By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

If you’re one of 435 Americans who can get yourself elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, then by definition you’re probably politically astute – which makes what happened this past week all the more hard to figure.

After being handed the reins of power at just about every level of government everywhere, House Republicans made it their first order of business to replace the independent Office of Congressional Ethics with a weakened and muzzled office overseen by the House Ethics Committee – in other words, by the very Congress the office investigates. Moreover, this happened during a behind-closed-doors meeting.

Among Arkansas’ congressional delegation, Reps. French Hill and Steve Womack voted against the plan, while Rep. Rick Crawford was traveling but said later he opposed it. Rep. Bruce Westerman voted for it. All of them said reforms are needed – just not necessarily these reforms, or these reforms done this way.

The backlash against the move was immediate and included not only Democrats but also President-elect Donald Trump, who questioned the timing and priorities in a tweet that concluded with “#DTS” – in other words, “drain the swamp.” On Tuesday, hours before the full Congress was to vote on the new rules, House Republicans hastily met and voted by unanimous consent to remove the controversial provision.

Why stumble so badly so early? House Republicans had heard complaints from some of their fellow members who said they had been unfairly targeted by an office that too aggressively investigates anonymous and/or frivolous complaints. Congressmen were then forced to spend large sums of their personal money – we’re talking $100,000 – to defend themselves and try to clear their name.

As a journalist, I talk a lot to politicians, mostly at the state level but occasionally with members of Congress as well. I don’t believe most elected officials are crooks – and granted, I’m writing the first draft of this paragraph on the same day an Arkansas state legislator pleaded guilty to steering $175,000 to two organizations and receiving $38,000 in bribes in return.

I think most elected officials are OK folks whose jobs force them to make professional and moral compromises to meet unattainable, sometimes contradictory public expectations. They’re expected to stand for their beliefs but represent their constituents’ will, and they’re expected to raise millions of dollars to fund their campaigns but not to be overly influenced by those donations, which of course come from people trying to influence them.

So when all four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation say this Office of Congressional Ethics needs to be reined in a little, I buy that, as long as it’s reined in, not gutted, as part of an open, transparent, bipartisan process. Which this wasn’t.

What’s more concerning is what Congress is planning to do in the next few months. It’s poised to repeal Obamacare without any consensus on a replacement, which could throw the entire health care system into a state of confusion and uncertainty for years. It will do so through a budget reconciliation mechanism that, as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, is pointing out, continues the grand old tradition of adding trillions to the national debt. And if it follows the president-elect’s lead and does as past Congresses have done, it soon will cut taxes without cutting spending, all while promising the difference will be bridged by future economic growth.

This behavior is perfectly legal. You might even say there’s nothing personally unethical about it. It’s just highly irresponsible. And it happens partly because of those same unattainable and contradictory expectations by voters, who tend to want easy answers without hard choices. If you’re a politician who wants to stay in office, just keep your hands out of the cookie jar, cut taxes but don’t cut spending, and find someone or something to blame so voters don’t blame you or themselves. The ones who really pay the price are members of future generations, and they don’t vote.

Members of Congress should pay a personal and financial price if they act illegally. If they act irresponsibly, they should pay a political one at the ballot box. Apparently, a handful are punished even when they haven’t acted illegally, and Congress should fix that. Few are punished when they act irresponsibly, and the voters should fix that.

Related: Please, Congress, if you cut taxes, cut spending too

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

Brent Dove of Rea Valley, state director of the Convention of States, said something really smart or at least interesting about the effort he leads in Arkansas – that it will gain momentum when people realize how little the election changed.

The Convention of States is a national effort to use a provision in the Constitution’s Article V allowing states to call a convention to amend that document.

All 27 of the Constitution’s previous amendments have been initiated through Congress, but Convention of States organizers believe the changes they want – term limits, a balanced budget amendment, a limit on government’s power – will never happen that way.

Every constitutional amendment faces an uphill battle, and this process would be a cliff, which is why it’s never happened in American history. Thirty-four states must approve an identical resolution and then send delegates to the convention, and then a majority of the delegations must agree to proposed amendments, and then 38 states must approve those amendments.

Eight states have approved the resolution. In Arkansas, it failed in 2015 in a Senate committee, but supporters will introduce it again in 2017. Former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican, told about three dozen Arkansas supporters Nov. 1 that the goal is to increase the number of states passing resolutions and build pressure on Congress to enact changes before the convention even happens.

It’s going to be tough to get 38 states to agree on anything these days, and that includes the Convention of States’ goals. The resolution would advance policies that are undeniably conservative in a country that is split in two and, if anything, moving left. Moreover, since its creation, the group has faced opposition from conservatives who fear a rogue convention that radically alters the Constitution – as if anything really radical would ever gain the approval of 38 states.

Where the convention gets it most right is the idea, voiced by Dove, that at this point in history, systemic change is needed.

The country’s political systems have evolved in ways that the Constitution doesn’t address, making it no longer a “living document” but instead an ignored one. The Constitution did not envision parties; clearly, partisan politics is how the system works. The Constitution’s checks and balances aren’t functioning properly because the humans who serve in Congress have too much allegiance to their party and not enough to their branch. The writers of the Constitution did not envision elected office would be a gigantic, full-time, sometimes lifetime industry based on legalized bribery, I mean campaign donations. The Constitution correctly gives Congress the power to tax and spend but has no provision requiring the numbers to eventually come into balance. Therefore, it rarely happens.

It’s time to reset the nation’s constitutional framework so that it can be relevant again – for example, so that it takes into account the now-obvious fact that political parties inevitably exist in a democracy. Either we can turn around the political system’s train and make it align perfectly with the Constitution’s original text, or instead, we can build new tracks and send the train to a destination it can actually reach.

Besides, very deep holes in the nation’s founding document have been filled before. It originally left out freedom of speech and religion, it allowed slavery, and it made it possible to deny African-Americans and women the right to vote. So I think the republic will survive a spirited debate about term limits.

Dove said that if 34 states can agree to the resolution, then at least that conversation can occur. While I have some doubts about whether the group can achieve its goals, I’m ready to have that conversation. It does matter who won on Tuesday, but systems usually change people more than the other way around. So after 18 months of talking a lot about what’s wrong with the people, let’s talk about tweaking the system.

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

Ready for some good news? Do you remember a few years ago when Arkansas’ public schools had inadequate internet connections, and there was a big controversy, and it seemed like this was going to be another one of those huge political fights requiring a lot of taxpayer dollars?

Problem solved. Seriously.

Mark Myers, director of the state Department of Information Systems (DIS), told the House and Senate Education Committees Monday that by July 2017, Arkansas will be one of three states where every school is connected to high-speed broadband internet. The fiber network will give schools speeds of 200 kilobits per second per student, which is twice the generally accepted minimum standard of 100 kbps. The network is ready to expand those speeds to 1 megabit per second per student without having to buy new equipment.

Let’s review the back story. Back in 2013, it became obvious that many Arkansas schools didn’t have the broadband they needed to use the internet as a learning resource or to administer online tests associated with the Common Core. Arkansas received a “D” in the 2013 “Digital Learning Now” report from the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

The state was spending huge dollars and getting terrible results. An report by the Quality Digital Learning Study Committee had found the state had invested almost $160 million in vendor costs since 1992 on the Arkansas Public School Computer Network (APSCN), a backbone that was offering schools a measly 5 kbps. At a time when everyone was moving to high-speed options like fiber, the state was still spending 70 percent of its budget on copper wiring – basically, a stagecoach on an interstate highway.

Individually, schools were doing a much better job of connecting to the internet than the state was. APSCN was costing an average of $286 per month per megabit – the equivalent of a household paying $2,800 to $5,700 for cable modem service. Meanwhile, schools were paying about $13 to private providers to supplement their connections. Because of that, according to a 2014 report by the nonprofit group EducationSuperHighway, 58 percent of Arkansas districts were meeting the 100 kbps standard, largely through their own efforts. However, 17 percent offered speeds of only 10-49 kbps, while 5 percent were even slower.

Naturally, there was a big argument about what to do about all of this. For a time, some wanted schools to hook up to the state’s Arkansas Research Education Optical Network, or ARE-ON, a private network used by universities and hospitals. Schools were prohibited by state law from connecting to it, and private internet providers were opposed because they didn’t want to compete with the government. There was talk of a special legislative session.

Then a consultant, CT&T, found that connecting to ARE-ON was not cost-effective and that instead the state should partner with those private providers. The move to connect to ARE-ON lost steam. Newly elected Gov. Asa Hutchinson ordered DIS to create a high-speed backbone for schools. The state worked with than 20 private providers. The timing was good because more fiber was being laid. In some cases, schools were let out of contracts that extended past the July 2017 goal.

The state is connecting to high-speed internet for about the same cost it was spending on those old slow connections. The annual total cost is just under $13 million a year, a fraction of the $2.19 billion budgeted for the public school fund in fiscal year 2017. E-rate, a federal program that provides funding for schools and libraries, will pay for 80% of the $6 million in transport costs. School districts don’t have to pay anything to be part of a secure statewide network.

So now, by the start of the 2017-18 school year, every public school student in Arkansas will have access to fast internet connections. Those connections will enable them and their teachers to use the internet for instruction and for school projects. Districts will spend less or, eventually for some, nothing on textbooks, which are extremely expensive, inflexible, and quickly become outdated. And as demands increase, so can the network. The big political fight never happened, and everybody got what they wanted.

Told you this was some good news.

Related: How two sisters and a cup of coffee changed a school.
In West Memphis, it’s all connected.