EDITORIAL
Swine stampede
hough needed, it came tragically too late. Legislation to curb feral hogs was approved by the House of Representatives last week, but not before Senate Republicans had already overridden Governor Beebe’s veto of a bill prohibiting voting without photo identification. Had the House roll call come first, the Republican senators might have been herded away from their party-line override, the very sort of pointless destruction that the House bill was intended to prevent. (Late word: Apparently confused, or fearing retribution, the House has now joined the override. Is there a word for “government by feral hogs”?) SB 2 by Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, is meant to reduce the number of voters who are likely to vote Democratic — the elderly, the poor, minorities. Today’s Republicans believe that voting, and indeed all important matters, should be left to rich white men. Gov. Beebe has a different reading of democracy, and explained it in his veto message: “Given the importance of the right to vote, laws that would impair or make it more difficult to exercise that right should be justified by the most compelling of reasons. This is particularly so when the citizens, whose right to vote is most likely to be impaired, are those citizens who experience the most difficulty in voting in the first place: the elderly and the poor. A compelling justification should likewise be shown when the citizens most likely to be affected include minorities who have in the past been target of officially sanctioned efforts to bar or discourage them from participating in the electoral process. “Senate Bill 2 is not supported by any demonstrated need. While proponents of laws similar to Senate Bill 2 argue that they are necessary to combat ‘election fraud,’ the bill addresses only voter impersonation, and no credible study of ‘election fraud’ supports the notion that such voter impersonation is or has been common in Arkansas. … There has been no demonstration that our current law is insufficient to deter and prevent voter impersonation. Senate Bill 2 is, then, an expensive solution in search of a problem. I cannot approve such an unnecessary measure that would negatively impact one of our most precious rights as citizens.” Protecting the precious rights of citizens is not on the minds of the backers of SB 2. They’ll trample those rights with no more concern than four-legged hogs show for farmers’ crops, but with considerably more hypocrisy. The four-legged invaders don’t pretend to be acting in the public interest. FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, Arkansas is not the only state beset by feral legislators. Nine Republican lawmakers in Iowa introduced a bill that would classify all abortions as murder, including “use of abortioninducing drugs.” Another Republican, Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara, introduced a bill to make it a felony for any lawmaker to introduce a gun-control bill. In New Mexico, Rep. Cathrynn Brown, also Republican, introduced a bill that appeared to make it a felony for victims of rape or incest to get an abortion. She amended the bill after a public outcry.
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APRIL 4, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
COURTNEY SPRADLIN/LOG CABIN DEMOCRAT
T
EYE ON ARKANSAS
DISASTER: A duck covered in oil is recovered near the Bell Slough State Wildlife Management Area in Mayflower. On Friday an ExxonMobil pipeline ruptured and spilled several thousand barrels of oil.
Inconvenient truth
T
he crack of a 20-inch interstate pipeline rupturing in Mayflower, Ark., announced more than a flood of heavy Canadian crude oil on a trim subdivision near Lake Conway. The spill of 10,000 barrels of oil did more than send a ripple through oil prices (down Monday, with the pipeline break cited as a factor.) It also sent a ripple through state and local politics. Those hurrying to the oil-fouled scene Friday evening included U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin and state Sen. Jason Rapert of Conway, both representatives of the affected area. Griffin managed to avoid being photographed. Rapert did not. For his solicitude, his picture got circulated around the world on Facebook amid the muck, along with continued questions about a bill he and Rep. Nate Bell have sponsored on eminent domain. The Rapert-Bell bill nominally protects private landowners from appropriation of property by private interests. But … it continues favored status for pipeline companies and, in its original form, posed the potential for even broadening the rights of energy exploration companies in the Fayetteville shale. By Sunday night, Rapert was referring questions on the bill to Bell, saying he, not Rapert, was the lead sponsor. Bell said critics simply didn’t understand the law. He referred questions to the Institute for Justice, apparently the source of the legislation. Dumb move. The Institute for Justice was financed by the billionaire Koch brothers, major players in the energy business and treasurers for many conservative corporate political lobbies, including the Americans for Prosperity, which has employed Nate Bell’s wife. The state legislation is small potatoes against a much larger national issue. Last year, Griffin told the New York Times, “I want to wake up talking about Keystone pipeline and I want to go to bed at night talking about Keystone pipeline.” He’s been as good as his word. He has legislation pending to force completion of the pipeline through the Great Plains without the usual environmental review. Greg Palast, the British journalist
who revealed Griffin’s connection to Florida vote suppression efforts in George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, argues that Griffin is carrying the Keystone fight for the energy lobby, MAX including the Koch brothers, BRANTLEY that has contributed hundreds maxbrantley@arktimes.com of thousands to his campaigns. The Kochs have a refinery in Texas. They want the pipeline to deliver Canadian tar sands crude that’ll be transformed into products for shipment. Keystone would carry the same nasty Canadian stuff that the ruptured Exxon Mobil Pegasus pipeline carried. It is more corrosive, mixed with unknown chemicals and harder to clean up. Of course oil companies endeavor to build safe pipelines. Federal regulations require computerguided mechanical inspections, too, though Palast has argued that the software can be gamed to reduce the incidence of discovery of weaknesses that require expensive pipe replacement. Oil and gas drilling and pipelines aren’t going away. But Friday’s disaster illustrates that Griffin and shale play cheerleader Rapert write off environmental peril too readily. The Keystone pipeline has been fought in Nebraska by people concerned that it passes over a critical underground water supply. Still Griffin wants to fast track it. As suction trucks vacuum oil, booms are put in place on Lake Conway and volunteers work to scrub oil-soaked waterfowl, you have to wonder if he’ll continue to be in such a noisy hurry. Closer to Little Rock, a Pulaski County justice of the peace asked for a report from Central Arkansas Water after I blogged that the pipeline crosses 13 miles of the Lake Maumelle watershed. The water utility has expressed concerns about spill response plans to Exxon previously and might soon move to ask Exxon to relocate the line. Coincidentally, the same Koch money pushing the Keystone pipeline and paying Tim Griffin is fighting anti-pollution regulation of the Maumelle watershed. What could go wrong?