Arkansas Week - April 28, 2023

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for joining us for the broadcast and eventful April.

In an eventful year, only days ago, the third Arkansan in three decades formally announced a campaign for the White House.

And at the Arkansas State House, final adjournment is near adjournment sign to die.

It will conclude a legislative session that was by any measure historic.

A new governor, the state's first woman chief executive, got everything from the General Assembly she asked for, including a major restructuring of Arkansas education and expansion of the state's prison system and a reworking of the sentencing statutes and the first step toward what she plans to be the elimination of Arkansas's personal income tax.

There's a lot of ground to cover in this edition, and we begin with some moments from Bentonville.

And the latest step by a politician who's 40 years in public life help shift his native state from Navy blue to Ruby red.

I ran as a conservative Republican when being a Republican was like having a career ending handicap.

In fact, lawyers told me that I continued to fight the establishment and overtime, guess what?

We won.

That was the beginning.

And since then, I've been a consistent conservative through my time as leader of the party in the United States Congress and as governor.

And now I bring that same vigor to a fight in another battle.

And that battle is for the future of our country and the soul of our party.

Today I'm announcing that I am a candidate for President of the United States Canada, Hutchinson at Bentonville, the ASA Hutchinson presidential campaign, the Huckabee Sanders gubernatorial administration here with some insights, grants, and Neil, Democratic State Chair.

Jeremy Gillum, a Republican and former speaker, and Andrew Demillo, Capital Bureau chief of The Associated Press.

Gentlemen, thanks to all of you for coming in.

Andrew, you were at Bentonville for the big announcement.

It was a bit anticlimactic.

The suspense, I guess, had become bearable.

But nonetheless, it was ASA Hutchinson's day.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's right.

You know this.

We already knew what the big news was.

Governor Hutchinson had already said he was running for for president, but this was really a chance for him to introduce himself on a national stage.

You know, Hutchinson has been a fixture of Arkansas politics for decades, as you noted.

But outside Arkansas, he still remains a blank slate for a lot of people.

So this was really a chance for him to be able to talk about his background, talk about his biography, you know, his beginnings in Bentonville and northwest Arkansas.

You know, his work, as we saw in that clip, talking about how he was a Republican going back when Arkansas used to be a blue state, and also talking about some of his policy proposals as he's running for president.

Well, he no question about it.

He was he was R when R wasn't cool around here and he called himself a consistent conservative by today's standards of the question would seem to be Andrew.

Is he conservative enough for everybody in this party?

Your thoughts?

You know, he, you know, he still remains, you know, very staunch conservative.

The biggest test for him is going to be can he run as a staunch conservative who still has these very conservative positions on things like abortion?

But run as an anti Trump candidate, he has been the most outspoken among the announced and potential candidates in terms of his his criticism of Trump, especially over Trump's lies about the 2020 election.

And also he's been the only one to say that Trump should not be running following his indictment.

So the question is, how does that work in an electorate, primary electorate that's still based on polling has, you know, a good amount of support and affection for Trump, even despite those criticisms.

Yeah, Andrew Demillo, Speaker Gillum.

Well, I think he did a great job this week laying out his credentials and beginning to expose some of the vision that he's going to.

Kind of expound upon as he goes into Iowa and New Hampshire and and South Carolina.

So I think he set himself up as well as he could to start now.

We'll see what kind of momentum he's able to pick up, especially nationally with donors.

And there's, you know, there's a lot of game to be played between announcing and then the first primary or the caucus and in Iowa.

Echo what Andrew said.

Maybe put a little sharper point on it.

I'm not sure how you run as the sanest man in the insane asylum.

And right now, as Andrew said, he most of of what Governor Hutchinson is saying puts him out of step with the vast majority of his party.

But I also think it's important that people understand that he is extremely conservative, maybe even extreme.

On some issues, obviously his position on abortion is out of step with the vast majority of American people.

And you know, he tried to throw disabled and sick and and otherwise handicapped individuals off of Medicaid, and I think that's pretty extreme as well.

So on the one hand, some of his positions seem to toe the line with what we're seeing out of the Republican Party lately, but I I think he's going to have a hard time selling himself as the zookeeper.

Well, he has to get through the Republican primary process first.

Which of as everyone know both on the right and the left, primary voters tend to be more fixed in their views than do than is the broader general election electorate.

Andrew mentioned abortion.

Mr. Trump.

His position is somewhat again to Mr. Trump's in that both men want to leave it to the states to decide.

And in Mr. Hutchinson's case, he has said repeatedly he wants exceptions for rape and incest.

Mr. Trump had no sooner uttered that position that some of the pro-life organizations boxed his ears right away and vowed to oppose him.

Jeremy Well, and I I think you'll see this probably more so this time than we have even in the past, but the electorate that all the Republican candidates are going for?

Is is going to fluctuate.

I mean they from sometimes from week to week what they care about or what they they voice their concerns about on on particular issues.

I think what I'm starting to see though is there's some highlevel folks that that are hardline Republicans that are starting to voice that the parameters that they're looking at now more are who can win in November maybe.

More so than a particular ideology or issue based position, but they're like okay who can win.

That's who they want to get behind.

And I think that's what Governor Hutchinson is going to have to exhibit to win a lot of folks over is that he can win in November.

And I think there will be kind of some some support that'll line up if he can prove that even they even though they might not agree with him on a particular issue.

If he can show viability to win, I think he has a shot at winning over some of the folks that are more concerned about winning in November maybe than having a purist on every issue be the candidate.

It's an hour passing to to navigate Grant and Neal.

But can't he do it?

I doubt it.

And and that's not because the governor isn't a skilled politician and enable guy and smart.

I just think that the Republican primary.

It is like a steel cage death match at this point and he can't win it.

Andrew Demillo, your thoughts there a path forward.

You know, if you look at Hutchinson's history, this is someone who has run and ran repeated statewide races and lost and but you learned from it.

And was really able to kind of thread the needle in Arkansas, especially as the state moved further and further to the right.

Yeah, we talked about, you know, Medicaid expansion and him putting the work requirement on it.

He also wanted to keep the Medicaid expansion.

You know, he's kind of tried to navigate middle ground on some areas while still keeping kind of conservative.

Positions, but also when you look at, you know, like the debate stage, you know, he's a lawyer, he was a, you know, federal prosecutor.

He's got a background in in debating.

He's, you know, debated some of the more most well known politicians in the state.

So he's got the background in that.

So that'll be the interesting thing is once we get to, you know, him possibly on debate stage with, you know, several, you know, you know, a dozen candidates that could be we we don't know, you know, how does he hold up in in a setting like that?

All right, on to the General center.

And Grant, you want the final word on that or we'll go on to the go to the General Assembly.

All right.

The first Sarah Huckabee Sanders, our new governor, is celebrating her first 100 days.

And one could argue successfully, I think that she has reason to celebrate.

She got everything she wanted.

Jeremy Gillum from the General Assembly, she did.

And you know, that kind of typical it is and in.

But I think a lot of governors, you know, exhibit that level of success their first.

Session and she speed she she I think hers were she had more significant and and I would say more As for scale initiatives that she pushed than maybe previous governors.

Exceedingly friendly legislature, but they they worked with her, you know and and I give her credit, there were some issues in which she could have just said no, this is what I want to do.

But she worked with leadership and and got some input on some things.

It slowed it down at times maybe more than what she would have wanted or others in the in the General Assembly would have wanted.

But there was some collaboration there and I think that made a difference on a few of the the bigger ticket items on the success that she saw.

Andrew Demilla, yeah, you know it's we went to into this expecting that she was probably going to get all all or most of her agenda items through.

The question was.

You know, how much was she going to have to budget on some of these?

And really she got, you know, she got her 33 big agenda items through pretty much the way she wanted.

You know, the LEARNS Act, which you know, is a voucher program along with, you know, an increase in minimum minimum pay for teachers that also includes, you know, several conservative priorities that that include a an Arkansas version of don't say gay legislation.

You know, getting the tax cuts through and also the criminal justice reform and prison expansion, you know, all of those got it got through.

There wasn't really too much drama on what was going to happen.

And she was even able to kind of ease some of the resistance from rural Republicans that you've seen traditionally over voucher programs.

Yeah, I think going forward, the big question is, you know, how are they going to address some of the questions that still linger about implementing these programs?

You have potential additional costs.

And also looking at some of the other areas that still need to be addressed in the future, including Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, right grants a deal.

She's a skilled politician and we know this.

She's a terrible policy maker.

And I think we saw it time and again through this legislative session.

Questions that went unanswered, input, important input that wasn't sought or listened to.

Learns is is one of the very first cases and when I say skillful politician, you drop a bill of that magnitude and give people 72 hours to try and read and understand it before they're supposed to go into committee and vote on it.

That's not serious policy making that those are political stunts and and here's where we're going to get bit on some of this stuff we've now said as part of this.

If you can't read to grade level at 3rd grade, we're going to hold you back.

We started out in this bill saying we'll hold you back forever.

And then some of the really smart behavioral people got to him and said, hey, look, you can't do that.

You're going to cause these children real harm.

So they backed off on that and come up with something else.

But here's the problem, the way to fix this.

She has an idea for literacy coaches.

She's funded 120 literacy coaches statewide, 30% according to their figure of our kids in 3rd grade aren't reading to grade level.

Those literacy coaches better be Vince Lombardi and Pat Summit because 120 of them ain't going to get the job done.

I think a lot of people agree with her that reading at grade level by third grade is critically important.

But.

We're not.

We're just sort of waving at the solution.

We're dunking on the We've done something about it, but we're not really addressing how we're going to solve it.

The loyal opposition, as it were, your party, I won't say impotent, but pretty close to it.

I mean, she's got supermajorities, of course, in both chambers, but I tell you where we weren't, Steve, real quick, that $50,000 minimum teacher rent pay.

Came from Democrats.

We filed that bill first.

They tabled our bill and took the 50 to replace the 40 that they had in their bill.

So we, we may struggle some time to get policy made, but sometimes we can get a good idea out there and it gets implemented.

Yeah, Jerry Mcgillum, when the bills start coming to and they will, we're talking about 9 figures in some cases on, on all of these programs is is do you see you've had a lot of experience in state fiscal affairs.

Are you concerned at all about the about the dollars and cents of this?

Well, I think pretty much anytime there's a bold initiative that goes into place at state government, if there's going to be some cost overruns, I mean, figuring out how you're going to implement the program, things like that.

So I think most everybody kind of is looking at this realizing there's going to be some extra costs they're going to come into play.

And I think some of it, as Grant just pointed out on the Reading coaches, may come because of the success they find.

With 125 and they want to scale that up.

So there's factors like that that I think will impact any kind of growth and in what the anticipated spending will be in that area.

There's going to be some things that they find that work really well, they want to expand upon.

There's going to be some things probably as they go through it that they realize maybe didn't work as well as they wanted to.

And so there's going to be definitely some fluctuations in that.

But yeah, I mean, looking at it, I think it's going to wind up costing more, but it may be because it's working.

May be the reason that it's costing more so time will tell on that will you imprison that too through the the tax cut bill for example and the governor's plans to continue tax cutting as is able plus you've got new capital costs coming up on corrections a tougher sentencing grid to and as Andrew mentioned a moment ago Medicaid which is is looming.

Well I I think that and I've said this before on the on this on shows with you but this is where having some really really good sound fiscal policy makers in the General Assembly are really going to come in very helpful in this and having you know the Chairman of of a budget you know and and with this main and and Lane Jean they're going to be able to kind of.

Work through some of these things to lessen some impacts.

You're going to have some triggers.

You're going to have some things, especially with tax cuts.

There's going to be a lot of prudence there that that those two gentlemen bring into the conversation.

So as we move forward, yes, I mean, there's going to be some money that's going to be spent on some of these things, Corrections and and you mentioned Medicaid.

There's definitely going to be some, some money that's going to have to be allocated over to cover some.

Rising cost there as well.

So but we're in really good fiscal shape as a state and that's the one thing that is allowing them to have some of these discussions and moving forward on some solutions is that we're still generating even as we speak you know through the fiscal year we're generating some very positive returns.

And revenue, so I think you know All in all the pieces are going to be able to be put together.

It's just maybe a little bit more complicated than what we're used to.

Yeah, Andrew Demillo, we've got a revenue stabilization act in play.

We got a budget in place yet still it would appear to be with these issues coming out of the session and the and the one, the issues that we were facing even before this General Assembly sat when there remain a lot of fiscal unknowns in in the near future.

Yeah, that's that's true.

And especially as we get further on in the year and school districts start putting together their their budgets.

You know what questions are going to be raised about, you know cost that they're finding in implementing some of the some of the learns act, some of the other issues you talked about prisons they're still kind of the issue of.

You've got this additional space that they that they're going to have in the long term.

How do they deal in the intermediate term with a prison system that is over capacity as they prepare for the implementation of these changes to the to sentencing and parole.

You know the good news with Arkansas is Arkansas has has had a record surplus kind of built up in recent in recent years that gives the state more of a cushion for.

4 downturns.

But when you combine all this together and a downturn, then the question is you know how much is going to be left if things if things go sour.

Gotta end it there.

Because gentlemen, we are out of time.

De millo gillum.

And to Neil, thanks for coming in.

Come back soon.

Thank you.

We'll have you back.

We'll be right back.

Consider this concept Extreme homesteading.

Curious.

Then off we go to Searcy County for this month's good routes.

All of this really started with my grandmother.

My grandmother, when I was little, we'd get up really early and go strawberry picking.

And then on her way home we would stop at her friend's house who had a milk cow, and we would get a pint of cream to go take home and have oatmeal and strawberries.

And it was just like, oh, there's just nothing better than that, you know?

We are originally from New Jersey, a rural area, so we had chickens and a couple goats.

So my sister showed in our local 4H club and of course cuz you know you always want to do what big sister does.

So I wanted to show chickens.

We came to Arkansas in 2007 with my husband's job, not here on the farm.

Originally he had taken a job in Harriet, so.

We found this after a while, and where we're standing now was all in the middle of the woods.

There was just a tiny little driveway coming down and the house at the end.

We're in very rural Arkansas, right?

And a lot of people have extended family in the area and they have Sunday dinner.

That's just a thing.

Some people's extended families just further away.

So the first potluck we had, this was all studs.

There was no paneling on the walls or anything like that.

So we just had this all set up in here and everybody brought dishes and we gathered from all over the place.

Some people I had met at the hardware store, some people at the feed store, Oh my gosh, the topics that we've covered, the drought last year, people shifting jobs, people losing everything in a crop or.

Of wild animals or you know just the cost of feed going through the roof.

There's a lot of things that it affect our small farming community and you know you never know what somebody's experienced that week.

Having a place to go and people to get together that become like extended family has been really, really great.

I think it's good for everybody.

You know I think that's why they come.

I mean it could be simple things.

They just know you know that that you're.

That you're there, you're that extra person that they can count on when they need something.

That was kind of how this all started with the first potluck, and it's just kind of kept going and going.

And, you know, we do Easter dinner, Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas every year, just kind of an open table.

And if people don't have a place to go, they know to just call us and say, hey, you got room.

You have to build that community that produce what you need.

And we've kind of just functioned that way for the last 15 years and it's really working out well.

And when we moved to Arkansas, I had more land, more space.

So I went from chickens to goats, meet goats 1st.

And then because I didn't want to eat my goats, I got dairy goats.

And then I got a fiber sheep.

And then I had a beef cow and then I got a dairy cow, which then eventually landed us into the dairy that I have now, July and dairy and then the guest farm has been here for.

Oh, golly, since 2012 is when we poured the concrete for the barn and opened it up originally as a pastor's retreat.

So they had a place to go with their families.

So we wanted a place where they could just kind of unplug, get out of the fishbowl and just be themselves and relax.

And then it kind of went from there to how do we have people participate on a farm?

You know, we had just this little homestead and then networked with a whole bunch of farmers across the country to find out what they liked, what they didn't like.

What they wish they had done and what they'd never do again.

We have a guest house across the Haller that the guests can stay in.

Typically it's family, so we'll have grandparents, parents, grandchildren all coming together, different people coming from all over the country and even internationally because these grandparents know did it back when they were kids and they want to show the grandkids how they did it so they'll come down in the mornings, they'll milk the cows with us, set up very much for.

Guests first for safety, for visual effects, and then, you know, they're milking.

You know, it's it's hard at first.

You know, they're always like, oh, I don't know if I can do this.

And then they, they get that first squirt and they're very, very excited.

And then they discover that the milk is warm because it's, you know, it's body temperature because in your mind you think it's going to be cold.

It was really homesteading and it's kind of grown in that.

It's never really left homesteading.

It's just been a little bit bigger, included a lot more people.

People being educated about farm life and about just being able to do stuff.

And then typically we'll go up for a farmer table breakfast, we'll do yogurt that we made here.

They'll get a bread of some kind, whether it's a muffin or an Irish soda bread, and then they'll get omelets with our fresh eggs, sometimes the cheese or if we have vegetables coming out of the garden, or locally sourced communal farmers market or one of our neighbors that has it.

If you've noticed up in our kitchen, there's cookbooks.

Everywhere.

There's lots and lots of cookbooks.

Mom did a lot of restaurant work and stuff.

She's worked in New York and New Jersey a lot.

She had a catering business.

I love to cook.

I love to feed people and I can't make all this fancy food and.

Lots of pastry and stuff like that, and the three of us be the only ones eating it.

That would be terrible.

In the afternoons we'll do classes like the pasta class or a pizza class, so we do a hand rolled ricotta gnocchi.

So we've got two really fabulous products.

We've got a full fat ricotta cheese and buttermilk.

And they make our baked goods so much better that there's an I don't even have to worry.

It's like not a competition thing.

This is like we have something really special here.

And what else is special about it is that we grow the fodder for the cows and we feed the cows this incredible diet every day that makes our buttermilk and our ricotta cheese so special based off of where we are geographically.

I do not have a lot of pasture, so I'm very limited.

So the hydroponic system that I have is an 8 day process from dry seed to harvest.

So the barley actually increases the cream content by about 2% in your cows, which was awesome because you know everybody loves cream, as well as the fact that this way I know exactly what my cows are eating.

They're getting a consistent food and if you're not enjoying what you're doing on the farm.

It's not going to last.

I mean, you have to, you have to enjoy it.

I mean, I know farming is really, really hard work and there's a lot of days you just like drag to the bed at night.

You're like okay, that was a day.

Let's just put that one on the shelf.

But you know, you really, there has to be something about it that you love, otherwise you're not going to keep doing it.

This program is funded through a Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network grant.

Provided by the United States Department of Agriculture and administered by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.

And that does it for us for this week.

As always, we thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette The Arkansas Times.

And KUARFM 89.