Category Archives: Politics

Another Senate candidate – maybe

Ricky Harrington is the Libertarian nominee for Senate.

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Sen. Tom Cotton has another opponent as of Saturday – maybe.

The Libertarian Party of Arkansas held its convention that day and nominated Ricky Harrington, 34, of Pine Bluff to run against Cotton and the only announced Democrat, Josh Mahony.

Libertarians support very limited government. They are to the right of Republicans on tax and spending issues. They are to the left of many Democrats on some other issues, such as opposing the drug war and the use of force in general.

Prison reform is one of Harrington’s biggest concerns. An employee of the prison system, he supports reducing the size of Arkansas’ inmate population, particularly with respect to nonviolent offenders. During a brief interview, he said he supports abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, repealing the Patriot Act, ending “endless” wars, and protecting gun rights.

He says he was inspired to enter the race by several events, including this year’s passage of Act 164. (More on that subject in a few paragraphs.) The Harding University graduate was working as a missionary in China in 2016 and was dismayed by what he saw happening in the U.S. presidential campaign. He’s African American, and when he returned to Arkansas, he said he was stopped by police for driving 35 miles per hour in a 40 mph zone. That was a frustrating moment for someone who had just spent two years in a communist country. Continue reading →

Debate questioners, please ask this

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billionBy Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“As president, what would you do to balance the federal budget and reduce the national debt?”

That’s a simple, straightforward question about an important issue affecting every American. So it’s odd it hasn’t been asked once in 14 hours of Democratic presidential debates this year.

The candidates have been asked 374 questions so far, according to Fix the Debt, a project of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Not once have they been asked about the federal government spending $984 billion this past fiscal year that it did not have. That’s almost $3,000 for every American man, woman and child. Uncle Sam spent $4.446 trillion but only collected $3.462 trillion. The candidates have not been asked about the cumulative national debt, accrued over centuries, now being almost $23 trillion, or more than $69,500 for every American. They have not been asked about how to address the looming shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare.

The lack of questions is illustrative of the country’s collective blind eye regarding these inconvenient truths. The United States has been in debt since the Revolutionary War, except for a brief period in the 1830s when it paid everything off. But the debt has been growing exponentially in recent years. It took 210 years to reach $5.67 trillion by Sept. 20, 2000. The debt has grown $17.27 trillion since then. It was a little less than $20 trillion the day President Trump took office. It’s grown about $3 trillion in less than three years.

And yet the debt registers so little on the public consciousness that debate questioners haven’t felt compelled to ask a single question about it. It’s a problem but not a crisis – yet – and there’s always another crisis calling for immediate attention. We all know we can’t keep spending money we don’t have forever, but we also know we can probably keep doing it a while longer. So we’ll talk about something else for now. Continue reading →

What Crawford, Westerman must consider with Trump

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I don’t know the real reasons why people do things, including often myself. This column is about considerations.

Recently, all four U.S. House of Representatives members from Arkansas voted for a resolution criticizing President Trump’s decision to let Turkey attack the Kurds. It passed 354-60 with 225-0 support among Democrats and 129-60 support among Republicans.

That was interesting but not surprising. Republicans and Democrats disagree about much, but there’s a consensus – not unanimous agreement, but consensus – that the United States cannot simply disengage from the world’s hotspots. Trump disrupts that consensus, as he does so many things.

Also interesting – and also not surprising – were the comments made by Arkansas’ House members, as reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Continue reading →

GOP will produce Arkansas’ first statewide minority official

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas has never elected an African-American statewide official, and when it finally does, he or she likely will be a Republican.

And he or she probably will be someone like Leon Jones.

The state has taken such a sharp turn red-ward in recent years that to be elected to a statewide office, a candidate almost must run as a Republican – much as the Democrats were the default party for a century and a half. That’s why the first African-American official probably will come from that party.

Jones, 47, Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s appointee as executive director of the Fair Housing Commission, is gauging support before making a final decision on running for attorney general in 2022. The current attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, is term-limited. Jones previously served as Hutchinson’s Labor Department director.

If he runs, he’d be Arkansas’ first elected African-American statewide official and also the only African-American Republican currently elected to any position at the state level – unless one is elected in 2020 or alongside him in 2022. The state’s seven constitutional officers and six members of Congress are white Republicans. As of Oct. 8, the 135-member Arkansas Legislature was composed of 102 white Republicans and 33 Democrats, 15 of whom are African-Americans including the recently elected Denise Ennett of Little Rock. Continue reading →

RBG holds court before 13,000 in North Little Rock

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, left, speaks with National Public Radio correspondent Nina Totenberg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

An 86-year-old woman sat down for an hour-long interview in North Little Rock’s Verizon Arena Tuesday, and one out of 100 Arkansans either were there or tried to be there.

The woman was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second female appointed to the court.

The event gave away 15,000 free tickets. About 13,000 attended, and there were another 15,000-16,000 people on a waiting list. That’s about 30,000 in a state with about 3 million people, or about one out of 100.

Ginsburg was interviewed by National Public Radio correspondent Nina Totenberg as part of the Clinton School of Public Service’s Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series. Former President Bill Clinton, who nominated Ginsburg to the court, introduced them.

Eleven days earlier, Ginsburg had received the last of three weeks of pancreatic cancer radiation treatments after undergoing a lung cancer operation late last year. Asked why she was appearing so soon, she said she had promised she would come, which drew a standing ovation.

She said she was “feeling very good tonight.” And she looked and sounded good. We should all be so sharp at 86. Continue reading →