It’s OK to vote for someone else

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

Voters complain each presidential election about their choices, but that’s especially true this year. According to Real Clear Politics’ compilation of polls, Hillary Clinton is viewed unfavorably by 55.5 percent of voters and favorably by only 39.7 percent, while Donald Trump’s numbers are worse: 61.1 percent to 33.4 percent unfavorable to favorable.

These are historic numbers, and they could get worse. When candidates’ negatives are so hopelessly high, they respond by trying to drive up their opponents’ unfavorables and, if necessary, win by becoming the lesser of two evils. Both campaigns will unleash a torrent of negative ads. Both have plenty to work with.

If you’re like many Arkansas voters, you may have said you’ll just write in somebody else’s name. Unfortunately, there is no provision in the law for you to do that in the presidential race.

However, there will be other candidates on the ballot: the Libertarians’ Gary Johnson, the Greens’ Jill Stein, the Constitution Party’s Darrell Castle, and possibly others. The bar for running for president in Arkansas as an independent is remarkably low: Just collect the signatures of 1,000 voters, which is much less than the 10,000 required to run for statewide offices. Candidates have until August 1 to submit those signatures.

This is the part where somebody always says, “Don’t waste your vote. If you don’t vote for one of the two major party candidates, you’re helping the other one” – the one they don’t want to win.

I respectfully disagree with that kind of thinking. An election is not just a process for picking winners and losers. It’s an opportunity for voters to express their beliefs about the country’s direction. Many voters strongly oppose both Clinton and Trump and do not want to affirm either candidacy on Election Day.

If your beliefs more closely align with one of those third parties, then vote your conscience and encourage others to do the same. That’s how the Republican Party came into existence. On March 20, 1854, a small group of idealists met in a Wisconsin schoolhouse to form a new party that would be based on their anti-slavery convictions, not raw political calculations about who might win the next election. Instead of holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils, they took the long view and stayed true to their beliefs. Six years later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

No matter how you vote, you won’t change the results in Arkansas. The United States does not have national elections where everybody’s vote goes into a big pot. It has individual, winner-take-all state elections that feed into the Electoral College. Arkansas has six votes, and we already know who will win them. In a recent Talk Business & Politics poll, Trump leads Clinton, 47-36 percent, and nothing will turn those numbers around. Clinton’s 36 percent is consistent with recent election results: President Obama won 37 percent in 2012; while in 2014, Sen. Mark Pryor won 39 percent in the U.S. Senate race while Mike Ross won 41 percent in the governor’s race. Somewhere in those numbers is the Democrats’ ceiling.

Regardless of what you as a voter do, Arkansas will be part of a large red splotch in the middle of the country on your television screen on Election Night. The state will be called for Trump immediately after the polls close, and then the attention will turn to the states that are actually up for grabs: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.

In other words, because Arkansas is blood red, your vote essentially has become meaningless as an election-deciding tool. However, as with those idealistic Republican reformers in 1854, it has great meaning as a form of political expression. This is when your voice really counts.

The best vote I ever cast was in 1992 for independent candidate Ross Perot. I believed he was not temperamentally suited to be president, but he campaigned on political reform and on balancing the budget and ran 30-minute infomercials explaining the national debt. On Election Day, he won 19 percent of the vote. Not coincidentally, President Clinton and the Republican Congress began working on balancing the budget. They couldn’t ignore Perot’s voters.

So do you really want to avoid wasting your vote? Vote your conscience.

Related: Independents, Greens better choice than death

If Trump or Clinton succeed? More debt

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

Presidential candidates can’t possibly fulfill all their campaign proposals, and few would even want to try. But what would happen if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump actually did what they said they want to do? Clinton would grow government and do nothing to reduce the growth of the national debt. Trump would explode the debt.

Those are the findings of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that advocates for deficit reduction. It scored the two candidates’ campaign proposals to find out how much they would increase the debt, determined maximum and minimum amounts based on various factors, and then came up with midrange amounts.

The CRFB found that Clinton’s proposals would increase spending by $1.4 trillion over 10 years, but she has proposed $1.2 trillion in tax increases over that time period. That’s $200 billion in new debt, plus another $50 billion in additional interest costs her policies would cause.

So Clinton’s not doing too badly, right? Not exactly. She has no plans for the $19 trillion in debt that already exists, nor does she propose anything that would reduce the additional annual deficits that already are baked into the system and are projected to add $10 trillion over 10 years if nothing is done.

Clinton gets a few points for this: While proposing to grow government, she also at least proposes to pay for most of that growth. Because of that, the CRFB says the national debt would not increase much as a share of gross domestic product if Clinton does what she says she wants to do. Without Clinton’s policies, the debt held by the public – the national debt minus what the government has borrowed from itself – will increase from its current 75 percent to 86 percent of GDP in 2026. With her policies, it would increase to 87 percent.

But I’m not reassured. Elected officials in Washington tend to keep their happy promises but not their take-your-medicine ones. If history is a guide, she along with Congress will more likely increase spending while letting her less popular tax increases slide.

Trump, meanwhile, proposes spending cuts of $650 billion, which is not much when you consider it covers an entire decade. Meanwhile, he’s proposing an estimated $10.5 trillion in tax cuts. Counting higher interest payments, Trump’s policies would increase the national debt by a midrange estimate of $11.5 trillion, the CRFB says. While tax cuts do have a stimulative effect, the economy would have to grow more than 10 percent a year for a decade for the budget to balance – more than twice the best it’s previously done over that time period. Moreover, like Clinton, he does little to address the current $19 trillion debt or the $10 trillion in new debt that’s already projected to occur. If Trump keeps his promises, then in a decade the debt held by the public could equal 127 percent of the gross domestic product – numbers not seen since World War II.

At this point, a lot of people might ask, so what? Since presidential candidates often don’t even try to enact their campaign proposals, then maybe we should just ignore them and vote with our guts.

The problem with that thinking is that it removes accountability. If voters don’t care what candidates tell us during the campaign, then they are free to say anything to get elected and do anything afterwards.

Moreover, a presidential campaign isn’t just a time to pick winners and losers. It’s also a time for voters to educate themselves about the issues. In 1992, third party presidential candidate Ross Perot broadcast 30-minute infomercials in which he explained the national debt. Because of him, it became a front-and-center issue, and after he won 19 percent of the vote, President Clinton and Congress moved to balance the budget. If the national debt is mostly ignored in this campaign, it probably will be mostly ignored after the election.

The CRFB says it will continue to track the candidates’ proposals as the campaign moves forward. Unfortunately, it has not scored any of the third party candidates, but hopefully that will change. Every candidate should be held to high standards – particularly Trump and Clinton. One of those two will succeed at becoming president. Let’s hope the winner doesn’t succeed at increasing the debt.

Related: Fiddling around, ignoring problems

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.