From: hooker@aristotle.ils.mwu.edu ( BOB HOOKER)
Subject: Re: Bush's attack on Clinton's Arkansas have some holes
Organization: ILS
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 18:27:57 GMT

In article <clinton-arkansasUR4d2_2SQ@clarinet.com>, clarinews@clarinet.com
(STEPHEN BUEL) writes:
> 
>  
>  _U_P_I _N_e_w_s_F_e_a_t_u_r_e
>  
> 	LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (UPI) - President Bush turned up the heat on his
> Democratic opponent last week, aiming at Bill Clinton's record as
> governor in a series of harshly critical speeches delivered in a six-
> state encirclement of Arkansas.
> 	Bush denounced the governor's record in Arkansas on crime, civil
> rights, taxation and the environment. Backed up with a wide range of
> statistics, some of the president's assertions pointed to legitimate
> chinks in the governor's armor.
> 	But many of Bush's criticisms, while technically correct, created a
> misleading portrait of the Clinton record and underscored the problems
> inherent in attempting to make quantitative comparisons between Arkansas
> and the rest of the nation.
> 	Some seemed not so much the fault of the governor as of the endemic
> poverty which has characterized Arkansas for its entire 156 years of
> statehood.
> 	Consider the president's comments on Clinton's crime-fighing record.
> 	``Arkansas ranks near rock bottom in nearly every per capita law-
> enforcement expenditure,'' Bush said in Springfield, Mo. ``For prisons,
> 46th. For judicial and legal systems, 50th. And when it comes to
> spending for police officers, Arkansas ranks 49th.''
> 	While no one in Arkansas government was inclined to dispute those
> numbers last week, a prison spokesman was happy to argue that low
> correctional spending is something the state should actually be proud
> of.
> 	David White, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction,
> said the last national comparison he saw ``indicates that Arkansas has
> the lowest cost per inmate, per day of any system in the nation.''
> 	Citing figures from the Criminal Justice Institute, White said
> Arkansas' cost of slightly more than $25 compares quite favorably to the
> national average of more than $48 or the federal prison average of $49.
> 	``We see that as a positive, not a negative,'' he said.
> 	White said Arkansas is able to keep its daily per inmate costs low by
> requiring all of medically able inmates to work in the Correction
> Department's extensive system of prison farms and industries. The
> department keeps costs low by raising most of its own food and selling
> still more outside the department, and by producing income from other
> non-farm industries, White said.
> 	A related problem exists with the president's assertion that ``most
> inmates in Arkansas serve less than one-fifth of their sentence behind
> bars. That's the worst record in the entire nation.''
> 	While White didn't dispute those figures either, he pointed out that
> inmates who aren't eligible for parole are not counted in state-by-state
> comparisons of prison sentences served. Therefore, since Arkansas
> sentences criminals to life without parole for a variety of different
> offenses -- unlike some other states -- White said his state fares poorly
> in the statistics used by the president precisely because it is tough on
> crime.
> 	In a straight comparison of the length of an average prisoner's time
> spent in prison, White said his state's average of two years and six
> months compares favorably to the national average of two years.
> 	On the issue of taxes, the statistics used by Bush were equally
> precise and yet equally murky. The president said Clinton had more than
> doubled state spending since 1983, and was particularly critical of the
> governor's reliance upon sales taxes, which he called ``the taxes which
> hurt poor and working families the most.''
> 	Clinton has indeed raised taxes a number of times during the last
> decade. But as the federal government has eliminated revenue sharing
> payments and thrust the burden of paying for many programs back upon the
> states, so have many Republican governors like Pete Wilson of
> California.
> 	More to the point perhaps, in spite of all the tax increase Arkansas
> still ranks 49th in per capita state and local taxes, according to the
> 1992 copy of ``States In Profile.''
> 	Bush was also critical of Clinton on the environment.
> 	``If you go swimming in that Arkansas River, keep your mouth closed
> and hold your nose,'' Bush said. ``They are doing a terrible job on
> pollution.'' Later, in Longview, Texas, he said ``the rivers are so
> polluted the fish glow in the dark.''
> 	Officials at the Arkansas Health Department have, in fact,
> recommended against swimming in the Arkansas River for as long as anyone
> can remember. But the reason is not pollution but the undertow. ``He's
> using some scare tactics there,'' said department spokesman Phil
> Scroggins.
> 	``The more the day went on, the more his hyperbole grew,'' said
> Betsey Wright, deputy chair of the Clinton campaign, who compiled last
> week a lengthy rebuttal of several of the Bush assertions.
> 	``When he went on about glowing fish, I nearly fell out. I remember
> when he came down here for the BassMasters Classic. They weren't glowing
> then.'' As vice president, Bush served as master of ceremonies of a
> trophy bass tournament on the very Arkansas River he denigrated Tuesday.
> 	The point the president's charges was to show the voters there's no
> Arkansas Miracle. ``Here's a guy with the gall to promise the moon to
> America while the sky is falling down in his own backyard,'' Bush said
> in Springfield.
> 	But on many of the topics the president selected, if the sky is truly
> falling down in Arkansas' backyard, it's been falling for Democratic and
> Republican governors alike.
> 	``I think it's unprecedented,'' Wright said. ``I've never heard of a
> president campaign against a state before.''
> 
> 
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