Ernest Dumas Column - Arkansas Times

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GOP's health care quandary

Ernest Dumas 4/5/19 8:35pm

Republican officeholders, in Arkansas and everywhere, have found themselves in an impossible catch-22 — caught between mutually conflicting political demands by their voters. I’m talking about the political dilemma of choosing between the widely hated Obamacare and the highly popular provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The worst legislature ever

Ernest Dumas 4/1/19 8:00am

Anti-women. Anti-poor. Anti-black. Anti-people. Anti-old-style Republicans.

ACA will stand

Ernest Dumas 12/20/18 3:00am

If you are worried about your health care — and that ought to be nearly everyone — pay no attention to the triumphant tweet of President Trump last Friday or the hurrah the same day from Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, after the most political judge in America declared the whole Affordable Care Act null and void.

Sex and Trump

Ernest Dumas 12/13/18 3:00am

No one, least of all Donald Trump, should be surprised when sex puts him in mortal jeopardy, which seemed to be the case last week when his personal lawyer pleaded guilty to violating the law by arranging $280,000 in hush payments to a porn actress and a Playboy model who were prepared to tell voters about having sex with him.

A decent man

Ernest Dumas 12/6/18 3:00pm

The beatification of George H.W. Bush, which even the current president signaled was OK, would have surprised the 41st president, who seemed to have accepted the public's verdict that, although a waffler, he was a decent man who did his best and didn't do any harm to the people of the country or the world with whose well-being he was entrusted for a time.

Prelude to war

Ernest Dumas 11/29/18 3:00am

President Trump's casual disinterest in the murder of Jamaal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia's leaders, a crime he once abhorred, may be only the final repudiation of America's ancient obedience to human rights, but what if it is much more? What if it is a prelude to war?

Clean air news

Ernest Dumas 11/22/18 3:00am

Amid the biblical fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising seas that beset the heating Earth, the old blue orb occasionally absorbs some good news that suggests it may still harbor some hope for a sustainable future.

Attacked

Ernest Dumas 11/15/18 3:00am

Courtney Goodson won her race to stay on the state Supreme Court last week with something to spare, in spite of the unprecedented sludge of dark-money ads that tried to persuade people that she was an execrable wench who was capable of almost anything.

Such good news

Ernest Dumas 10/18/18 8:00am

Health care has moved to the top of people's concerns this election year even as the "good" news keeps coming. The question is, how much more good news can people stand?

No courage

Ernest Dumas 10/11/18 8:00am

Political courage — doing what needs to be done even if it is not wildly popular — is a vanishing commodity.

Voter suppression

Ernest Dumas 10/4/18 4:00pm

The history of voting in America and in our little corner of it has been the struggle to empower more and more people to have a say in how laws are made and are applied to them.

BS Bob Ballinger

Ernest Dumas 9/27/18 3:00am

Disingenuous is a handy word for political discussions. Look it up or, better still, for a perfect definition, read last Sunday's op-ed article in the statewide newspaper written supposedly by state Rep. Bob Ballinger (R-Berryville), a Northwest Arkansas Republican who is hoping for elevation to the Senate in November.

Tables turned

Ernest Dumas 9/20/18 3:00am

Brett Kavanaugh's dilemma over a prep-school tussle with a girl provokes many proverbs, but one that seems most apropos is "what goes around comes around."

High crime

Ernest Dumas 9/13/18 3:00am

Since President Trump has been terrifying us about a huge national crime epidemic, it's time to mention that we have a doozy in Arkansas. There's been nothing like it in at least a hundred years.

An apology from McCain

Ernest Dumas 9/6/18 3:00am

What you do with the lowest point in your life is probably going to define you for the rest of your days. So it was with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose funeral Saturday will be the iconic religious spectacle of our time, though probably not the great national awakening he hoped it would be.

Leslie Rutledge: do not rehire

Ernest Dumas 8/30/18 3:00am

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge looks like she will survive revelations from her personnel file that she was a very poor public employee a decade ago when she was supposed to be representing children caught up in family troubles.

The joy of tax cuts

Ernest Dumas 8/23/18 3:00am

No greater joy can be experienced in a legislative body at any level than to cut taxes, especially when the beneficiaries are businesses and the well-to-do

Politics and the court

Ernest Dumas 8/16/18 3:00am

When they say that confirming a Supreme Court justice is about the Constitution, they mean it's about politics. It's always about politics, at least in the modern era.

The real Q plot?

Ernest Dumas 8/9/18 3:00am

Could "they" be right that President Trump and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are not really at war but are secret collaborators who have a grand plot that will end with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in striped prison suits and Trump as the national savior?

$$$ over health

Ernest Dumas 8/2/18 3:00am

More than 7,000 Arkansans are about to lose their medical insurance because they aren't holding down steady jobs or else they are so aimless and disconnected from today's digital-savvy world that they don't know what is happening to them.

Ernest Dumas

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