Don’t forget about these beauts
DOES THE world really need more professional politicians? That could be what you’d get, Mr. and Mrs. Arkansas, if Proposed Amendment No. 2 passes November 4th. This proposition would have the Arkansas legislature meet every year instead of every two years. Which would give the Ledge twice as much opportunity to hand out appropriations, distribute patronage, legislate unnecessarily, collect even more per diems, and generally make mischief.
We have a better idea: Save all that money.
Why are annual sessions needed? If there’s an emergency, or just a change in the state’s financial outlook, the governor can call a special session. Do lawmakers really need the additional pay that bad?
Yes, we know the proposed new annual session would be limited to budgetary matters. But can’t you just imagine the non-germane legislation this change would invite, the resulting court cases, and general confusion? In addition to the usual grabbiness now multiplied by two thanks to this additional session. Wheee! Happy Days Are Here Again.
Besides all that, we have a more profound objection to this constitutional amendment, a philosophical one that goes to the heart of what representative government should be in a republic that is fast morphing into a mass democracy where not the people but the full-time pols rule. Should we accelerate that unwholesome trend by replacing the citizen-legislator with the full-time lawmaker?
State legislators aren’t, or at least they shouldn’t be, United States senators responsible for representing entire states and focusing on a whole range of great national issues from foreign policy to federal taxation. Now that’s a full-time job. But state legislators should be of the people. They should be full-time farmers, bankers, teachers, lawyers, insurance salesmen and candlestick makers. That is, they need to keep their day jobs.
A state legislator should be somebody you see at church. Or in the produce section. That way, you can give your legislators a piece of your mind. Or slap ’em on the back and say what a wonderful job they’re doing—if and when they finally repeal that dadburned grocery tax in full.
Those state senators and reps won’t be at church or in the produce section if they’re away in Little Rock, attending still another annual session of spending-andgetting. Keep them at home. Where the rest of us can keep an eye on ’em. And where they’ll need to fully participate in the life of the community they’re supposed to represent.
Vote Against Proposed Amendment No. 2.
BACK IN the 1990s, somebody asked Edwin Edwards, the onceupon-a-time governor of Louisiana, if he was going to play the state’s new lottery. No thanks, he said. Because the odds were terrible. (He was a gambler and is a felon, but he’s no fool.)
On the ballot this time around, you won’t see just the names of potential presidents, state senators and U.S. congressmen, but a handful of amendments to the state constitution. Thanks to Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter and 91,000 some-odd signatures, you’ll get to vote on whether to have an Arkansas lottery. Should you chance a vote on it? Our considered editorial opinion: No thanks.
If electronic poker is the crack cocaine of the gambling world, then a lottery is a gateway drug. Once the state constitution allows a lottery, how long before Arkansas must have casinos, too, and riverboat gambling? We can just see the scratch-off tickets littering the roadways, the way they do today down in Louisiana. This isn’t just an economic issue, it’s a cultural one, a quality-of-life issue. Is this the kind of get-something-for-nothing ethos we want to encourage in Arkansas, to raise our kids with, and make part of our daily life and mores?
Not that there isn’t an economic downside to a lottery, too. These days especially, with the economy slowing, businesses like bowling alleys and miniature golf courses are worried every time they open for the day. Will this day be worse than yesterday? Will anybody show up? Folks’ entertainment dollars are not infinite. Never have been. But nowadays a trip to the roller rink or the pizza joint may have to be put off till (much) later. A lottery would suck those dollars right out of circulation. And not just those dollars. Every buck that goes for lottery tickets isn’t going for food, shelter and clothing. Not to mention books, music lessons and sporting goods. The racing season in Hot Springs is bad enough for local merchants around the state; should we set up a lottery to drain away their business, too?
Talk about a regressive tax, a lot of the folks who’d pay this one are flat-out desperate. Playing with the rent money. Or worse.
Those folks who have a ton of money to blow on legal gambling just for the heck of it can go to Vegas or visit the boats in various surrounding states. They’ll go to the places with the cheap buffets and the flashing lights. Not the local convenience store. What a state lottery is, is a voluntary tax on the poor and ignorant. And one more spur to the country’s gambling addiction, which already afflicts entirely too many of us. For a lottery is a public health issue, too. Pass this amendment and get ready to open a whole new slew of Gamblers Anonymous chapters.
Supposedly the money raised by the lottery would go only to fund college scholarships for Arkansas students. That’s a good intention. But you know what the road to the Other Place is paved with. Louisiana’s lottery was supposed to benefit education, too. We haven’t heard much about that state leading the Union in innovations in education, have you?
It’s just too easy for a state legislature, even if it reserves lottery money for education, to cut other funds that otherwise would have gone to college scholarships. Arkansas’ legislature hasn’t even been able to do away with all of the grocery tax. Would you trust it with all this lottery money? And don’t get us started on the sizeable new bureaucracy it would take to regulate this new Arkansas industry and addiction—and all those bureaucrats would get their cut of the take before any college students did.
Vote Against Proposed Amendment No. 3.
THERE’S A reason supporters of a proposal to ban unmarried couples from being foster parents put that “unmarried couples” language in there. Because just to come out and say “homosexual couples” might have run into a Supreme Court gavel. But that’s what this is all about.
We’d be tempted to shrug off Initiated Act 1 as just another one of those ballot initiatives to make people feel better about themselves by putting others down. Remember the proposal by Secure Arkansas to keep ILLEGAL ALIENS! from . . . um . . . Well, we’re still not sure what that proposal would have done—and neither are the legal scholars—except clog up the state’s constitution. Thankfully, that petition didn’t get enough signatures to make it onto the ballot. But this Proposed Initiated Act is more than just another exercise in stirring up bad feelings; it could harm children by denying them good foster homes.
Let the professionals in the state’s Department of Human Services, together with the courts who review their recommendations, decide who’s fit to be a foster parent.
Vote Against Initiated Act No. 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment