You find yourself desperate for predictions for the new year in Arkansas. I know you do. So here are one man's.
Well-known Searcy golfer Mike Beebe will find it advisable by March to stop reading the newspaper.
Easily and expeditiously, Gov. Asa Hutchinson will persuade the Legislature to cut income taxes by $100 million on workers making between $34,000 and $75,000--this to provide a job-creation incentive for the state.
A survey late in the year will show that several months of lower payroll deductions for employees in the aforementioned tax-cut category had led to the creation of approximately zero jobs in the state.
An adjoining poll of business executives will find that the business executives care only about their own income-tax rates, not those of people working for them.
Hutchinson will announce his opposition to the private-option form of Medicaid expansion. He will then introduce his own substitute proposal that will be identical to the private option except for a lone new provision: Recipients will be forced to wear signs at hospitals and doctors' offices saying "I'm a deadbeat. Or maybe I'm disabled. Either way, thank y'all for paying for my care."
Tom Cotton will reveal in a speech on the Senate floor that he served in the military.
The Blue Hog blog will bring down somebody for something. I don't know whom or for what. But it'll be somebody big and it'll be something bad.
The Arkansas Supreme Court will not make a ruling in the same-sex marriage case. Instead, it will issue a per curiam order saying it just doesn't want to get into all that mess.
(On the other hand and just in case: The Supreme Court might have issued the same-sex marriage ruling after this column got put to bed Friday, for the purpose of ruining this column and in the vain hope that no one would notice.)
Asked by parties to reconsider and/or clarify, the court will issue a second per curiam order, saying "nope."
Asked for an opinion as to whether the state Supreme Court's inaction effectively validates Circuit Judge Chris Piazza's ruling and makes same-sex marriage legal in the state, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge will formally respond, "Huh?"
Donald Corbin will seek to dissent formally and vigorously from those per curiam orders. But the court clerk will explain to him that per curiam means in the court's full behalf, and that, anyway, his term on the court ended many weeks previously.
Rutledge will be asked to issue an opinion on the constitutionality of several anti-abortion bills filed during the legislative session. She will say it's not the attorney general's role to make those kinds of calls. She will say she'll leave it to Jason Rapert, based on his greater experience.
Then Rutledge will resume pushing back on Barack Obama's over-reach, which apparently is some sort of dance.
Because of a holiday season obsession with matters of collegiate athletic competition, and owing to my background as a sportswriter, I also offer a few predictions for 2015 in the areas of football and basketball:
The House will beat the Senate again in the Big Brothers charity basketball game at UALR. State Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson will get called for a flagrant foul for taking the game too seriously--and for running over Rep. Julie Mayberry a third time.
Honorary referee Asa Hutchinson, Jeremy's uncle, will grant House members as many free throws as needed to produce victory.
House Speaker Jeremy Gillam will shoot the requisite free throws until 4:18 a.m.
NCAA officials will announce that TCU and Georgia Tech will face each other in mid-January for the real national college football championship. Or at least the Mississippi state championship.
Arkansas State University will reject a plea for reinstatement from Hugh Freeze.
People will argue about whether Brandon Allen is any good as a quarterback, and, as usual, nothing in his performance next fall will settle the argument. In every game, he will complete nine of 19 passes for 164 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions and six balls thrown into the stands.
The Arkansas basketball Razorbacks will make it to March Madness and then--because the post-season tournament will require them to play on the road--lose in the first round.
Finally: Bret Bielema, having come south in search of the toughest competition, will return to Wisconsin for that purpose. You might call it karma.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/04/2015