Politics: Arkansas Blog, Arkansas Times

Benghazi, the new Whitewater

Max Brantley — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:07:00 -0500

Ernie Dumas this week compares the fulminations about Benghazi — which Republicans are attempting to make an impeachment-worthy scandal from minute differences in post-attack talking points — with the cooked-up Whitewater investigations.

Better still, he asks what Republicans would have made of the 1983 slaughter of 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut or of the overlooked intelligence that preceded the 911 attacks, if only a Democrat had been president on either of those occasions.

If you are a beltway Republican, no antidote for the blues matches extended congressional hearings on a real or imagined national horror—that is, if it might heap dishonor on a Democratic administration. If Hillary Clinton will be the dishonoree, so much the better.

The news lately could hardly be more disheartening: Barack Obama’s easy re-election, Democratic congressional gains, stratospheric polling for Hillary Clinton in 2016, more horrible polls for congressional Republicans, a rapidly shrinking budget deficit, a 15,000 Dow and improving economic numbers across the board.

So what to do but revive the Benghazi hearings.

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Ark. GOP congressmen vote against protecting abused women

Lindsey Millar — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:09:00 -0600

Arkansas's congressional delegation was nowhere to be found among the 87 House Republicans who joined 199 Democrats today to pass the Senate's bipartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The measures reauthorizes a 1994 law that provides support for organizations that serve domestic and sexual violence victims.

Reps. Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin and Steve Womack each refused to support the bipartisan legislation. Instead, they voted in favor of an amendment to the bill that would remove specific protections for gay, bisexual or transgender victims and strip protections of Native American women living on reservations.

Rep. Tom Cotton doesn't want anything to do with protecting abused women. He voted against the bipartisan legislation AND the Republican amendment.

Griffin has issued a disingenuous statement trumpeting his support of the House version of VAWA. He said the Senate version was unacceptable because "it fails to guarantee the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens on tribal lands."

The Washington Post reports that was a sticking point for a number of Republicans, which led to a new version, drafted in part by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, which stripped protections for LGBT women.

Sen. John "Dr. No" Boozman voted against the Senate bill earlier this month.

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Al Gore gives fiery talk at Clinton Presidential Library

David Ramsey — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:53:00 -0600

Former Vice-president Al Gore gave a talk discussing his new book this evening at an invitation-only event at the Clinton Presidential Library, with students of the Clinton School of Public Service and a who’s who of local politcos in attendance, including David Pryor, Dale Bumpers, and Mack McLarty.

"The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change" is Gore’s attempt to forecast and explain radical changes coming to the world through globalization, technology, scientific advances, medical advances, artificial life and artificial intelligence, outsourcing of jobs to robots and mechanization, increasing inequality, overpopulation, the Internet, erosion of democratic institutions, genetic engineering, murkier identities of nation states, climate change….And so on! Really, there’s much more, and Gore crams a dizzying array of world-historical trends into his six sweeping and interrelated “drivers,” each with a catchy tag like “Earth, Inc.” or “The Global Mind.”

He argues convincingly in the book that “there is no prior period of change that remotely resembles what humanity is about to experience.” Despite the hefty ambition and sweeping scope, it’s actually a relatively breezy read, recalling the style of best-selling writer Malcolm Gladwell, cited approvingly a few times in the book. Like Gladwell, Gore offers a big survey of big ideas from the social and hard sciences, replete with fun factoids — Genetic engineers have created goats that secrete spider silk from their udders! Seventy percent of pictures on Facebook are posted by women!

While the book is measured and professorial, his talk was fiery and passionate, as preacherly as it was erudite. Al Gore may be wonky but he’s mad as hell. The crowd ate it up. Having grown up with Gore as my U.S. Senator in Tennessee, I was struck by the oft-noted contrast between the young Al Gore, a careful, often stiff politician seeking establishment approval — and the old Al Gore, a tell-it-like-it-is firebrand with a cult following among idealistic young liberals.

Unsurprisingly, his passion reached its highest pitch on the topic of climate change, though he was equally fired up about the corroding influence of moneyed special interests in the U.S. democracy.

He closed with a call to arms:

We have the opportunity to seize the future. Aristotle wrote that the end of the thing defines its nature. What is our end destined to be? Should, God forbid, we not rise to the occasion and these incredibly powerful changes sweep us along and bring about an end to civilization — as the scientists say, certainly, the climate crisis can — what does that say about our nature? Or to put it another way, who are we as human beings? Are we destined to prove the proposition that the combination of opposable thumbs and the neocortex was just a big mistake? Are we destined to be creatures that destroy our own future? I refuse to believe that! I refuse to accept that! I know what men and women in Arkansas and Tennessee and throughout this country are made of. And we have our limitations, and we can make mistakes. But when the chips are down and the stakes are high, we, all of us as human beings — and particularly those of us whose minds have had the opportunity to be freed in our country’s system — have the ability to rise to challenges and seize the moment when it is necessary to do so. I hope you will help to save our future and make it worthy of our children.

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Obama's 'liberal' speech — it wasn't

Max Brantley — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:03:26 -0600

Good analysis in the Washington Post of President Obama's inaugural speech and the notion that it embodied liberalism. It was far more of a centrist speech, if you judge by national opinion, rather than by the skewed perspective of the ideological war waged in Congress in which Democrats are liberal and Republicans are conservative.

Over the past four years, politics in the nation’s capital has been consumed by the fight between the president and tea party Republicans. But because Obama is far closer to the center than the tea party is, what counts as middle ground in Washington is more conservative than the political center nationwide. In this setting, even centrist proposals face mighty legislative hurdles.

Beyond the capital’s divisions, citizens across the country resist the “liberal” label — even though polls showthat they tend to hold liberal positions on individual issues. Political scientists call this “symbolic” vs. “operational” ideology.

See the Post's graphic for some examples.

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Arkansans in House OK debt limit suspension

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:43:12 -0600

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to lift the debt ceiling for three months, kicking the can down the road until May.

The vote was 285 to 144; all of Arkansas's congressional delegation (even Cotton) voted with the majority.

The measure requires that if lawmakers in either of the chambers of Congress fail to pass a budget bill by April 15, their pay will be blocked. (The pay would go into escrow, Boehner explained this morning on NPR).

From the New York Times article:

“The good news is that our Republican colleagues finally recognized that America must pay its bill and meet its financial obligations without conditions,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland. “The bad news is they only want to do it for three months.”

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UA poll finds regional, racial, gender splits on president

Max Brantley — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:24:35 -0600

The Blair Center for Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas and the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock have released results from a new poll on political and other questions.

Here's the UA news release, which focuses on student loan issues. Americans are more likely to blame colleges and the federal government for high student debt than the students, it says.

Among others, the polling looked into demographics of recent presidential votes:

Roughly half of the respondents said they voted for President Barack Obama and 42 percent said they voted for Gov. Mitt Romney, while the remainder did not respond. Men were more likely to have voted for Romney (46 percent), while women were more likely to have supported the president’s reelection (56 percent).

Support for Romney was higher overall in the South than elsewhere, but results indicated significant racial and regional gaps.

Of the Southern respondents who reported to have voted in the election, 67 percent of whites, 2 percent of African Americans and 32 percent of Latinos indicated they voted for Romney, while 33 percent of whites, 98 percent of African Americans and 66 percent of Latinos in the South indicated they voted for Obama.

Of the respondents outside the South who reported to have voted in the election, 47 percent of whites, 2 percent of African Americans and 28 percent of Latinos indicated they voted for Romney, while 46 percent of whites, 95 percent of African Americans and 72 percent of Latinos outside the South indicated they voted for Obama.

Here's a link to full poll results.

This is a partial release of poll findings. More topics are to be covered.

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Krugman: 'Fiscal Cliff' a political crisis, not a debt crisis

David Koon — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 07:09:43 -0600

Here's Paul Krugman in yesterday's New York Times, dropping some truth bombs about the realities of "The Fiscal Cliff":

"I keep seeing articles about the 'fiscal cliff' that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t... No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration."

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Beebe weighs in — fiscal and football

Cheree Franco — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:17:32 -0600

Gov. Beebe didn’t offer many specifics after his Roosevelt Room meeting with President Obama and five other governors regarding the fiscal cliff. He said that he came away optimistic, because bipartisan governors were able to come to a consensus, so perhaps Congress will follow suit. That consensus seems to be vague, though. The governors agreed that they don’t want to see the country go over the cliff and that all states and the federal government will have to share the burden. And if anyone is wondering how to get the President’s ear, Beebe said he is the point man. According to President Obama, V.P. Biden has never left a governor’s phone call unreturned.

The group of governors didn’t get into specific cliff-avoidance plans, but they did ponder if states will be relieved of federal obligations regarding specific programs that will be slashed. “If the state has to lose $100 million, then we need to lose $100 million in federal requirements,” Beebe said.

The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration has a preliminary list of program cuts complied from Federal Funds Information for States, should Arkansas lose federal grants. The biggest cut, nearly $12 million, would come from Title I grants to local education agencies. The U.S. Department of Education would determine which institutions lose funding, but these grants largely go to public schools that serve low-income children. According to Brandon Sharp, Administrator for Fiscal and Budget, the cuts wouldn't take place till 2013-2014 school term, which gives Congress extra time to find another solution. Next in lines for cuts are special education programs, Head Start and WIC. See the list here: FFIS_VIP_Series_Sequester_Reductions.pdf

At the press conference, Beebe also weighed in on the state universities' coaching changes. "I was surprised with the U of A’s pick. U of A had kept that a really good secret or that didn’t become an option till this weekend…This guy’s got a good track record, and I’m sure he’s a very good, competent coach, and I’m sure Wisconsin hated to lose him. Malzahn, I’m obviously very disappointed…but it's a place that a lot of people want to go. I don’t know another school in the country that’s had two SEC coaches hired in two years, so it’s obviously a desirable job... and a program on the rise. They’ll end up with a good choice."

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Tim Griffin to serve on Ways and Means

David Ramsey — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:10:00 -0600

U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin has been chosen to serve on the powerful U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. Griffin says this means he will not run for Governor or Senator in 2014, both of which he had considered doing.

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Buffett, Rattner and the myth of tax cut stimulation

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 09:28:15 -0600

Ernie Dumas' column today is — like all Dumas columns — a must read on the wisdom of Warren E. Buffett and Steven L. Rattner, two very rich men who don't think rich men need a handout to get richer. Both men wrote about their ideas — Buffett to restore the 2000 tax rate and Rattner to raise the capital gains tax to 28 percent — in oped columns in the New York Times.

How much proof does the Republican Party need that tax cuts don't produce jobs? Re Buffett:

He posed a simple hypothesis that ought to be directed at every proponent of slashing capital gains taxes, including the legislative hearing rooms at Little Rock. If an investor you trust comes to you with an investment idea and says he is in it and thinks you should be, too, would your response be, “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be.” If the tax rate is a little high would you say you would rather leave your money in your savings account earning a quarter of 1 percent?”

It's nonsense that is playing out at home:

Meantime, the clamor for lowering or eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends and cutting other taxes ramps up in Little Rock. The arguments approach the ridiculous. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette suggested editorially that if Arkansas would just slash its income tax rates hordes of people would quit their jobs and the sunny climes in California to move to Arkansas and create a boom. I’m not kidding.

Column on the jump.

Dumas column: Moguls say rich don't need handouts

Goes there a billionaire more without honor in his own class than Warren E. Buffett?

Not unless it is Steven L. Rattner, the rich financier and investor who directed the restructuring of the U. S. auto industry in 2009.

Buffett and Rattner refurbished their status as pariahs among the One Percent and the Republican Party this week by writing yet again that the well-to-do are not paying their just share of taxes and the expense of civilization.

In another op-ed essay in The New York Times, Buffett offered his solutions for avoiding the fiscal cliff, which were to adopt President Obama’s plan to restore the 2000-era income tax rate on those earning more than $250,000 (Buffett would make the threshold $500,000), impose a minimum tax of 30 percent on very rich Americans who use the tax code to avoid taxes, and cut federal spending back to 21 percent of GDP, the level at which America functioned prosperously in the past.

Rattner, the chairman of a big Wall Street investment firm who writes economic advice occasionally for The New York Times, wrote another the same day advising Congress to raise the tax rate on capital gains and dividends for the well-to-do to 28 percent, which would still be below the tax rate now paid by halfway prosperous wage and salaried employees. That was the tax rate on capital gains and dividends during the great economic boom of the ’90s, and it would shrink the budget deficit by more than $300 billion over the next decade without deterring investment one iota, in Rattner’s mind.

Both pieces appeared as the president, Congress and the outlying players gear up for the final negotiations on avoiding sizable tax increases, spending cuts and repudiation of the federal debt, all of which will occur after the first of the year if nothing is done.

The debate engendered by the two moguls’ class-defying ideas — you would like to think, anyway — also may affect the manufactured crises in a number of state capitols, including Arkansas’s, where rejuvenated Republican majorities are setting out in the new year to slash state income taxes and force a reduction in state services to children and the needy.

If anyone should be a soothsayer, wouldn’t it be someone like Buffett? Or Rattner, who founded one of the most successful private-equity firms (the sort where Mitt Romney made his fortune) and ran big investment banking operations during their good days?

Buffett’s wisdom gets more attention because he is either the richest or second richest man in the world and he is the shrewdest investor of all time. It should count for something because all the hullabaloo over spending and taxes is about the effect any step will have on investors. Will they decide to invest, make more money and create jobs because the government takes a little less of their profits in taxes, and will they refuse opportunities to make more money if the government will take a trifle more of the profits than it now does?

History should have settled the questions long ago. High marginal tax rates never deterred investment and low ones never stimulated it. That is the record nationally, and it is also the invariable story in Arkansas.

Buffett said that between 1951 and 1954 when the capital gains tax rate was 25 percent (now it’s 15 percent) he sold securities and did well. From 1956 to 1969, when the top marginal rate on income was 70 percent (it is now half that), he was accumulating a fortune as a fund manager and never once had anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment he offered.

“So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased,” he wrote this week. “The ultrarich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities.”

He posed a simple hypothesis that ought to be directed at every proponent of slashing capital gains taxes, including the legislative hearing rooms at Little Rock. If an investor you trust comes to you with an investment idea and says he is in it and thinks you should be, too, would your response be, “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be.” If the tax rate is a little high would you say you would rather leave your money in your savings account earning a quarter of 1 percent?”

But the attacks on Buffett for such notions don’t deal with the logic. He has been raising hackles since 2006, when he calculated that his secretarial and clerical employees paid 33 percent of their income in federal taxes while he paid only 19 percent on his $48.1 million net income. He said it was an immoral tax system.

Monday, critics attacked him for not voluntarily giving the treasury a big part of his wealth rather than encouraging the taxing of other billionaires and for not giving the government 85 percent of his holdings in 2006 rather than bequeathing it to five foundations to fight disease in the third world.

Meantime, the clamor for lowering or eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends and cutting other taxes ramps up in Little Rock. The arguments approach the ridiculous. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette suggested editorially that if Arkansas would just slash its income tax rates hordes of people would quit their jobs and the sunny climes in California to move to Arkansas and create a boom. I’m not kidding.

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Family values congressman exposed in Tennessee court

Max Brantley — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:10:22 -0600

The reader who passed this along commented accurately that the story about Tennessee Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais sets a new standard for hypocrisy.

He was recently re-elected easily in Tennessee, though some of this sordid tale was already leaking into public print. A helpful court, citing lack of a completed transcript, delayed until after the election release of court testimony that lays out in full his background.

* Avowed supporter of "pro-life" (anti-abortion) policies? Check.

* Family values candidate? Check.

* Divorced? Check.

* Former wife had two abortions BEFORE they were married? Check.

* Had sex with two former patients (he's a physician)? Check.

* Had sex with three co-workers? Check.

* Had sex with a drug company rep? Check.

* Urged one of the patient sex partners to get an abortion? Check.

* Lied about conversations with patient in which he urged her to get abortion? Check.

* Wrote painkiller prescriptions for one of mistress/patients and provided various gifts including a plane ticket to Las Vegas? Check.

* Said in questioning, "I've never been challenged or questioned in terms of my integrity before."? Check.

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The 'post-fact' Saturday open line

Max Brantley — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 11:35:55 -0600

It's open way early because I have things to do. Finishing up:

* NEWS UPDATE: A 65-year old bicyclist was seriously injured when hit by a car on Kavanaugh near Terry's this afternoon. Channel 4 reports.

* AN ARKANSAS SOLUTION TO THE 'FISCAL CLIFF': Mack McLarty, the Arkansan political consultant who was chief of staff in the Clinton White House, co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post today suggesting a bipartisan solution for the impending end of Bush tax cuts and mandated spending cuts. He says President Obama should ask Mitt Romney to craft a bipartisan plan "he can’t really believe that the deficit can be solved with zero new revenue, including from individuals as wealthy as he is...." And he should also bring in McLarty's former boss, Bill Clinton. "He should bring his basic math skills, and his considerable political skills, to the table to help craft a solution to deficit reduction that creates jobs and doesn’t stifle them." McLarty says the president should draw on past work by Simpson-Bowles and others and that his plan should include "entitlement reform" and "revenue generation." Businesses who opposed Obama should get engaged, he says. (Try telling that to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mack.) "These times demand big ideas," writes McLarty. My added comment: And some contributions from rich people. Until the Republican Party is ready to move in that direction, big action isn't possible.

* ANOTHER LR HOMICIDE: Police found the body of a young woman who'd been fatally shot in the 3800 block of Katherine Street in the John Barrow Addition about 3 a.m. today. Not much else known at last report.

* REALITY-BASED POLITICS: Frank Rich provides a dose in New York magazine. (Heard him on public radio this morning, live in Wisconsin, congratulating that state for rejecting native son Paul "Marathon Man" Ryan, who's yet to face up to the reality of the devastation his budget plans would cause.) The opener:

Mitt Romney is already slithering into the mists of history, or at least La Jolla, gone and soon to be forgotten. A weightless figure unloved and distrusted by even his own supporters, he was always destined, win or lose, to be a transitory front man for a radical-right GOP intent on barreling full-speed down the Randian path laid out by its true 2012 standard-bearer, Paul Ryan. But as was said of another unsuccessful salesman who worked the New England territory, attention must be paid to Mitt as the door slams behind him in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s brilliant victory. Though Romney has no political heirs in his own party or elsewhere, he does leave behind a cultural legacy of sorts. He raised Truthiness to a level of chutzpah beyond Stephen Colbert’s fertile imagination, and on the grandest scale. That a presidential hopeful so cavalierly mendacious could get so close to the White House, winning some 48 percent of the popular vote, is no small accomplishment. The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might.

There's so much to work with and Rich piles in a lot:

At the policy level, this is the GOP that denies climate change, that rejects Keynesian economics, and that identifies voter fraud where there is none. At the loony-tunes level, this is the GOP that has given us the birthers, websites purporting that Obama was lying about Osama bin Laden’s death, and not one but two (failed) senatorial candidates who redefined rape in defiance of medical science and simple common sense. It’s the GOP that demands the rewriting of history (and history textbooks), still denying that Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” transformed the party of Lincoln into a haven for racists. Such is the conservative version of history that when the website Right Wing News surveyed 43 popular conservative bloggers to determine the “worst figures in American history” two years ago, Jimmy Carter, Obama, and FDR led the tally, all well ahead of Benedict Arnold, Timothy McVeigh, and John Wilkes Booth.

And there's much in defense of my hero, Nate Silver:

Some of Silver’s detractors didn’t bother to concoct their own bogus analyses but just tried to defame and bully him. In the waning days of October, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe discounted FiveThirtyEight’s finding that Obama had (then) a 73.6 percent probability of victory by ranting that “anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a toss-up right now is such an ideologue they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next ten days, because they’re jokes.” Dean Chambers, a conservative blogger who gained popularity on the right by setting up a junk-science Romney-boosting site called UnSkewed Polls, implied that FiveThirtyEight was skewed by Silver’s sexual orientation. Chambers wrote that Silver is “of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.” (To which Silver responded with a classic Tweet: “Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!”) Scarborough’s and Chambers’s efforts to discredit FiveThirtyEight mirrored their party’s attempts to demonize the nonpartisan organizations that questioned Romney and Ryan’s voodoo economics as well as Jack Welch’s assault on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You challenge the imaginary numbers of the post-fact GOP at your peril.

I need not remind you that the party of faith, not facts, now holds the Arkansas legislative majority and every one of its U.S. House seats, thanks in part to the same kind of disregard of facts Rich so ably recites. Rich says that party has not given up on faith, despite the national setbacks, apart from making empty nice noises about Latinos.

Most Americans, Rich says, believe they are entitled to their own facts and he concludes, " ... it may be the wholesale denial of reality by the opposition and its fellow travelers that is the biggest obstacle to our country moving forward under a much-empowered Barack Obama in his second term. If truth can’t command a mandate, no one can."

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Winners and losers in the polling world

Max Brantley — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:54:21 -0600

In Nate we trust.

Nate Silver, the New York Times' election guru, was a big winner last night after a heaping dose of vilification not only from Republicans but from competing mainstream media for his statistical analysis that said there was a high likelihood of a presidential victory by Barack Obama.

Republicans hate facts. Climate facts. Budget facts. Polling facts. Their faith is so great that they are blind to facts and presume others — even those who make their living by the reliability of their fact-based predictions — must be corrupt to voice opposition. Obama's victory and small Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate and House, being facts, won't shake their faith still.

Silver's election morning final prediction, posted here yesterday, called it Obama 315 electoral votes and Romney 223 (rounded). It's currently 303-206, with Florida's 29 still in play in a very tight election (also accurately predicted as very tight by Silver). Apologies from Politico and others may or may not be forthcoming.

May we also take a moment for a horse laugh about Fox News' repugnant Dick Morris, so reliably wrong that you can reliably go opposite his predictions and stand a good chance of being right.

Something else was afoot in Arkansas. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how badly Republican pollsters and pundits missed the mark on predictions — and how effectively they influenced the rest of the pundit and media class in the runup to the election that a runaway Republican takeover of the legislature was in the offing. For example, one Republic blogger dutifully posted this about the predictions from Keith Emis and Ted Thomas and their Republican consulting/polling group:

GOP pollster Diamond State predicts @ARGOP will take 62 to 64 House seats and 24 to 25 Senate seats

It's look like 51 House seats and 21 Senate seats and that margin included some real squeakers. 20-25 percent exaggeration on the House outcome. 15-20 percent exaggeration on the Senate outcome. Was this done to spin the media and help create a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or was it just bad polling and analysis? Emis insists their polling and prognostication were excellent, no matter what the numbers directly quoted say.

Another Republican political strategist who does his work on taxpayer money in the secretary of state's thoroughly political operation had predicted 63 House and 25 Senate seats. But just ask him. He wasn't wrong either, see. Catch his alibi:

Mostly...think it was a general underestimate of black turnout...nevertheless the Senate is close to my prediction

Get it? Black votes are trick votes and shouldn't be factored into election predictions. A nearly 20 percent miss on a Senate prediction is "close."

A Republican blogger said a "big tidal wave nigh" was "highly likely" — meaning as many as 70 House seats and 25 in the Senate. Uh huh.

Democratic side? The Republican pollsters laughed at Little Rock polltaker Ernie Oakleaf's finding that Herb Rule would carry Pulaski County. He did. Incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Griffin got only 44 percent of the vote in his home county.

House Speaker-designate Darrin Williams, whose historic future leadership as the first black speaker is now probably on the scrap heap of history, had predicted to me a 51-seat Democratic majority in the House. He was two critical votes off. The L.J. Bryant race still being contested, Barbara Graves' run against Allen Kerr and a race in Arkadelphia all figured as potentially part of his narrow winning formula, but all appear to have been lost.

Democratic leaders in the Senate yesterday morning predicted 20 to 21 seats for Republicans. It looks like it will be 21.

I confess that the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats in their predictions, along with the certainty of Republicans who claimed scientific polling support for their predictions, led me to expect a lot worse than what transpired. But this is all cold comfort. There are no moral victories in politics, really. In the Arkansas legislature, a one-vote margin is as good as a 10-vote margin.

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Assessing the wealth of Congress

Max Brantley — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:42:22 -0500

The Washington Post rolled out the results of a giant examination of the finances of members of Congress over the weekend. The lead news is that 73 members of Congress had sponsored legislation that could benefit businesses in which they or their families had invested.

Also of use in the project is a spot on the page I've linked at which you can look up financial details of every member of Congress. Sen. John Boozman is pegged as the wealthiest of the six Arkies, at $3.4 million in wealth. (If you go to the Boozman link you'll notice on the side of the page quick links to all the other Arkansans.)

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Retaking House hopeless for Democrats

Max Brantley — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:36:16 -0500

Slate paints a bleak picture of chances of Democrats to regain a majority in the U.S. House.

One reason: Republican successes in state legislative races gave them control of the redistricting process in many states and a leg up on long-term dominance of the House as a result.

This is how bleak the picture is: Democrats still controlled the redistricting process in Arkansas and did all in their power to create Democratic-friendly congressional districts. Results: If Republicans don't sweep Arkansas this year — for a net one-seat Republican gain — it will be an Immaculate Election.

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Following the corporate money; some improvement, but then there's ALEC

Max Brantley — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:14:06 -0500

The Washington Post reports on a study that says a majority of Fortune 500 companies now either disclose their political spending or else have sworn off giving political contributions. In the era of Citizens United, a touch of disclosure seems the least the moneybags can do. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce naturally is adamantly opposed to transparency, much like Republican politicians, to be redundant about the seamless joining of corporate America and the Republican Party.

This link takes you to the Center for Political Accountability, which did the study. You'll see that Walmart scores at the bottom of the ranking of the 200 biggest companies on board oversight and disclosure practices on political spending.

Gold stars to IBM, Colgate-Palmolive, Goldman Sachs and Praxair for not making political expenditures from their treasuries and directing trade associations not to use their payments for political work.

THE DARK SIDE: The dark side of the corporate world is embodied in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate (think Kochs, particularly) lobby that has co-opted mostly Republican legislators into a political juggernaut masquerading as a research institution. Bill Moyers is on the case:

This week, we report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most Americans have never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a "nonpartisan public-private partnership". But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who's behind it.

We explore ALEC's self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as "a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests."

It's always worth a reminder that the Republican Party of Arkansas is prepared to jam the ALEC agenda through our General Assembly if given a majority.

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New Republican trend of bipartisanship not visible in Arkansas

Max Brantley — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 07:04:00 -0500

Signs of this are hard to find in Arkansas, but the New York Times reports the emergence of claims of bipartisanship from some Republican candidates nationally. Understandable.

The Republican quest for bipartisanship — at least nominally — is not hard to explain. A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week and released this weekend showed that 44 percent of Americans see Republicans at fault for gridlock in Washington, compared with 29 percent who blame President Obama and the Democrats. Nineteen percent said both were to blame. That imbalance has persisted at almost exactly those proportions since last year.

Democrats have noted Republicans’ efforts to present themselves as agreeable, and say they will try to beat them back.

You need only look at the record — from goose-step vote after vote at the state and national level to pledges of fealty to the Kochs and Grover Norquist to extremist state and federal platforms — to understand that believing this newfound compromising spirit is to believe Lucy will let Charlie Brown kick the football. Notes the Times:

With less than two months until Election Day, some House races may turn on whether the incumbent Republicans can shake the Tea Party label that Democrats are eager to press to them like flypaper.

Arkansas, being typically the last to join trends, is still in Tea Party thrall in many precincts. The old and poor will soon pay for that. Elsewhere, more voters are beginning to understand the challenge the Republican Romney/Ryan ticket represent to popular Medicare and to less popular, but still vital to working class elderly, Medicaid.

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How retrograde are Todd Akin's ideas?

Lindsey Millar — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:20:15 -0500

Before Arkansas was even a state, in 1820, a defense attorney for one Thomas Dickinson argued that his client was innocent of rape because the woman he was said to have raped became pregnant.

Dan Greenberg, writing at the Arkansas Project, quotes from the court ruling against the defense: “The old notion that if the woman conceive, it could not be a rape, because she must have in such case have consented, is quite exploded.

Not surprisingly, the latest poll numbers in Missouri don't look so good for Akin.

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Out of the woodwork: Missouri Rep. Todd Akin

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:18:10 -0500

It's hard to believe that in this day and age, there are men who believe that women who are raped don't get pregnant because of some magical chemical that kicks in and makes sperm go bad. It was bad enough when Fay Boozman said ~~"God's little protective shield"~~ (see below) kept women who'd been raped from getting pregnant and then went on to become head of the Arkansas Department of Health. Now we have a U.S. Congressman on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology saying "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Todd Akin: Another misogynist crawls out of the rot.

But then, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology isn't really about science. Check out its website, using taxpayer money to promote Republican propaganda. Here's what you'll read there: "Republicans Examine Billions in Taxpayer Dollars Spent on Advanced Vehicle Subsidies" / "Republicans Press Administration on Escalating Energy Prices" / "Republicans Question President’s Science Policies and Priorities" / Witnesses Detail Potential of America’s Vast Oil Resources.

It's a new day in America, and a dark one.

Correction: John Brummett coined the "God's little protective shield" phrase attributed to Boozman and has posted on that here. Boozman did say that women were unlikely to become pregnant by a rapist because of fear or some such chemical protection, and later recanted, saying the statistics weren't there to prove it.

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This week in Republican attack politics: Sack Biden

Max Brantley — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:17:53 -0500

The Republican base loves vice presidential pick Paul Ryan. The public at large isn't so swept away, polls indicate. And a close examination of what his nutty budget ideas would do to working people only drives his numbers down further.

How does the GOP respond? Well, lie, for one thing. The Romney/Republican lies about Medicare, which Ryan would end as a single-payer insurance program, are a start.

Another good way to paper over Paul Ryan is to attack the Democratic vice president Joe Biden. He does stick his foot in his mouth now and again, so the soundbite game is easy to play..

I think that's at least part of what's at work in a popular Republican talking point this week.

Type the words "Obama to drop Biden" into Google and you'll get a flood of links. Again and again, they are links to speculative stories from the likes of Fox, Weekly Standard, Daily Caller and other right-wing organs and blogs. The rare links to mainstream media are to articles quoting experts like Sarah Palin on the advisability of dropping Biden from the ticket. Got it. Message; "Our guy is better than your guy. And Hillary Clinton is better than all of them, but your presidential nominee is a black Muslim from Kenya, too stupid to give her a rightful place at the top of the ticket."

Cagey attack ploy. Careful what you wish for, though.

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Taxpayer-supported corporate influence on politics

Max Brantley — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 07:34:17 -0500

Citizens United was a bad thing. But the flow of corporate money in Super PACs, bad as it could be, at least has a shred of accountability in financial disclosure.

Not so the laundering of corporate money through nonprofit groups that work to elect friendly politicians, defeat unfriendly ones and otherwise push a corporate agenda in secrecy. This money passes through groups that enjoy nonprofit status and thus a taxpayer subsidy of their activities. (See, for illustration of this secret agenda setting, the billionaire Koch Bros. and such affiliates of the Arkansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which pushes Arkansas Republican candidates while opposing taxes and environmental regulation, even to the local level in its fight against protection of the Lake Maumelle water supply.)

The New York Times examines this process today.

The review found that corporate donations — many of them previously unreported — went to groups large and small, dedicated to shaping public policy on the state and national levels. From a redistricting fight in Minnesota to the sprawling battleground of the 2012 presidential and Congressional elections, corporations are opening their wallets and altering the political world.

Some of the biggest recipients of corporate money are organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, the federal designation for “social welfare” groups dedicated to advancing broad community interests. Because they are not technically political organizations, they do not have to register with or disclose their donors to the Federal Election Commission, potentially shielding corporate contributors from shareholders or others unhappy with their political positions.

“Companies want to be able to quietly push for their political agendas without being held accountable for it by their customers,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed complaints against issue groups. “I think the 501(c)(4)’s are likely to outweigh super PAC spending, because so many donors want to remain anonymous.”

Some irony here. The corporate Republican U.S. Supreme Court majority recently legislated that unions could not take non-union member dues for spending on political issues with which the non-members disagreed. Do you think for a minute the Roberts-Alito-Scalia-Thomas-Kennedy court would say corporations could not spend political money in ways with which minority stockholders disagreed?

The Times story notes, among others, $1 million donated by American Electric Power to a group pushing for limited government. This is the country's biggest coal burner, owner of the greenhouse gas-spewing new power plant in Hempstead County. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a major player (don't forget it lists the leaders of Arkansas's largest local chambers, including Jay Chesshir of Little Rock, in its higher echelon.)

The 501c4s — the organizations at the root of the Times story — are active in Arkansas in many ways, at every level. The idea is to leave a voter not knowing what hit them.

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Chad Griffin speaks about marriage equality and bullying at The Clinton School

Cheree Franco — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:15:46 -0500

Max mentioned this morning that Arkansas native Chad Griffin is in town. In 1992, at age 19, Griffin became the youngest person to hold a staff position in the White House. Recently he was named president of the ~~Los Angeles~~ Washington-based Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LBGT civil rights organization in America.

In 2010 Griffin astounded everyone by convincing Theodore Olson, who represented George W. Bush, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore, in Bush v. Gore, to form a legal team and federally challenge the constitutionally of California’s Proposition 8 (legislation that overturned an earlier California Supreme Court ruling giving same-sex couples the right to marry). It was the first time that same-sex marriage rights had been challenged under the federal justice system. Olson and Boies won the case in Federal District Court, in the U.S. Court of Appeals and in a second Court of Appeals. They’re prepared to fight in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Someone suggested that Ted Olson might be on our side of the issue, I didn’t believe it. In fact, I was quite remiss that I didn’t have anything in common with Ted Olson. And I probably still don’t except for this issue…I found out that Ted Olson is a long-time supporter of marriage equality, not despite being a conservative, but frankly because he’s a conservative,” Griffin said, in a lunch talk at the Clinton School that was moderated by Arkansas’s first publicly gay state legislator, Rep. Kathy Webb.

Griffin mentioned that bipartisan support is the only way to accomplish equality. There were a few questions about how HRC will engage Republicans and how Griffin reconciles allegiances with those who may support marriage equality but otherwise have disparate political platforms. “This issue is so life-impacting for young people…that it’s certainly number one for me. So my view is, when there are Republicans that will stand up for equality, I want to support those people…they have a seat at the table that most of us don’t have. And if anyone’s going to start changing those minds…when those closed door meeting happen…we need people in that room,” Griffin said.

He’s optimistic that people of all political persuasions will support equality sooner rather than later because, “We’ve reached a turning point where…you need to be on the side of equality if you want to advance your political career…Politicians that don’t catch up will forever be remembered with a legacy of bigotry and discrimination…We have governors of this state and all over the country that forever have their place in history books because of discrimination.”

Griffin is in the middle of a five state tour (California, Utah, Arkansas, Nebraska and Maryland) to release statistics HRC gathered from 10,000 high school students across the country, who answered a 97-question survey about their relationships with family and peers, and with school, government and religious leaders. The survey found that 37 percent of LGBT students say they’re happy (36 percent in Arkansas), as opposed to 67 percent of straight students. LGBT students are over twice as likely to experiment with drugs. Seventy-three percent of LGBT students say they’re more honest online, 47 percent say they “don’t fit in” (60 percent in Arkansas), over half say they are verbally harassed at school (65 percent in Arkansas), 17 percent have been physically assaulted at school (25 percent in Arkansas), and 92 percent say they hear primarily negative messages about being LGBT. These students are resilient, though. Seventy-five percent believe their peers are okay with their LGBT identity; that number drops to 66 percent in Arkansas. Seventy-seven percent believe that things will change for the better, but 72 percent of Arkansas students say they’ll need to move to another town or state to be accepted.

In 2011 Arkansas passed an anti-bullying bill that includes Facebook and electronic forums and specifically mentions persecution related to gender identity and sexual orientation. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and 68 to 18 in the House. It forces schools to provide anti-bullying training and to document and investigate all credible reports of bullying. Arkansas is one of eleven states to have such a bill, and its sponsor, Sen. David Johnson, was in the audience today.

Both of Griffin’s local appearances, the earlier press conference and the Clinton School talk, were charged with the emotion that any civil rights discourse carries, alongside the expectant pride of a homecoming. Griffin’s family was present, including his Southern Baptist mother who, when Griffin came out in his late 20’s, responded with the question, “Did you think I would love you less?”

During the press conference, Sen. Joyce Elliot broke down, recalling her days as a high school principal. One gay student was “absolutely drummed out of school,” she said. “He missed a free public education because he was bullied…and because adults didn’t stand up for him.” She encouraged another student to be honest with his parents. That student was kicked out of his home. Johnson mentioned that the dramatic events (such as Matthew Shepherd and Tyler Clementi) make headlines, but the daily toll often gets overlooked. “School bullying results in a loss of ambition and opportunity,” he said. Romney’s prep school bullying wasn’t mentioned, but its undercurrent snaked throughout the room.

At the Clinton School Q&A, a few questions were preceded by a tearful anecdotes – a reminder that despite professional objectivity, identity and discrimination are personal issues first, policy issues second. A woman spoke about her 17-year-old son, who has attempted suicide three times, and who is currently in a two-year wilderness program trying to learn to cope. He wrote her a 10-page letter about how difficult it is to be gay in Arkansas and how hurtful peers and family members have been. An elderly woman from Arkadelphia mentioned a gay man she knew years ago, a beloved philanthropist and later, a Washington Post editor, and how an Arkansas Baptist church balked at holding his funeral. A 19-year-old minister’s daughter, who isn’t out to her family, said, “I want to do more, I want to rise above the statistics. How do I help?”

Griffin talked about the LGBT civil rights battles won and lost in Arkansas. The anti-bullying legislation is on the books. Legislation that stripped unmarried couples of adoption rights is off the books thanks to the courts. In 2010, Clint McCance, formerly of the Midland School Board, was forced to resign following gay-targeted hate-speech on his Facebook page. But there are still no housing and employment protections for LGBT Arkansans and of course, no marriage rights. And the statistics in the HRC Youth Survey are fairly grim.

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Republicans use fraud claim to achieve damaging aims

Max Brantley — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:48:00 -0500

The down-the-rabbit-hole moment of the morning is the analysis of a Texas runoff for Senate that pits a Tea Party candidate against someone seen as more Republican establishment oriented.

In this bizarro world, Lt. Gov. Ted Dewhurst, and his leading backer, Gov. Rick Perry, are considered squishy. Too moderate.

We saw this in some Arkansas Republican Senate primaries. The extremist Republicans won every time.

We got another taste of this coming Republican tsunami this morning in a Democrat-Gazette article that raised a question of whether there's fraud in the qualification process for ARKids, the Arkansas program to provide medical coverage for children of the working poor. House Minority Leader Bruce Westerman seems sure there must be fraud. He has no proof. He just assumes with money at issue somebody must be up to no good. As with Mike Huckabee's lifelong obsession with material goods, this presumption of fraud says more about Westerman than it does about others. Westerman's feint on fraud is analagous to the Republican voter fraud noise machine. Vote fraud must exist. In Bizarro World, an absence of proof is proof.

There is, of course, no aspect of human endeavor in which fraud or impropriety doesn't occur. But, because people cheat on their income tax deductions, I don't hear the Bruce Westermans of the world calling for an end to tax deductions for, say, church contributions.

Of course, rooting out fraud is not the aim of these time-tested Republican strategies. It is the message-tested way to achieve more damaging goals:

1) HEALTH CARE FOR KIDS: Westerman and his ilk want to reduce the amount we spend on providing health insurance for poor kids. Nice guy. And pound-foolish, given the costs of untreated basic needs when left to fester. (More here on ARKids, a triumph of the Huckabee years, ironic given Republican aims to slash it.)

2) VOTING: Republicans — Rep. Nate Bell, the Mena extremist noisiest among them —- want it to be harder to vote because they don't want the Democratically inclined, particularly student, elderly, poor and minority voters, to be counted.

UPDATE: How extreme are Republicans these days? Jeb Bush says his father and Ronald Reagan couldn't win Republican primaries today.

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John Edwards' fate turns on legal question

Max Brantley — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:59:46 -0500

The New York Times has written a good explanation of the core legal question in the John Edwards case. Was money paid to support his mistress a political contribution? If not, it could open to the door to all kinds of monetary support to candidates from wealthy people. If so, on the other hand, it could potentially criminalize legitimate behavior.

The jury is in its fourth day of deliberation and continues to ask to review more exhibits.

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They hate him; they really hate him

Max Brantley — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:14:26 -0500

How ugly will the presidential campaign get? You can't imagine. Check out this story on a billionaire's plan to go after President Obama with Jeremiah Wright and every other race-baiting trick he can think of to take down the "metrosexual Abraham Lincoln."

If there's money to be spent on such as this, can putative "nice guy" Mike Huckabee be far behind? Of course not.

Here is the Huckster, doing a testimonial for Citizens United, a letter talking about the "morally repugnant political whores" surrounding President Obama. Nice guy. Later, Huckabee denied the letter — a copy of which is available on his letterhead — was his, but, as you can see, this is one smelly kettle of fish. Huckabee DOES work with Citizens United and its repugnant leader David Bossie, whose dirty tricks in the Clinton era are legendary (and who worked side-by-side in dirty tricksterdom on a congressional committee with future Congressman Tim Griffin. More about that later.) Huckabee deserves to scratch for lying down with these dogs.

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