By Steve Brawner
© 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
The U.S. House of Representatives last week played politics with a serious issue. You should not be disappointed if your congressman participated. You should only be disappointed if he brags about it.
And then more importantly, you should ask yourself why it happened.
Let’s note the contrast between powerful congressional leaders leaving office and Arkansas’ congressmen – who haven’t started being in leadership until now – who seek to stay.
Speaker Paul Ryan’s announced retirement Wednesday was the blockbuster, but he’s not the only leader going home. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Penn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is retiring. So is Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, a partisan Republican who told VICE News he’s leaving Congress partly because it’s so partisan. Gowdy said he knows exactly how many flights to Washington he has left – 19 as of the interview.
Ryan is the big news. He’s third in line to be president and is one of Congress’ two most powerful officials. But he had to be talked into taking the speakership, and now he’s walking away from it. His stated desire to spend more time with his family is believable given his history, but the job also has worn him down. Plus, he knows there’s a good chance he’d be handing the gavel next January to Nancy Pelosi. Few jobs are more frustrating than being in the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. Continue reading
Tucked in the middle of last week’s Arkansas 2nd Congressional District debate was a disagreement between two of the four candidates – about impeaching President Trump.
Asked in the debate sponsored by KATV and Talk Business & Politics about the Russia investigation and Congress’ role as a check and balancer, Gwen Combs said she favors impeachment. Paul Spencer said he “would not even entertain that thought right now without seeing some evidence.”
On this issue, Democrats should follow Spencer’s lead – for the country’s sake, and for their own. Continue reading
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died 50 years ago this past week, which makes this an appropriate time to consider why he has a national holiday named after him, and you and I don’t.
Here are four of many reasons.
He sacrificed for his ideals. Everyone thinks they’re persecuted these days. King really was. There’s a reason his most famous writing was titled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He was in jail when he wrote it. While he’s been elevated to American sainthood since his death, 63 percent of respondents in a 1966 Gallup poll had a negative opinion of him (and only 12 percent a highly favorable one). Many saw him as an agitator. The FBI investigated him as a communist back when that accusation carried serious implications.
Listening to his sermon in Memphis the night before he died, it’s clear he believed he would not live long, which is understandable. He’d been stabbed in Harlem and struck in the head by a rock in Chicago. The physical strains of leading his movement must have been life-threatening. “I have seen the Promised Land,” he said in Memphis. “I may not get there with you.” He was right. He was shot the next day at age 39. Continue reading
State and local governments in Arkansas are suing opioid manufacturers for millions or billions. If they’re successful, what will they do with all that money?
On March 21, the Association of Arkansas Counties and the Arkansas Municipal League announced that 72 counties – it’s now all 75 – and 210 cities together were suing 65 defendants in the opioid industry in Crittenden County Circuit Court. Both organizations were already part of a nationwide federal lawsuit. Then on March 29 Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced her office is suing three of the largest opioid manufacturers.
They’re currently feuding a bit over these dueling lawsuits, but that’s not what this column’s about.
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