week that was
EYE ON ARKANSAS
In an interview with Arkansas Business, John Correnti, the chief executive of Big River Steel and other ventures, said that, despite the massive amount of welfare the state is providing Big River in Mississippi County, the government should stay out of the private sector. “Is it better for the state to invest in a company like Big River? Or is it better to invest in more SNAP cards and more welfare? The governor and [Arkansas Economic Development Commission Director] Grant Tennille — they didn’t give away the whole candy store. They used Amendment 82 the way that the citizens of Arkansas intended them to use it. But as far as government is concerned, they should stay out of private industry.” The brass of this blowhard. He’s received tens of millions in direct handouts and tax giveaways. The Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, funded by taxpayers to pay teachers’ pensions, has invested $125 million in Big River. Those same venture capitalists — Arkansas taxpayers — have put $18 million in another Correnti project, an electronics recycling business. Stay out? If government stayed out of John Correnti’s business, he’d have no business.
Tweet of the week “I pray for a cure for Ebola, but it is ludicrous to introduce this disease on American soil, maybe even treasonous.” — Sen. Jason Rapert, reaching a new nadir, in expressing outrage to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and President Obama, for the government’s role in transporting a U.S. doctor, Kent Brantly, from Liberia to a unit in Emory University Hospital after he contracted Ebola. Brantly worked at a treatment center operated by two U.S. faith-based organizations. Question to Rapert: Would Jesus establish border limits on his ministry? “I was sick and you looked after me,” the Bible says. It didn’t come with an asterisk — Not Operative in Egypt.
Heartless Every member of the Arkansas House delegation voted last week for Tea Party-driven anti-immigrant legislation that would effectively require the deportation of everyone in the U.S. illegally, including those brought as children. The measure is dead on arrival in the Senate. How cynical is it to serve up red meat like this knowing that it’s only symbolic and, if it were possible, would blast the U.S. economy even as it blew up the lives of millions of families? Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero and a Democrat from Georgia, had it right in a fiery floor speech when he asked, “Where are our hearts? Where are our souls?”
6
August 7, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
Paul Barrows
Hypocrite of the week
SUNSET: On the Broadway Bridge, scheduled for replacement next year. Photo by Paul Barrows. From the Eye On Arkansas Flickr page.
The scaredy-cat party The agenda of the rising Republican Party reflects the close of Carl Sandburg’s poem about exceptionalism (and ignores the hubris). We are “the greatest nation. Nothing like us ever was.” But if we are so great, why are they so scared? Many of the American exceptionalists fear diversity of religion — particularly, but not only, Islam. They root blasphemy out of textbooks and demand recitations to their favorite deity in public assemblies. They fear the small minority whose hard-wired sexual preferences differ from their own. Why else oppose equal legal rights for this little group? They fear foreigners, particularly those with yellow and brown skins. Nordic people don’t seem to cause as much alarm, but Swedes aren’t massing at the border either. State Sen. Bart Hester, a Republican Cave Springs dweller, sounded the alarm last week about Central American children seeking refuge. The border must be secured against them, he said, even as he acknowledged the horror of their young lives. He demanded to know if the Arkansas legislature had been asked for permission by the federal government to allow 166 children to cross our borders for temporary shelter with friends and relatives. The mostly imaginary threat of disease powers hysteria about immigrant children. The same group of objectors seems less fearful of the poisons injected into Arkansas air and water by corporate polluters. The panicky exceptionalists fear, in general, for their safety. Thus, they pressure for still more guns — in homes, schools, churches, bars and parks. Once, they clamored for concealed weapons. They also said safety demanded that the public not know who was armed. Now many of them argue that only open carry of weapons — including semi-automatic rifles designed for mass killing — guarantees true peace of mind in a Starbucks or Walmart. But they remain easily spooked even when armed. Open carry demonstrators in Austin, Texas were flum-
moxed last week by two topless women who counter-protested the gun display with nothing more than bared breasts and signs proclaiming “Boobs for Peace.” The First Amendment won the max standoff with the Second Amendbrantley ment, it seemed to me. Mighty maxbrantley@arktimes.com weaponry couldn’t silence two middle-aged topless women, much less a world full of asymmetrical threats to order. For fear run rampant, it was hard to top Republican State Sen. Jason Rapert last week. He said it was “ludicrous” and “maybe treasonous” to allow the return of a U.S. medical missionary to a hospital in Atlanta for treatment of Ebola. Let the U.S. citizen stay in Africa, he said, or on a military ship where the risk of exposure would be limited to U.S. military men and women. Rapert, an alleged minister of the Gospel, was not alone in finding a waiver from Christ’s call to welcome the sick. A Times Facebook post on the episode drew 40,000 readers and dozens of comments, most critical of Rapert. But not all. One defender suggested it was safe for Jesus to treat lepers because he was the Son of God and imbued with superhuman powers. The rest of us mortals are right to insist that an ocean separate us from the sick and those brave enough to treat them. This is the same variety of American exceptionalism that hungers to commit American volunteers and rockets to world trouble spots, so long as there’s no draft for the timid and no tax exacted for the expenditure of American lives and resources. Join me in a modest counter-demonstration. For the 42nd year, I intend to go to work in downtown Little Rock without a gun. I’ll buy a meal from a Latino immigrant. I’ll scan the legal filings for advancement of equality for gay people. I’ll happily pay my taxes. And I will not fear the consequences.