Opioids and those down-ballot coroners

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

In Arkansas, 434 people died of a drug overdose in 2018. The year before, 429 died, and 188 of those involved opioids.

Well, about that many. All of those probably should be higher. The Centers for Disease Control and other government agencies don’t have great numbers because they aren’t reported uniformly and aren’t compiled in a timely manner.

Moreover, Arkansas’ numbers often depend on the judgments of 75 county coroners, all but two of them elected, whose only qualifications are that they be 18, registered to vote, residents of their counties, and not felons. Training is offered and encouraged, but they are not required to complete it because they are constitutional officers. (However, under a law passed this year, training is required for their deputies, if they have them.)

Also, sometimes families ask coroners to assign an opioid death’s cause to, say, a heart attack, which sounds better and technically is correct but doesn’t tell the whole story. Continue reading →

He’s ‘gonna tweet what he’s gonna tweet’

By Steve Brawner

© 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

For Arkansas’ all-Republican elected leadership, President Trump sometimes makes things … complicated.

Such was the case this week, when Trump dominated the news cycle – and I mean dominated – by tweeting that several Democratic congresswomen should “go back” to their home countries. He didn’t specify them by name, but he clearly was referring to all or some of a group that includes four outspoken progressives, all minorities. In a press conference Monday, he reiterated they are “free to leave if they want.”

The “go back to where you came from” tweets sparked immediate outrage from Democrats. Republican officeholders, meanwhile, met them with initial silence, which is how they prefer to respond to these kinds of tweets. These, however, were harder to ignore.

Among Arkansas’ elected officials, Rep. Steve Womack tweeted that the remarks were “not defensible” and then criticized the “anti-American, anti-Semitic and extreme policies espoused by the socialist wing of the Democratic majority.” Ironically, in the next sentence he called for changing the tone. Rep. Bruce Westerman criticized the “new socialist Democrats” but called the president’s remarks “unnecessarily demeaning.” Rep. French Hill said he was “tired of the war of outrageous and ill-informed comments – from our president and other elected officials.” As reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sen. John Boozman said that “singling out people whose opinions differ from our own is bad for discourse and public civility.” Continue reading →

Perot a force from the outside

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

A man for whom I cast two votes for president died Tuesday.

Ross Perot ran for president as an independent in 1992 and as the nominee of his Reform Party in 1996. His temperament was not a good match for the presidency. But especially in that 1992 campaign, he did something no other major candidate in my lifetime has done: He made the national debt a major campaign issue, successfully educated Americans about it, and offered real solutions to solve it and other problems.

At the time, the debt was a little more than $4 trillion, or about $16,000 for every American. Today, it’s $22 trillion, or about $66,900 for every American. It will grow roughly $1 trillion this year, and that’s in a good economy.

Perot, the billionaire businessman born to modest circumstances in Texarkana, Texas, could not abide such irresponsibility. And while other candidates try to manipulate us with slick ads, divisive rhetoric and poll-tested sound bytes, he ran substantive 30-minute television commercials where he explained problems and offered solutions.

One of those attracted 16.5 million viewers. Imagine that. A man discussing politics with hand-held charts had almost as many viewers as this year’s “Game of Thrones” series finale (19.3 million), supposedly a national event. And Perot’s were broadcast when there were 74 million fewer Americans. Continue reading →

An interesting week for non-Republican-Democrats

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

There are few encouraging weeks for Americans who don’t fit into the two-party system. Last week was at least interesting.

On July 3, District Judge Kristine Baker issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a new law that makes it harder for third parties to qualify for the Arkansas ballot.

The injunction means the law won’t take effect while Baker considers the case’s merits. It was brought by the Libertarian Party, the state’s only really active third party.

Under previous law, parties have qualified for the ballot if they won 3% in the preceding presidential or gubernatorial election. Otherwise, they’ve had to collect 10,000 valid signatures over a 90-day period.

The Libertarians fell just short of that 3% in the 2018 governor’s race, so they must collect signatures for 2020. A few months later, legislators and the governor passed Act 164. It increased the required number of signatures to 3% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. The Libertarians would have to collect 26,746 valid signatures in 90 days rather than 10,000. They sued, and meanwhile on June 28 submitted 18,667 signatures to the secretary of state’s office. Continue reading →

Will 2020 follow 2008’s script?

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

July 4, 2019

Goodness knows it’s early, and things change quickly and often, but at the moment the 2020 Democratic presidential primary is looking a lot like the one in 2008.

In both elections, the White House has been occupied by a Republican president first elected despite losing the popular vote – first President George W. Bush and then President Trump. (One big difference: Trump is an incumbent up for re-election, while the office was open in 2008 at the end of Bush’s second term.)

Both elections have started with a presumed Democratic frontrunner with experience, high name identification and a close relationship with the last Democratic administration. That’s Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Joe Biden in 2020.

Both of those candidates have brought significant baggage to the campaigns. Clinton had all of the problems from her and her husband’s time in the White House and in Little Rock, as well as her supposed “likability” problem. “Likability” isn’t an issue for Biden. Instead, it’s a long record of gaffes, his sometimes uncomfortable handsy-ness, and his lack of success in previous presidential campaigns. Plus, he would be 77 years old when he takes office. Some people would say that’s too old. Continue reading →