Is age 70 too old to judge, case closed?

golden balanceBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Is a 69-year-old perfectly acceptable to serve as a judge, but a 70-year-old too old? That’s sort of how the state of Arkansas looks at it.

Under a law passed in 1965, judges who reach age 70 would lose their retirement benefits permanently if they are re-elected, though their paycheck contributions through the years would be returned to them. Not surprisingly, no Arkansas judge has ever given up those benefits to keep serving.

Several judges who are about that age recently sued, saying the law effectively adds an age requirement to the Arkansas Constitution.

They lost. In a 5-2 decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled June 23 that an age limit for receiving retirement benefits is not the same as an age limit for serving. “If it is possible to construe a statute as constitutional, we must do so,” wrote Justice Courtney Goodson in her majority opinion.

Thirty-three states have upper age limits for judges, but Arkansas is the only state that uses retirement benefits to encourage judges to retire. We’re not going to make them leave, but we will grab their cane and use it to nudge them toward the door. In her concurring opinion, Justice Karen Baker wrote that most of the recent efforts to change or repeal those laws across the country have failed. The Arkansas Legislature rejected an attempt to increase the age to 72 in 2015 and has rejected other efforts to change the law in the past. Legal challenges also have failed. The U.S. Supreme Court – which currently has three members above age 70 – has ruled age requirements to be constitutional.

The Arkansas Supreme Court justices who are nowhere near 70 all voted to uphold the law. Two of the older justices split, with Justice Jo Hart voting with the majority and Chief Justice Howard Brill dissenting.

And the one justice who has reached age 70, Justice Paul Danielson, really let ‘em have it in his dissent. He wrote that the Legislature is trying to indirectly accomplish what it can’t accomplish directly, and that what the law actually says is, “leave or we’ll steal your wallet.” And then he got even more personal, writing, “The General Assembly may consider me aged and possibly even senile, but I can still spot a constitutional violation when I see one.”

Some facts are noteworthy here. One is that legislators and members of the executive branch are not required to retire by a certain age to receive benefits. Also, this is not a term limits measure. You can serve 40 years, and as long as you quit at 70, you still receive a pension.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that lawmakers are members of political parties whose presidential candidates would be considered too old or almost too old for the Arkansas Supreme Court. Donald Trump is 70. Hillary Clinton will be 69 by the time the election occurs in November. So 70 is too old to sit in a chair and judge cases, but not too old to fly around the world on Air Force One.

What bothers me most about this law – and it bothers me more now that I’m 47 than it would have when I was 37 – is how arbitrary it is. The age limit is sort of picked out of a hat. At a time when society is contorting itself not to discriminate against some individuals, Arkansas is saying that 70-year-olds in general probably can’t make wise decisions any more. That’s unfair and dumb. There are many 70-year-olds who are in excellent physical shape and who haven’t lost a step mentally. Arkansas is discouraging from service the very people who have the most experience with the law.

This society is rapidly aging, and it will have to question some of its assumptions about what a senior citizen can do. Otherwise, we’ll carry on our backs people who are still capable of shouldering their share of the load. Certainly, some 70-year-olds should not be judges – but neither should many 50-year-olds. As in a court of law, it should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Related: Why Supreme Court races matter: Lake View

Fiddling around, ignoring problems

Uncle Sam hangs on for webBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

You know the story about Nero fiddling while Rome burned? It didn’t actually happen, but it illustrates a point about leaders crazily ignoring a problem.

These days, no illustration is needed. The government’s largest programs, Social Security and Medicare, are not burning up, but their problems are being ignored.

On Wednesday, the Social Security trustees and Medicare trustees each released their annual reports.

Social Security’s trustees wrote that the trust fund that supposedly finances the program – but actually has been raided to pay for other programs and then filled with IOUs – will be empty by 2034. That’s when today’s 49-year-olds (I’m 47) reach the normal retirement age. When that happens, benefits for all recipients, including 85-year-olds, theoretically would be cut 21 percent.

But of course that probably wouldn’t happen. The American people wouldn’t stand for it, and too many seniors vote. If tomorrow’s elected officials play the fiddle as well as today’s do (and they will probably be some of the same people), they’ll transfer money from the rest of the budget to Social Security and add to the national debt. As of June 21, that debt is $19,265,744,770,778.65, or more than $59,000 for every American.

Medicare’s due date is approaching faster. The trustees say the trust fund that pays for hospitals will be depleted by 2028, which is two years sooner than was projected last year. When the assets are depleted, revenues would cover 87 percent of the costs. Today, the program covers 55.3 million people.

All of this is occurring in the context of huge budget challenges. The government will already spend $534 billion more this year than it will collect, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt already comprise 45 percent of the federal budget. Social Security and Medicare are growing, and the CBO says interest costs will rise from 6 percent of the budget this year to 13 percent by 2026.

In other words, if you neither touch Social Security and Medicare nor raise taxes, everything else, including defense, has to be cut quite a bit.

The American democratic experiment has faced bigger challenges than this one: creating a Constitution, ending slavery, reconstructing the union, winning World War II. Social Security and Medicare previously have faced insolvency, but at various times policymakers have figured out ways to push the due dates into the future. Social Security doesn’t require some Einsteinian policy fix – just spend less and/or collect more tax revenues. Medicare is harder because it’s based on paying into a health care system that keeps getting more costly, but it can be done.

Still, solving these problems is difficult because of changing demographics – we’re getting older and living longer – and because Americans now expect expensive government services for which they’re unwilling to pay the full cost. They believe the money can be found elsewhere, and some can be found, but not enough.

So elected officials not only must put down their fiddles, but they must also come down into the city and convince a majority of people to help put out a fire that, for now, is hard to see. All the while, they must overcome the many special interests who want to feed the fire.

Somebody must lead. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen this election year. Sen. Bernie Sanders has led the Democratic Party, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton, to calling for increasing Social Security benefits. Clinton says she’ll pay for her increases by raising taxes on the wealthy – but remember, she gets a lot of money from wealthy people. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, says there will be no need for changing the programs because America will be so rich because of his better trade deals and Mexico-built wall.

If it were up to me, we’d raise Social Security’s retirement age, reduce or end benefits for the wealthy, increase payments to older and infirm recipients, and increase the payroll tax. I’m not sure what to do about Medicare. I’d also cut other things and slowly pay back the money we’ve already spent.

But for now, I’ve lost that debate in every direction. Americans don’t want to cut spending, and they don’t want to raise any taxes.

So at this point, I really don’t care which direction we go. Just stop increasing the debt we’re passing on to my kids. They’re going to have enough on their hands taking care of me someday.

Related: Red ink rising.

Part of state’s deer population wasting away

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

One of the biggest stories in Arkansas this year involves four legs – and I’m not talking about the two apiece used by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

I’m talking about those used by deer, a growing number of whom have a deadly, incurable neurologic disease that spreads easily.

Chronic wasting disease is caused not by viruses or bacteria but by a protein called prions that attack a deer’s brain, sort of like mad cow disease. Prions are spread through contact with an infected deer’s urine, feces, saliva, blood or carcass. They’re not living, so they can’t be killed, and they last a long time on the forest floor.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has been watching this disease for decades as it started in the western United States and then moved closer. When an elk felled by a hunter tested positive last fall, Game and Fish Commission members took notice. Then in February, a seemingly healthy deer that appeared near Ponca and was oddly not afraid of people suddenly grew sick and died.

AGFC initially tested 266 deer in a 125,000-acre area and found 23 percent were infected. No other state has seen that high an initial detection rate. Among the concerns is that 12 of 48 fawns tested were infected. By comparison, Wisconsin sampled more than 14,000 fawns and found only 24 cases, legislators were told Monday.

More samples are being taken. Infected deer have been found in five counties – Newton, Boone, Carroll, Madison, and Pope, with Newton hit the hardest. The rest of the state so far is clean, but deer are mobile. The one case in Pope County was well south of the cluster of cases in Newton County.

Why is this a big deal? Arkansas is home to 500,000 licensed deer hunters, and that’s not including those under 16 who aren’t required to buy a license. The state last year issued 21,515 nonresident big game hunting licenses to out-of-state hunters. Deer hunting not only is big business, but it’s a lot of small businesses. It’s also an important part of the state’s culture – an activity where grandparents, parents and children spend time together in places that often don’t have a good cell phone signal. Many schools close at the beginning of deer season.

The good news is that, currently, you and I probably cannot catch chronic wasting disease. Remember, it’s caused by a protein, not a virus that could mutate and jump from one species to the next. Also, the disease hasn’t spread to livestock in the wild. On the other hand, the prions can withstand 1,000-degree temperatures, so they can’t be cooked out.

Now state officials are trying to respond to a disease that can’t be cured or eradicated. On Friday, the Game and Fish Commission will vote on a set of regulations meant to limit the spread. Among the proposals would be to allow hunters to kill more deer and elk to thin the herd.

That proposal shouldn’t be too controversial. However, another would require landowners who erect high fences to leave openings so deer can move freely in and out. The idea is to reduce the chances that a deer will be stuck in captivity in an enclosed area, where it would be more likely to come in contact with an infected deer’s body fluids or carcass.

The idea is not well fleshed out, and I’m not sure I understand the logic. Wouldn’t it better for a dying deer to be trapped rather than roaming free? More importantly, several otherwise sympathetic legislators who were informed of the proposal in a committee meeting Monday raised objections regarding private property rights. People who want to build fences on their land ought to be able to do so, they said. We’ll see if that particular idea gets scrapped.

So let’s sum it up. There are many sick deer in part of the state. The disease is fatal, incurable, difficult to contain and likely to spread. But it supposedly won’t make us or livestock sick, and, for now, there are still 70 counties in our Arkansas home where the deer play.

Sorry for the discouraging word.

Governor a Trump supporter, not surrogate

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

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

Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday was in “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” mode, and seemed comfortable with it.

The day before, he and five other Republican governors had a private meeting with their party’s presumptive nominee in Trump Tower.

Donald Trump is not Hutchinson’s ideal choice. He endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Earlier this year, he told National Public Radio, “I do not see (Trump’s) discussion of issues as serious. The words are frightening – how you’re going to build a wall, how you’re going to have Mexico pay for it. What does this mean?” When Trump said a judge should step down from a lawsuit against Trump University partly because his parents are from Mexico, Hutchinson issued a statement saying, “Criticizing and trying to disqualify a judge because of the judge’s ethnic heritage is antithetical to everything that is true and good about America.”

But now he’s supporting him. Why? Because they’re both Republicans, and because he’s better than the alternative, Hutchinson said.

“The framework that will take place under Mr. Trump is totally different than the framework that will take place under a President Clinton,” he said. “Elections are team efforts, and just because you don’t agree with the last play called by a quarterback doesn’t mean you’re going to stop blocking. …

“I have no doubt but that the team that I’ve aligned myself with for multiple decades is the one that I feel most comfortable with and will provide the best direction and security for the United States of America.”

Hutchinson did not seem torn about supporting Trump. When he started in politics, Republicans in this state were rare breeds and, occasionally, odd ducks, so this is not the first time he’s had to cast a less than enthusiastic vote. Believing your party is best for the country is not putting party over country.

Still, there are limits. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said after the Trump Tower meeting that the governors would be “surrogates” for Trump.

“He was speaking for himself there,” Hutchinson said. Asked if he would campaign for Trump, he said, “In a serious vein, there’s a lot to be done here in Arkansas in the fall, but this election’s important, so we’re just going to take that a step at a time.”

Other Arkansas Republican officials? During the campaign, some legislators held a press conference endorsing Rubio, while others did the same for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. There was no group photo op for Trump. But, like Hutchinson, they’re part of a team, and they don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president, so, whether they like Trump or not, most will get in line.

But most is not all, and we still have a secret ballot. Most Republican officials picked that party because they want to shrink government and defend certain traditional values. Trump doesn’t talk much about shrinking government. He also once wrote in “The Art of the Comeback”: “If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller.”

So some members of the party of family values may leave that race blank in the voting booth. Or they might cast their secret ballot for the Libertarians, who have nominated two credible former Republican governors, New Mexico’s Gary Johnson for president and Massachusetts’ William Weld for vice president.

It’s not only Republicans who are divided. Clinton only recently clinched the Democratic nomination campaigning against Bernie Sanders. She must try to unite her party, too.

But Republicans have more to lose. Of the 34 U.S. Senate seats in play this year, 24 are occupied by Republicans. While both Trump and Clinton have historically high unfavorable numbers, Trump’s are in the stratosphere. In a recent ABC News poll, 71 percent don’t like him and 55 percent don’t like her. So one of two things seems most likely to happen. First, Trump inspires millions of new voters, and the math works out in his favor, just as it did in the primaries. Or, it’s possible that Republicans as a party suffer a historic defeat up and down the ballot.

Unless something weird happens – and, boy, this would be the year – Trump will win Arkansas. Hutchinson and most Republican elected officials will support him with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Whether they like him or not, they’ll decide they’ve gotta do what they’ve gotta do.

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

How two sisters and a cup of coffee changed a school

Tyler Cope, 17, already has her certified nursing assistant license.

Tyler Cope, 17, already has her certified nursing assistant license.

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

Pea Ridge High School senior Tyler Cope, 17, was a waitress. Now, she’s a certified nursing assistant making $11 an hour. More importantly, she’s well on her way to a good-paying future in nursing. Thirty of her fellow students also have CNA licenses, while others are learning skills in other career fields.

Cope and her fellow students have that opportunity partly because of two sisters and a cup of coffee. The sisters both were carhops at a local Sonic, where Rick Neal, then the high school principal, would stop. One had been a good student and earned a high school diploma. The other had dropped out. Both were working the same job making $8 an hour, which bothered him.

“We’ve gotten (students) to a point of handing them that diploma and saying, ‘Head on out the door. You’re good. You’re good to go,’” Neal said. “But we’ve never really given them a true vision of where they can possibly go.” Continue reading →