Who Gives a Duck? HB1417
News and Analysis on the 2025 Legislative Session
Feb 12, 2025
NEWS.
The 2025 legislative session is underway, and I promise you, this is not satire.
A representative wanted to name a conference room after the Mallard duck. Apparently, you can’t name a conference room after something that is not a “state entity.” Hence, the bill seeks to make the duck an official Arkansas entity.
Now comes the debate.
“Why don’t we change the state bird? Don’t you think that changing the state bird to be the mallard and having it as the state duck would be confusing? But mallards don’t reside in Arkansas. They are transient. Therefore, they should not be an official Arkansas entity.”
Finally, “there is a difference between a duck and a bird.”
ANALYSIS.
As I watched this debate unfold, I was reminded of the scene in Top Gun 2 where Maverick and Rooster shoot a missile at 5th generation fighter and the plane does some crazy aeronautical maneuver to evade the missile. Being completely marveled by this never seen before event, the quote of the moment was spawned.
“What the [d]uck was that?”
Is this the highest order of state business? Is this what my tax dollars are paying for, to debate the merits of a duck, which is not a bird? I am paying the electricity and heat bill at the capital. I am paying the legislators a daily per diem? I am paying a salary to these people. And finally, please explain to me the difference between a duck and a bird, because I must have been out that day in 5th grade biology.
Then, Representative K. Brown runs a bill to end affirmative action and it fails, with Representative David Kitty asking which court struck down affirmative action, “was it the state Supreme Court?” And this guy is the special envoy to the Arkansas attorney general?
I want my money back.
Attorney. America First. Sued Hunter Biden for child support. Represented President Trump in the 2020 Wisconsin election challenge. Former attorney for the Wisconsin Special Counsel. An official “Tough Cookie” per President Trump.
My question comes from The Marx brothers “viaduct?” Groucho “Vi not a chicken?”. After-all Arkansas is produces 1.1 billion chickens a year. And Tyson might scratch together a few bucks for the logo. The cost for them would be chicken feed.
I am still trying to reconcile how a duck is not a bird or is somehow different from a bird. The Representative who made the statement, his last name was “Hawk,” which caused me to conclude that if anyone would know that there as a distinguishable difference between a bird and a duck, it would be a guy whose last name is “Hawk.”
I suppose that this phenomenon with ducks and birds is “one of life’s great mysteries.”