#Arkansas Democrat Gazette

[sweetsmellosuccess]

The second half of Denis Villeneuve's epic adaptation of Frank Herbert's sprawling novel is not without its flaws, but before we get to them, there is call to sing its praises, at least on one specific topic. After a years-long slog of superhero movies with substandard CGI cementing the films as money-grubbing afterthoughts -- like an old, regifted candle wrapped poorly -- Villeneuve's majestic film is a revelation of special effects and cinematography that adds an enormous gravitas and beauty to the proceedings.

It doesn't seem as if it should be so difficult, in this day and technological age, for a high-rolling studio to put the time and effort into its CGI creations such that it enhances and doesn't detract from the picture, and in that sordid process, reveal the chintzy apparatus it's trying to peddle to viewers. Yet, time and again, with big, would-be tentpole blockbusters boasting enormous production budgets, the effects feel flat and unconvincing.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Deering, Arkansas Democrat Gazette

* * * * *

Play offense, not defense!

September 16, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Things are going so badly for Donald Trump's campaign that he has decided it is better to stoke outrage with racist lies and attacks on Taylor Swift than allow the media and public to focus on the ugly truth of his collapsing campaign.

So, let’s resist Trump’s disinformation gambit and focus first on Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who are crisscrossing the country to carry their message to persuadable voters. Harris and Walz will visit Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina this week. According to the Harris-Walz campaign,

Harris will be doing a sit-down interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. She will then head to Michigan for a live stream event with Oprah on Thursday, [and then] she plans to be in Wisconsin on Friday. On Tuesday, September 17, Governor Tim Walz will host a series of political events in Macon and Atlanta, Georgia and Asheville, North Carolina.

The race remains effectively tied, although Kamala Harris has maintained her initial momentum despite predictions that it would evaporate shortly after the convention. (Sorry to disappoint you, Nate Silver!). And every objective signal suggests Harris is driving new registrations and fueling unprecedented levels of grassroots activism and small donor contributions. In August, Kamala Harris’s fundraising total was triple that of Trump's—driven almost entirely by small donor donations.

I always urge readers to ignore the polls, but new voter registrations are verifiable and quantifiable. I will spare you the details, but new voter registrations are higher across the board compared to 2020—with Black women, voters “under 30,” and women showing significant increases over 2020. Those cohorts have strong Democratic correlation. (If you are interested in new voter registrations, Tom Bonier is keeping track on Twitter.)

 It is difficult to quantify the effect of raw enthusiasm, but every objective observer knows that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are leading on that metric as well—which is why cynics like Nate Silver continue to “discount” Harris’s lead in the polls to offset what they believe is an unsustainable level of support for Harris.

It is also worth noting that Kamala Harris has met and exceeded every expectation marker that doubters and critics set for her. Although many doubted her ability to secure the nomination, she did so in 48 hours. Her convention speech was a soaring success—described as “presidential” by even her toughest critics. Her first sit-down interview with major media (Dana Bash) was a solid success. And her performance in the first debate was historic. Indeed, Trump is still trying to recover from her resounding victory, which explains why he has doubled down on racism and hate as a diversionary tactic.

So, we should look ahead with confidence to her sprint to the finish. She is on message, energetic, and positive as she challenges the biggest threat to democracy in nearly a century. We can take nothing for granted, but we are well-positioned for the final 50 days of the campaign.

We should be inspired to work with even greater dedication and confidence—and to ignore the noise that is the sound of Trump's campaign desperately trying to distract attention from its failures while appealing to the ugliest instincts of his base. Read on!

Trump and Vance turn up the volume on anti-immigrant attacks and hate

Trump and JD Vance doubled down on racism and hate over the weekend—apparently concluding that provoking criticism for those statements is better than allowing the press to dwell on Trump's disastrous debate performance and his continuing decline in the polls (all within the margin of error).

Trump started Sunday morning by posting “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” on Truth Social. It was a reprehensible post on many levels—but most fundamentally because “hate” has no place in political discourse. Such vitriol can only serve to motivate Trump's followers to threaten, harass, or harm Taylor Swift. Every responsible media outlet in America should condemn Trump's attack on Swift—but as of Sunday evening, most outlets are simply reporting the fact of the attack without commentary. Let’s hope that changes soon.

Just as reprehensible as Trump's attack on Taylor Swift was JD Vance’s appearance for an interview on Dana Bash’s show on CNN’s State of the Nation. Vance not only failed to acknowledge that his attacks on Haitians were baseless, but he also seemed to suggest (and then retract) that it was acceptable to fabricate false stories about immigrants if doing so caused the media to focus on the problem of immigration.

During a back-and-forth with Dana Bash about whether the reports of immigrants eating domestic pets were true, JD Vance said,

If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.

JD Vance later seemed to retract the statement, saying that his comments were based on “first-hand reports from constituents.”

But Vance’s attempt to retract his statement is unavailing. He admitted that “creating stories” was acceptable to counter the media’s alleged (but non-existent) bias in favor of Kamala Harris. Whether he did so with respect to the cat-eating immigrants is beside the point. As one reader noted in an email Sunday evening, “This is simply unbelievable. Right out of the Nazi playbook of the early 30s.”

The reader forwarded an article from The Bulwark, Trump Team: ‘We’ll Take The Hit’ on Cat Eating to Keep Immigration in the News.

Per The Bulwark,

Bash suggested the rhetoric from Trump and Vance incited bomb threats and risked violence, but Vance called the insinuation “disgusting” and refused to tone down his approach, delighting conservatives on social media. [¶¶] Privately, Trump aides think it’s a net plus. The longer the discussion is about migrants, the less it is about tougher topics for them. “We talk about abortion, we lose. We talk about immigration, we win,” said one Trump adviser. But what about spreading an incendiary story for which there is no evidence? “We’ll take the hit to prove the bigger point,” the adviser said.

In the last two lines above, the Trump campaign adviser seems to confirm that JD Vance “spread incendiary stories for which there is no evidence.” As the reader noted, directing such slander to immigrants and foreigners is, indeed, “right out of the Nazi playbook.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responded with a tweet:

Cats! Dogs! Geese! Laura Loomer! Look, now he’s attacking Taylor! Like the last season before a show gets canceled for getting over-the-top and, at the same time, boring. This election is about jobs, wages, climate, health care, abortion. Not his show. Your life.

Secretary Buttigieg is right: Trump understands that he is on the verge of being canceled and is going all out to retain viewership.

Trump may also be attempting to create distractions to divert the press from talking about rumors about his relationship with Laura Loomer, the right wing provocateur who had been traveling with Trump on his private jet. (Trump's campaign managers have apparently banned Loomer from further travel on the jet.}

Finally, Heather Cox Richardson noted that the anti-immigrant hate may be an attempt to gain control of the Senate by defeating Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. See September 13, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson. Per HCR,

The widespread ridicule of Trump’s statement has obscured that this attack on Ohio’s immigrants is part of an attempt to regain control of the Senate. Convincing Ohio voters that the immigrants in their midst are subhuman could help Republicans defeat popular Democratic incumbent senator Sherrod Brown, who has held his seat since 2007. Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester, both Democrats in states that supported Trump in 2020, are key to controlling the Senate. 

The key question, of course, is whether Trump's tactics will work. Most people in Springfield, Ohio know that Trump's lies are racial slurs with no basis in fact. Such lies will not expand Trump's base—and will likely offend persuadable independents and Democrats who might have otherwise stayed at home.

A note on the second apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump

The Secret Service foiled a second potential assassination attempt on Trump's life. See Trump safe after potential assassination attempt at golf course. (This article is accessible to all.) As details are still developing, I will refrain from discussion, other than to say that in a nation with more than 300 million guns, many will find their way into the hands of people with mental health issues and tendencies toward violence.

The most reprehensible response to the attempted assassination on Trump was that posted by Elon Musk on Twitter. In response to a tweet that said, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”, Musk posted,

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”

The Secret Service and FBI should treat Musk’s post as an incitement to assassinate Biden and Harris until Musk explains otherwise. Taking the Tweet down would be a good first step in that direction. Musk’s companies are major US government contractors. All of his companies’ contracts with the US government should be put under review. It is unacceptable for the US government to be doing business with a person questioning why Biden and Harris have not been the subject of assassination attempts.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who has repeatedly pledged to “protect kids” with anti-LGBTQ+ laws, appointed a man to a top state prison post even though he had previously been fired from a local police force for receiving oral sex from a teen girl in a post office parking lot.

Jamol Jones, who Sanders appointed as chairman to the Arkansas Post-Prison Transfer Board in January, resigned last Friday after news agencies reported that the Benton Police Department fired him after he admitted to an internal affairs investigator that he had sexual relations as an adult with a 17-year-old girl, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

The age of consent in Arkansas is 16. A ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors that Sanders signed last year includes everyone younger than 18.

A November 1, 2018 letter from Benton Police Chief Scotty L. Hodges revealed that he placed Jones on administrative leave with pay “until further notice” for lying to an internal affairs investigator about his sexual relationship with the teen. Jones said he lied because he was embarrassed and scared. An investigation found that Jones’s initial job application to join the police force “did not provide or submit certain key information” about the relationship with the minor.

Jones said he and the girl “had talked at the gym” and that “she had identified herself as an 18-year-old” before performing oral sex on him in the Benton Post Office parking lot. Though he denied knowing her actual age, the Benton Police internal affairs investigator wrote in his official report, “There was indication he knew her age and continued the relationship, even telling her that the relationship could not be found out.”

Jones admitted to wanting to keep the relationship secret. He also admitted to never asking to see the girl’s ID, even though he had been formerly trained as a police officer to confirm people’s ages by doing so. The girl’s mother said she suspected that her daughter might have lied about her age to attract male attention, and the mother added that she didn’t want Jones to go to jail over the sexual relationship with her daughter.

Nevertheless, the lie and relationship violated the department’s ethics policy and state law. Though the Saline County prosecuting attorney’s office didn’t file charges against Jones, Hodges fired Jones three weeks later.

When Sanders appointed Jones in January, she said in a statement, “His prior law enforcement experience makes him a clear choice to take on this important role, and I look forward to working together as we empower Arkansans with a safer, stronger state.”

He was meant to serve for seven years as the board’s “chief executive, administrative, budgetary, and fiscal officer” while earning an annual salary of over $95,380. The board he resigned from oversees parole, alternative sentencing programs, and expunging criminal records for eligible offenders.

State Sen. Kim Hammer (R) said that he and other senators “had no knowledge of [Jones’s] actions” before the Senate voted to confirm his appointment to the position, noting, “I was given no indication from the Governor’s office, who vets the application, that there was an issue.”

Sanders’s office didn’t respond to a media request asking if she knew of Jones’ firing from the police force before she appointed him or how her office vets potential political appointees. Her appointment of him seems at odds with her pledge to “protect kids” by passing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

In March, Sanders also signed a “Don’t Say Gay” law, banning classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation before fifth grade, as well as another bill allowing anyone who received gender-affirming care as a minor to sue their doctor up to 15 years after they turn 18 — though a court blocked it. In February, she signed a bill reclassifying drag performances as adult-oriented entertainment.

“The Governor has said she will sign laws that focus on protecting and educating our kids, not indoctrinating them and believes our schools are no place for the radical left’s woke agenda,” a Sanders spokesperson said in a statement when she signed the gender-affirming care ban.

Last November, Sanders appointed an anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist to oversee state libraries. In October, Sanders issued an executive order banning “woke,” gender-inclusive language in government communications.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

While keeping to my general "Fuck historical accuracy" rule for this rosielemmons, I am actually from Arkansas and knew the state paper of record (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) was previously two different papers, so I wanted to know which one was more likely to be read by Ken Lemmons.

Which led to this wikipedia line:

The Gazette and the Democrat exchanged words that soon escalated into an exchange of gunfire between the owner of the Democrat and a part-owner of the Gazette.

Because of fucking course it did. Rednecks are gonna redneck.

[carriehillart]

More illustrations of the fun and sassy Billy from her namesake book, “Billy of Arkansas”! The book was first published in 1914, then serialized in the “Arkansas Democrat-Gazette” in 1922. The Gazette has been publishing summaries of it lately, and I’ve had the pleasure of illustrating them! (Fun fact: if you google “Billy of Arkansas”, these stories with my illustrations are the first things to appear! 😍)

[futileexercise]

And they’re scared if drag queens, who are public performers, while this crap… 😡

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

SEE EVANESCENCE'S AMY LEE SING "BRING ME TO LIFE," COVER BEATLES AT VATICAN CONCERT

Lee participated in annual "Concerto Di Natale"

Back on December 17th, Evanescence singer Amy Lee had the unusual honor of performing at the Vatican's annual "Concerto Di Natale" as part of Pope Francis's Christmas celebrations at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome, Italy. She sang her band's smash hit "Bring Me to the Life" and covered the Beatles' "Across the Universe," both accompanied by the Orchestra Italiana del Cinema, conducted by Maestro Adriano Pennino. Today (February 1st), official footage of her performances hit YouTube — watch above and below.

As reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Lee became involved with the concert after she took part in a 2021 songwriting session with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and his son, Matteo, at Bocelli's estate in Tuscany. Soon after the fact the Vatican event, she described her participation as an "unforgettable experience." Other performers included AKA7even, Cristina D'Avena, Darin, Fiorella Mannoia and Jimmy Sax.

[masquedrones]

La vigilancia con drones sin consentimiento provoca una disputa legal en Arkansas

Un notable conflicto legal ha surgido en Arkansas en relación con la supuesta vigilancia no autorizada con drones realizada por Clean Harbors, una empresa especializada en la gestión de residuos peligrosos. Según informaciones del Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Clean Harbors se enfrenta a serias consecuencias tras el vuelo de un dron operado por uno de sus empleados sobre las instalaciones de su…

[sweetsmellosuccess]

In 30 years as a movie star, Leonardo DiCaprio has played everyone including a mentally challenged man-child, Romeo, historic figures like Howard Hughes and J. Edgar Hoover and slick, unscrupulous con men like Jordan Belfort. Yet he's never played a character more jarringly amoral as Ernest Burkhart, the salty protagonist in Martin Scorsese's adaptation of David Grann's true crime book "Killers of the Flower Moon." He comes to a small, oil-rich town in Oklahoma, and becomes the treacherous, morally reprehensible henchman of his even more corrupt uncle, William "King" Hale (Robert De Niro), en route to destroying an entire Osage family.

DiCaprio has long had a baby face, which served him well as a teen heartthrob and young movie star, but, at times, less convincingly playing more adult roles. Here, the 49-year-old has never looked worse or more convincing. His face wan and puffy, his teeth subtly altered, his mouth perpetually in a De Niro-esque frown, he plays Ernest as the worst kind of duplicitous: Bizarrely unaware of his own utter moral decrepitude.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Deering, Arkansas Democrat Gazette

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 25, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Democrats are generally staying out of the way and letting Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans make a spectacle of themselves. In order to get the votes to become speaker, McCarthy had to give power to extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and now has openly brought her on board as a close advisor, making the extremists the face of the new MAGA Republican Party. If McCarthy appears to have abandoned principle for power by catering to the far right, Representative George Santos (R-NY) hasn’t helped: stories of his lies have mounted, and financial filings yesterday suggest quite serious financial improprieties.

Even the Senate Republicans seem to be keeping their heads down while the House Republicans perform for their base. Demanding big cuts in spending before they agree to raise the debt ceiling has put the House Republicans in a difficult spot. They have been clear that they intend to slash Social Security and Medicare, only to have Trump, who was the one who originally insisted on using the debt ceiling to get concessions out of Democrats, recognize that such cuts are enormously unpopular and say they should not touch Medicare and Social Security. Senate Republicans have said they will stay out of debt ceiling negotiations until the House Republicans come up with a viable plan.

While the House Republicans take up oxygen, the Democrats are highlighting for the American people how, over the past two years, they have carefully and methodically changed U.S. policy to stop the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few.

In July 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to promote competition in the economy. Since the 1980s, he said, when right-wing legal theorist Robert Bork masterminded a pro-corporate legal revolution against antitrust laws, the government had stopped enforcing laws to prevent giant corporations from concentrating their power. The result had been less growth, weakened investment, fewer small businesses, less bargaining power for workers, and higher prices for consumers.

“[T]he experiment failed,” he said.

Biden vowed to change the direction of the government’s role in the economy, bringing back competition for small businesses, workers, and consumers. Very deliberately, he reclaimed the country’s long tradition of opposing economic consolidation. Calling out both presidents Roosevelt—Republican Theodore, who oversaw part of the Progressive Era, and Democrat Franklin, who oversaw the New Deal—Biden celebrated their attempt to rein in the power of big business, first by focusing on the abuses of those businesses and then by championing competition.

The administration put together a whole-of-government approach to restore competition based on the 72 separate actions outlined in Biden’s executive order. A terrific piece today by David Dayen in The American Prospect suggests that the effort has worked. Overall, Dayen concludes, the executive order of July 9, 2021, was “one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy since FDR.”

While administrations since Reagan have judged whether consolidation is harmful solely by its effect on consumer prices, the Biden approach also factors in the welfare of workers, including their ability to negotiate higher wages. It has also taken on the sharing of medical patents that have raised costs of drugs and equipment like hearing aids by preventing others from entering the market. It has taken on large businesses’ strangling of start-up competitors simply by buying them out before they take off. And, crucially, it has claimed the ability to review previous mergers that it now deems in violation of antitrust laws, citing the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil.

Dayen notes that one of the causes for a sharp drop in mergers and acquisitions in the second half of 2022 is that government agencies are willing to enforce antitrust laws. “Just about everything on competition has been hard-fought,” he writes, “[b]ut there’s plenty of evidence of real movement.”

Not only government agencies, but also the Democratic Congress—along with some Republicans—passed a number of laws that have shifted the economic policy of the nation. Biden is fond of saying that he doesn’t believe in trickle-down economics and that he intends to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. New numbers suggest the policies of the past two years are doing just that.

The December jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that job growth continues strong. The country added 223,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate went down slightly to 3.5 percent. The last two years of job growth are the strongest on record, and the country has recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. According to the White House, 10.7 million jobs were created and a record 10.5 million small businesses’ applications were filed in the past two years.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that median weekly earnings rose 7.4% last year, slightly faster than inflation. For Black Americans employed full time, the median rise was 11.3% over 2021. A median Hispanic or Latino worker’s income saw a 4.8% raise, to $837 a week. Young workers, between 16 and 24, saw their weekly income rise more than 10%. Also seeing close to a 10% weekly rise were those in the bottom tenth of wage earners, those making about $570 a week. The day after the Wall Street Journal’s roundup, Walmart, which employs 1.7 million people in the U.S., announced it would raise its minimum wage to $14 an hour, up from $12.

Democrats promised that the CHIPS and Science Act would bring “good paying” jobs to those without college degrees by investing in high-tech manufacturing. A study by the Brookings Institution out yesterday notes that the act has already attracted multibillion-dollar private investments in New York, Indiana, and Ohio and that two thirds of the jobs they will produce are accessible to those without college degrees. Those jobs do, in fact, pay better than most of those available for those without college degrees, although Brookings urged better investment in training programs to make workers ready for those jobs.

The Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and capped the cost of insulin for those on Medicare at $35 a month (Republicans blocked an attempt to make that cap available for those not on Medicare). It made hearing aids available over the counter, making them dramatically cheaper, and it also expanded subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Today the Department of Health and Human Services announced that a record number of Americans enrolled in the ACA in the last open enrollment period: 16.3 million people.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post notes that much of the investment from these laws is going to Republican-dominated states even though their Republican lawmakers opposed the laws and voted against them. The clean energy investments of the Inflation Reduction Act are going largely to those states, bringing with them additional private investment. A solar panel factory is expanding into Greene’s own district despite her vocal opposition both to alternative energy and to the Inflation Reduction Act.

For 40 years the Republican Party offered a vision of America as a land of hyperindividualism, in which any government intervention in the economy was seen hampering the accumulation of wealth and thus as an attack on individual liberty. The government stopped working for ordinary Americans, and perhaps not surprisingly, many of them have stopped supporting it. Biden refused to engage with the Republicans on the terms of their cultural wars and has instead reclaimed the idea that government can actually work for the good of all by keeping the economic playing field level for everyone.

Biden and members of his administration are taking to the road to tout their successes to the country, especially to those places most skeptical of the government. If they can bring the Republican base around to support their economic policies, they will have realigned the nation as profoundly as did FDR and Theodore Roosevelt before them.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-marjorie-taylor-greene.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/23/senate-republicans-kevin-mccarthy-debt-00079126

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/09/remarks-by-president-biden-at-signing-of-an-executive-order-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/07/19/bork-and-the-pro-business-bias/f98206ec-5d73-4e1d-b1fa-066eab789284/

https://www.brookings.edu/research/with-high-tech-manufacturing-plants-promising-good-jobs-in-ohio-workforce-developers-race-to-get-ready/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-green-subsidies-are-attracting-billions-of-dollars-to-red-states-11674488426

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/01/24/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-12/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/business/walmart-raising-wages/index.html

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/01/25/biden-harris-administration-announces-record-breaking-16-3-million-people-signed-up-health-care-coverage-aca-marketplaces-during-2022-2023-open-enrollment-season.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biggest-pay-raises-went-to-black-workers-young-people-and-low-wage-earners-11674425793

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-01-25-pitched-battle-corporate-power/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/25/biden-place-based-industrial-policy-muro/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[from comments]

TCinLA

Writes Thats Another Fine Mess

TPM is now reporting that House Republicans want to pass a series of "clean" debt limit suspension bills that brings the debt default crisis to coincide with the new fiscal year, to create a mega crisis of default/government shutdown, and that they will then be putting the most egregious of their spending bills up for votes over the summer before the mega crisis arrives. Interestingly, this will benefit Democrats if they do this, since the Democrats will be able to point to all the egregious cuts the crazies want. Also, enough Republicans have now stated they do not intend to touch Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare or Defense that McCarthy does not have a majority to push those cuts, leaving them very few places they would have to cut heavily to achieve their goals.

In other words, the wheels are coming off the clown car already. Who could have expected that? I ask you!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) has signed a bill that bans state and local governments from mandating COVID-19 vaccines for workers after a similar ban expired last month.

The legislation signed Thursday is aimed at defending citizens’ “individual liberty,” Sanders said at a press conference prior to its signing.

The legislation also prohibits COVID-19 vaccinations from being required as a condition of education, or for obtaining a service or licensure, permit or certificate of some kind. Any potential risks and harms associated with the shots must also be recorded and published by the state.

The bill is different from the state’s prior ban on vaccine mandates, which first went into effect in 2021, in that it covers vaccines or immunizations for any subvariants of the coronavirus, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The latest COVID-19 vaccine, which was federally authorized for use this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, is specially designed to reduce major illness and illness from omicron virus variants that are currently circulating.

In total, Sanders signed 11 bills on Thursday.

A separate bill she signed restricts the public release of her travel and security records. That bill, which went into immediate effect, shields details about the security that the Governor and other constitutional officers receive.

These details include who travels on the State Police airplane and the cost of individual trips. Sanders argued that it was needed for her and her family’s safety, though some critics said it eliminates government transparency.

State Sen. Bart Hester (R), who co-sponsored the bill, said at Thursday’s press conference that all of the state’s elected government leaders are still able to see the travel receipts through audit. The law also requires the state to file a quarterly report listing the monthly costs of protecting the Governor.

[vegasgogreen]

OPINION | Curtis Varnell: How changing laws morphed perception of Marijuana from dangerous hallucinogens to something tamer - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

http://dlvr.it/TCd4pM