Party has attracted more and more support from two very important groups who don’t fit neatly into the pro-business or social conservative wings: white working people without a college degree, and senior citizens.

At the same time, Republican Party policies have not always aligned with those voters. The party has supported trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, teaming with President Clinton and President Obama to overcome the opposition of Democrats in Congress. Who’s been hurt the most by free trade? Working people without a college degree. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have supported significant changes to Social Security and Medicare that their senior citizen voters generally don’t support.

Then came Donald Trump.

During the campaign, he’s pledged repeatedly not to touch Social Security and Medicare, saying his policies will make the country so rich that no changes are needed. And during his speech to the Republican National Convention, Trump railed against a system rigged in favor of those rich Wall Streeters and blasted those free trade deals. He also repeated his plan to stop illegal immigration, which also has cost working people without a college degree the most.

Trump’s ascendancy is forcing the Republican Party to come to grips with the disconnect between some of its conservative policies and its voters. That’s difficult. Last week, some conservatives stayed home from the Republican National Convention, while others whooped and hollered or at least held their nose and golf-clapped for a candidate who, at times, sounded a lot like a Democrat.

For liberals, Hillary Clinton may have won the nomination, but Sen. Bernie Sanders won the battle of ideas. Thanks to him, the party has taken a giant step to the left, including promising a tuition-free college education to students with a family income of up to $125,000. During his speech to the rowdy convention Monday, Sanders railed against income inequality caused in part by … the same trade deals Donald Trump criticized.

As for social issues, Democrats at the national level no longer are even pretending to straddle the middle. During Sanders’ speech, the person sitting next to President Clinton was Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

Every election is described as “the most important election of our lifetime.” This one actually does rank up there. We are watching the realignment of both parties. The Republicans, for three decades the party of Reagan conservatism, are becoming the party of Donald Trump. To some degree, they must in order to appeal to their own voters. The Democrats are becoming more liberal – so liberal that President Obama is now one of the party’s moderates, and the Bill Clinton of the 1990s wouldn’t even fit in the party today.

So for liberals, the Democrats, and in some ways the Republicans, have moved in their direction if not past them.

Conservatives, meanwhile, will have some tough questions to ask about their own philosophy. Maybe the best they can hope for is to be both the party of Reagan and the party of Trump.

As for the Wall Streeters who both nominees say they’re mad at? I’m pretty sure they’ll do OK, regardless of who wins or loses.

Related: Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year.

Don’t be a reptile this election

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You’re not a reptile, so don’t let yourself be treated like one this election cycle.

In legal circles, the “Reptile Theory” is the basis for many plaintiff’s attorneys’ cases. According to a report by Dr. Ann Greeley that’s posted on the American Bar Association’s website, lawyers across the country have stopped trying to focus on building sympathy for their clients and instead are focusing on rousing anger toward the defendant.

The practice got its name from a 1960s theory of evolutionary biology by neuroscientist Paul MacLean, who said the brain at its most primitive core is “reptilian” and focused on survival.

Regardless of whether or not plaintiff’s lawyers believe that theory makes any sense biologically, they want jurors focused on safety – theirs and others. Lawyers aren’t just building a case against the defendant; they’re identifying a source of danger facing the entire community, including the jurors. A tire blowing out and causing an accident could happen to anyone, so the lawyer wants to give jurors a chance to punish the danger itself and hopefully eliminate it by punishing the defendant.

If a plaintiff’s lawyer focuses on the plaintiff’s suffering, on the other hand, then juries might find fault with that person’s actions. Maybe the driver bears some responsibility for the tire blowing out because he drove over a broken glass bottle. Besides, why should that guy get rich just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Plaintiff’s lawyers are not the only ones relying on the Reptile Theory. Political campaigns do it, too, especially this year. The unfavorable ratings for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are so historically high that the Reptile Theory is either’s best path to victory.

That’s a big reason why this year’s Republican National Convention was so much an exercise in Hillary fear-raising rather than Trump praising. Like a plaintiff’s lawyer, the party tried to make voters focus on their fears and punish the defendant – this week, Clinton. It’s why the first night’s theme was “Make America Safe Again.”

Of course, the Reptile Theory is only part of the reason for the party’s focus on Clinton. There are legitimate concerns about her candidacy. At the same time, some Republicans can’t bring themselves to say much positive about their own nominee, even if they should. In a seven-minute speech, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton mentioned Trump’s name one time, and then only his last name. Sen. Ted Cruz, whose wife Trump had insulted and whose father Trump had suggested was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination, didn’t even endorse the candidate, instead encouraging his audience to “vote your conscience.”

I have no doubt that the Reptile Theory will be alive and well at the Democratic National Convention, when Trump will become the defendant.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with criticizing an opponent. A majority of Americans have serious concerns about both Trump and Clinton, so of course the opposing campaigns will try to use those concerns to their advantage.

The problem is that fear alone, unless you’re in imminent danger, is a terrible basis for making decisions. As those plaintiff’s lawyers know, frightened people are more easily manipulated. When we’e afraid, we’re more likely to surrender our freedom, we stop thinking logically and creatively, and we start looking for people to blame. And then really bad things can happen.

Moreover, the two major parties use these fears to maintain their shared control. Republicans and Democrats make us believe we must vote for one or the other – the one we fear the least – rather than give a third party or independent a chance.

Reptiles have been around a long time. They are good at individual survival – eating and avoiding being eaten. But they don’t advance, they don’t make the world a better place for their young, and they don’t do anything great.

So, yes, this election, vote your fears. But also vote your hopes and dreams, and your logic and reason.

Most importantly, as Cruz said, vote your conscience. It’s something that reptiles don’t have but humans do, which helps us invent things like democracies and elections.

Spend less to tax less

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin says tightening state government's finances is the necessary first step to cutting taxes.

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin says tightening state government’s finances is the necessary first step to cutting taxes.

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin is pushing an idea: Cut spending first and then cut taxes. It’s so crazy it just might work, which is why he wants to try it in Arkansas and why, hopefully, someone will try it in Washington, D.C.

Griffin, who has announced he is running for re-election in 2018, points to the state’s ranking in the high 40s in many areas. Sitting across the table from me in a Little Rock coffee shop, he said the state can’t get to the top by tweaking. “Bold is the only option” he said.

A top priority would be the state’s income tax. It ranks in the middle of the country, according to the Tax Foundation, but the top rate, 6.9 percent, is tied for 14th highest and hits all filers with incomes of $35,099, which is not exactly Walton money.

Arkansas’ top rate is higher than all its surrounding states, including Texas, which has no income tax. Thus the state is at a competitive disadvantage, which is one reason Gov. Asa Hutchinson wants to cut income taxes next year, as was done in 2015. Hutchinson probably will propose relatively modest cuts. Griffin wants to go big.

The problem, Griffin says, is that elected officials who talk about tax cuts run into a brick wall erected by those who argue that the state won’t have enough revenues to meet critical needs. To get past that, the state must make reforms to meet those needs with fewer dollars.

The simplest way of looking at how the state spends money is its general revenue budget, which in fiscal year 2017 is $5.3 billion. Griffin says making government 10 percent more efficient, which is really doable, would free up $530 million – enough for a substantial income tax cut along with increased spending in other areas, such as highways.

Griffin is talking about not just cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but instead undertaking systemic reforms of state agencies, many of which he says were designed before the remote control was invented. He says if a boat is designed to require six rowers, it does no good to try to propel it with four. Instead, change the boat so it only needs four.

“Make smart government your focus. … If you just cut, you still have the same inefficient systems in place that require the inefficient resources,” he said.

Last year, Griffin undertook a review of the state’s massive Department of Human Services, which takes care of a lot of the state’s neediest residents and is a mess. Its new director, Cindy Gillespie, now is reorganizing it. Griffin wants to see the same effort undertaken across state government. He started by cutting one position from his three-person office.

Griffin says state government has a moral obligation to spend taxpayer dollars efficiently. He says Arkansas must be competitive with other states. And, it must prepare for the day when the debt-ridden federal government starts sending less money to Arkansas.

And that brings us to Washington, D.C., where Republicans adhere to two entrenched beliefs that are very different from what Griffin, a former Republican congressman, is describing. One, “starve the beast,” says government can be shrunk by depriving it of money through tax cuts. The other belief is that tax cuts generate so much economic growth that spending cuts aren’t really necessary. Donald Trump’s plan reflects that belief – tax cuts without spending cuts – which is why the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it could add $11.5 trillion to the national debt.

Republicans in Washington over the past few decades have pledged allegiance to those two beliefs, enthusiastically cutting taxes without insisting on cutting government. Democrats shook hands on that bargain because they like to spend without taxing, too. The result has been the national debt ballooning from $1 trillion in 1981 to $19.4 trillion today. Unfortunately, money did not grow on trees, and the beast wasn’t starved because it could reach across the table into the future and steal food from the plates of our children and grandchildren.

All of this should make perfect sense to those of us who live on a budget. If you are struggling to make ends meet, you look for waste and inefficiency in your spending first, and certainly before you switch to a lower-paying job.

It makes sense in government, too, where being smart should be the focus, and where the state of Arkansas is a good place to start.

Related: If Trump or Clinton succeed? More debt.

When were the good old days?

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

All the bad news and societal changes lately probably have a lot of people yearning for the good old days. When exactly were those?

If someone invented a time machine to transport you and me to other eras, imagine what we would see.

Let’s start our trip in the 1700s, as the nation was being founded on democratic ideals. Traveling to that time period, we might land in the middle of a slave auction where people were being sold as property. Picture the cries of sorrow we would witness as husbands and wives were separated and as children were yanked forever from their families. Around us, the buyers would not be troubled enough by the scene to stop what they were doing. Meanwhile, society continued to compromise its values to allow it to continue.

Maybe the time machine might then take us to 1838-39, when the Cherokees were forced by the government to march west from their native land across the Mississippi River, trudging through Arkansas along the way. Of the 15,000 who started the Trail of Tears, 4,000 died.

A couple of decades later came the Civil War, in which 620,000 men died, or about 2 percent of the population or the equivalent of 6 million today. At Gettysburg, 51,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded in one battle. The wholesale indifference to human life would be striking. We would watch troops line up across an open field from each other and then just start shooting, until someone gave the order to advance. According to the Civil War Trust, almost as many troops on both sides died while prisoners of their once and future countrymen as the number of Americans killed in the entire Vietnam War.

Our time machine might then take us to the Industrial Revolution, where in the latter 1800s and first part of the 1900s, children instead of going to school toiled unceasingly in terrible factories that employed them because they worked cheap and were easier than adults to control.

Along the way, the time machine might stop in Elaine, Arkansas, in 1919. An organizational meeting of a farmers’ union led to a race-based shootout and then days of bloodshed. Whites descended on Elaine, along with troops sent by the governor. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “Although the exact number is unknown, estimates of the number of African Americans killed by whites range into the hundreds; five white people lost their lives.”

From there, the time machine might take us to the 1950s – seen by many as an idyllic era. But for many Americans, it wasn’t exactly Mayberry. Society was set up on a separate but unequal foundation, and African-Americans, including World War II veterans, were forced to live second-class lifestyles. Suddenly transported to that environment, you and I would be shocked at the injustices and inequalities suffered by people who, in many cases, are still alive today.

Would you really want to go back to that? Would you really want to go back to any of those earlier eras?

The point is not that things have always been terrible. It’s that every era has had its troubles and persecutions – this one no more and in many ways far fewer. Children today spend their days in schools (yes, imperfect ones) instead of working for pennies in squalid factories with little hope of lifelong advancement. Likewise, the United States remains an imperfect union, but progress has been made in creating a more just society for people of all races. Even the problems that seem so bad today are not as bad as they were recently. Violent crime dropped 16.2 percent from 2005 to 2014, the FBI says. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy created 287,000 jobs in June, which is really good. The unemployment rate in Arkansas is the lowest it’s ever been at 3.8 percent. True, that’s partly because many frustrated workers have left the workforce. But still.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 says, “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.” Pining for the past is pointless and ignores the past’s problems.

Anyway, no one has invented a time machine yet, so we can’t go back even if we wanted to. We can only learn from history, live in the moment, and try to make the future better.