Democracy’s laboratories

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

States often are described as laboratories of democracy, which is good because our democracy definitely needs some tinkering. These past few weeks, we’ve seen how three states in particular are running their experiments.

On Tuesday, California held its “top two” party primaries. Republicans, Democrats, and all other candidates appeared on the same ballot, and the top two finishers advanced to the general election regardless of party label.

Why do this? Under the traditional primary system, like in Arkansas, voters choose between participating in the Republican and Democratic primaries. Nationwide, these tend to attract low turnouts composed of a disproportionate share of partisan and ideological voters. As a result, the winners tend also to be partisan and ideological, or at least pretend to be.

The consequence has been a Congress composed heavily of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, with a void between them where statesmanlike compromise is supposed to occur. Without a healthy center, Congress gets stuck in gridlock, unable to accomplish even its most basic responsibilities such as passing a budget. The top two voting system theoretically would help remedy this by forcing candidates to appeal to the broader electorate, including voters in the center, assuming there still are some. Continue reading →

Listening to Eeyore in boom times

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s been a lot of supposedly good economic news lately, which means someone needs to be that guy – the Eeyore guy. Eeyore is needed to balance out the Tiggers.

In case your “Winnie the Pooh” is a little rusty, Eeyore is the pessimistic donkey who sees the cloud in every silver lining. Tigger is the optimistic, enthusiastic tiger who bounces around and is pretty full of himself.

I bring up those two characters in light of this week’s announcement that Arkansas state government is enjoying a $44.2 million surplus this fiscal year with one month to go, and has collected about $160 million more than last year.

That’s good news, and it comes amidst a prosperous national economy – indeed, a global one. We are now in the midst of the nation’s second longest economic expansion on record, though records don’t go back far. This expansion began in June 2009 in the bottom of the Great Recession. If we make it to July 2019, it will become the longest.

But economies that go boom eventually go bust, and so will this one. In the foreseeable future, the expansion will run out of steam and then we’ll be in a slowdown, or something bad will really shock the system like the banking crisis of a decade ago. Continue reading →

School shooters: Tell us what they did, not who they are

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Many questions are being tossed around the news media landscape regarding the causes of school shootings. Is it the guns? Violent video games? A lack of morals in society?

The one question members of the news media don’t ask enough is, how much of this is our fault?

As demonstrated in videos released this week that had been made by the Parkland, Florida, school shooter, journalists must be careful lest their breathless, wall-to-wall reporting and dramatization of a tragedy encourage copycat crimes.

A few thoughts …

– Responsible journalists should not give shooters the publicity they seek by publishing their names and likenesses. Otherwise, they’re encouraging people like the Parkland shooter, who in those self-made videos declared, “It’s going to be a big event, and when you see me on the news, you’ll all know who I am. You’re all going to die.” Continue reading →

Recess is back at 24 schools

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Twenty-four Arkansas schools are giving their kids more time in recess, and the only bad news is that all of them aren’t.

As reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Monday, those schools are participating in a pilot program this upcoming school year. In addition to physical education classes, their students up to fourth grade will have 60 minutes of recess daily, while fifth- and sixth-graders will have 45 minutes. In contrast, the state minimum is 40 minutes of P.E. per week plus 90 minutes of additional physical activity, including recess.

Among the participating schools are Marguerite Vann Elementary in Conway, Elmer H. Cook Elementary in Fort Smith, and six elementary schools in North Little Rock.

Recess started increasingly being seen as expendable in the 1990s, and that trend continued after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law in 2001. As a result of its emphasis on test scores, letting kids play was seen as a luxury that schools and states couldn’t afford. After all, this is America, where the key to success is working harder not smarter, right?

Continue reading →

It was a good day for the governor – plus, why your vote matters

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas primariesBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

It was a good night for Gov. Asa Hutchinson – actually, a good two days.

On Monday, he visited the White House, where President Trump sent a tweet endorsing him and praising him for his “incredible job.” Then on Tuesday, Hutchinson won almost 70 percent of the vote in an election he said was “about the soul of the Republican Party.”

He now enters the general election campaign with a huge fundraising lead and a huge advantage having “Gov.” in front of his name and “R” behind it.

Meanwhile, Tuesday saw the defeats of two of his least favorite legislators, Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, and Sen. Linda Collins-Smith, R-Pocahontas. Both oppose his Arkansas Works health program and oppose him at other times, too – King especially and vocally and sometimes not nicely. They were defeated by Republicans much more agreeable to Hutchinson: King by Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Berryville, and Collins-Smith by Rep. James Sturch, R-Batesville.

Here are some other observations following Tuesday’s results. Continue reading →