This online-only column each Wednesday provides a good place for reader interaction. It affords the occasional opportunity to respond publicly to reader queries, gripes and hostilities, a few of which have piled up lately.
So let’s address some of them.
Q: In view of your column the other day about debating state Rep. Charlie Collins in Fayetteville, could you please relate what possibly qualifies you to engage in debate on tax policy and economy policy?
A: American citizenship, first. That Collins invited me, second. That I have a lot of nerve, third.
Q: As further regards the matter of this debate and your column thereon, is there any tax in the wide world that you liberals do not want to raise?
A: First you ought to ask some real liberals whether I’m one of them. I know a dozen or two in the Hillcrest section of Little Rock you might ask.
Have you read my views on charter schools?
Beyond that, please try to read more closely next time.
This column apparently offended you with my idea to move to a much higher level the threshold for the top bracket for state income taxes, then charge a higher marginal rate for that elevated bracket.
But the column also called for reducing state income-tax rates for everyone else—nearly everybody, actually—and declared the further drawing down of the sales tax on grocery items to be a moral imperative.
So the answer to your question about whether I ever met a tax I didn’t want to raise is . . . yes.
We liberals, if I am to be included, are forever trying to cut taxes for the poor people and the middle-income people.
Q: You can no longer be taken seriously when you argue that Barack Obama is less liberal than Bill Clinton, who was plenty liberal enough. Did you not get that forwarded email about the ABC News report saying Obama had given American bridge projects to Chinese companies, taking these jobs from American companies?
A: Arbitrarily unfair favoritism of a foreign country over our own country would not be a matter of political philosophy, but of something worse.
But I did read about an ABC News report that said the state of California had turned down federal stimulus money for a bridge job because the federal stimulus program required that American companies do the work.
California state transportation officials—not Obama or the federal government—found that the Chinese could deliver some sort of fabricated and welded component much more quickly and cheaply than American companies.
Whether you think it was worth it for California to save taxpayer money to eschew federal funds and rules and hire a cheaper Chinese provider—which will employ American workers, by the way—is one thing, and a debatable thing.
But that Obama had anything in the world to do with it, much less personally dictated it, is a malicious falsehood, all too typical of pervasive viral slanders of this president.
We cannot have a reasonable or productive policy argument in this country until we get the facts straight.
Seriously, why would Obama be sitting around conspiring to hurt America and help China? Are you thinking he’s some kind of literal Manchurian candidate? I thought you believed him to be a Kenyan Muslim and European socialist. Now are you saying he is a Kenyan Muslim and European socialist brainwashed along the way by Beijing?
One good general rule: Delete and unread any frequently forwarded emails with exclamation points in the subject line.
Q: What’s the real reason Mike Ross is not running for governor? What’s the real reason Griffin Smith quit as executive editor of the Democrat-Gazette?
A: I’m thinking the ones they gave.
Q: Why did you wait until after the election to write that Supreme Court candidate Raymond Abramson was a close friend of yours? It might have helped him or it might have hurt him, but shouldn’t you have told us before?
A: Finally, a good question.
I made a difficult decision that the wisest and most appropriate course for me was to write nothing, since my friendship posed such a mighty conflict. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I should have held forth with special insight into to my friend’s exemplary worthiness for the high court. But I didn’t.
For all I knew, the other candidate might have had worthiness of her own.
Let’s hope so.
Actually, I spent the campaign irked at Raymond for running, to be honest.
As you know, everything is about me and this column, and my friend had inconvenienced me and this column.
John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.