At least they’re consistent

An advantage of being opposed to stricter ethical behavior is that you need not bother with ethical behavior in your opposition.

At least you are consistent. Nobody can call you a hypocrite.

You feel free to keep your identity secret as you spread anonymously prepared flyers. You blithely make maliciously false assertions on those flyers. You try to smear would-be ethics reformers by tying them to scruffy campers in Occupy Little Rock.

At least you consider that a smear, I guess.

All of that is precisely what happened Monday.

That was the day before hired professional canvassers went to primary polling places to circulate petitions seeking signatures to qualify an initiated act for ethics reform for the state’s general election ballot in November.

This is the proposal originating with Paul Spencer, government teacher at Catholic High School in Little Rock. He and his wife indeed were early sympathizers of the Occupy movement. But soon he went to work separately on this tangible policy reform.

Distressed by the chasm between the government principles he taught and the corporate dominance of our politics that he observed, he decided to push for this initiated act.

It would bar gifts to legislators. It would prohibit legislators from becoming lobbyists for two years. It would forbid direct corporate or utility contributions to political campaigns.

Naive and a practical amateur at real politics, Spencer was despairing of his ability to get the requisite 62,507 signatures of qualified voters by July 1. But then well-to-do people, some with famous names, came to his aid.

They created Better Ethics Now and, in two days, raised more than $100,000. They hired the professional canvassing firm.

They are led by Brent Bumpers, son of Dale, along with Jim Keet and Baker Kurrus. Those three act as chairmen. Their uncommonly bipartisan committee includes such credible luminaries as Dale Bumpers, John Paul Hammerschmidt, Ed Bethune, Joycelyn Elders, Betty Dickey, Bruce McMath, Nate Coulter and John Riggs.

The conventional wisdom is that such a proposal would pass if it got to the ballot. Thus we beheld this anonymous last-minute flyer seeking to deter signatures to try to keep it off the ballot.

This flyer was adorned at the top with unattractive pictures of the Occupy Little Rock campsite. It asserted that these supposed reformers actually were allied with these scruffy types.

The flyer implored employers to spread the word that these petitions should not be signed because the proposal would impair the business community’s right to express itself politically.

It was all as predictable as cowardly and false—considerable in all regards.

This proposal far transcends Occupy Little Rock, though, actually, there is nothing at all wrong with sharing an ethical vision with certain of the Occupiers.

The business community would not be impaired from expressing itself. Businesspeople, along with anyone else outside narrowly defined personal relationships, would be prohibited from favoring gifts on legislators.

Businesses indeed would be barred from making campaign contributions. But so would unions.

Legislators couldn’t become instant business lobbyists, but nor could they become instant registered lobbyists of any sort, either for public agencies or nonprofit associations.

The only way the initiated act would work a special hardship on any business would be if that business happened to be a lavisher of legislative gifts and state campaign contributions while also prone to hiring just-departed legislators to be lobbyists.

Such a business might be forced to consider anew some sort of substantive tactic in its attempt to influence elected officials.

So a final word of advice: Beware of incendiary material that is signed. Chunk any that is not.

Oh, and a postscript: If this thing gets to the ballot, there are some business lobbyists who are likely to endorse it. Some of them aren’t bad people at all.