Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tonight, tonight
The line is open.
EARLY READ: Posted on NY Times site for tomorrow's paper is a piece on the expected surge of the Arkansas Republican brand in the November election. Pretty much the same theories trotted out that have been advanced locally.
There were murmurings of racial distrust by a few of the white men here [Blytheville], those remaining after years of white flight to neighboring counties. But the complaints were mainly fiscal, about the “giveaway money” that the Democrats — and Republicans, and anybody in Washington for that matter — seemed to be handing out.While many of the farmers bristled defensively when the topic of agricultural subsidies was raised in this context, one even suggested heretically that he would be open to a reduction in subsidies — farms in the district received nearly $6 billion in subsidies after the past 15 years — just to get spending under control. Other farmers said they would vote against Ms. Lincoln because of her vote for the health care bill, even though she is in a position to help them as the chairwoman of the Senate agriculture committee.
The frustration — and it is more frustration than Tea Party-style anger — runs that deep.
What's missing in the unhappiness quoted is much rational thinking, of course. Fiscal distress was put in motion by eight years of George W. Bush. The favorite for Senate voted for the big TARP bailout. These good Arkies hate health care reform, because they've been inundated by scare commercials. I still go with Dumas' theory. Arkansas is particularly vulnerable to a campaign aimed at every level at the otherness of the president. Let's be generous and include religion, education, philosopy and elitism along with race in what defines that otherness, but let's not argue that race is NO factor. Combine that with hard times, political poison to the ruling party any year, and you have kerosene.
Turn the Rubik's Cube this other way to consider brand strength. Is there an incumbent Democrat after Blanche Lincoln who is in trouble? The problem for the party is that some strong figures — think Reps. Vic Snyder and Marion Berry — decided to retire and others at lower levels were term limited, leaving a huge crop of open races with little by way of Democratic Party recruitment to show for them. Don't get me wrong. I've written before that the loss of a reflexive Democratic vote for would-be successors this year can be expected and amounts to a sea change in Arkansas politics. But its durability will rest on its foundation. Passing frustration isn't much for the long haul.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (37)
Shots fired at NLR High
Multiple reports of shots fired on the campus of North Little Rock High School East Campus. I got a very brief word with the North Little Rock police information officer, Sgt. Terry Kuykendall, who said one adult has been shot and no students were involved. He's at the scene trying to sort out events.
Channel 4 has reported that a car driving through the campus, apparently the student pickup area, refused to stop and hit a campus police resource officer. Another police officer on campus fired at the car, hitting the driver, according to 4's Jessica Dean, reporting by Twitter.
Fox 16 has more. Driver in custody after medical attention. Police officer hospitalized. He was reportedly forced onto the hood of his vehicle by the driver who was shot.
Still no ID on the driver of the car. The police officer was not seriously injured.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (4)
Boozman goes to Tea Party
Rep. John Boozman joins a Tea Party rally Sunday in Mountain Home, perhaps preparatory to a Tea Party endorsement of his candidacy. Many 'baggers say a TARP vote is the most "toxic asset" on a member of Congress' record. Rep. Boozman, of course, voted for TARP. (One of his rare good votes, we'd be the first to volunteer.)
Is all that forgiven by Arkansas Tea Partyers? Politics over principle?
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Arkansas Lottery Ernie P. tries to douse comp time fire
The Arkansas Lottery Commission met today and director Ernie Passailaigue tried to put out the fire raging over the massive comp time doled out to employees during the lottery startup, including hundreds of hours credited to Passailiague himself and two top aides, Ernestine Middleton and David Barden, though they make $225,000 and Ernie P. makes $324,000.
Passailaigue said he, Middleton and Barden would waive all claims to any accrued comp time and repay the state for comp time they had already drawn by giving up offsetting leave or vacation time or making a payment if necessary, said staff attorney Bishop Woosley. Passailaigue also said, going forward, no comp time would be awarded to any employees exempt on account of high rank from usual state employee reimbursement policies. CORRECTION: Contrary to what I wrote earlier, Woosley also said that other exempt employees with accrued comp time they have not taken will not be able to use it, unless the Commission revisits the subject and approves it. I had misunderstood him to say lower level exempt employees could use remaining time.
The comp time to highly paid employees had set off a furor on top of salaries, which are well in excess of those paid top officials in most other lotteries. Two lottery commissioners tried to fire Passailaigue over the issue at the last meeting.
BY THE WAY: The lottery ceremonially presented the Higher Education Department a $106 million check today, the amount provided for scholarships from the lottery's first-year sales of $485 million after payouts to winners and expenses.
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Education Interviews set for ASU candidates
The committee searching for a new president for Arkansas State University has begun review of the 13 applicants so far and has now set interviews with two of them, a Troy University administrator and an LSU chancellor.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (0)
Law Supreme Court speeds amendment challenge
The Arkansas Supreme Court today granted a taxpayer's motion to expedite a hearing on a challenge to the three-part constitutional amendment that includes a proposal to jack up the interest limit on retail lending. The schedule calls for oral arguments Oct. 21. The court also will hear arguments on whether it has original jurisdiction to try the challenge to the form of the amendment without having it first heard in circuit court.
Lawyers challenging the amendment say they've been unable so far to get a response from Circuit Judge Mary McGowan on a request to speed a hearing on the challenge at that level. With a ruling on the merits there, they say they have time to he controlling issue before the Supreme Court before the election and in time for the Oct. 21 hearing on the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction issue.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (0)
If it smells like a lobbyist
Joyce Elliott, the Democratic candidate for 2nd District Congress, led the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers when it struck over a contract dispute in 1988 when the average teacher made less than $22,000. This is very bad, Tim Griffin, her Republican opponent, says.
In 2009, Tim Griffin made almost a half-million dollars working for Washington, D.C., political lobbying and consulting firms on shadowy causes, including one of the greasiest outfits formerly afloat, Freedom Works. He did $66,000 worth of consulting work helping miners oppose an Alaska clean water ballot initiative, but none dare call that lobbying.
So who do you think is for the working man based on this record? Hint: Don't put your money on Tim Griffin. He extolled the 30 percent national sales tax plan before it became politically inconvenient. He also has spoken warmly of the Ryan plan to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. Surprise.
The Elliott campaign jumps Griffin on the record. If only it mattered.
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Arkansas Culture and Characters The Kroger watch UPDATE
- Forbidden Hillcrest
- INSIDE KROGER: An unauthorized view.
The great Hillcrest Kroger watch is nearing a climax, though a planned Oct. 2 opening of the rebuilt store at Kavanaugh and Beechwood has apparently been pushed back a week, perhaps because of some utility difficulties. A neighbor, not me, has received a VIP invite to a pre-opening party Friday night, Oct. 8.
Chopped liver the rest of us may be, but thanks to Forbidden Hillcrest, you can get a glimpse of the rebuilt store ahead of the swells. More pix at the link.
UPDATE: Speaking of new stores, Target has announced it will open several new stores, including its new one on the former site of University Mall, on Oct. 10. The Little Rock Target will include produce, fresh meat and baked goods along with the other usual stuff.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (3)
Arkansas Politics It's race
Your reading for today: Ernest Dumas
When time comes to explain Republican gains in Arkansas:
The academics won't have to dig deeply. Everyone knows the answer though many will dispute its meaning. Barack Obama is president and he has come to represent the Democratic Party. Republican candidates from the courthouse to the Senate see to that. Every Republican is running against the president and every Democrat is somehow a stooge of Obama. It works.Wait, you say, don't tell us it is because Obama is black, the first African-American nominee of a major party and the first African-American president.
That is exactly the reason.
Be sure to read the whole column for a useful explanation of why Arkansas is late to the Southern strategy. Short answer: WR. And some of our early commenters have apparently already forgotten the presidential primary in 2008 in Arkansas.
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Arkansas Politics Autogate: Was suit a good idea?
An elected Republican official tells me he/she was not consulted nor were many other Republicans in his/her circle before the Republican Party sued yesterday over the state cars provided constitutional officers and the House speaker. The thinking from this quarter was that the suit was ill-advised. It's nakedly political. An existing lawsuit already presents a non-partisan attack on the broader question of use of state cars for personal purposes. Republican Party Chair Doyle Webb is not exactly a poster child for ethical behavior. Even the Democrat-Gazette editorial page, though no defender of freebies, has indicated the lawsuit is screwy.
I was kind of surprised to hear the party's insider's view. Maybe it's a lonely point of view. Conventional wisdom certainly seems to be that you can't beat up politicians enough over perks, big or small.
As I've said before, I think you can make a case that the cars, when used personally (and it's just about impossible to avoid when you have a state vehicle) might be an unconstitutional pay enhancement. I do think Webb is wrong to dismiss the argument that, if that's so, retirement and health benefits are also illegal. Webb says these are non-taxable fringe benefits and thus not an income supplement. (And lots of Republican officeholders benefit from them and he wouldn't want to sue THEM.) Retirement contributions certainly are designed to become income.
Webb figured, correctly, that he'd reap a bonanza of news coverage by suing and there's no media like free media. Since this has been the Democrat-Gazette's story, it is sure to blow it out every time the subject is raised. This morning, it led the newspaper with the GOP's follow-through on its pre-announced intention to sue. The newspaper editor's position on lawsuits has generally been that anybody can file a lawsuit. The mere filing of one is, thus, not such a big deal.
Much as I think state cars are justified for only a small number of employees who must use them constantly in their work, I think the broader question of the overall state fleet (particularly that bodacious Game and Fish motor pool — a state car in every garage) is the much more important point than Charlie Daniels' Buick.
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Arkansas Politics O'Brien goes after Martin
The secretary of state's race is another indication of Arkansas politics taking on the scorched-earth tenor of national elections with the rise of Republicanism here.
Mark Martin, the Republican candidate, made the wholly specious and wildly exaggerated claim yesterday that O'Brien had violated federal law by mailing 80 absentee ballots prepared erroneously by the Election Commission. (They lacked the sufficient number of Jacksonville alderman races.) Martin demanded that it be corrected. It already had been corrected
O'Brien is back today with his own jab — at Martin's conflation of home, business and campaign office addresses and phone numbers and the whopping $1,350 he gets taxpayers to pay himself monthly for supposedly using his private business office for a state legislative office. I asked Martin's campaign yesterday how much he paid to lease this very modest space — check Google for 9310 Wagon Wheel Road, Springdale (CORRECTION TO ORIGINAL ADDRESS, DON'T KNOW WHERE EARLIER NUMBER CAME FROM) — that he re-leases to himself and how long he had leased it. No answers. According to O'Brien, Martin couldn't even remember the address when asked by another reporter. It's hard to see how Martin has much private business, given how many days he charges taxpayers for per diem running down to the Capitol. He knocks down more than $70,000 a year from the state taxpayers.
Much more is to come. We'll hear about O'Brien's clean underwear policy for county employees, no doubt. I hope we hear more about some of Martin's nuttier ideas, such as legislating religion into school curriculum. Actually, I wish the election was tomorrow.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (4)
Echols hearing underway UPDATE
The hearing to decide whether Damien Echols, one of the men known as the West Memphis Three, was held this morning. For some background, you can check out this story. The Arkansas Supreme Court broadcast the hearings live on the web. A spokesperson for the court asked that viewers go to this site, to route some of the web traffic around the court's own webpage.
The state argued that DNA testing, which turned up no trace of Echols, isn't sufficient to prove innocence in the case and efforts to introduce other evidence developed since the trial would upend the notion of finality in criminal cases.
The justices had many questions. They didn't seem openly hostile to questions raised by the appeal.
UPDATE: A report follows from Mara Leveritt, Times senior editor, who wrote a groundbreaking book about the case and became an advocate for the defendants. She was in the courtroom today for arguments.
Posted by Gerard Matthews on | Permalink | Comments (9)
Education Thoughts on education reform
A couple of good articles on education "reform":
* Diane Ravitch, herself a former reformer, has nothing but contempt for those who think you can take student standardized test scores as a precise measure of teacher achievement. Moved by news of the suicide of a highly respected Los Angeles school teacher who was upset over the Los Angeles Times' teacher rating project that showed him deficient in serving disadvantaged students, she wrote for the Daily Beast:
Tests that assess what students have learned are not intended to be, nor are they, measures of teacher quality. It is easier for teachers to get higher test scores if they teach advantaged students. If they teach children who are poor or children who are English language learners, or homeless children, or children with disabilities, they will not get big score gains. So, the result of this approach—judging teachers by the score gains of their students—will incentivize teachers to avoid students with the greatest needs. This is just plain stupid as a matter of policy.... People who know nothing about education and whose ideas have no basis in research or practice are calling the shots. Left to their own devices, they will destroy public education. They have already demoralized our nation's teachers. Eventually, their bad ideas will fail, because they are wrong.
* Nicholas Lemann makes a similar point, though more broadly and quietly, in an opinion essay in The New Yorker. Education, both in grade schools and college, have come a long way, though you wouldn't think it from the overblown hand-wringing, he says. Universal public education, he writes, "embodies a faith in the capabilities of ordinary people that the Founders simply didn’t have."
It is also, like democracy itself, loose, shaggy, and inefficient, full of redundancies and conflicting goals. It serves many constituencies and interest groups, each of which, in the manner of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, sees its purpose differently. But, by the fundamental test of attractiveness to students and their families, the system—which is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and decentralized—is, as a whole, succeeding. Enrollment in charter schools is growing rapidly, but so is enrollment in old-fashioned public schools, and enrollments are rising at all levels. Those who complete a higher education still do better economically. Measures of how much American students are learning—compared to the past, and compared to students in other countries—are holding steady, for the most part, even as more people are going to school.So it’s odd that a narrative of crisis, of a systemic failure, in American education is currently so persuasive. ...
It should raise questions when an enormous, complicated realm of life takes on the characteristics of a stock drama. In the current school-reform story, there is a reliable villain, in the form of the teachers’ unions, and a familiar set of heroes, including Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone; Wendy Kopp, of Teach for America, the Knowledge Is Power Program; and Michele Rhee, the superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C. And there is a clear answer to the problem—charter schools. The details of this story are accurate, but they are fitted together too neatly and are made to imply too much. For example, although most of the specific charter schools one encounters in this narrative are very good, the data do not show that charter schools in general are better than district schools. There are also many school-reform efforts besides charter schools: the one with the best sustained record of producing better-educated children in difficult circumstances, in hundreds of schools over many years, is a rigorously field-tested curriculum called Success for All, but because it’s not part of the story line it goes almost completely unmentioned. Similarly, on the issue of tenure, the clear implication of most school-reform writing these days—that abolishing teacher tenure would increase students’ learning—is an unproved assumption.
In Arkansas, the discount store fortune heir, the newspaper fortune heir, the brokerage house heir and the petrochemical fortune heir who are driving the message that public schools have failed, unions are to blame (though they have organized less than a single handful of school districts in Arkansas) and charter schools are the answer know that Lemann is wrong to be slightly skeptical of their simple hypothesis. How do they know? They just know. Money confers that kind of insight and certainty.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (24)
Arkansas Politics Another poll for Beebe
Talk Business polling shows Gov. Mike Beebe's edge over Republican Jim Keet widening to 13.5 percent. (15 percent undecided?)
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (2)
Health Care Obamacare: Keep it
The Republican echo chamber has certainly convinced itself. And it's convinced weenies like Mike Ross, too. But the fact is that most Americans like a lot of things about health care reform and, what's more, polling shows only a small minority want it repealed.
Part of the unhappiness about the law is, as Gene Lyons noted today, from people who didn't think it went far enough. But that certainly doesn't equate to a repeal vote. Repeal won't happen. People will grow to like it more, just not in time for this election.
A new Kaiser poll has found that more voters like the law than not:The tug of war for public opinion on health reform continues this month, with approval and disapproval staying in the same relatively narrow band each has occupied since passage even as favorable views regain a small upper hand, 49 percent favorable vs. 40 percent unfavorable. Opinion is more closely divided among this fall’s likely voters (46 percent vs. 45 percent), and opponents of the law continue to hold their views more emphatically than supporters. Overall, 26 percent of Americans believe the law should be repealed.
... And here is where is gets more interesting. According to a recent Associated Press poll, many of the voters who are disappointed wanted the new law to do more, not less.
A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.
Posted by Max Brantley on | Permalink | Comments (23)
Event Calendar
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Re: Riverfest eve open line
Thanks to elwood for important citywire story on the newspapers of NWA. Plainjim has it…
- on May 24, 2012
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Re: Surgeon general strikes deal on disturbance charges
That's what I meant, RYD, about getting your revenge later.
- on May 24, 2012
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Re: Riverfest eve open line
Old habits die hard.
- on May 24, 2012
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Police close the Occupy Little Rock camp, perhaps the last Occupy encampment on public land.
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Two LR police officers arrested on federal drug charges.
May 24, 2012Two Little Rock police officers were arrested Thursday on federal drug charges, accusing them of helping possess and distribute 1,400 pounds of marijuana. fox16.com /more/ -
Negligent Homicide and DWI Drugs charged in wreck
May 24, 2012A woman who hit and killed another driver on West Sardis Road Wednesday will be charged with negligent homicide and DWI drugs, according to the Saline County Sheriff’s Office. fox16.com /more/
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