Legislative tactics not
example of democracy
Wow! It's been so hard lately to keep up with all the terrible bills our current Legislature has proposed in committee, voted out of committee, or brought to a vote on the floor of the House and the Senate. I suspect many Arkansans haven't even bothered. And by "Legislature," I mean our Republican-majority Legislature.
There have been a few good bills brought to the floor by Democrats only to be voted down by Republicans. What the good people of Arkansas need to know is that these bills are not coming from individual Republicans. They are coming from the national Republican party, the NRA, and other special-interest groups representing corporations and big business. They send them the basic bill they want passed and then our legislators may modify it somewhat before introducing it in committee, but sometimes this is not even the case. They simply take the emailed bill, print it out, and present it verbatim.
I'm sure the Republican legislators who are peddling these "cookie-cutter" bills for special-
interest groups said over and over, while running for office, that they would work for laws that help all the people of Arkansas. Well, they lied. And if you happen to be a Republican voter, they lied to you as well. While I understand it may not be a shocker that politicians lie, I think it should be an eye opener that they don't care whether they blatantly lie on the campaign trail anymore because the current POTUS lied and got elected. And this is the biggest revelation to the Republican party these days -- "We can lie and push these awful bills forward, and they will keep on re-electing us!" Why? Because ordinary citizens are too busy working their paycheck-to-paycheck jobs and tending to their families to even have the time to pay attention. Just ramrod bills through committee and get them to the floor and our majority will vote for them.
This is not how the founders of our country envisioned democracy would work. They never would have thought of partisan gerrymandering, that there would be back-door deals with big business (think Farm Bureau, NRA), and that there would not be a fair debate in committee and on the floor (and by fair, I mean people actually listening to the other side of the argument instead of putting up with it silently, knowing they have the votes anyway). But that is exactly what is happening in Arkansas in our Republican-controlled Legislature and in many such legislatures across the country.
When one party shuts out the other party only to protect the views expressed by outside interests and their lobbyists, not on whether the proposed bill is a good deal for the people, we no longer have a democracy.
But we do have the power to vote them out of office. And our founders did have that in mind.
Steven Trulock
Fayetteville
Commentary on 04/15/2019