Stuff from Around Arkansas, February 18 (Updated!)

February 18, 2009

Inspect This: Do you miss the pain and inconvenience of annual vehicle inspections? Great news, then! Rep. Stephanie Flowers has introduced a bill to bring ‘em back! This hasn’t gotten much coverage, probably because no one thinks it’s going anywhere this session, but keep an eye on it — it’ll be back. (CapSearch Insiders’ blog)

Upstart: Freshman Rep. John Burris suggests full House discussion of lottery and is promptly smacked down by Speaker Robert “Robbie” Wills because all such discussions of public business are to be handled in private. (Arkansas News Bureau)

Day of Worship: Bill Clinton’s in town talking to the legislature, so expect state Democrats to be all gay and breathless for the rest of the day. (AP)

Not in the Cards?: Are Blue Dog Democrats defecting from support for union-backed card check legislation? Columnist David Sanders suggests that all signs point to ‘yes,’ if Rep. Marion Berry’s recent alleged discussions with state business leaders are any indication. (Arkansas News Bureau)***

Mr. Sunshine: Hey, look, Greenberg finally won one! Be free, Information, be free! (Benton Courier)

Roughshod: A Conway shoe factory is shutting down, which explains all those elves sitting around the coffee shop this morning combing through the classifieds. (Talk Business)

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***UPDATE: With regard to Mr. Sanders’ bit on the Blue Dog Democrats and the card check stuff, the K. Ryan James blog is pulling together some additional strands, noting a report that the Blue Dogs are telling the Senate “You show me yours first.“

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Lincoln Has New Campaign Site, E-mail Funds Push

February 18, 2009

Nice catch over at Tim Griffin’s blog, where he has what he says is the text of a February 10 fundraising e-mail circulated by Sen. Blanche Lincoln. It’s all about those dastardly unaccountable Wall Street types and their fat bonuses:

I need your help to send a message to my colleagues in the Senate and the executives on Wall Street that Americans are fed up. They need to hear from you that you are fed up with the way they’re wasting your money. They need to hear that you demand accountability and reasonable limits on extravagant salaries.

Moreover, Lincoln’s snappy new 2010 campaign website appears to be fully operational. (Last week, we took a look at the senator’s vastly improved office site.)

And of course, Griffin himself has floated the possibility that he’ll challenge Lincoln from the GOP side.

UPDATE: An Arkansas Project correspondent notes that the Lincoln campaign site has been up since December. But since it only just became known to me today and I am the center of the universe, I’m still classifying it as “new.”

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Another Damn Blogging Legislator

February 18, 2009
Rep. Mark Martin

Rep. Mark Martin

GOP House Rep. Mark Martin, recently featured on The Arkansas Project for merrily heckling the Democratic majority but then not-so-merrily apologizing for same, has jumped into the game with his own new blog, Off the Marble. Only one post so far, but keep an eye on it.

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Arkansas Tie in Senate Head Lice Scandal!

February 17, 2009

The inimitable Onion does it yet again with this headline gem:

Quick, which Arkansas Congressman could be at the root of the Capitol Hill epidemic? I’m betting it’s Rep. Mike Ross:

While Senate leaders would not release the name of the blood-feeding parasite’s original host, many legislators speculated Tuesday that the epidemic started with that one gross Arkansas representative who always wears sweatpants.

Go ahead and read it all. I don’t think I oversell it when I say that it’s approximately 10 million times better than any story coming out of the Arkansas legislature today.

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Stuff from Around Arkansas, February 17

February 17, 2009

Rumor-Mongering: Is Lt. Gov. Bill Halter considering a primary run against Democratic U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010? Sure, why not, let’s make that our new thing. Earlier completely unfounded rumors have hereby been declared inoperative. Please update your notes accordingly. (The Tolbert Report)

Back Talk: Meanwhile, Sen. Lincoln can stare at the ceiling and ponder that rumor as she recovers from the back surgery she had Monday to treat a herniated disc. (Talk Business)

Lottery Ethics: House Speaker Robert “Robbie” Wills says that he’ll propose super-strict ethics rules for state lottery employees. Here’s the part I don’t understand: Is there something endemic to lottery employees that would require stricter ethics rules and accountability than those required of other public officials? (AP)

Stim Sells: Hey, smokers, while you’re seething about that hefty new tax you’ll have to pay on your cigarettes, please note that Arkansas will receive an estimated $2.1 billion from the federal stimulus package (Arkansas News Bureau). Unless you’re reading the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in which case the total is $4.65 billion. So it’s somewhere in the range of two to four-and-a-half billion. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

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Max Brantley, Dancing As Fast As He Can

February 16, 2009

Over at the Arkansas Times blog, Max Brantley notes:

The gun crowd has gone berserk in Tennessee because The Commercial Appeal in Memphis has posted on-line the names of all holders of concealed weapon permits in the state. It’s a public record. The list in Arkansas is public record, too. Care to see it?

Max’s glee in communicating public information wasn’t in evidence a week or two ago, when my bill to make the criminal records of public officials available to the public came before the House Judiciary Committee. At that point, Max said that that bill “simply has an aura of meanness.” (Of course, he’s hardly the only person who didn’t like the idea; the bill got voted down by the House Friday.)

What drives Max’s shifting moods on the freedom of public information? Is it just a matter of what he had for breakfast that day?

Filed Under: Arkansas Legislature, Arkansas Media Tagged With:

Stuff from Around Arkansas, February 16

February 16, 2009
Saluting our nation's presidents

Saluting our nation's presidents

Hatchet, Buried: Forget about all that a-fussin’ and a-feudin’ on the tobacco tax vote: Democratic and Republican House leaders tell Roby Brock they’re gonna make nice from here on out (Talk Business).

Grudge, Carried: But Democratic House and Senate leaders still don’t want to make nice with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in developing lottery legislation. They just hate him so much! (AP)

What’s He Hiding?: More on Rep. Dan Greenberg’s effort to strengthen FOI law by making criminal records of public officials more accessible, vigorously opposed by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (Arkansas News Bureau). Read Greenberg’s take here, if you missed it last week.

GOP Rx: Columnist Doug Thompson offers advice for Arkansas GOP. Prescription: Quit acting like local branch office of national party. (Morning News of NWA)

Content-Free: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial suggests that newspapers distributing content on the web for free is a failed business model. If you’d like to know more, go to the ADG’s Northwest Arkansas edition site where you can read the whole editorial, for free. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

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Radio Free Think Tank

February 15, 2009
Blake Rutherford: A face made for radio

Blake Rutherford: A face made for radio

Arkansas Project pal Blake Rutherford of Blake’s Think Tank reports that he and his doughty band of armed rebels have taken command of the radio station, and will be broadcasting their message of truth and freedom to the masses on KARN Newsradio 920 AM (and 102.9 FM) on First News on Monday morning. Among his guests will be an actual Little Rock city director!

The show starts at 5:39 a.m., which is a weirdly precise time to start, and runs to 9 a.m. That’s an awful lot of time to spend listening to Blake prattle on gayly about how much he likes chick flicks, but whatever. Anyway, don’t miss it! Or do, it’s your life.

Filed Under: Arkansas Media Tagged With: ,

Uh, Something Something Something Something

February 13, 2009
Oh, OK, go ahead and click it again.

Oh, OK, go ahead and click it again.

I don’t really have anything new, but I couldn’t bear to keep clicking over here and being greeted by that terrifying photo of Dustin McDaniel’s grinning deaths-head mug on Greenberg’s stupid FOI post. So, hey, hot women, again!

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Keep the Sunshine Out?

February 13, 2009
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel: "No public information for you!"

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel: "No public information for you!"

When I first filed a bill that would make the criminal records of government officials public — at the suggestion of a professor at our local law school — I figured most people would think it’s a good idea. Maybe so, but it turned out that most state legislators thought differently.

HB 1051 would have made the criminal records of candidates, elected officials and high-ranking appointed officials accessible on demand. The argument for this is simple: public access to the criminal histories of government decision-makers is absolutely in the public interest, and the public has a right to know about the criminal past of those who are supposed to act in the interest of the public.

State government already compiles all Arkansans’ criminal history from public records. The information in Arkansas law enforcement databases is already public information, already collected by state government employees, and is already paid for by taxpayers. It’s exactly the kind of information that is supposed to be open to the public under our freedom of information laws.

The only bar to getting it is that the everyday citizen has to drive to 75 counties and visit huge numbers of courthouses and police stations in order to get criminal record information. It’s unreasonable to make citizens go to this length when state government already has a complete database of easily accessible public information.

[Read more...]

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