Crackpot Republican Asa Hutchinson Is On A Killing Spree In Arkansas

I first heard about Asa Hutchinson, now governor of Arkansas. in 1986 when he ran for the U.S. Senate against Dale Bumpers. Bumpers, a moderate Democrat, pulverized the radical right Hutchinson, winning all but 6 of Arkansas' 75 counties in a 433,122 (62.3%) to 262,313 (37.7%) rout. Ten years later, Hutchinson's brother, Tim, left his congressional seat open to run for the Senate. The two brothers both won their races. He was reelected twice-- the Democrats not running candidates against him-- and in 1998 served as an impeachment manager against Bill Clinton. He left Congress in 2001 after Bush appointed him to run the Drug Enforcement Administration and then the Border and Transportation Security Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. When he returned to Arkansas he jumped back into electoral politics and was immediately defeated when he ran for governor in 2006 by Democrat Mike Beebe.

He ran again in 2014 and won and was reelected in 2018. He's generally been considered one of the most far right extremist of any governor in America. And this week he showed why again. Every county the state has coronavirus cases and statewide there are around 1,000 confirmed cases, the most in Pulaski, Jefferson, Cleburne, Crittenden, Faulkner and Garland counties. Hutchinson is one of the right-wing nut-jobs who has refused to impose stay-at-home orders but he decided to go further than the other right-wing nut-jobs. On Tuesday, Hutchinson told mayors of cities that did impose stay-at-home orders that they are out of bounds and have no authority to do any such thing, likely condemning thousands in Arkansas to death.

He spoke at a news conference with Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., who said he had asked the governor to impose such an order on the capital city.

"I've had discussions with a number of different mayors, and I think it points to the need to have a statewide policy," Hutchinson said when asked if other mayors had made similar requests.

"If you have a business in one community, it impacts others."

He spoke just after officials announced the deaths of two more Arkansans from the coronavirus, raising its death toll in the state to 18.

The number of identified cases rose by 70, to 997.

In the health emergency declaration that Hutchinson issued on March 11, the day the state's first case was discovered, the Republican governor barred cities and counties from issuing "quarantine regulations of commerce or travel" except "by authority of the Secretary of Health."

Another executive order Hutchinson issued Saturday clarifies that cities and counties can take "reasonable measures" to limit the virus's spread by closing parks and facilities and imposing curfews, as long as they don't prevent people from getting to work, acquiring food and other necessities, walking pets or exercising while staying at least 6 feet away from other people.

"We have given them additional discretion in terms of curfews, but we want that coordinated with my office so that we're all on the same path," Hutchinson said Tuesday.

"We have discussions on this. Sometimes there's agreement, sometimes there's disagreement, but that's what brings us success and lets us work through this together."

Scott said he speaks to Hutchinson at least once a day if not twice.

"From the city of Little Rock's perspective yes, I believe that is what's best for Little Rock," Scott said of a stay-at-home order. "But that may not be what is best for Fort Smith.

"And so as mayor of the city, that's something that we desire; however, we are working within the confines of the current laws and great partnership with the governor."

We'll watch Arkansas closely from here on and see if Governor Hutchinson's gamble with the lives of his state's citizens works or not.

UPDATE: Kansas Republicans Too

So not just crazy Hutchinson. The Republican leaders of Kansas' legislature are also excited to see how many Kansans they can kill. So far there are only 1,046 confirmed cases and 38 deaths in Kansas, most of them in Johnson, Wyandotte and Sedgewick counties. Kansans elected a Democratic governor but unfortunately leaving the right-wing crazies in charge of the state legislature so... yesterday they overturned her executive order limiting attendance at church gatherings. Do you doubt that the GOP really is a death cult?

"The gun-lobby goons were at it again" (Dana Milbank)

By amazing coincidence, the "independent" report commissioned by the NRA, brandished here by old-school loon former Rep. "Itchy Asa" Hutchinson at Tuesday's big armed press conference, is solidly percent behind the its loony scheme to make the schools "safe" by filling them with armed goons. One difference: The "independent" task force wants those goons to be professionals, rejecting the vigilantes envisioned by the NRA.

"By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don't carry guns to news conferences -- and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA's Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn't pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn't going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower."

-- Dana Milbank, in his WaPo column yesterday,
"The NRA's disarming plan toarm schools"

"The purchase of Asa Hutchinson did not and will not prevent the N.R.A. from buying a single additional congressman in the future. Period."

-- the NRA's "Crazy Wayne" LaPierre, quoted in the Borowitz
Report "N.R.A. Defends Purchase of Former Congressman"

by Ken

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank surely knows how to set a scene. The scene in this case is the press conference at which "Call Me Crazy" Wayne LaPierre announced the National Rifle Association's uneagerly awaited plan for school insecurity, which is to turn the nation's schools into free-fire zones. Hey, as long as there are guns firing, Crazy Wayne is happy.

The quote in the post title is the opening line of Dana's column yesterday, "The NRA's disarming plan toarm schools." From there he proceeds to a reminder that the NRA's security guards "gained notoriety earlier this year when, escorting NRA officials to a hearing, they were upbraided by Capitol authorities for pushing cameramen."

The thugs were back Tuesday when the NRA rolled out its "National School Shield" -- the gun lobbyists' plan to get armed guards in public schools -- and this time they were packing heat.

About 20 of them -- roughly one for every three reporters -- fanned out through the National Press Club, some in uniforms with gun holsters exposed, others with earpieces and bulges under their suit jackets.

In a spectacle that officials at the National Press Club said they had never seen before, the NRA gunmen directed some photographers not to take pictures, ordered reporters out of the lobby when NRA officials passed and inspected reporters' briefcases before granting them access to the news conference.

The antics gave new meaning to the notion of disarming your critics.

By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don't carry guns to news conferences -- and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA's Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn't pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn't going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower.

Thus has it gone so far in the gun debate in Washington. . . .

Dana seems unsurprised by the faded chances for any sort of meaningful congressional action to curb the gun craziness. The momentum is all going in the other direction. But then, we know who creates that momentum.

If the NRA has its way, as it usually does, states will soon be weakening their gun laws to allow more guns in schools. The top two recommendations Hutchinson announced Tuesday involved firearms in the schoolhouse. The first: "training programs" for "designated armed school personnel." The second: "adoption of model legislation by individual states to allow for armed school personnel."

Hutchinson claimed that his task force, which came up with these ideas, had "full independence" from the NRA. By coincidence, the proposals closely matched those announced by the NRA before it formed and funded the task force. The task force did scale back plans to protect schools with armed volunteer vigilantes, opting instead for arming paid guards and school staff -- at least one in every school. States and school districts "are prepared" to pay for it, Hutchinson declared.

The task force garnished the more-guns recommendations with some good ideas, such as better fencing, doors and security monitoring for schools, and more mental-health intervention. But much of that is in the overall Senate legislation that the NRA is trying to kill.

To close his case, Hutchinson introduced a secret weapon, "special guest" Mark Mattioli, the father of one of the Newtown, Conn., victims. Mattioli told reporters that there had been "nine school shootings since Newtown" but that Newtown was "off the bell curve, if you will, with respect to the impact."

Perhaps that's because the Newtown killer had a military-style gun with a 30-round magazine?

And if the NRA gets its way, says Dana, "American schoolchildren may grow accustomed to the sort of scene Hutchinson caused Tuesday, protected by more armed guards than a Third World dictator."

Hutchinson, pressed by reporters about the armed goons, said: "You go into a mall, there is security. And so there is security here at the National Press Club."

A reporter asked Hutchinson what he was afraid of.

"There's nothing I'm afraid of. I'm very wide open," Hutchinson replied, separated from his unarmed questioners by an eight-foot buffer zone, a lectern, a raised podium, a red-velvet rope and a score of gun-toting men. "There's nothing I'm nervous about."

SAY, WHO IS THIS ASA HUTCHINSON BOZO ANYWAYS?

For a bit of background, as well as some controversy regarding the NRA's new use of Itchy Asa as a front loon, we turn to the crack investigators at the Borowitz Report.

N.R.A. Defends Purchase of Former Congressman

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- The National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre today defended his decision to purchase the former congressman Asa Hutchinson, after an outspoken N.R.A. member complained that the organization should be using its funds to buy current congressmen only.

Shortly after Mr. Hutchinson appeared at a press conference in Washington to present the N.R.A.'s plan to arm teachers and other school personnel, N.R.A. dissident Tracy Klugian blasted the purchase of the former Arkansas representative.

"Members of the N.R.A. fork over millions of dollars to this organization," he said. "That money should be used to buy people who are actually in Congress now, not some has-been like Hutchinson who doesn't even have a vote anymore."

Mr. Klugian said that as he watched former Rep. Hutchinson at the podium, "It made my blood boil, especially when I thought about all of the current congressmen out there who are totally for sale."

Not long after Mr. Klugian made his comments, Mr. LaPierre pushed back: "The purchase of Asa Hutchinson did not and will not prevent the N.R.A. from buying a single additional congressman in the future. Period."

While refusing to divulge the purchase price for Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. LaPierre reassured the N.R.A. membership, "We got a very good deal on Asa. There wasn't exactly a bidding war."

In a separate statement, Mr. Hutchinson said, "A free and lively exchange of views is what makes the N.R.A. such a great organization -- and is why I'm so proud to be owned by it."

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Reporters are starting to look into Rudy G's influence-peddling, which means that some reporters are starting to do their job

Yes, it's the famous Giuliani Partners, in 2004--with Rudy's right-hand guy Bernie (where else?) at his right, before moving on to his new career as a public embarrassment.

"It was all because of Giuliani. And he got to take the money."
--Ed Bisch, "whose son died of an OxyContin overdose," as reported by Barry Meier and Eric Lipton in today's New York Times, and who "said that he believed that [OxyContin maker] Purdue [Pharma] got a free pass for years thanks to Mr. Giuliani"

Okay, let's stipulate that the Mayor of 9/11 didn't do anything illegal, and possibly even--by prevailing standards--nothing egregiously unethical. There are even suggestions that in allowing his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to take on Purdeu Pharma as a client, and in playing an active role himself in pushing back against a rising tide of public outcry and legal jeopardy, was acting honorably.

"Everything I did with Giuliani Partners has been totally legal, totally ethical," Mr. Giuliani recently told The Associated Press. "There's nothing for me to explain about it. We've acted honorably, decently."

In the OxyContin case, Mr. Giuliani's supporters suggest that as a cancer survivor himself, he was driven by a noble goal: to keep the company's proven pain reliever available to the widest circle of sufferers.

"I understand the pain and distress that accompanies illness," Mr. Giuliani said at the time. "I know that proper medications are necessary for people to treat their sickness and improve their quality of life."

But the NYT reporters, in their extended look at Giuliani Partners' and Giuliani's hugely profitable involvement with Purdue Pharma, "the company's first and longest-running client," suggest that it "provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune."

A former top federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani participated in two meetings between Purdue officials and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency investigating the company. Giuliani Partners took on the job of monitoring security improvements at company facilities making OxyContin, an issue of concern to the D.E.A.

As a celebrity, Mr. Giuliani helped the company win several public relations battles, playing a role in an effort by Purdue to persuade an influential Pennsylvania congressman, Curt Weldon, not to blame it for OxyContin abuse.

Purdue turned to Giuliani Partners in 2002, six years into

what D.E.A. officials described as perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse.

As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead.

Complicating the company's problem was a rising tide of charges regarding not just its marketing of OxyContin but what the reporters describe as D.E.A.'s inspectors' finding of "widespread security and record-keeping problems at the company's manufacturing plants." Giuliani Partners "became involved in every aspect of the company's problem."

Of course, to deal with Purdue's plant security issues, Giuliani Partners could deploy its own Mr. Security, Bernie "Love Nest" Kerik, who of course hadn't yet become the public embarrassment we know and love. And Giuliani's own active participation--both publicly ("It is clear to us," Purdue lawyer Howard R. Udell was quoted as saying in a Giuliani Partners promotional brochure, "and we hope it is clear to the government, that Giuliani would not take an assignment with a company that he felt was acting in an improper way") and in the form of personal contact with government lawyers including D.E.A. chief Asa Hutchinson--seems to have been worth whatever Purdue paid, however much that was. "Giuliani Partners would not say how much Purdue had paid it, but one consultant to the drug maker estimated that Mr. Giuliani's firm had, in some years, earned several million dollars from the account."

The D.E.A. official in charge of the Purdue inquiry is said to have recommended a $20 million fine for the record-keeping problems. In 2004, two years into the Giuliani Partners pushback, the company paid a $2 million fine, naturally without admitting any wrongdoing.

About the one person the company couldn't neutralize was the fairly obscure U.S. attorney for western Virginia, John L. Brownlee.

For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse.

Clearly Giuliani and his clients expected Brownlee to be awed by Rudy's stature.

Between June and October 2006, Mr. Giuliani met or spoke with the prosecutor on six occasions. During those conversations, Mr. Giuliani was cordial but pointed in arguing against what he felt were flaws in the case.

Mr. Brownlee would not change course, though, even when the Purdue legal team appealed, unsuccessfully, at the 11th hour to his superiors at the Justice Department in Washington.

In October 2006, Mr. Brownlee told Mr. Giuliani and Purdue that he expected to ask for a grand jury indictment by the end of the month. Plea discussions ensued and Mr. Brownlee ultimately agreed that the three executives would not have to do jail time.

In the settlement, Purdue and the targeted executives agreed to pay $634.5 million, and the company "after years of denial and a high-profile public relations campaign, was forced to admit that it had misled doctors and patients.

Measured against Purdue's presumed billions in OxyContin profits, and especially in the absence of any jail time, a lot of people--including parents of children who had become casualties of OxyContin abuse--cried out that the company had bought its way out of much bigger trouble, with particular focus on the role of Giuliani, prompting this rather remarkable statement from U.S. District Court Judge James P. Jones: "It has been implied that because Mr. Giuliani is a prominent national politician, Purdue may have received a favorable deal from the government solely because of politics. I completely reject this claim."

Among those unpersuaded was Ed Bisch, whose son died of an OxyContin overdose. He's the fellow who said, "It was all because of Giuliani. And he got to take the money."

Indeed he did. As the Times reporters point out, growing attention has been paid recently to the clients serviced and services performed by Giuliani Partners:

Giuliani Partners carved out a lucrative niche in corporate consulting, crisis management and security.

In the process, Mr. Giuliani, a Brooklyn native whose legal career had largely been spent in government, became a corporate trouble-shooter with homes in the Hamptons and on the Upper East Side. According to financial disclosure forms filed in May, his net worth was more than $30 million.

Again, there may have been no illegal activity involved, and our Rudy insists there was nothing unethical either. But at the very least, it's unsavory. How many stories like the Purdue one await public airing? What it amounts to is the good old American practice of taking the money and running.

Well, maybe Rudy is entitled to cash in on his years of public service. It seems to me an appalling qualification for any future public office. Like the presidency, to pick a random example.

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