On the Arkansas Times, Part I

May 13, 2013 2 Comments
why-time-travel-is-impossible_66207_600x450

One of the legislature’s most praiseworthy achievements this session was passing a “voter ID” bill. If you read the unsigned article in this week’s Arkansas Times, though, you’ll see a very different perspective on voter ID. Indeed, the Times explained: Republicans say the new law will protect the integrity of our elections; some may believe that. But there's no evidence of substantial in-person voter fraud, the only kind prevented by the new law. There is plenty of evidence, however, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arkansas Legislature, Arkansas Media, Elections, Voter ID Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

How Nonprofits Work

April 9, 2013 2 Comments
Ed Haislmaier speaking to a packed house at AAI's Conway forum last night.

It was a pleasure to bring Christie Herrera and Ed Haislmaier to Arkansas in order to speak on what several lawmakers have called the “private option” – namely, an Arkansas spin on Medicaid expansion. But I was disappointed to see Senator Jason Rapert’s tweet yesterday, in which he explained that one of our speakers said “he has not read the AR private option bill while speaking against it today.” Rapert got that wrong, and it may be useful to explain why. Both of our speakers had … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2013 General Assembly, Arkansas Legislature, Medicaid, Obamacare Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

My David Ramsey Problem – And Ours

March 17, 2013 4 Comments
mind reader

Well, I see David Ramsey is at it again. Ramsey, a blogger for the Arkansas Times, faces a problem. What he’d like to do is criticize Republicans for the wicked things they say. However, there’s a difficulty: Republicans are as careful about what they say as anyone else, so it’s often difficult for Ramsey to find things to write about. Ramsey, however, has come up with a creative solution to this problem: namely, he makes things up. This solves a small problem for Ramsey – the social … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2013 General Assembly, Arkansas Media, Voter ID Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Final Note on Voter ID

March 15, 2013 2 Comments
Arkansas Senate gallery

Voter ID, as amended, passed out of Senate Committee yesterday and will successfully pass the Senate next week. (It already passed the Senate once.) But the Arkansas Times's description of voter ID, and of me, suggests that a response is in order. More precisely, yesterday one of their writers, Lindsay Miller, accused me of being a “cynical policy wonk.” If you’re curious about why he thinks that, read the article. Regrettably, even after you read it, you’ll still be curious. That is … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Voter Fraud, Voter ID Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

David Johnson: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

February 21, 2013 2 Comments
Groucho Marx

I have always admired Senator David Johnson. He and I rarely agree, but he is an uncommonly smart and honest legislator. When I watched the Senate debate voter ID yesterday, I was pleased to see that he was reading AAI’s most recent paper before he spoke and that he referenced it in his remarks. But I was sorry to see that the arguments he made against voter ID yesterday were startling in their unseriousness. AAI’s latest paper undercuts the idea that requiring an ID suppresses the vote; … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2013 General Assembly, Arkansas Legislature, Voter ID Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Some Will Rob You With A Six-Gun, Some With A Fountain Pen

February 8, 2013 1 Comment
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Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the House Public Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee to speak in favor of Representative Dan Douglas’s bill to eliminate Arkansas’s prevailing wage law. Current law makes the price of construction projects artificially high, and burdens taxpayers, government budgeters, and consumers by forcing prices upwards. The theory of a prevailing wage law is that laborers working on public projects shouldn't be paid competitive wages; rather, we should have … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2013 General Assembly, Arkansas Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

KATV Interviews Greenberg on Voter Fraud

September 13, 2012

I am not sure I like the idea of being known as a ‘vote fraud expert’; nonetheless, I accepted KATV’s invitation to discuss vote fraud yesterday. I thought Jeannette Reyes’s report on the proposed requirement for voters to show ID at the polls was fair overall; of course, she is handicapped by the inherent challenges of TV, which only gives her a few minutes to explore a complex issue. I particularly appreciate that Reyes relied on the AAI paper on vote fraud that we published … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arkansas Democrats, Arkansas Legislature, Voter Fraud Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Todd Akin: The Arkansas Angle

August 23, 2012
Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, nominee for the 2012 Worst Misunderstanding of Reproductive Biology Award.

After Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s regrettable statement on Sunday, that “the female body” has a biological response to rape that typically blocks pregnancy,  observers of Arkansas political history were probably experiencing déjà vu. In 1998, Arkansas Senate candidate Fay Boozman expressed a similar view: namely, that the rush of adrenaline created by the anxiety of rape or incest would make conception unlikely to occur. (Although it was widely misreported that Dr. Boozman … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Abortion Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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