The House expels one of its own

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

There are two certainties, Arkansas Speaker of the House Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, told his colleagues Oct. 11: death and taxes.

Rep. Mickey Gates, R-Hot Springs, finally had succumbed to the inevitability of the second. And this day, his political life was on trial, with Shepherd the reluctant prosecutor and Gates’ fellow legislators his jury.

Friday was a somber day. The last time House members had expelled a member was in 1837 after the House speaker stabbed to death a fellow member on the floor.

Shepherd, an attorney, made his case by saying the Arkansas Constitution allows a two-thirds House majority to expel a member for any reason – but with Gates, there is a good one. He had pled no contest to a single charge of not filing or paying his taxes after being charged for not filing returns from 2012 to 2017. He’s paying the state at least $74,789 for the years 2012 through 2014, with his debt for the later years to be determined after a December hearing.

This year, lawmakers passed Act 894 saying anyone who pleads guilty or no contest to a “public trust crime” or is found guilty cannot serve in the Legislature.

Clearly not getting the hint, Gates was one of 71 House members who voted for it. Now he says it adds an extraconstitutional qualification for service, an argument he will use if he sues. Continue reading →

Want real news? You get what you pay for

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

How can you be an informed citizen without going insane in an insane world? It starts with reading the newspaper.

The week of Oct. 6-12 was National Newspaper Week, sponsored by Newspaper Association Managers.

It’s a good way to remind ourselves that the best way to keep informed is through a news provider where working journalists interview sources, sit through government meetings from beginning to end, and present facts and differing viewpoints because they trust us to make up our own minds.

That’s the newspaper. Here’s how you can use this invaluable tool.

First, you should subscribe – to your local newspaper and probably also to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more state, national and world events. Your local paper focuses on your community, as it should.

Subscribing costs money. Meanwhile, there are plenty of sources of free information, including talk radio, cable news, opinionated websites, Facebook and Twitter.

But you know the old saying that you get what you pay for? Those free sources often are completely biased. They often don’t do the legwork that ferrets out the truth. They fill time by ranting and shouting alongside politico-celebrities from the left or the right. Many make money by fueling our outrage. That outrage is addictive, and like all addictions, harmful to ourselves and our society. And Facebook and Twitter just dump everything in our laps at once. There’s some good there, and a lot of garbage. 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 →

What will NCAA choose to do now

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

At the Little Rock Touchdown Club Sept. 23, University of Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek was asked about a California bill allowing college athletes to profit from endorsements.

He said he’d been told by NCAA attorneys not to comment but said the university invests its revenues in the athletes and that the student-athlete experience is the best it’s ever been. He also said this.

“Being a student-athlete is a voluntary activity. It’s a heck of a commitment, but no one is making you be a student-athlete. No one’s making you put your name on that line and sign that scholarship. That’s something that you do, and you understand when you sign your name … what comes with that and what doesn’t come with that. And so if there’s an opportunity for you to make some money … as a person off your name, image and likeness, right now that’s not as a student-athlete, and so you ought to take that opportunity and go somewhere else with that.”

In other words, the athletes knew the rules and still agreed to play.

But those rules will change, sooner or later. Thanks to California’s law, it’s probably sooner.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the Fair Pay to Play Act, which bars the NCAA from banning participation by California schools whose athletes are compensated for using their name, image or likeness. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2023.

It applies only to California, but the NCAA and other college athletic departments will have no choice but to respond – by suing, of course, and by threatening California with expulsion.

It won’t work, at least not for long. Eventually the NCAA must find a way to share more of its billions with the athletes if it wants to continue existing. After all, if the best college athletes can make money only in California, that’s where they will play.

The NCAA and the college athletic departments want to keep the status quo because they benefit from the rules they wrote. Those rules haven’t changed much even as college sports evolved from an extracurricular activity into a multi-billion-dollar business. Generations of college athletes from poor and minority backgrounds have struggled to make ends meet while the rich old rule-makers made plenty. At one point, the NCAA even made money from video games featuring players’ names and likenesses – again, without compensating the players – until a lawsuit finally ended that. In 2015, the NCAA finally began allowing players to collect small stipends in addition to their scholarships to help pay for incidental expenses. But those are pennies compared to what the rule-makers are paid.

At the highest levels, college athletics is really becoming a farce. Big-time programs exist alongside rather than as a part of their universities. Coaches’ salaries dwarf the universities’ presidents’. It’s “amateur athletics,” but only the athletes aren’t being compensated – legally, anyway, because the system encourages under-the-table payments.

The status quo is most unfair to football players. The best 18-year-old basketball players can play in the NBA or overseas. The best 18-year-old baseball players can go straight to the minor leagues. But the best 18-year-old football players must go to college if they want to keep playing.

In signing the bill into law, Newsom said he knows it will have consequences, and the state wants to “engage” the NCAA. In other words, the NCAA had better make a counteroffer before Jan. 1, 2023. He pointed out that only athletic governing bodies can keep students from making money off their name and likeness. If you’re a student with another skill, the free market still applies.

Yes, college sports is a voluntary activity, but so is almost any adult endeavor. No one “makes” you work for a factory or a newspaper. That doesn’t give a powerful entity the right to act like the standards that apply to the rest of society don’t apply to it.

Perhaps this could have been avoided had the NCAA voluntarily shared revenues with athletes more equitably.

Or maybe this was inevitable. This America. If you own anything, it’s your name and likeness.

Regardless, the rules are changing. Soon it will be the NCAA that must adapt if it wants to keep playing.

As flu season nears, officials say shots help

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

You think your job is hard? Dr. Nathaniel Smith is trying to convince 3 million Arkansans to let someone stick a needle in their arm – or use a mist – to fight the flu.

Smith, Arkansas’ secretary of health, and Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the Department of Health’s medical director for immunizations, held a moderately attended press conference last Monday. He got better coverage this week when he and Gov. Asa Hutchinson publicly received their flu shots.

Last year, 48.8% of Arkansans ages six months and older and 49.2% of Americans were vaccinated.

There were 113 reported influenza deaths in Arkansas last flu season and 228 the season before, which was a really bad one that saw 79,400 die nationwide. Most Arkansans who died last flu season were age 65 and older. Two were children. Five children died the previous season.

Continue reading →