Brummett's Blog

My newspaper column yesterday, which had challenges enough in suggesting the issue with Hillary was Hillary, not womanhood, contained one of my all-time most-bungled sentences. It was the one saying our last two secretaries of state, fourth in line to the presidency and our very emissaries to the world, were women. There were only two powerful errors. Can you identify them? One is that I completely forgot Colin Powell, who served between Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, and is no woman. The other is that while it's true the office of secretary of state is fourth in line to the presidency, Albright was born in Czechoslovakia and ineligible.

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Notes from walking through the Capitol corridors just now: 1. On the way out, rounding to the second floor stairs, I see two guys engaged in animated conversation outside the governor's office, right there in the hall. Why, it's Beebe and Harriman, governor and right hand, Jordan and Pippen, someone once said. I ask why they don't use their office and tell them it's already out that Maria Haley is going to Economic Development and that their office leaks like a sieve. Harriman, possessed of comic timing, says, yeah, leaking is getting to be a problem: Some of these things are leaking 24 hours later than we intend for them to. Beebe says one of the best things I wrote recently was when I took him to task for loose lips for talking publicly about de-merging Health from Human Services, unless, that is, he was floating a strategic trial balloon, in which case: never mind. 2. Sen. Dave Bisbee is chairman of the Senate Efficiency Committee, which met secretly yesterday and forced the retirement as Senate chief of staff of Bill Goodman, one of the most veteran and competent and respected legislative employees of the last three decades. Bisbee, one of the now-outvoted good guys resisting the new order, said the power-hungry and small-minded Brotherhood did it and he doesn't know why, because "I don't understand how anybody couldn't get along with Bill Goodman," Bisbee said he has no idea who'll replace Goodman, "but it'll be a vote of 8-to-4, I know that." 3. A competent, well-intended House member told me he's fed up because "19 guys in the Senate are running this state." I thought the Brotherhood was 21.

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Mike Huckabee's attack on the Little Rock paper's reporter who did the piece about Huckabee's depleting the emergency fund and crushing the hard drives -- well, let's call it stepped-up. Huckabee had a little press availability at state Republican headquarters this afternoon to discuss this presidential thing. He got one question about the local controversy and referred to the reporter's "total distortion" in saying the Huckabee camp couldn't be reached for response when, in fact, Alice Stewart had relayed Huckabee's response in a 15-minute phone conversation with the offending reporter. So, curious about that, I positioned myself in the path of Huckabee's likely exit and engaged him further on the matter. In our conversation, Huckabee accused the reporter of "taking a half-truth and presenting it as whole-truth . . . that's Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke type stuff." My goodness. Blair was the plagiarizing fabricator fired by The New York Times. Cooke was forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize for concocting a story about a supposed 8-year-old heroin addict for The Washington Post. Cooke's little boy didn't exist. Crushed hard drives and depleted emergency funds were real, this issue of who said what when aside. Frank Fellone, the Little Rock paper's deputy editor, responds for the paper with a time line purporting that Stewart did not, on that first day before the first article, do anything beyond leave a voice mail saying she'd try to get Huckabee to respond. She did respond later, and get quoted. As for any of this deserving comparison to Blair or Cooke, Fellone said, "Oh, spare me." Huckabee said crushing a hard drive is no more than shredding paper and that it was "protocol" to destroy it mainly to protect personal user information amassed over years of computer use. As I have said, I agree with that. It's throwing his emergency fund around at the end and going off because his Blackberry got disconnected — those interest me as more relevant and revelatory. The story to me is tackiness, fiscal liberalism and raging hyperbole. Here's the deal with Huckabee: He can go along fine, even impressive, perhaps on the verge of inspiring, and then you look up and he's gone plumb over the top on you. Presidential? Well, after George W. . . .

Posted by John Brummett at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Little Rock paper let Mike Huckabee have that front-page editorial section space today to defend himself on his tacky exit from the governor's office after having refused to respond directly to standard reporters' questioning. It also let Huckabee actually suggest that one of the paper's Capitol reporters was "dishonest" in the reporting of that exit. The phrase "if not dishonest" is a device essentially implying the reporter might have been -- dishonest. The paper did this without so much as a perfunctory reference to the paper's standing by its report, much less giving the reporter and his newsroom editor a chance to respond. Two problems: One is that readers' interests weren't served by Huckabee's unchallenged and typically self-congratulatory account, which, by the way, offered nary a word in substantive defense of his running the emergency fund to zero on personal pet projects. The hard drive crushing is no big deal; the bad fiscal performance on the emergency fund -- that's more reflective of the real point, meaning Huckabee's tackiness. And, by the way, is anyone buying that Huckabee couldn't be reached at all Dec. 23 when his Blackberry got cut off, and that the state's chances of landing an economic development project were rendered jeopardized? That's standard dramatic hyperbole on Huckabee's part. Two, and this is the paper's business: How do you maintain morale among reporters when you hang one of them out to dry by letting a powerful newsmaker avoid his questioning on legitimate news items, then personally attack him in his own paper without the least attempt at defending him or even extending courtesy toward him? And, oh, yes, by the way, on a lesser note: Huckabee announced for president this morning on "Meet the Press." Yawn. Arkansas has been there and done that. Huckabee sure can talk, and he said a lot to Tim Russert. But all I remember his saying is that Wayne DuMond was not his doing.

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Just because we passed that constitutional amendment to make bingo legal doesn't mean bingo is yet legal in Arkansas. The legislature must now create "enabling" legislation providing a process for licensing and regulation and such. Sen. Steve Farris of Malvern has put in a bill, SB 87. It's a lengthy sonofagaun, and, already, it has people concerned. It might be that the bill, as written, would permit a bunch of nonprofits to go together to form a kind of bingo cooperative at some hall, with their games run by out-of-state professional operators, and that this hall would become essentially a permanent gambling operation — the Humane Society getting two nights, some other worthy charity another night, etc. — producing income for professionals. Is that what we had in mind when we said yes to helping the fine little church groups and keeping the senior citizens active? This is not going to be as easy as it sounds.

Posted by John Brummett at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As tipped, again, by the scoop of the Arkansas Times blog, I inquired as to whether it's true that the Little Rock paper Sunday will run on its editorial section front a personal piece from Mike Huckabee defending himself on the emergency fund/hard drive crushing, and that it would do so despite newsroom objections to the very idea that Huckabee would decline to talk to the newspaper's reporters but avail himself of another wing of the newsroom to mount his story without standard reportorial inquiry. I was told that Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor, could answer. Greenberg said he simply couldn't because the readers deserved the information first. When I asked him if we could talk Sunday or Monday to seek his explanation for what he did, he said sure. May I say that this is not a hard journalistic question, despite reports of internal dispute and angst over at the LR paper. What you do is tell Huckabee you will be happy to run his piece as written in the editorial section, but that you will insist on sharing it with the newsroom for development as a straight news article, also for Sunday, and that if Huckabee declines to cooperate with reporters, then, well, you simply will be unable to provide him an immunized forum. Or, if you don't want to coordinate editorial with news that way, then you could insist that one of the editorial writers — the soon-to-depart Kane Webb, perhaps — be allowed to question Huckabee beyond what he's written and write a little sidebar for the editorial section fleshing out or balancing the governor's unfiltered account. Maybe that's what they're doing. We can hope.

Posted by John Brummett at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A blog entry a few items down makes mild fun of the Little Rock paper for reporting that the public salary was unavailable for its editorial writer, Kane Webb, who is leaving to become Lu Hardin's communications guy at UCA. So, what the heck. I may as well tell that it's $92,000. Not enough.

Posted by John Brummett at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Huckabee's Hope for America PAC confirms the news broken yesterday by his nemesis, the Arkansas Times: He will be a guest Sunday morning on "Meet the Press" and discuss a range of matters including "his future plans," after which he'll participate in a summit sponsored by the conservative publication, National Review, then go to Iowa. Republican sources are saying he'll announce his presidential candidacy to Tim Russert.

Posted by John Brummett at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Huckabee told Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC yesterday that an announcement concerning his presidency candidacy is imminent. I still think he's a stronger prospect to join O'Donnell at MSNBC than to move into the White House.

Posted by John Brummett at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes newspaper people amuse me. Like today. The Little Rock paper does a little story about its assistant editoralist, Kane Webb, taking the communications job for Lu Hardin at UCA. Talk about a fulltime job. The little article closes by saying that information about Webb's new salary, which will be public, was unavailable. Isn't Webb still working there at the paper? Didn't he give a couple of weeks' notice? Why not stroll into his little office just off the newsroom and ask him what he's going to make? I'd do it, but it it's not my newspaper. Whatever the salary is, it won't be enough, considering Lu's publicity demands. By the way, Kane is a swell guy who was a moderating influence on that editorial page. Now they're liable to bring back Chris Battle, Asa Hutchinson's hatchet man.

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Sen. Gilbert Baker, Republican and Brotherhooder, surely enjoyed leaving that phone message this morning "to help a friend out of a hole." He related that my column prediction from John Riggs that the grocery tax reduction wouldn't pass the Senate was perhaps rendered dubious by the presence of 30 of the 35 senators as sponsors of the bill. Thanks, Gil. Surprised you haven't become a confirmed blog reader; roll down to check yesterday's behind-covering post. I suspect the Senate has decided that since House Speaker Benny Petrus is out front with his income tax alternatives, it would go ahead and oblige Beebe and let the House fight this out. Should Beebe's bill fail in the House and Petrus' alternative pass, the Senate would then have to confont options more seriously toward session's end. I'm figuring Beebe's bill could pass on the House floor, and that the problem will be getting it out of the House Revenue and Tax Committee. There'll be no loser here, either way. It will be good to halve the grocery tax, especially since the governor campaigned on it. But Petrus is right, actually, about his income tax alternatives being more beneficial to the low-income working man. If I had to vote, I'd grudgingly go with the governor only because he ran on the issue and there's a compact with the voters to be honored.

Posted by John Brummett at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On the matter raised here that Beebe might put Paul Suskie on the Public Service Commission, I am reliably advised that Beebe asked Dustin McDaniel if that would be all right with him, and McDaniel said sure. Suskie fought McDaniel hard in the Democratic runoff for attorney general, you might recall. It was civil. Winners can be magnanimous, though I doubt McDaniel would sign off on Beebe's naming Gunner DeLay to anything, not that Beebe would. Someone pointed out that, if he names Suskie, and apparently that's not for sure, Beebe will be giving a second major appointment to a North Little Rockian, after Cliff Hoofman to the Highway Commission. It happens that I last recall seeing Hoofman and Suskie together wearing aprons and funny hats cooking and serving frog legs for Beebe's big fund-raiser at Alltel Arena late last summer. The ticket to appointment in this administration may be frog legs.

Posted by John Brummett at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I never until today got anything but heartburn from a column by Paul Greenberg in the Little Rock paper. But today he holds forth on people who annoy him, including those who walk around unhappy although they have both reasons in the world to be happy: USA citizenship and good health. No one with those blessings is entitled to frown, he writes. I am trying to take this to heart. Losing that tennis set in a tie-breaker last night because I choked — it's nothing. The important things are that I was free to play the game and in sufficiently good health to get to a tiebreaker with worthy foes.

Posted by John Brummett at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

General Improvement Fund report: They'll probably set aside some amount of money for local projects and set up a commission to vet these projects during the interim and authorize the release of money. That'll circumvent the court injunction against naming local projects. The fights, then, will be how much is set aside and who appoints the vetting commission. Thaw in Brotherhood/Otherhood? It's superficial. People are being courteous, for now. That's all.

Posted by John Brummett at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This afternoon, most likely, Sen. Bobby Glover will put in Beebe's proposed grocery tax halving. He'll reportedly have 30, count 'em, 30, sponsors. That's of 35 senators. Please pre-emptively disregard, then, the quote from former senator John Riggs, now board chairman of Arkansas Advocates for Children, in my column in the morning in many fine newspapers in which Riggs will rather embarrassingly predict that Beebe's bill can't pass the Senate. Forget, too, the responding observation by Jack Critcher, president pro tem, that the Senate vote on the food tax will be close. It looks like it'll be a slam dunk, saving the real fight for Speaker Benny Petrus' alternative in the House. And it'll probably be a fast-track slam dunk. Six of the aforementioned sponsors will sit on the Senate Revenue and Tax Committee, which probably will hold a special order of business on the grocery tax Monday morning. A blog turns out to be a convenient thing to have when your newspaper column is already reduced to newsprint in selected places, but, as it happens, comically awry in one respect or another.

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Bush, in his State of the Union address, came out against terrorists and for taking the fight to them. All of us are with him there, and only wish he hadn't taken that wrong turn to an irrelevant Iraq. Then he seemed practically to admit we'd invaded Iraq for bad reasons, but said it's now a war with terrorists that we can't afford to lose. This is the "I've made such a mess we have no choice but to let me keep making it" argument. It assumes there's a way out and that we can trust this president to find it in time. In the Iraq context, Democrats only got up to applaud when he mentioned supporting the troops. This means Democrats are going to give him his surge money, even as they adopt nonbinding resolutons opposing his latest ploy. Bush went over his health care initiative as if in a hurry, not bothering to mention the little part about treating high-cost employee health insurance plans as taxable income. It's just as well. Immigration is his strong suit with Democrats. On style, he did all right, mispronouncing only "nuclear," per usual. I think he'll poll up three to five points, breaking 30.

Posted by John Brummett at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What do legislators want to talk about ? Just this, as one put it: "Hey, what's going on up on the Hill?" Silly me. I first thought he meant Capitol Hill. But, no, he meant the hogaholic sports enterprise at Fayetteville. "My boy's upset. He liked Mustain," spoke the solon. All I know is nothing — which is equal to what I care — except that people who tend to know indicate that something, they can't quite figure out what, is percolating regarding Razorback, Inc. I told a legislator this would be the time to put in another bill to force Arkansas to play ASU, considering Broyles' momentary weakness in public relations. I was joking. He gave me that arched-eyebrow look as if I was on to something. "Some of 'em are talking about that." Lordy mercy. Let's not. It's not so much the bill itself that worries me. It's Lu Hardin's amendment to play UCA, then an amendment to play UAPB, then a basketball-exclusive amendment to play UALR.

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Observed this morning: Brotherhood senators huddling with Otherhood senators. You had opposing lightning rods Jack Critcher and Percy Malone chatting with seeming civility, without reddened faces or clinched fists. You had Brother Tracy Steele talking with Other Jim Argue. So, I asked Critcher, president pro tempore, if there was a thaw. "There'd have to have been an iceberg to be a thaw," he said. Getting nowhere that way, I asked Critcher if he believed an amicable disposition of General Improvement Fund money would be achieved this session. "I do," he said.

Posted by John Brummett at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, Beebe got his $500,000 supplemental this morning in the Joint Budget Committee to replenish the emergency fund that Huckabee doled out to non-emergency pet projects on his way out of office. Kim Hendren, excitable senator from Gravette, wanted to know what was different from the other day when the same request got tabled. Nobody could or would tell him the truth, which was that it had been deferred the other day to call negative attention to Huckabee's borish, tacky exit behavior. Plenty of negative attention was duly directed, so it was time to give Beebe his money. Jimmy Jeffress, senator from Crossett most outspoken over the years in anti-Huckabeeness, wanted an investigation of Huckabee. Jim Luker, Democratic senator from Wynne with a quieter manner, said the Joint Budget Committee didn't need to get bogged down during the session investigating the former governor, and that Joint Performance Review could delve into this later. Senators Shane Broadway of Bryant and Paul Miller of Melbourne made the point that, by operative case law regarding the separation and balance of powers, the legislature can merely review, not presume to approve or disapprove, executive expenditures duly authorized. If money was flat-out stolen by misappropriation, then you'd need your prosecuting attorney to look into that. Few people want to go that far. Huckabee's gone. Maybe he won't come back. We hope. We hope. The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival got a new car and some kids got some used musical instruments and the Mexican consulate got some help on affordable quarters and Huckabee's hard drives got crushed. Is it time, as they say, to move on?

Posted by John Brummett at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, one more thing about Bush's plan to be announced tonight to encourage states to spend more Medicaid to extend health insurance to the uncovered: Apparently, he will want to take this money from Medicaid now flowing to public hospitals that provide care to the uninsured. He wants revene neutality, you see. He'll say it's better to spend the federal matching money for Medicaid on the people themselves for their health insurance than to give it to the public hospitals that treat uncovered people after they get sick. That sounds like a worthy argument conceptually, one having to do with personal responsibility and all; but, in the real-world practice of medicine and politics, it surely will and ought to be a nonstarter to tell places like UAMS that, all of a sudden, they're going to get less money. A better way to go, but it would be costly, perhaps requiring repeal of the income tax cuts on the elite wealthy, would be to spend more in Medicaid to broaden state coverages, and reduce Medicaid payments to public hospitals naturally, over time, by reducing the demand for services to the uninsured because there will be fewer uninsured. A prediction: Though the country needs bold innovation and major reform on health care, Bush is so inconsequential anymore that his pronouncements this evening won't be dead on arrival; they'll be dead before they're even uttered. The state of the Union is not good. It's because of him and his tragic war.

Posted by John Brummett at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In keeping with our very recent theme of expanding health insurance at the state level, the do-good Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, which concocted ARKids First, says that, if we'd put a puny $4 million more in state general revenue into the program, we could turn it into $16 million with the federal match. That should be enough, the organization says, to extend the children's health insurance program from covering younsters in households with incomes up to twice the poverty level, as now, to covering youngsters in households with incomes up to three times the poverty level. That'd be up to $50,000 a year for a family of four, give or take. Households with incomes between $35,000 or so and $50,000 or so represent the fastest-growing group in the state, percentage-wise. This would require a federal Medicaid waiver, but we are led to believe that, tomorrow night, George W. will call for expedited state waivers so that states can better extend health insurance to the uncovered. In time, we might be like Pennsylvania, which now covers virtually all its children, with a higher buy-in for higher-income households. Failing federal universal health care, this ever-expanding state patchwork is the way to go.

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We seem to have a theme: meaningful government activism at the state, not federal, level. I'd cite my own preceding two or three posts. Then, this morning, the Little Rock paper put on the front page a national wire service piece about how governors and legislatures across the country are kicking tail and taking names while Democrats in Congress try to figure out what to do after their hundred-hour consensus. Our boy Beebe gets a mention in this national story for proposing to take down the grocery tax and expand pre-kindergarten. It may be that, in the morning, I'll columnize on how George W. will propose in his State of the Union that the states please expand health coverage, like Arnold, a Republican, proposes in California and Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, boasts of having done in Massachusetts. I'm telling you: There's something transpartisan percolating out there about expanding availability of health insurance and getting some kind of handle on the costs. As our country ages with Baby Boomers reaching retirement and moving into a Medicare system that includes a drug benefit, and as we keep expanding Medicaid to take in people and children increasingly above the poverty level, and as the VA continues to serve all our military personnel, and as states offer themselves as laboratories of democracy, as someone called them — well, we're going to look up in fifteen years and be closer to universal health care than we realized.

Posted by John Brummett at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After my aforementioned panel appearance before that Delta group during which I suggested state government, not federal, was the arena for Delta advocacy, an eager-looking fellow walked up and handed me a card and implored me to visit crossroadscoalition.org He was Otto J. Loewer, former UA engineering school dean who now heads the UA's Economic Development Institute, an outgrowth of the Walton Foundation gift to the university. Some people embrace ideas endowed by rich people just because they're rich people's ideas. Some folks resist, even recoil, on the same basis. I, of course, am of an open mind, receptive to those who share my views about state government's vital Delta role and that times are sufficiently desperate in a few East Arkansas areas to try unconventional things transcending political branding. This Crossroads Coalition would best be introduced by your going to crossroadscoalition.org and downloading that 22-page PDF called Legislative Agenda. Suffice to say, for these introductory purposes, that this is a coalition of interested groups in the poorest Delta counties, named for the intersections of Highways 1 and 64 and Interstates 40 and 55, advised by the Walton-funded UA institute, and interested in all kinds of tax credits for businesses, homeowners and medical providers locating in those counties. That includes tax-increment financing districts by which additional property tax revenue from a development is not paid in property taxes, to schools, mainly, but put back into the development, and which, if they belong anywhere in Arkansas, belong in the Delta. The coalition also has some of those alternative public education ideas that people fight about. But it embraces expanded pre-K. And it suggests that legislators representing these direst Delta counties turn over to the coalition at least 10 percent of whatever share of the General Improvement they take home. Worthy discussion. That's all I'm saying right now.

Posted by John Brummett at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hillary just announced for president. Well, technically, she announced an exploratory committee. But the video you can watch by going to hillaryclinton.com plainly reveals not an explorer, but a runner. It's a slick, interesting, well-performed video, probably an edited amalgam of takes, the camera panning Hillary's apparent home living room to show what looks like a sweet framed picture of Bill on a nearby table. For every 10 people who'll watch the video, 4.5 will like Hillary and love what they see and hear; 4.5 will loathe Hillary and be sickened by what they see and hear; and 1 person will be sufficiently noncommittal to judge whether she's likable and credible or phony and offensive. And that one person will decide the next president. Bear in mind that Arkansas, by a 2005 law, will conduct its presidential primary in early February, right after Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The early question, posed to me by a confirmed Clintonite the other day: Does Hillary run here, the Southern state where she's best known, and risk not doing bang-up against Edwards and Obama, the former of whom has the Southern thing and the latter of whom was judged electric in his late-election appearance for Beebe and Democrat at the state Capitol? I don't see how she could not. Either way, it makes the Arkansas vote most interesting.

Posted by John Brummett at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No less than Joyce Elliott, distinguished term-limited state representative and Beebe transition team member, spoke up to say I was right. The next day, an article said that some had questioned whether the new Democratic Congress would make any difference to the Delta. So, hesitant as I am to quote myself, and certain the reference couldn't have been solely to me, let me relate my part on a panel at the Mississippi Delta Grassroots Caucus meeting Friday in Little Rock. Our four-person group was charged with assessing what to expect for the troubled Delta from the new Congress. I said not much — because the Democratic majority was so scant; because Democrats can't agree on much beyond what they've already done in the House in a hundred hours; and because, any moment now, everything nationally becomes about the '08 presidential race. Meantime, the real action and difference-making will be at the state government level — attracting and, yes, heavily subsidizing an auto plant or steel mill, perhaps with legislatively issued bonded debt of up to $200 million repayable from general revenue, newly authorized in Amendment 82; making special allowances for Delta schools that lose students, because equal per-pupil funding is not necessarily fair; widening charter school opportunties; stimulating bio-fuel develoment; and providing workforce training through our extensive community college network. So, this morning it's on the front page that, again, Marion over in Memphis' shadow is on Toyota's list of two, this time for SUVs. I think we'll know soon. Just 10 days ago, Beebe was telling me we need to sit tight on how to spend that surplus because of school facilities issues and economic development opportunties on which, he said, we ought to know by March. To be altogether worth the kinds of subsidies that might be forthcoming from Arkansas state government, these relatively high-wage jobs can't go mostly to Tennesseeans, Missourians and Mississippians.

Posted by John Brummett at 07:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, a little more on Huckabee's clumsy departure. Alice Stewart, still doing some spokesmany stuff for the former governor, checks back to assert the following as fact: (1) That audio-visual equipment was paid for by Huckabee campaign money (someone else had remembered that the late Lloyd Stone, former state GOP chairman) had provided it). Alice says it's in storage and probably will be offered to the Republican Party. (2) The governor's emergency fund is different from the disaster relief fund, so any suggestion that Huckabee left the state without recourse from weather disaster was inaccurate. (3) Huckabee released money from his emergency fund for this very transition from Huckabee to Beebe, so any sugggestion the former governor left the new one high and dry is not accurate.

Posted by John Brummett at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More will come on this in the morning column in some of your newspapers and at arkansasnews.com, but, for now, let me report that I have synthesized what my other favorite blogger calls Gimmegate and come to these tentative conclusions about Huckabee's crushing those hard drives and taking off with that audio-visual equipment and depleting the governor's emergency fund: (1) A sophisticated erasure of computer hard drives is common when an office is closed, and actual crushing is simply a more extreme step to make sure no computer whiz can ever restore anything at all. Huckabee's action was a tad strange, but not out of character considering his paranoia that the only thing Democrats in the Capitol ever thought about was trying to hurt him. (2) Huckabee people — not Huckabee himself, to whom I haven't spoken — seem reasonably confident those lights and speaker system were properly private property. Whose? I await a call and explanation. (3) The most serious transgression — and the one Beebe was most plainspoken about when confronted by reporters before a luncheon speech to a Delta advocacy group at the Clinton library just now — was Huckabee's doling out the emergency fund for pet interests and leaving Beebe with no emergency fund for, you know, emergencies. We had flooding last weekend. We could have ice this one. Spring brings tornados. Beebe will get his supplemental appropriation. But senses of courtesy and responsibility would have kept the average guy from the late spending spree that Huckabee went on.

Posted by John Brummett at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I need to write a column for Saturday. I don't know what to focus on. I'm torn three powerful ways this remarkably rich morning. One — Huckabee crushed the hard drives so Beebe's people couldn't see his computer stuff, threw a hissy fit because his cell phone and Blackberry were cut off, ran the governor's emergency fund down to nothing right there at the end by meting it out to pet projects and apparently left the governor's office owing the state Information Systems agency a bunch of money for computer services extended over Huckabee's notoriously petty, frequently paranoid, electronically active, technically advanced, often-progressive and blessedly ended tenure. I suspect the hard drive crushing is the least of it, perhaps not all that irregular. I'll probably go that route, endeavoring to lend appropriate context, although: Two — Asa Hutchinson got up to make a speech yesterday to lawyers in Washington, and, apparently unaware an Arkansas reporter was sitting out there, said it was great to be in Washington away from Arkansas because of the way his Homeland Security record got distorted down there; then, to that reporter, said he was merely being "lighthearted," which is the very word he used when he hired those little kiddies to call Beebe names. He called the reporter back to make sure the reporter understood that he wasn't disparaging Arkansas, where he has a business and his wife has jury duty. Three — Mark Pryor said that Attorney General Gonzalez' assertion before a Senate committee that the two of them talked beforehand about the appointment of a Karl Rovian disciple as the new federal attorney in Little Rock was, well, not exactly right. He said Gonzalez told him how it was going to be, which was forcing a change in the U. S. attorney's office to get this Rovian guy in outside the normal Senate confirmation process, which is happening elsewhere, and which has Diane Feinstein of California understandably upset.

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Colleague Doug Thompson tells me the governor spoke at noon today to the Arkansas Society of Association Executives, which is the association for people who run associations, which often but not exclusively means lobbyists. Among other things, Beebe said he found a note for him left from Huckabee saying "welcome to the best job you'll ever have," or words to that effect, and had already confirmed that for himself. "It's everything it's cracked up to be. It's a great gig," he said. And debate on the form of tax relief will be great "as long as I win," Beebe said. And, for some reason, he apparently talked about the KIPP School at Helena and how he hauled me over there three or four years ago, asserting that I hadn't wanted to go, but that even I was impressed, and that, as he's said before, I'm 85 percent Lab and 15 percent pit bull. I don't know what I had to do with it and I do not recall not wanting to go. And I do not understand this idea that it's extraordinary that I would be impressed with something. But, he's the governor and there is such a thing as luncheon speaker's license. It's not nearly as bad as going around saying falsely that I parked in Nick Wilson's spot at the Capitol, which is what Beebe's predecessor did. Speaking of things apparently lacking in my self-perception, I read that old boy's piece on this very new blog in the Arkansas Times, the one where he said I was his favorite glass-half-empty kind of guy. What the heck: Do I walk around the very picture of pessimism? I think of myself and sweet and optimistic. Anyway, when I guy walked up to me at the Capitol this morning and said he was doing some lobbying for clean water, I said, "Good. Even a guy whose glass is only half-full wants the water clean."

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It was indeed the Highway Commission, the independent powerhouse generally considered the governor's chief plum, and it was Cliff Hoofman, veteran former state legislator from North Little Rock. Central Arkansas now has two of the five commissioners, but the rule is that one commissioner must come from each of the four congressional districts with one at large, so somebody has to have two. It's fair to say, though, that the southwestern and southeastern corners are now basically unrepresented, with the other three from Blytheville, Siloam Springs and El Dorado. Hoofman is a beloved friend of Gov. Beebe, a man of uncommon personal loyalty who called me up short more than once a few years ago when I tried to make something of Cliff's unfortunate matter of driving under the influence. Cliff was paying his price and owning up to his problem and was a good man, the governor-to-be would say. Indeed Hoofman is a capable man whose intense interests in the Highway Commission and its issues date back to another of his intense friendships — with the late and legendary highway director, Henry Gray. Hoofman knows the territory. As for that preceding speculative post on Suskie to the PSC, I think I'll just leave it there for a few days.

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Beebe has a big appointment announcement at 10:30 a.m. today, 41 minutes from now. Everybody's thinking Highway Commission. But what if it's chairman of the utility-regulating Public Service Commission, replacing Republican Randy Bynum? What if it's Paul Suskie, conservative Democrat from North Little Rock and Afghan war veteran who very nearly got himself elected attorney general? Just asking. As governors always say, "Why don't you just wait and see." But who wants to do that?

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It always happens. Early in legislative sessions, before things get churning, time has to be spent on something. That something usually turns out to be religious nonsense or frivolity. There was the time Pat Flanagin of Forrest City put in and passed a resolution saying that since both Bubbas formerly serving in the House were no longer there, then I would be the official House Bubba. I got on the front page of the Moonie Washington Times for my absolutely innocent role in that one. This time it's frivolity revisited. Freshman representative Dan Greenberg of Little Rock filed a bill with what he apparently thought was a clever title, about an "edifice complex." He proposes to keep government from naming buildings for living people, having deemed the matter out of control. We have all these things named for the Huckabees; Little Rock put Jim Dailey's name on the fitness center. It'd be almost worth passing this bill just to see what the governor would do. I've been to Searcy; I've driven on the Beebe-Capps Highway. But colleges need to be able to tap egomaniacal rich people for big donations in exchange for naming buildings and centers and such. And, in the end, just as you can't legislative morality, you can't legislate taste. We just endured a decade's lesson in that, didn't we?

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I'll be out of pocket some if not most of the day, and I promise I'm not making this a sports blog. But I simply had to share the take of a tennis pal on this hogaholic soap opera. He said everybody's right. One: The UA recruiters said they what they had to say to lure in-state high school stars, and in this case their coach, because college football recruiting is dirty business and everybody knows it. Second: Nutt was right to insist this season, at least, on a traditional run offense considering his job was on the line and he had a veteran offensive line and the two best runners he'd ever had. Third: Malzahn was right to take offense, pardon the pun, that he was undercut and misled, and find himself another job where he'll be happier. Fourth: Mustain was right to bail if he didn't like the situation or the people. There's something in Arkansas bigger than all this: It's the mighty Razorback, the idol before which Arkansawyers bow. All these people saying they're mad and finished with the mighty Razorback — they're not. They'll be in the stands next year, which is all that matters.

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Steve Ronnel, the savvy Democratic insider with ties to Clinton, Bumpers, both Pryors, McLarty and Lincoln, among others, now leads the Political Animals Club of Little Rock. He is planning changes after all these years, nearly 20, actually, since Skip Rutherford launched the breakfast club for insider political programs and brought in Dukakis and Gore that first year. One of Ronnel's ideas is occasionally to meet for something other than a 7 a.m. breakfast, such as a late-afternoon happy hour. Another is to launch partnerships to land big-name speakers on somebody else's tab, since the Political Animals offer no honoraria — with the Clinton School, for example. In fact, Ronnel tells me he will announce soon particulars of that partnership, which will be the very theme for 2007, but can't tell me more and "get ahead of Skip," the same Skip, who now, of course, heads the Clinton School. Meanwhile, the next meeting will be a traditional breakfast affair Feb. 13 with Petrus and Critcher. March will launch the Clinton School partnership. April will present a program in partnership with that month's third annual Arkansas Literary Festival, maybe with the White House pastry chef. Meantime, if UA lobbyist Richard Hudson or anyone else wants equal time for the Northwest Arkansas Political Animals, they're more than welcome to call.

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It's in the sports section of The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas. It asserts, according to an unidentified source, that Houstondale had told Gus he was getting demoted to receivers' coach and that David Lee was coming in as the new offensive coordinator. A Web fan-site writer says there's a barbecue joint in Bentonville posting this sign: We got rid of the wrong coach. This is a soap opera plot line good for several years. In three or four, we'll see Tulsa setting offensive records while Houstondale gets to sing only after six or seven games.

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It's a strange thing for me to say. But it occurred to me this morning as I read Mike Beebe's making first-page news by thinking out loud to a reporter for the Little Rock paper. He allowed as how maybe we need to reverse His Huffiness' merger of Human Services and Health because Health's morale is in the toilet. It's wondrous that Beebe is open and accessible and informed, but maybe he could remain accessible and informed while occasionally being a tad less open. Can you believe what I just said? I'd be kicked out of the Society of Professional Journalists, if I was a member. This is called "podium policy," which occurs when a political officeholder gets so carried away by the moment and his pulpit that he says things off the cuff that would be better kept, for the time being, close to the vest. Does a governor really need to be surprising hundreds of state employees by speculating on the front page that it's run through his mind that he might re-reorganize them? There's one other possibility: If this was an on-purpose floating of a trial balloon, timed and designed to begin an inevitable discussion toward an intended reform, then . . . never mind.

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E. J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution fellow who was a leading thinker in the New Democrat movement that spawned Bill Clinton, offers a column on Mike Huckabee today casually observing that the newest presidential aspirant from Hope conceivably could turn out to be the "next big thing." That would be a religious Republican conservative who triangulates to be pragmatic, moderate and compassionate otherwise. I mention it because I'm not sure it's not prescient. Presidential races are usually about the next big thing — Bush's supposedly compassionate conservatism, Clinton's new Democratic image, Reagan's revolution, Carter's outsider decency after Watergate. I think that, as time goes by, Huckabee will be hamstrung nationally by petulance/huffiness, ethical shortcoming, a horrible record of prison commutation and an inability to raise sufficient money to compete well in the frenzied primary season. But I have this idea that, between now and then, he'll kind of catch on. If McCain doesn't win the GOP nomination pre-emptively, then I'm not sure what happens. If he does win it pre-emptively, he might need to shore up the vital South with his running mate selection. We can forget Allen and Frist, and certainly Jeb Bush, and Haley Barbour is too much the former K Street lobbyist. And McCain is in his 70s. Well, I'm getting well ahead of myself. I'd best have a second cup of coffee.

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My national column, the one about Bush making such an Iraq mess that the Democrats can't fashion coherent opposition, got posted on realclearpolitics.com. Whenever that happens, which isn't often, nuts come out of the nationwide network. So, I'm getting a lot of e-mails about how I'm pro-terrorist. But I also got this: "Like the blog. Since your columns that ridicule the joke that constitutes the major college football program in the northwest corner of this tailgate party masquerading as a state (borrowed from you) never fail to make me giggle, I wondered if you might take a stab at the Gus story on your blog. One of my hogaholic friends informed me just now that he is headed to Tulsa, not surprisingly. It would be a nice diversion from Iraq and the Leg." That's Gus Malzahn, high school coaching phenom of Springdale and the Hurry Up No Huddle offense whom nail-chewing Houston Dale hired as offensive coordinator for the Oinkers so that he, Houston Dale, could recruit and run off Williams and recruit and not use Mustain. Malzahn kept smiling all season and saying that he was operating with all the latitude and authority he'd been promised. But now he's going not quite laterally to Tulsa not as head coach, but as offensive coordinator. People are saying this is plain evidence that Houston cut off Malzahn at the knees, and that now we may lose Mustain, too. What it's plain evidence of is this: This Razorback empire is a soap opera that will forever feed obsessions and break hearts. My pure speculation: Houston Dale didn't ever intend to give up play-calling, but did so on Frank's orders. Then Frank rescinded those orders after the opening loss to Southern Cal because he thought all those double-reverse, throw-back passes looked like rat ball. Then Houston got away with keeping the offense in his own image because McFadden and Jones were so good. Malzahn wants to do his thing, and a place like Tulsa is just the place. Meantime, back in Hogville: It's nine wins or fewer forever, and hogaholism remains an eternal epidemic.

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Most of the state legislative action on extra teacher pay — merit, alternative, incentive, whatever you want to call it — is behind the scenes. The Walton-Hussman people are shopping an idea for a pilot program of alternative or incentive teacher compensation that would award higher pay to teachers both doing extra work and producing improved student test scores. The AEA is resisting anything based on test scores. Mike Beebe is saying come let us reason together. The Waltons and Hussman fret about Speaker Benny Petrus having made Jodie Mahony his educational specialist, considering that you never know what Jodie may be up to. Reportedly, Petrus is determined to limit Jodie's activity to Lake View adequacy issues. Meantime, just for the record, there's a merit pay bill in the hopper. It's SB 54, by Sen. Jimmy Jeffress of Crossett, a retired teacher himself. His bill is the kind the AEA would go for. It authorizes "incentive pay" only by school-to-school choice, but not ever districtwide. It authorizes individual school groups to decide on the extra pay that would be composed at least 50 percent by certified teachers. It says student test scores must be held to less than 50 percent of the criteria. And it says that whenever 15 percent of the certified personnel of a school vote to disapprove of an incentive pay system, then the incentive pay system would be discontinued. Let's call that not what the Waltons and Hussman had in mind. Let's call it a starting point for discussion.

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"Face the Nation" on CBS this morning presented John McCain, then Barack Obama. Amid the polite talk, they managed to provide the political dynamic of this utterly untenable Iraq catastrophe. McCain, in behalf of Bush and Republicans, said that if Democrats really believe the war to be wrong and the surge misguided, then they should draw up a ban on funding and pass it. That's a dare: Strand the troops, leave chaos and have blood on their hands — in other words. Obama, in behalf of the Democratic caucus, managed amid hedging to hint pretty well that Democrats intend first to pass a nonbinding resolution opposing the surge, then to approve supplemental appropriations that come through and thus support the troops, but to avail themselves of the appropriations process to attempt "constraints" on Bush, perhaps with riders setting a timetable for phased withdrawal and demanding tries at political and diplomatic solutions. For more on the latter, see my column coming Tuesday based on discussons with Vic Snyder.

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