The Truth In Arkansas Politics

When we first reported that Maria Haley, the shady Clinton fundraiser with ties to China, was to head Beebe's economic development team, we knew she was out of her league. We did, however, think that she might be able to land the Toyota deal given her Asian ties.

During his State of the State address, Governor Beebe said "We must put a special focus on the industries of the 21st century that will ensure our long term economic success."

In Mike Beebe's first attempt to bring new jobs and wages to Arkansas, Mike Beebe failed miserably. Instead Toyota is locating across the river in Mississippi. Apparently Republican Governor Haley Barbour was able to land new paying jobs for his constituents.

If Beebe was going to bring in Maria Haley, who has such strong albeit shady ties to the Asian community, how come they couldn't even land Toyota? Is this the kind of Economic Development Beebe was talking about during his campaign?

We have reported many times about the Democrats' cozy relationships with the payday lending industry. So its no wonder that the Senate Democrats killed the bill to end this vicious lending practice.

We already know how much money Beebe received during the campaign from the Industry. And we know that Beebe's close friend and payday lending lobbyist Don Tilton worked tirelessly to keep poor Arkansans paying ridiculous interest rates.

We just wonder what kind of preferrential treatment Beebe gave to Tilton seeing that Tilton says Beebe "is like a brother to me."

Between the chief lobbyist for the payday lending industry being the Governor's best friend and donating over $60,000 to the Democrats, there is no wonder regular Arkansans have no chance.

We rarely note anything that comes from the Arkansas Times Blog, but on this case we turn to one of their bloggers, deathbyinches, who tells his liberal friends to remember who was involved in killing this bill and vote them out of office...Well we hope our liberal friends will heed their own advice seeing as their party faithful are the ones so closely tied to the payday lending industry.

Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment says: "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." Maybe its time we listened to the Great Communicator and heed his advice.

In a time where Republicans should come together in an effort to move forward, we turn to one of our favorite blogs. At the ArkFam Blog, everytime the party leadership or who should be running the party comes up, the comment pages get hijacked and all we see is Republicans dragging down and publicly attacking fellow Republicans.

The fact is that we need to understand that writing hateful and mostly untrue rumors and inuendos about people on blogs are there for everyone to see. If the people on these blogs truly cared about moving the party forward and not about their own personal gain, they would not publicly attack their fellow Republicans, candidates for jobs, or the very volunteers that make our party so great.

At a time where we should be coming together and building the party up, this same crowd sees this as a time to bring the party down. I would hope that those who want to be the next Executive Director of the Party would go out and talk to members of the party about their qualifications and not waste their time with petty attacks on a blog. It is very clear that many of the comments are coming from the same few people, but putting the party's business on a blog is probably the worst thing for the party right now.

The people putting themselves out there should be encouraged to participate in the party not discouraged by a handful of hateful bloggers...

The Truth...

The blogs are all blazing with the news that Arkansas GOP Executive Director Clint Reed is leaving his post to join the RNC. We congratulate Clint on his new job and want to say that we believe it is well deserved. Clint served the party well and will do a great job moving forward. Now the question remains, who will fill his shoes. We hear that there are many folks hoping to jump in the ring: Jeremy Hutchinson, Bruce Campbell, Jim Harris, Jennifer Crawley and Doug Matayo. We wonder what our readers think about who the next E.D. will be?

• Did you know that there are 275 payday lenders yet only 127 McDonalds Restaurants? I wonder what that says about profits of payday lenders?
  

• Did you know the "effective annual interest rate" for these loans are between 372-869 percent? The average payday borrower pays $800 to borrow $325.

• Did you know that the average "payday borrower" is rolled over 8 times on a single loan? That means they are only paying down the high interest designed to keep them paying.

"Payday lenders tend to prey on low-to-moderate income families, college students, military personnel and the elderly. They prey on our friends, our family, and people just like us."

In 1996, as Chairman of the Senate Efficiency Committee, Jay Bradford was in charge of selecting finalists for the head of the Senate's new Office of Constituency Services.

Yet, Bradford said "he sought to avoid allegations of politics in the selection process. He said some of those who applied had strong qualifications but were hurt because they 'were just too close to the political system.'"

"A dozen years ago, they would have hired the nephew of some veteran senator," said a legislative staff member. "We have changed the way we do things around here."

Now fast forward 10 years and apparently we are right back to where we started. Instead, we get a veteran state Senator who:

1) Granted Nick Wilson and the rest of the good ol boy network under Beebe clemency from a public showcase by cancelling the planned removal hearing. Good loyal Democrat...

2) Once unethically used a misleading ad in his race for Congress that depicted him as "I Am The NRA," even though his opponent Jay Dickey was the one endorsed by the NRA. In fact, the NRA claimed Bradford had "stolen" the slogan in an attempt to "steal NRA votes" away from Dickey.

3) May or may not have used his status as Jay Dickey's insurance agent to release information to the press about Jay's Taco Bell Restaurants in the 94 Congressional Race. In fact, Dickey alleged:

"Here he is, bringing an issue in the campaign that has nothing to do with my record, the issues, or my plans for our future," Dickey said. "And No. 2, it's against his own client. He's accepted a relationship with me, then he's attacking me with information that could be gotten from the files."

So here we are with Mike Beebe's selection: a loyal democrat with a history of unethical behavior, who is very close to the political process going to work for over $100,000 to run another of Beebe's departments. Our only question is how long will it take for DHHS to mandate a policy that will make Bradford and First Arkansas Insurance extremely rich?