In an aginner mood

— The election is Tuesday, and it can’t come soon enough. Has there ever been such a shrill and fearsome campaign season?

Like most of you, I’m in an aginner mood. Where I differ from the masses is my lack of enthusiasm for any of the choices (with the possible exception of the contests for, of all things, secretary of state and land commissioner, which won’t exactly put a bounce in my step on the way to the voting booth).

The three constitutional proposals are all terrible, although one is more terrible than the others. That would be Issue No. 2, a catchall proposal concocted by the General Assembly because today’s Legislature has plenty of big shots but darned few leaders. (I’ve been advised that lawmakers liked all of its provisions but didn’t want to break them out into separate proposed amendments. Since they can refer only three non-salary issues to voters, they lumped these all together and used the other two slots for other proposals.)

Issue No. 2 would raise the interest limit on retail lending; allow governmental units to issue revenue bonds to finance energy-efficiencyprojects like retrofitting public buildings, securing the bonds by a pledge of savings from projects and repaying them from general, special, tax and/or any other revenues that come to mind; and repeal the cap on interest rates for government bonds and commercial loans and let the Legislature set the limits.

By the way, should the Legislature fail to set a limit, there would be no maximum rate on bonds and loans issued by governmental units under this proposal; the sky would be thelimit. Issue No. 2 is a mess, and the summary of it that you will see on your ballot is incredibly vague.

Issue No. 1 would establish a constitutional right to hunt, fish, trap and harvest wildlife-a “clarification,” if you will, of the profligate, powermad Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s authority over man’s God-given dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air and many of the creeping things that creepeth upon the earth.

I’m told that animal-rights groups love this proposal. I don’t.

Issue No. 3 would let the Legislature establish criteria for authorizing bonds for economic development projects such as new industrial plants. Haven’t we come across that somewhere before? Besides, this one was sponsored by House Speaker Robbie Wills, whose judgment I have come to doubt since the great automobile fiasco.

Republicans are expected to do well everywhere this year, and that just might apply to Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District as well. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether I could stand that or not.

The idea of former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins’ nemesis, Karl Rove lieutenant Tim Griffin, sitting in Congress makes me very uneasy, but no more so than the idea of state Sen. Joyce Elliott doing so.

Having followed Elliott’s legislative career, admittedly more closely at some intervals than others, I find her strident, inflexible and hopelessly ethnocentric.

I’m also unhappy that she and outgoing Congressman Vic Snyder-What happened to St. Vic? Did his halo slip?-bandied about a specialinterest group’s outrageous claim that Griffin was one of 2010’s “crookedest” candidates. The executive director of that group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, is a former assistant U.S. attorney who has represented Valerie Plame in her litigation against former Bush administration officials for her “outing” as a CIA operative, so I have an idea what inspired the claim.

Frankly, I am not acquainted with Griffin except by way of what has been written and said about him, some of it reassuring, some of it otherwise. I lean toward social liberalism and fiscal conservatism, a combination whose choices are in short supply this year, maybe this decade. Nonetheless, Griffin’s affiliation with the slimy Rove gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In short, I don’t like either choice.

There’s no such conflict in two other races. I like L.J. Bryant for land commissioner and Pat O’Brien for secretary of state. Both have pledged to update and expand the functions of the offices they seek and make the records they keep more accessible to the public, and curb usage of stateowned vehicles, up to and including forgoing the use of one. What’s not to like?

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Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.

Editorial, Pages 87 on 10/31/2010

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