Wednesday Wrap Up

This would not have happened if the Pulaski County jail was open!!!

An article in today’s paper on page 3B profiles exactly why the Pulaski County jail needs to be open to more than just offenders accused of violent felonies. On Monday in the heart of Hillcrest, some deranged idiot attacked a couple from New Mexico for having lunch with a black woman. The suspect (also black) approached the 3 people seated at an outdoor table at Leo’s Greek Castle on Kavanaugh and asked “What are you doing with these white devils?”

As the three were trying to leave the restaurant, the suspect attacked the white couple with a piece of rebar breaking the man’s arm and a hand on his wife.

The piece of crap that did this has a long criminal history and had been cited on Sunday (the day before the attack) with failure to appear in court. He was cited Sunday and told to be in court on Tuesday.

Both Sgt. Terry Hastings of the LRPD and Little Rock District Judge Lee Munson both stated in the article that he would have been in jail on Monday for the failure to appear charge waiting to see a judge and thus the assault would not have happened. Judge Munson further states he probably would have sentenced the suspect to jail time for the failure to appear.

I know that Pulaski County is about to have a special election for tax increases for the county jail but why can’t we do some things like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County Arizona?

I think if we set up an overflow tent city somewhere in the county, maybe at the jail complex or on the state fairgrounds near by plus take away all frills maybe we could squeeze those county tax dollars that much further. I know it takes money to run the jail but we need a solution NOW and I just don’t think throwing money at the problem is going to solve it.

I could care less what Amnesty International says about Sheriff Joe… Most of these people deserve to be in jail and should not be coddled. They should be earning their keep somehow.

The part that worries me is the only candidate for Sheriff that is talking like this is that crazy Deeeeeewayne Graham. That guy is nuts, probably more so than Tommy Robinson…

END OF A LANDMARK

I see that Maxine’s Tap Room had a fire last night. Oh man, I spend many a night there back in college. This has been a rough month for the family that owns that joint. First Maxine passes away and now this. The good thing is that niece that is currently running the bar says that she will rebuild and re-open. Since the bar was made of cinder block, its probably ok structurally and just needs to be re-done on the inside…

Trouble on PBS Kids Sprout.....

Well it would appear that the folks at PBS maybe be hypocrites of sort….

There are news reports of the PBS Kids Sprout network firing the host of “The Good Night Show” because she appeared in some spoof commercials that parodied absence PSA’s.

Melanie Martinez was the host of the show and notified network officials when shorts she filmed for technicalvirgin.com were showing up on YouTube. The folks at PBS decided that dialog of the parodies was inappropriate and would undermine her character’s credibility with the audience according to a statement issued by network president Sandy Wax so they fired her.

I think this is pretty laughable that “liberal” (….er excuse me, I mean “progressive”) PBS that they would hold such “high” moral standards. I mean come one, you guys are about as liberal as you can get. I remember specifically during the month of December 2005, there was never a mention of Christmas or Channukah but at almost every program interlude there was a buffer in which an African American kid was dancing around saying “Happy Kwanzaa.”

My 3 year old watches a lot of Sprout so I saw this buffer a lot. From what I remember it was pretty much their standard buffer between the programs and since the programs are 10 to 15 minutes in length, this buffer was played 4 to 6 times an hour. Our TV is on Sprout most of the time for our son and not one time did I hear anything about “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Channukah.” By the end of December it was really starting to piss me off…

Getting back to the parodies, the two that I saw were pretty funny IMHO. I don’t see how these would damage her “credibility” unless they were made while she was employed by PBS. Judging from the video, she looks younger in the video than she does today so they were most likely done a few years ago. If Melanie were still on the air, I would not have a problem letting my son continue to watch her show…

I guess the ‘ol double standard is alive and well on the far left…ok and the far right….

Signing off from the “middle of the road”
Arkansas Blogger

Its Friday!

Arkansas Public Smoking Ban…
Apparently, the statewide ban on public smoking which goes into effect on July 21st but the rules and regulations as dictated by the state Board of Health will not be approved until July 27th at the earliest.

Once they are approved, they have to be forwarded to the Governor for his approval and then sent to the Secretary of State and put into effect 10 to 15 days later.

Nothing like government being on top of things….

University Mall Woes
It looks like a couple of city directors will be traveling to Indianapolis to visit with the folks at Simon properties over the state of University Mall.

Simon (who also own McCain Mall in North Little Rock) has let University Mall fall into severe disrepair and has an occupancy rate of less than 50%. I will admit the last time I was in that mall which was probably late last year, it was pretty crappy. Most of the stores in the mall are crap especially when compared to Park Plaza mall that is essentially across the street. The only reason I was there was to find an outfit for my Grandmother at MM Cohn because they seem to carry a lot of clothes that people from her generation seem to like.

I think Simon has let this mall go to crap because they are pissed about the whole Summit Mall fiasco. Several years ago, they tried to ram-rod through the approval to build a new mega-mall in west little rock and tried to claim at the same time that University or Park Plaza would not lose any tenants. Of course, several of the upscale retailers did state that if Summit Mall was built, they would move there and not open a second location.

An upscale shopping center (its supposed to have a Williams & Sonoma, Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware) is going in very close to University Mall so I don’t see why Simon just doesn’t either rehab University or raze it and build something even better in its place. I know it would be cheaper to follow the Wal-Mart method and build at a new location and abandon the old one but Mid-town Little Rock is going through a revival right now and I think this would tie in very nicely…

Budget Surplus Take 2…
I am very pleased to read today that Governor Huckabee says that not refuding at least part of the budget surplus is inexcusable. Apparently a Los Angeles Times report from June indicated that many other states ended the year with a budget surplus as well.

I guess my big question is how much of a rebate would that be for each taxpayer? I saw a blurb on the local news today that was estimating an average rebate of $140 per taxpayer. I guess if they are going to this route, I would like to see it in the form of a tax credit so the bums who are not paying their taxes can't their their money unless they file a tax return...

Thursday Wrap Up.....

Kenneth Lay….YOU GOT OFF EASY!!!

Kenneth W. Lay, the former chairman of CEO of Enron who was convicted on May 25 of six counts of fraud and conspiracy and four counts of bank fraud conveniently died near Aspen, Colorado on Wednesday.  He was free on a $5 million bail and was supposed to have been sentenced on October 23 where he faced spending the rest of his life in jail since each count carried a 5 to 10 years sentence.

I find it very hard to be believe that a CEO of a major corporation would not be aware of millions of dollars being stolen from the company he helped set up.  I also have very little sympathy for him since his fortune had shrunk from a peak of $200 million down to around $20 million during Enron’s implosion.  I also find it hard to believe when he claimed during his trial that his net worth has shrunk to -$250,000.

In my opinion, this SOB got off too easy.  He should have been sent to federal prison to rot and had all of his wealth stripped away and given to the employees who lost their pensions and retirement from the Enron collapse because they were not sell their shares as the stock plummeted but the executives were able to dump their to save themselves.

Arkansas State Surplus….The Legislature is about to go on a drunken spending spree

Once again, the State of Arkansas has a rather large surplus at the end of the fiscal year that ended on June 30th.  Right now the state has $721 million in surplus funds and had a surplus of $420 million for fiscal year 2005-2006 alone.  Instead of wasting this money away on stupid pet projects, I would propose the following uses:

• Set aside a large portion of the surplus (maybe half) for a “Rainy Day Fund” maybe in some sort of interest bearing account so it can accumulate in value over time and use the interest for projects.


• Increase funding for the Department of Corrections and Department of Community Punishment to decrease the backlog of state prisoners in county jails.  This would help a lot of the counties (especially Pulaski) when their own jail operations by freeing up jail beds.


• Increase the amount that the State contributes to health insurance for state employees and teachers so offset the annual 10% increase they have been seeing in the last few years.  The teachers have it much worse than the state employees because what the state and school district apply towards the insurance premium is significantly less than what the state contributes for state employees.


• Eliminate the sales tax on groceries WITHOUT increasing the general sales tax rate.  If the state has a surplus of $400 million for FY2005-2006, I think they could do without the $100 million or so that would result from eliminating the sales tax on groceries.


• Increase economic development funding both for marketing and tax credits for new businesses.  If the state could provide some better tax incentives like other states have been doing, we just might get that auto assembly plant in Marion that everybody wants.


• Increase bio-fuels tax credits.  We should be pushing bio-fuels more and more to lessen our dependence on foreign oil especially since bio-diesel is made with Arkansas soybeans.

I do not think any of the surplus should be spent on public education though.  Its not that I am opposed to public education (I just don’t trust them to give my children a proper education because the teachers unions and district administrators are out of control, so my children will be attending private schools), its just that not matter how much money you give a school district, the superintendent is still going to say its not enough.

Look at the Rogers School District, they are probably the “wealthiest” school district in the state and they sued the State of Arkansas last year saying that they were not being given enough money based after education funding was increased by hundreds of millions of dollars…

I know they are looking at spending several hundred million dollars to repair and replace school buildings but a lot of them fell into disrepair because the districts would not maintain them in the first place.  Why should it fall on the state because an individual district is unwilling to be a good steward of the public funds entrusted to it?