Mike and Mark
A Republican blogger in Virginia reports interviewing Mike Huckabee, being impressed, and extracting Huckabee's faithful promise not to oppose Mark Pryor, of whom he reportedly spoke kindly. It's at tooconservative.com
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A Republican blogger in Virginia reports interviewing Mike Huckabee, being impressed, and extracting Huckabee's faithful promise not to oppose Mark Pryor, of whom he reportedly spoke kindly. It's at tooconservative.com
Well, it looks like the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame is going to get another hundred grand in taxpayer money from the General Improvement Fund for -- well, whatever the heck it wants. This is not a public agency. The appropriation doesn't even restrict the expenditure to development of the outfit's museum displays under eternal development in the Alltel Arena, a potentially worthwhile tourism purpose — but one that could be funded by this cultural committee handing out grants from real estate transfer tax proceeds, the ones they don't want the homeless to get for housing. This bill just hands over a hundred grand to a group that exists mostly to honor aging ex-Razorbacks with an annual cocktail reception. The outfit now has a foundation to raise money privately, but that mustn't be going too well, thus the taxpayers are forced into the breach. Sen. Salmon of NLR filed the bill, and, just now on the phone, didn't exactly overwhelm me with reasoning to justify such an appropriation. She got asked to put it in. The museum would be in her town. It's "Arkansas." Blah. Blah. Blah. Maybe the House will amend it at least to restrict the money's use to capital expenditures to erect the museum. Ideally it'd stomp the sucker flat. But I'm dreaming now. I'm coming next time with this Newspaper Hall of Fame — a hundred grand from your pocket to mine to throw an annual party honoring tired old journalists, present company included.
1. The gay foster care ban lost big twice today in the House Judiciary Committee — in the morning, when it died for lack of motion, and again this afternoon, when it got a motion and, on a voice vote, got shouted down overwhelmingly. Remarkable. I guess the evangelical advocates can try to pluck it from committee on the House floor, requiring a two-thirds vote, but I can't see that. If they wanted, I think Judicary could put a rare do-not-pass on this thing.
2. Farm Bureau guy says he's actually lobbying for the second-act-in-five-years felony on animal cruelty, and it'll be on Senate committee agenda tomorrow.
A couple of the blogs, scouring document dumps from the Justice Department in the U.S. attorney matter, take note that Tim Griffin bragged to a Justice Department official in a now-disclosed e-mail that U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln's chief of staff, Elizabeth Burks, was his high school girlfriend. This would have been down at Magnolia High, where he was two or maybe three years ahead of her. He wondered in this e-mail if maybe he ought to chat her up about getting Lincoln to support his confirmation. Now Burks says through Lincoln's press secretary that she was not the Rovian's girlfriend — and, the press secretary added to me this morning, this just goes to show more significantly that Griffin was trying to "drive" his nomination politically and misrepresenting the nature of his prospects of garnering Lincoln's support. So, Griffin just called me back by bad cell phone connection. I asked him about this romantic recollection. He professed not to know what I was talking about. He said he hadn't heard a word of this difference of recollection. He paused briefly, then said he wouldn't be commenting. He said he wanted to talk . . . about something other than his girlfriend, someday, that is, "after all this dies down," which, he acknowledged, might be after he departs his unconfirmed and thoroughly controversial service as U. S. attorney.
UPDATE: Put this down as something I regret getting into. After a flurry of phone calls, I wish to submit that this boils down to the fact that a high school boy thought his relationship with a junior high girl was a boyfriend-girlfriend thing and that she saw it as something entirely different, and decidedly less. Boys and girls are different, I've heard. They both could and should have kept quiet about it. But, whatever one thinks of Tim Griffin, I don't accuse him of lying here. Nor her. I remember trying to figure out in junior high if i was the boyfriend of a girl who invited me to walk her to her locker. I recall not being able to think of anything to say as we strolled.
At his news conference just now, Gov. Mike Beebe said he had told legislators that he has concerns about the constitutionality of the bill banning gay and unmarried cobitant foster care and adoption. He didn't say what the concerns were. Either he wants not to sign such a bill at all or he wants legislators to peel back all the cohabitation and adoption stuff,and get down to what he committed to as a candidate -- a ban on gays as foster parents. But that, by singling out gays, might be unconstitutional, too.
Medicaid-enriched providers of residential care for emotionally troubled children — such as Mike Huckabee's airplane provider, the Lord's Ranch — had been charging through the ever-pliable state Senate with bills to pre-empt the state's flexibility to de-institutionalize these kids, then give themselves a rate increase to boot. The bills were abandoned late this morning, and Gov. Mike Beebe announced another approach, one encouraging the state to study and develop alternative treatments. More on how this happened in tomorrow's column.
Sen. Shawn Womack of Mountain Home, integral as Joint Budget co-chairman to the last-stage work on Revenue Stabilization and General Improvement, was taken this morning to the hospital, from where Sen. Gilbert Baker reports that doctors determined that Womack had a heart-related "episode," with very high blood pressure and respiratory problems. The mid-30s senator, with a family history of heart problems and cholesterol issues, is now stabilized and resting comfortably, but Baker says no decision has been made on further medical action. Beyond high-profile activities on the budget and as sponsor of the bill to ban gay and unwed cohabitant foster parenting and adoption, Womack also was a key vote this afternoon for the bill to make extreme animal cruelty a felony, owing in part to the strong support of his home-county sheriff. That one may be close.
You have these nice people supporting Sue Madison's bill to establish a felony offense for the most horrible cases of torturing dogs, cats and horses. They are sending mass e-mails to senators. Meantime, Farm Bureau lobbyists stalk the doors to the Senate chamber button-holing senators in support of an alternative bill to create a felony only for the second most horrible case of torture, but only if it happened within five years of the first. The first barbecuing of a dog or microwaving of a cat would remain a slap on the wrist misdemeanor. This is how the process works. Some well-intended people have to work for real livings and can't hang out at the Senate door. Other nice people sit around their bridge tables and talk about how the animal cruelty bill is needed, then commit to e-mailing their senators. All the while, the bill gets killed outside the Senate door by paid lobbyists representing entrenched and usually regressive powers, usually under the guise of a more palatable alternative. Might there be mitigating circumstances on a first horror -- say, a stupid kid torturing a pet and needing not a felony charge with jail time, but a second chance and professional help? Maybe. The prosecuting attorney always has discretion to negotiate a charge. The required psychoanalysis of Madison's bill would, in that case, become the most vital part.
While the Little Rock paper runs a front-page article praising its publisher's pilot program giving bonuses to Little Rock teachers based on student test scores, the push at the state Capitol for a bill setting up such pilot programs around the state — merit pay, generally speaking — looks a tad complex if not anemic. What happened was that Gov. Beebe persuaded merit-pay advocates to let him try to work something out with the AEA and file the bill himself. Here's what we've got, if I digest the lengthy amendment to the shell bill , HB2614, properly: A bill saying the state Education Board may establish criteria not limited to student test scores and then approve 12 such applications, but that schools may not submit applications without 70 percent approval of teachers, and, after approval, may not implement merit pay if 51 percent of the teachers say no.
Couple of things to look for as the legislative session enters the head of the stretch: Next week a prominent business group called Accelerate Arkansas, through the sponsorship of Sen. Bob Johnson of Bigelow, current Big Man in the Senate, will begin the push on four appropriations bills from the General Improvement Fund. Tens of millions will be sought to provide seed capital for knowledge-based and technology-based companies as well as research money and special pay for science, math, engineering and technology teachers. The point is that Arkansas is getting behinder and behinder on the knowledge-based and technology-based new economy, and we'd better spend this surplus while we've got it to try to jump-start ourselves in that sector with home-grown brainpower. There is wide support, from the governor down. I will columnize on this further next week. Second: There is wide interest in seeking legislative reform through one of the three referred constitutional amendments. To that end, Sen. Shawn Womack's SJR 12 is the most comprehensive. It would hold budget sessions in even-numbered years separate from regular sessions, provide for annual rather than biennial budgeting, require a uniform (and nearly prohibitive) three-fourths legislative majority to pass any tax increase and allow "local legislation," meaning, primarily, General Improvement bills for local projects. Couple of good things; couple of bad things.
This whole Mike Beebe-Jason Willett thing is decidedly odd. We are led to believe that Beebe was offended weeks ago upon learning from a press inquiry that Willett, his Democratic chairman, had registered as a lobbyist for other clients. But we are led to believe Beebe did not take any action at the time because, as we were told, Willett had already decided to leave some months hence anyway. So, Beebe didn't object very much, did he? I mean, he was letting Willett stay as Democratic chairman during the legislative session when the very conflicts that supposedly worried him were most relevant. So now House Speaker Benny Petrus has a mild and worthy ethics reform bill. And now Willett sends an e-mail saying that he, and presumably the party of which Beebe is the titular head, oppose the Democratic House speaker's ethics reform bill because Democrats can't compete unless rich contributors can continue to give them "stacked" money under several different corporate entities. And Beebe says calmly that that is Willett's business, though he, Beebe, supports Petrus' bill. I've sent the governor's office a lot of questions about this. Such as: Are you really for Petrus' bill, or not? And: Did you really object to Willett's dual role, or not? And: If your lame-duck party chairman blindsided you this way, what in tarnation do you intend to do about it? So far, governing has been easy for Beebe, cutting taxes and increasing spending. I'm wondering if we're not entering a new stage. Where is this governor -- really -- on ethics reform, considering that his best friends are out in the halls representing payday lenders and their 300 percent interest rates on poor people? And what'll he do on the gay foster care thing? Will he give us that campaign song-and-dance about how he knows from his fatherless childhood about the hardships on children from unconventional homes?
The Senate Insurance and Commerce Committee gave a do-pass this morning to the payday lenders' window dressing bill supposedly to govern themselves. The bill promises credit counseling. Swell. It did so after berating the poor spokesman for the opposing AARP because AARP offers members a credit card in affiliation with a New York bank that, by federal waiver, charges interest rates higher than the state usury limit. There was supposed hypocrisy in that, you see. Credit cards can be choking, yes, especially on people without enough sense to use them responsibly. Even so, the strangulation happens at rates of under 30 percent per annum, not in excess of 300. Senators actually voted this time -- all "aye" for the industry's window dressing bill except Jim Argue, nobly "no." Argue said the way to help poor people was not to lend them money they couldn't repay, and to feed their children otherwise. "Maybe you and Jim Argue have never been poor," Percy Malone smarted off to me afterward. I now qualify for Ripley's Believe It or Not: I am a newspaperman who has been out-poored by a pharmaceutical and general business mogul. Defending payday lenders managed to make allies of the two most polarizing members of the feuding Senate factions -- Malone and Bob Johnson. They huddled. They passed notes. Malone concoted some quick math about how nobody would loan a hundred bucks for two weeks to make 75 cents. Johnson ran with his new pal Percy's math, the upshot of which was an assertion that nobody can make money on poor people at 17 percent. Anyway, the point of this charade was to oblige the payday lenders' powerful hired-gun lobbyists and derail the real restrictions on payday lending that had passed the House something like 93-to-1. By the way, committee members paid no attention to the fact that Congress has enacted a prohibition effective Oct. 1 against making loans to enlisted military personnel at rates in excess of a state's usury law. That might shut down the "cash advance" outlets near the Air Base in Jacksonville, but add to the nest out on Colonel Glenn.
The coalition of working people and seniors trying probably in vain to pass Rep. David Johnson's bill holding payday lenders to the usury limit hopes to get the bill brought up for another vote — well, a real vote this time — at 10 a.m. Tuesday at a meeting of the Senate Insurance and Commerce Committee. You will remember that, previously in this committee, Jim Argue made a do-pass motion, then was alone in voting -- not merely in voting for it, but in voting at all. The rest of 'em either had to go the bathroom or just sat there unable to locate their intestines where some people keep their fortitude. Powerful lobbyists have managed to cloud the issue by saying poor people couldn't get loans otherwise and that federal banks break the usury law all the time. (Feds have overriding legislation.) Payday lenders, in fact, have countered with their own bill, which is window dressing, but might fare better in this unfortunate committee. Meantime, the feds are going to fix this outrage for enlisted service personnel by saying payday lenders can charge members of the U. S. military either 36 percent per annum or the state usury limit, whichever is lower. It's 17 percent under our Amendment 60. Civilians needing a little help between paychecks are on their own.
Went to Dumas yesterday and have written in detail about it and FEMA for Saturday's column. For this purpose, let me say that I left with these conclusions: (1) Dumas will be all right because the swath was narrow and the affected people and businesses were responsible adults, fully insured and self-starting. (2) People aren't dead and it's all because of the warning systems and, franky, those TV weather people. Forty-eight shoppers and workers at the Mad Butcher knew to get in the freezer for safety because of a TV report that said plainly: If you're in Dumas right now, take cover. In a few seconds the store came down where those people just been. (3) Emergencies like this require local people and local services. FEMA's worthless, on which I'll elaborate column-wise.
So Bud Cummins was testifying Tuesday afternoon about being ousted as U. S. attorney in Little Rock so that Rove's hit man could take the job. Cummins was told by a questioner that U. S. Rep. Marion Berry had spoken highly of him. And Cummins replied, "Yes, Congressman. And while we're talking about your neighboring districts, I'd like to recognize that my home state, home district congressman, Vic Snyder, is in attendance and, I may be presumptuous, but I think he's mostly here because of our friendship and out of concern for what's happening to me and I'd just like to publicly say that I appreciate him. We don't happen to be in the same political party. In fact, I was his opponent in 1996 for Congress. But he works hard and represents our district honorably and I appreciate his attendance here today." That's how it ought to be. It's like it used to be with the McGoverns and Doles and Fords and so forth. They could disagree diametrically, but respect each other fully and openly.
Gone to Dumas. Want to see what a non-disaster looks like. Will report in Saturday's column, and maybe here.
Please allow me to refer you to myself. In my column today on FEMA and the White House not giving Arkansas even the courtesy of an answer on whether Dumas was a disaster, I allude to something I'd like to emphasize. CNN's Anderson Cooper show did a piece on this two nights ago. The reporter, not Cooper himself, interviewed U. S. Rep. Mike Ross. She asked Ross to respond to something said to her by an unidentified FEMA official, which was that Arkansas has a budget surplus of $840 million and could always handle the situation itself. That's outrageous, presuming to means-test federal emergency aid. Texas at one point had a $14 billion surplus; why not cut off Medicare to senior Texans and invite the state to pick up the tab? Same thing. Ross tells me he me kind of blew up, and that when he related the tidbit to Mike Beebe, Beebe also kind of blew up. Unbelievably, this begins to smack of politics, of passive Republican aggressiveness toward Arkansas's reborn blue-stateness.
The long-awaited report on court-ordered school facilities needs will be issued this afternoon. Something higher than $400 million, I'm told.
National attention is about to come to the Dumas tornado, specifically the fact that a request for FEMA assistance has been pending 10 days, and that Desha County could use maybe a hundred trailers while FEMA has thousands of them doing nothing in Hope, 180 miles away. Congressman Mike Ross is giving a floor speech this evening with large blown-up photographs of Dumas damage. And apparently CNN will report the matter tonight. Some guy named Cooper.
Lobbyists for cities and counties are so desperate they're coming to see even the columnist. On Friday, a noble bill, HB1575, flew out of the House by 95-to-zip. It would compile a pot of money for hospitals around the state, and in Memphis, to improve their trauma treatment facilities. Arkansas is the only state without what's known as Level 1 trauma care. It's an outrage. Supporting this measure are UAMS, Children's Hospital and the Hospital Association, a stout lineup. In the face of all that, the Association of Arkansas Counties and the Municipal League are really up against it in arguing not against improved trauma care, of course, but the method of funding. You see, the bill calls for earmarking $25 in court fines for traffic violations and $50 for DWIs. One would naturally expect that these fines would be supplemental to those already existing. But the county and city people say that's completely up to municipal and district judges, who can't be counted on simply to pass through the costs by increasing their fines, since some consider fines to be high enough already. The effect will be that some local jurisdictions will lose existing revenue, city and county people say. Surely there's a better way, say the city and county people. Attention turns to the Senate.
House Speaker Benny Petrus still promises an ethics bill. I expect that he and Chris Thyer will file it tomorrow. They'll probably take out the two-year ban on legislators becoming lobbyists because a one-year ban is still floating between the House and Senate and is proving problematic enough. This new bill will require full disclosure of any and all lobbyist expenditures on legislators. It will put a hard cap of a hundred dollars on allowable gifts to legislators, replacing the current cap which is so soft it is no cap at all, since you'd have to prove the gift was a bribe to disallow it. It would impose conflict of interest disclosures on higher education board members. At least that was some of what it would do the last time I glanced at a draft. These things are fluid.