Serious Problems In State Seem Hidden By Virus Resurgence

Today, Arkansans, I am afraid, are a little confused.

And our politicians, I know, are muddled in a ‘covid hangover’ and political filing season that has their respective eyes off the ball of state government.

There is little good news out there – even if Governor Asa Hutchinson and his economic development staff trotted out the record low unemployment numbers that show the state’s unemployment at 3 percent.

Somehow, I feel that perhaps only 3 percent are applying for unemployment benefits because many of those who are unemployed have run through their benefits to be provided and yet still haven’t found work and are still unemployed.

That old government line “Just because I said it, doesn’t make it so,” comes to mind very quickly when state officials brag about record low unemployment rates.

With all the “Help Needed” signs, ads and inducements for new employees I am seeing at every level of industry, including state jobs, how can this new record low unemployment statistic really be true?

Yet, all of us focused on the 14-25 deaths a day from the virus in the past two weeks, with a grand total of almost 10,000 Arkansas deaths from the pandemic over the last two years – how can we not focus more on getting people vaccinated?

Apparently, tired of all the incentives, pleas, advertisements and recommendations from medical, pastoral and even high-profile sports personalities in Arkansas – nothing is boosting our state’s sorry vaccination rate – hovering well below the national averages.

Gov. Hutchinson, appearing on several recent national television talk shows and network interviews, has apparently all but given up, parroting that old line of personal freedoms and misinformation trumping all common sense and scientific data.

His weekly covid briefings, which seem to be on the same format, just data, data, data, need some sort of lift – to gain any possible attention from the public. I do understand his caution of appearing outside the usual covid meeting spaces and not taking these sessions on the road, as the “freedom” fighters will crash his conference.

Two major concerns, outside the daily covid numbers, this week were serious to me as a casual observer of the operations of state government.

First, there is a real security crisis at the state’s most serious lock-up, the Tucker Unit at the Department of Corrections. Solomon Graves, the Director of the State Department of Corrections, says the “system is managed by grace,” not necessarily by the best corrections practices. In other words, there is a crisis that is not being dealt with.

Some of the state’s inmates, those serving for the most brutal and dangerous offenses at the Tucker Unit, are being guarded by a very low and depleted workforce. Prison officials are asking for a reduction in beds at the Tucker Unit (because of low staffing and some construction/renovation) to be dropped from 910 beds to 612 beds for an unspecified time period.

That is just the kind of news our overcrowded jails in Benton and Washington Counties want to hear from the Department of Corrections.

Another problem that is alarming me is the prevalent use of Dicamba, that synthetic herbicide which, when applied, “drifts” to nearby fields and kills other non- dicamba developed crops and will even kill trees and bushes upon contact.

The state has seen a surge of complaints from those who have been harmed by this synthetic herbicide rise from 137 in 2020 to 360 cases last year with 266 of those “harm” cases being verified.

The spray ending date was extended from late spring to midsummer last year and will be extended until midsummer this year, says a plant board scientist who calls the extended spraying dates “a serious mistake.”

Since Dicamba first appeared in 2017, there have been 1,500 complaints about its poison- like effect on non-dicamba development soybeans.

This is putting the state’s 3 million acres of soybeans, our No. 1 export crop, plus cotton and other row crops in serious peril.

But little has been done about stopping this chemical scourge on a major food crop from Arkansas.

Yet the covid rages on and our politicians sure seem out of answers.