What’s missing on social media? Empathy + fear = respect

By Steve Brawner

© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I was mad at someone on Facebook, until I saw him in real life.

The victim of my annoyance was an Arkansas state legislator who posted something online I didn’t agree with. There was a brief back and forth, nothing serious and perfectly civil, and then it ended. But the debate stayed with me.

A day or two later, the Legislature had just dismissed from its special session, and the governor had just finished a press conference. I was writing my story while sitting in a vacant committee room when that same legislator hurried down the stairs and passed by. He was carrying belongings with both hands and nodded through the window in a friendly way, and I smiled and waved.

I realized I wasn’t mad at the actual person I’d just seen. Continue reading →

On lawsuit limits, Family Council, lawyers on same side

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s opponent, and vice versa. Which helps explain why the Family Council, one of Arkansas’ most visible conservative groups, will be allied with trial lawyers and opposing the Chamber of Commerce this year.

It’s because of Issue 1, the tort reform amendment.

Referred to voters by the Legislature last year, Issue 1 would limit punitive damages (which punish wrongdoing) to the greater of $500,000 or three times compensatory damages, though not if the defendant intentionally caused harm. It would limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) to $500,000, or $500,000 for all beneficiaries when the victim dies. Economic damages based on the victim’s income would not be limited, so the more the victim makes, the higher the potential award. It also would limit lawyers’ contingency fees to one-third of the judgment and let the Legislature change the state Supreme Court’s own rules.

A lot of money is at stake, so a lot of money will be spent in the campaign by November. Continue reading →

Will the Republican red tide flood Arkansas’ county elections?

Alabama, blue wave, school boards, Hixson, Breanne, red tideThe most compelling races in Arkansas this November won’t be the big ones – governor, Congress, etc. Republicans probably are going to win all of them, and most of them easily.

Instead, the county races may be the ones most worth watching. That’s because this could be the election cycle where Republicans become the majority party in Arkansas.

Republicans now control every U.S. congressional office, all statewide races, and about three-fourths of the Legislature. And it’s mostly happened since 2010, the election following the election of President Obama. Before that, Arkansas was a one-party state – in fact, one of the nation’s one-partiest – controlled by Democrats.

But for all of their dominance at the state and national levels, Republicans still hold only a minority of partisan elected seats statewide, according to their own count. GOP Chairman Doyle Webb says that of 1,524 partisan offices ranging from justice of the peace up to the major state and national offices, Republicans control 620, or only 41 percent.  Continue reading →

Five options to fix the world’s oldest democracy

It’s obvious that American democracy isn’t working. The question is, how do we fix it?

Consider these two examples.

The national debt has tripled in the past decade and a half to $21 trillion, even though we all know that no entity can spend more money than it collects forever. Not a family, not a business, and no, not the government, either. And we’re headed in the wrong direction. As was announced by the Treasury Department this week, the recent tax cuts and spending increases made February’s budget deficit the worst it has been for that month since 2012.

Meanwhile, Congress can’t create a solution for the 1.8 million young people brought to America illegally as children “through no fault of their own,” as even immigration hardliner Sen. Tom Cotton describes them. That’s happening despite the fact that the compromise solution is fairly obvious: Give the young people a path to legal status while strengthening border security and immigration enforcement.

So what’s next for the world’s oldest democracy? Here are five options. Continue reading →

Trump change helps Arkansas Obamacare program continue

Seema Verna

Seema Verna hands the work requirement waiver to Gov. Asa Hutchinson at the Capitol.

The presidential administration that tried to repeal Obamacare in 2017 just made it easier for some Arkansas legislators to vote to continue part of it.

I guess that’s ironic. But that’s how politics works sometimes.

On Monday, Arkansas was visited by Seema Verna, President Trump’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. She granted a waiver letting the state require some Arkansas Works beneficiaries to work.  Continue reading →