Andanh.com

Good column by Paul Krugman today on McCain's use of the POW card.

Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service. ...

Again and again we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.

The latest fake scandal fit the usual pattern as an awkwardly phrased remark, lifted out of context and willfully misinterpreted, exploded across the airwaves.

What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.

Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.

In my mail box today -- copy of a letter from the Friday Firm to the Little Rock School District notifying the district that the Little Rock City Board will vote July 15 on issuing tax-free revenue bonds to build a Sage Foods plant at the Little Rock Port. The vote will include an agreement on a payment by Sage Food in lieu of school and other taxes that won't be assessed because the public technically will own the plant.

I was thinking that since the bond counsel, the Friday firm, also reaps a fair amount of business as the school district's law firm, it would have been nice if this public notice had included as a small courtesy the specifics on the in-lieu-of payments, if any. Should anybody in blogland happen to have access to that information on this holiday, I'd appreciate the details.

The Democrat-Gazette continues to pursue the fine print of the early payment of $300,000 to UCA President Lu Hardin as a result of a secret vote by the Board of Trustees.

The article acknowledges what I told you two days ago. This is not private money. It comes, as mentioned here yesterday, from a Board of Trustees discretionary fund made up of "excess" profits from campus bookstore and food operations and some unspecified private money. Just exactly what is an excess profit? Is it money that otherwise could be used to support students? Is it money that could be returned to students in the form of lower prices on books and burgers? I bet the ancillary profits count for a good deal more in this fund than private contributions.

This whole situation needs a disinterested legal analysis.

UCA officials are throwing around the notion that this money is somehow not public money. I don't think that will stand legal analysis. Once money, of any sort, enters the accounts of a public institution, it is public money and its use is fully disclosable and governed by laws of the state. The Board of Trustees is not a private entity; it is appointed by the governor to oversee a public institution. Even if it has voted itself the power to annex some of campus money for discretionary spending, this does not exempt it from the law.

The article raises the UCA defense that, because the money is from campus-generated money and is not from state general revenue, the spending of the money does not count under the state statute that caps public employee compensation at a figure 25 percent higher than the legislatively appropriated maximum. Guess what? Nothing a college spends is wholly from general revenue. Ever heard of student tuition? I don't accept this legal analysis, but I don't have the statutes before me.

Think about the can of worms that is opened if a university board has the power to designate non-general-revenue money for unfettered discretionary spending? The mind boggles.

(You ask about UA and the enormous sums paid coaches in excess of line-item maximums? The UA has done a work-around through the private Razorback Foundation. It is not controlled by the Board of Trustees. Its money isn't directed to it by a Board of Trustees vote. Those are just two differences with the UCA Board's sequestering of what I believe is undeniably public money, if not general revenue, for its own, sometimes secretive, uses, including a payment of money to the president in one year well in excess of what otherwise would be the statutory maximum.)

No wonder UCA Trustee Rush Harding, the key facilitator in all this, wouldn't return my call about this yesterday.

I'm practicing law without a license, of course. The UCA folks are practicing it only to the extent they can cover the tracks of an embarrassing maneuver. (Even they concede a "gray" area about whether the bookstore fund is public money.) This needs a firm and thorough legal analysis, not only because of this particular expenditure but for future expenditures by all similarly situated institutions.

If the law does allow a public governing body to skirt statutory salary caps by tapping money generated by a public institution but not deriving from "general revenue," then the law needs revisiting.

Somebody should request an attorney general's opinion.

This would, inevitably, cause a few politically tinged comments. Dustin McDaniel will be running for governor in 2014 as a Democrat. Lu Hardin has talked to Republicans about such a possibility, too.

UPDATE: Trustee Rush Harding called me this morning. He said he'd just missed my call yesterday, which came about the time he departed for a business trip to Baton Rouge. He offers some interesting comments on the jump, including details of that closed meeting in May.

We've been down this road before. But it's July 4. What better day for Stephens Media to do a feature on an affront to democracy -- the new get-rich scheme by Stephen Brill in which airports, including the Little Rock National Airport, are selling the right to preferential treatment by government employees (airport security workers) for a fee.

A Little Rock airport spokesman says she's heard no complaints. Well hear one now. As a NY Times article noted:

"Whether richer fliers should be allowed to cut in line at checkpoints is one of a family of problems that crop up when public spaces and private interests intersect. What looks to one person like flexibility looks to another like bribing your way through the system."

It's one of my favorite holidays.

Barbecue is generally involved. Sometimes band music.

You can get your Fourth on in a variety of ways today.

One is at the Clinton Presidential Center and Park, where there's free admission all day to the presidential library. Food vendors will be operating in the park, music is planned and there will be fun for kids -- Safari Train, bounce house, a water slide and obstacle course -- beginning at 10:30 a.m. The Delta Brass Quintent plays from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The Chicken King will distribute free chicken wings from 2 to 4 p.m. The Dell Smith Experience takes the stage from 6 to 9 p.m. and then it's time for the Democrat-Gazette's Pops on the River-closing fireworks at 9:30.

I'm also going to indulge myself by reprinting on the jump a July 4 column I wrote back in 1990 at the Arkansas Gazette and reworked once for the Arkansas Times. It's purely a guilty pleasure for me to stir July 4 memories of days long ago lakeside in South Louisiana.

The group hoping to punish gay people -- and punish everyone else in the process -- by making it harder to adopt or be a foster parent in Arkansas will have a news conference Monday to announce they have the required number of signatures, almost 62,000, to put the measure on the ballot. But they acknowledge that many of the signatures are invalid. By turning in the threshhold number, however, they say they can get an extension until August 12 to try to gather more signatures.

Help me, lawyers. When you KNOW many of your signatures are invalid and you turn them in anyway as representing signatures toward the required number, should that count? Just a thought. It has been the typical pattern on petition drives over the years.

They have 67,000 signatures, but many are not registered voters and untold numbers were not individually witnessed as the law requires.

Opponents of this hateful proposal won't depend solely on secretary of state vetting of the signatures. They will be checking for irregularities, too.

Here's just one reason why B.C. got a little hacked when the disciples were throwing down on the Clinton years:

Dean Baker: "Total private sector job gains in the Bush years may fall below 3 million by November. The annual average for the Clinton years was 2.6 million."

RE OBAMA: As some have already noted, vultures are circling over his newly nuanced language on Iraq policy. It's being "refined," he says. This link will give you the best possible spin from an Obamaist's point of view on the hubbub. Doesn't matter if this analyst is right, however. The dominant story line today -- and probably forever -- is that he's backpedaling. Again. But this time on his defining issue -- withdrawing troops from Iraq. Where's that Black Eyed Peas guy now?

80-year-old pusher, on bail while appealing a 70-year sentence, busted against in Alma for dealing dope.

In today's e-mailbox:

We can all take a pretty good guess at the story behind this classified ad in today's paper:

BRIDAL GOWN Found between Alcoa & Bryant exits westbound. Call ....

This one went out recently:

I am R. Dwayne Dobbins and a candidate for State Representative District 39.
There are many challenges facing the state of Arkansas. I have the experience, will and drive to help address these challenges. Therefore, I am asking for your financial support during this election cycle. I thank you in advance for your support. Please make your campaign donation to R. Dwayne Dobbins campaign fund and send to 604 Walnut St. NLR, AR 72114.
 
Thank you for your continued support.

I'm thinking that the list of lobbyists who respond to this solicitation will be an interesting list. Honor roll would not be exactly the right phrase.
 

News this week about some secret financial dealing by the University of Central Arkansas Board of Trustees had a ripple effect. It stirred more talk about UCA and the campus' vigorous president, Lu Hardin.

The former state senator has long had political ambitions. So came a call this morning from a well-placed Republican on the subject. I didn't credit it. And told him so initially. But I try to check them all out.

The story was that the same UCA Board of Trustees that had secretly accelerated a deferred compensation plan for Hardin -- by payment of $300,000 in a lump sum of public cash two years before it was due -- had also met secretly about giving Hardin a sabbatical -- paid leave -- to run for public office. My tipster said the office would be governor in 2014, after the presumed completion of the Amagon Dynasty.

This sounded like a stretch for a lot of reasons, one being that six years might as well be a century in the half-life of politics. But I made a call to my former co-worker Warwick Sabin, now handling public affairs for UCA, who checked with Hardin. He said Hardin would get back to me in 30 to 45 minutes. That meant there was something to this report.

Hardin was going to call back. But, instead, he had Warwick call. He relayed what Hardin said: Hardin had been informed, though he was not present, that the UCA Board had discussed a sabbatical for Hardin at some point, but no action was taken. Hardin wanted it noted that it is common to give university presidents sabbaticals after six to nine years of service. But he said, according to Warwick, this discussion had "nothing to do whatsoever with political office." Hardin said he hadn't requested a sabbatical and had none planned.

Did the subject of a sabbatical appear out of nowhere, simply on account of a grateful board? I don't know. I have a call into Rush Harding about that. He's not chairman of the board, but the LR securities executive seems to be the functional equivalent at UCA of Jim Lindsey on the UA Board. He's the bull in the china shop who runs things  -- sometimes in ill-considered ways, such as secret votes for pay enhancements in excess of statutory pay limits. The shame for UCA is that actions arising from his CEO-style of private management of a public institution -- if done according to the law in daylight -- would often be defensible, as in the case of rewarding and retaining Hardin at the helm of a booming campus.

PS -- An admirer of Hardin calls to comment -- with justification -- that the politics of taking a sabbatical for a political campaign would be so damaging that it's hardly worth mentioning, even speculatively. He adds, about Hardin's compensation package: "At that level, he's still one of the lowest paid college football coaches in the country."

PPS -- Another example of the wisdom of sabbaticals was the GOP UCA prof who took a paid leave to run for legislature. As one correspondent put it, "he got his brains beat in." I suspect Lu remembers the episode.

PPPS -- The Log Cabin Democrat notes the deferred comp/accelerated bonus money came from an auxiliary account built by student book, food and other purchases. It says private donors plan to reimburse the account.

Take a mid-morning open thread if you will.

I have at least one interesting story working. So check back after a while.

But I'm also trying to get out a bunch of copy for next week's print edition in advance of the three-day weekend.

Don't know about your neck of the woods, but the holiday seems to already being taking hold around here.