Rep. Vic Snyder appeared this afternoon on KARN to discuss his vote in favor of Cap and Trade with guest host David Sanders. Rep. Snyder insisted that his vote was a vote on conscience and that although the bill in not perfect it is better than nothing. “People who are critical of Cap and Trade have reason to be critical.” Snyder admitted. He said that in spite of those opposed to the energy bill that opposition is not universal. He cited Entergy as lobbying him strongly to vote for the bill leading him to override his constituents concerns. He went on the explain that he was alright with voting for the bill in spite the problem because “It will not become law” as he feels the Senate has not chance on passing it in its current form.

He could be right as the bill needs sixty votes to get through the Senate meaning the Democrats would have to get every vote in their caucus. In an Arkansas News Bureau article today, both Arkansas Senators have indicated that have reservations. Sen. Mark Pryor says he has never been a fan and said that the Cap and Trade legislation that European countries have passed does not work and has lead to jobs moving overseas. Sen. Pryor has concerns that the current bill would do the same for the United States. Sen. Blanche Lincoln was not as strong in her remarks but did say that she felt the House moved too quickly and the bill needs some improvement. She did indicate her desire to pass for some sort of climate change legislation.

UPDATE - David Meeks, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Rep. Snyder, send me the following response….

“Apparently Congressman Snyder thinks higher electricity prices, lost jobs, and increased regulations are better then nothing. Most of the people he is supposed to be representing, including myself, know better.”

UPDATE II - The National Republican Congressional Committee released the ad above targeting Rep. Snyder’s Cap and Trade vote.  Does this mean the NRCC is going to be supporting Meeks or will a more establishment type of candidate be announcing soon.  Anybody talk to French Hill lately?

Somewhere buried under the coverage of Michael Jackson and Mark Sanford, the Energy Bill (often called Cap and Trade Bill) was passed by a hair in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday night with only one vote to spare. The bill sponsors hold that the bill will reduce greenhouse gasses by 17 percent in the next 11 years and is necessary to help save our planet. Opponents argue that the bill is unnecessary and will dramatically increase utility costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated today that the bill with increase taxes by $872.8 billion.

The Arkansas Representatives were split on their votes with Rep. Berry, Boozman, and Ross voting against the bill and Rep. Snyder voting to give it the one plus needed votes for passage. Snyder told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that he was persuaded to vote for the bill after reading it late Thursday with his son sleeping on the couch. He must be quite the reader the get through the 1,200 page bill with a 310 page amendment arriving at 3:00 am. Dick Morris has another idea about what happened. According to Morris, the bills passage was not in doubt; instead the Democrats were fighting over which Democrats facing difficult reelections would get to be one of the forty-four Democrats to vote against the bill. I guess Rep. Snyder either believes he is safe (Blake Rutherford tells me he borrowed the tie in the picture above from his potential opponent David Meeks!!!) or drew the short straw.

So now the bill heads to the Senate where it needs sixty votes to end debate and bring the bill up for a vote. With 40 Republicans and 57 Democrats, 2 Independents, and the Minnesota seats still unresolved, there is no doubt that Sen. Blanche Lincoln will be feeling the pressure on this one with her potential Republican opponents already bring up the issue. On his blog, Curtis Coleman calls the energy bill “the biggest and most unnecessary tax increase in American history.” Likewise, Tom Cox said during his Senate announcement that instead of cap and trade the bill should be called “the clean your clock bill” because it will hit the budgets of average American so hard.

As a key swing vote to reach the 60 needed in the full Senate as well as her membership on the Senate Energy Committee, there is little doubt the Sen. Lincoln will be directly in the crosshairs on this one.

Somewhere buried under the coverage of Michael Jackson and Mark Sanford, the Energy Bill (often called Cap and Trade Bill) was passed by a hair in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday night with only one vote to spare. The bill sponsors hold that the bill will reduce greenhouse gasses by 17 percent in the next 11 years and is necessary to help save our planet. Opponents argue that the bill is unnecessary and will dramatically increase utility costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated today that the bill with increase taxes by $872.8 billion.

The Arkansas Representatives were split on their votes with Rep. Berry, Boozman, and Ross voting against the bill and Rep. Snyder voting to give it the one plus needed votes for passage. Snyder told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that he was persuaded to vote for the bill after reading it late Thursday with his son sleeping on the couch. He must be quite the reader the get through the 1,200 page bill with a 310 page amendment arriving at 3:00 am. Dick Morris has another idea about what happened. According to Morris, the bills passage was not in doubt; instead the Democrats were fighting over which Democrats facing difficult reelections would get to be one of the forty-four Democrats to vote against the bill. I guess Rep. Snyder either believes he is safe (Blake Rutherford tells me he borrowed the tie in the picture above from his potential opponent David Meeks!!!) or drew the short straw.

So now the bill heads to the Senate where it needs sixty votes to end debate and bring the bill up for a vote. With 40 Republicans and 57 Democrats, 2 Independents, and the Minnesota seats still unresolved, there is no doubt that Sen. Blanche Lincoln will be feeling the pressure on this one with her potential Republican opponents already bring up the issue. On his blog, Curtis Coleman calls the energy bill “the biggest and most unnecessary tax increase in American history.” Likewise, Tom Cox said during his Senate announcement that instead of cap and trade the bill should be called “the clean your clock bill” because it will hit the budgets of average American so hard.

As a key swing vote to reach the 60 needed in the full Senate as well as her membership on the Senate Energy Committee, there is little doubt the Sen. Lincoln will be directly in the crosshairs on this one.

Conway Republican David Meeks, who just a few weeks ago announced he was exploring a run against Rep. Vic Snyder for the Arkansas Second Congressional District seat, says he’s had enough of this exploratory business and is getting in for good. Here, go spend some time poking around on his website.

Post from: The Arkansas Project

Arkansas voters are not always consistent in their voting.  When it comes to political parties, some have called us the reddest blue state or the bluest red state.  But one thing voters have been consistent on is that they do not want casinos in Arkansas.  Every time a casino issue has made it to the ballot, it has been rejected by the voters.  Unfortunately, this does not mean we will not get them here in Arkansas.

In fact, we already have a couple casinos operating in Hot Springs and West Memphis.  This all began in 2005, when the powerful lobbies of Oaklawn and Southland Park put forward their Senate Bill 999 which became ACT1151 of 2005.  This bill flew through both chambers of the legislature in eight days, which is a near record time especially for a controversial bill, with very little discussion.  Of course, at the time we were assured that this only authorized “electronic games of skill” (EGS) and this would not open the doors to casino gambling.

The problem with SB999/ACT1151 was it left the decision as to what constitutes an EGS up to the Racing Commission, which hardly exercises strict regulation.  The definition of EGS under the act is “games played through any electronic device or machine that afford an opportunity for the exercise of skill or judgment where the outcome is not completely controlled by chance alone.” Within two years, Hot Springs and West Memphis both approved these “games of skill” and video poker, blackjack, and games that look a lot like slot machines went operational.  Roby Brook reported last week that EGS wagers at Oaklawn and Southland Park had dramatically increased with $66 million raked in May 2009 alone.

If we learned nothing from this experience, it should have been that the legislature’s promises while passing gambling legislation quickly evaporates when the decision get turned over to the regulatory commission.  For the Arkansas Lottery Commission, this is even more magnified by the fact that generating the maximum profit to fund Arkansas scholarships is the commission’s primary purpose.  That is why it is not surprising that this week Commission Director Ernie Passailaigue began talking about “monitor games” such as “Texas Hold ‘Um” as well as keno.

Controversy quickly followed with Jerry Cox of Family Council warning that Arkansas is “well on the way to state-run casinos.”  Even usual Cox critic Max Brantley admitted “Jerry Cox is right” with a series of posts on his blog explaining that “it turns out the law was intentionally written vaguely and included an override of an old state law outlawing all manner of gambling ranging from keno to roulette to wagering on horses.”  Cox warned his supporters in an email today “Unless (state legislators) pass additional legislation to reign in the newly hired director and the Lottery Commission, Arkansans may find themselves awash in a sea of gambling with mini-casinos popping up in local convenience stores, restaurants, and even on Main Street.”

Not to be overdone, House Speaker Robbie Wills fired back on his own blog saying “this ‘Keno’ issue was in the earliest draft of the bill  and was openly discussed in detail by me at the joint meeting of the Senate State Agencies/House Rules Committees on Wednesday, February 18 long before the bill was in its finished form.  The room was packed and every media outlet in the state was there.” He goes on to say that “If you weren’t there or weren’t paying attention, that’s not our fault.”  Hmmm.  Sorry, my flip cam can’t be everywhere.  Perhaps if we put these committee meetings online. But I digress.  Wills finally concludes with the brilliant “I personally don’t care if the Lottery Commission offers Keno.”  Thanks Robbie, but some of us do. 

Wills follows up with another post today educating us on the details of the different types of lottery games.  His description of “monitor games” and “instant ticket” games certainly sounds an offal lot like a casino to me, with groups of people at one location playing “scratch off games based on Blackjack, Bingo, Slots, Craps, and Poker.”  Wills insists that “In spite of the themed games above, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery has not opened the door to casinos.  The lottery law specifically prohibits the Lottery Commission from conducting casino gambling.  Period.” 

Of course, in Robbie’s world, the picture to the right of Southland Park is not a casino either, just a “games of skill.”  Sorry, Robbie, we were fooled once with SB999; we are not following for it again.

Noam Cohen of The New York Times asseses the value that Twitter may or may not be playing in Iran. He writes,

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion. As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests.

This was the topic of our final SWIM session on Friday. Here’s my perspective on the role of social media in Iran.

UPDATE: Here’s more on this topic from The Washington Post.

Yet for all their promise, there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet are not the end of politics as we know it — and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes. No amount of Twittering will force Iran’s leaders to change course, as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made clear Friday with his rebuke of the protesters, reportedly followed by the security forces’ use of tear gas, batons, water cannons and gunfire to break up demonstrations yesterday. In Iran, as elsewhere, if true revolution is coming, it must happen offline.

From before: An Arkansas perspective from Jessica Dean and Mark Elrod.

I was appalled when I began reading Bill Kristol in The New York Times. No, it’s not because he’s a conservative or that he cozied up close to Dick Cheney. It’s because he was lazy; his writing for the Times was sloppy, and no one seemed to mind it when the Times didn’t renew his contract after one year.

Smartly, the Times didn’t retreat to an aged Republican has-been when it searched for a replacement. (Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard was often mentioned.) Thankfully, they didn’t offer the gig to Rush Limbaugh, a mistake ESPN learned the hard way. Instead, it went with Ross Douthat who used to write for The Atlantic. He was 29 at the time of his hiring.

During the selection, Jack Shafer of Slate wrote this,

The Times doesn’t have to treat Kristol’s vacancy like an open Supreme Court seat, a lifetime sinecure filled once a decade according to political calculus. I want the Times to think more about what to publish than whom to publish.”

If you’ve been reading his columns you’ll see some interesting and thoughtful perspectives on the Republican Party, abortion, God and politics, Mr. Cheney and now, Iran.

But as an ideological rival to liberal democracy, Islamism isn’t in the same league with the totalitarianisms of the 1930s. And there aren’t any other likely candidates on the horizon. Indeed, for all the talk about a crisis of global capitalism, what’s most striking about the great financial meltdown is how little radicalism it’s spawned.

In the West, especially, there’s been more hysteria about the specter of extremism than actual radical activity. If you listen to certain conservative media personalities, you’d think Obama is channeling Leon Trotsky. If you listen to certain liberal pundits, you’d think that talk radio was fomenting a wave of right-wing violence.

But nothing of the sort is happening. Barack Obama is pushing the United States leftward, but his wish list — universal health care, a green industrial policy — has been pinned to the Democratic National Committee’s bulletin board since the 1970s. Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly do not, in fact, command an army of gun-toting vigilantes, the crimes of a few lunatics notwithstanding. And in Europe, despite the angst over a few penny-ante racists getting themselves elected to the E.U. Parliament, the crisis’s major beneficiaries have been the cautious, incrementalist parties of the center-right.

In Iran, students are protesting for democracy and shouting for Obama. In the West, meanwhile, nobody’s talking about adopting Putinist economic nationalism, or renovating the financial sector using the tenets of the Islamic banking system, or imitating Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Socialism.” (You’ll sometimes hear admiring comments about China’s recent economic management — but never their one-party dictatorship.)

Noam Cohen of The New York Times asseses the value that Twitter may or may not be playing in Iran. He writes,

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion. As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests.

This was the topic of our final SWIM session on Friday. Here’s my perspective on the role of social media in Iran.

Shut up, he says.

TEHRAN — In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”

President Obama’s cool and careful calculation on complex issues is one of his strengths. Also an occasional political liability. See Iran where his distance — though still preferable to the bomb jockeys like John McCain– is seen as too great as popular protests continue over the recent election.

Mr. Obama is coming under increased pressure from Republicans and other conservatives who say he should take a more visible stance in support of the protesters.

Even while supporting the president’s approach, senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.

And then there’s the home front. This new poll shows erosion in public approval of his work in some core economic areas, though his overall ratings remain high.

A distinct gulf exists between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler. A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results.