Monday, January 9, 2012
Monday, Monday
Posted by Max Brantley on Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:49 PM
A slow start to this the first full week in a while. Final note:
* TRAVELING IN STYLE TO BOWL GAMES: A friend of the Times reports a big SUV with Game and Fish Commission insignia barreled past him on the way back from Dallas over the weekend. He presumes the vehicle was returning from the Cotton Bowl, as he was. Or perhaps G&FC was relocating Canada geese to Texas for Commodore Hays. I'm running a check on the plate and its out-of-state use. UPDATE: The Tahoe was the personal vehicle of Commissioner George Dunklin. All commissioners receive courtesy Game and Fish plates, but the vehicle is his own and thus purely legit for bowl game trips.
Which reminds me: Another reader inquired on how Gov. Mike Beebe got to the Cotton Bowl, where the University of Arkansas beat Kansas State, and then the Go Daddy Bowl where the Arkansas State Red Wolves played. His office said he flew on private planes arranged by the respective universities. The donated transportation will be reported on the governor's statement of financial interest in 2013. The governor was joined on the Go Daddy flight by his son Kyle, two staff members, a state trooper and fellow ASU alum Shane and Debbie Broadway. The governor, chief of staff Morril Harriman and a trooper were on the UA flight from the governor's office. They referred me to UA for any other passengers. I've inquired. Harriman's wife joined the flight home.
PS — Hey. You. Those legislators with briefcases meeting at Anatole. Who threw the confab? You reporting? They reporting? Can I get a second for a Walmart rule? Didn't think so.
* INTERROGATING CHILDREN: The Memphis Commercial Appeal has an engrossing retelling of a Camden case in which a 12-year-old was convicted of killing his sister on the strength of a confession his defense contends was tricked out of the boy in a case where no other evidence implicated him. It's part of an ongoing debate on whether full videotaping should be required of the entire interrogation in homicide cases. The Camden youth was released after his confession was declared inadmissible. The Arkansas Supreme Court last summer proposed that interrogations should be recorded wherever practical. The proposal drew a tremendous public response. Mara Leveritt wrote at the time that the rule didn't go far enough. She tells me today that the court still hasn't decided. Perhaps it's time for more letters.
* BANK BOMB THREAT: Odd story out of Fayetteville, where police said a woman went to a bank branch with a bomb attached to her leg. She said she'd been kidnapped and rigged up with a bomb as part of a robbery attempt. Her husband was found tied up at her home. No robbery occurred. No bomb exploded. And, at last word in this account, no arrests.
* REPUBLICAN DEBATE: Who has the biggest guns, can pray the loudest, can cut the most taxes? From 5 until 6:30 p.m., you can watch three 4th District Republican candidates — Tom Cotton, Beth Anne Ranking and Marcus Richmond — try to outboast each other in debate live-streamed by Talk Business. One candidate is missing, John Cowart, currently serving in Afghanistan.
Opening statement nuggets:
Rankin — "Government eats freedom."
Cotton — Only in America could a Dardanelle Sand Lizard run for Congress.
Richmond — There are no silver spoons on a dairy farm, only rusty shovels.
Speaking of...
-
Beebe names Bunny Adcock to UCA Board of Trustees
May 16, 2012Gov. Mike Beebe has named Robert "Bunny" Adcock, a Conway banker, to the University of Central Arkanas Board of Trustees. /more/
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Rise in revenues means state spending increase
May 9, 2012An unexpected rise in state revenue will enable an increase in state spending in the final two months of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, Gov. Mike Beebe has announced. /more/
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Slowing the rise in health care spending
April 29, 2012Nobody's declaring victory yet, but there are enormous implications in the finding reported today that something may be finally arresting the rise in health care spending. /more/
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Resolved: Scott Roussel should resign from UCA Board
April 27, 2012The faculty Senate of the University of Central Arkansas yesterday adopted a resolution urging Scott Roussel to resign from the UCA Board of Trustees. /more/
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Sheffield Nelson schools Beebe on severance tax
April 6, 2012I never really expected Gov. Mike Beebe, who cut his teeth golfing with the lobby in the Senate, to be a supporter of the Sheffield Nelson-backed initiative to raise the pitifully low severance tax on natural gas. /more/
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Former forestry finance chief Robert Araiza retires
March 9, 2012Robert Araiza, the financial officer who was in the middle of the long-running controversy over financial shortfalls at the Arkansas Forestry Commission, has taken state retirement. /more/
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Missing Mike Huckabee
March 6, 2012Gov. Mike Beebe's office sent out a round of pardons today and they fit the pattern of his tenure — only six granted among 59 applications and then only for relatively minor offenses. /more/
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Talk among yourselves
March 3, 2012I'm off the web grid this morning outside Johnson City, Texas with only an iPhone for blogging. /more/
- More »
Comments (18)
Showing 1-18 of 18
RE the 2 car wreck at 4th and Scott.
Notice the white sedan would have made it to the side walk had a telephone poll not stopped them. Good thing a ped was not waiting on the sidewalk to cross the intersection.
Cars 0, Telephone polls 1.
like
dislike
The number one news item of the day, overlooked by Ark. Blog.
http://money.msn.com/stock-broker-guided/a…
>>BANK BOMB THREAT: Odd story out of Fayetteville, where police said a woman went to a bank branch with a bomb attached to her leg.<<
WRONG STORY LINK on the article
correct story link below
http://www.5newsonline.com/news/kfsm-bomb-…
“ TRAVELING IN STYLE TO BOWL GAMES”
You ain’t traveled to th’ Cotton Bowl in style till you’ve done it with my pal Robert in his little Mooney. He mighta invited the gov and Morril, too, but ain’t enough room in a little Mooney for egos that big. The story below about the Conway grandmother and granddaughter makes me sick. Bless that poor little girl. Her terribly-troubled Granny, too.
Tell Richmond,
On a dairy, the only shovel that gets rusty is one you aren't shoveling with. Used bulldozer blades and shovels stay "bright"!
State-owned banks?
Only North Dakota has one.
"Only North Dakota runs a state-owned bank, but 14 other states are at least considering opening similar institutions.
Supporters say North Dakota serves as an example that not all public institutions are wasteful: the state has run a budget surplus since the economic crisis began, and boasts an unemployment rate below 4 percent.
http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/State-…
Now it can be told.
Sex-obsessed (not in a good way) Catholic POTUS pretender Rick Santorum lost his last election not because of his poon-peen paranoias but because of plain old political and financial corruption.
Either way, Rick Man-on-Dog-Sex Santorum's screwing SOMEBODY.
He lost re-election because he got a huge loan from a private bank that doesn't make loans to the public (a genre of insider info typically followed in Hollywood by, "Who'd you have to blow to -- ?"). Here's ABC.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/santorum-sur…
Santorum lost re-election because while in office he slipped a multi-BILLION dollar handout to his friends into the Katrina disaster relief bill. Multi-BILLIONS on the backs of Katrina victims and taxpayers. That's Santorum. Here's Time on his elite largesse:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/…
How's that for a good Catholic?
Corrupt. THAT'S why the sanctimonious flit lost re-election.
And of course here's the notorious "Spreading Santorum" Google bomb.
http://www.spreadingsantorum.com/
Daley’s Demotion: How Washington Elites Got Obama Wrong
"The effort failed because Daley’s analysis — which is also the analysis of David Brooks and Michael Bloomberg — was fatally incorrect. Americans were not itching for Obama to make peace with corporate America. Americans are in an angry, populist mood — distrustful of government, but even more distrustful of business."
****
What’s more, it may be true that a bipartisan deal to reduce the deficit would have bolstered Obama’s standing. The trouble is that Republicans believed the exact same thing.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/daley…
For our legal-eagles and justice watchers here's something to accompany today's Krugman thread on unequal America..
unequal sentences for murder:
"Lady Justice Rolls the Dice: the Death Penalty is "Random Horror"
The death penalty is supposed to be for the worst of the worst. The system of capital punishment in the United States has always assumed it was so, from its beginnings. Not all crimes may be punished with death, and not all trials for death-eligible crimes result in a death sentence. Therefore, the law must be set up to make rational distinctions, in order to guide prosecutors and juries to winnow out “the worst of the worst” as the recipients of the death penalty.
But as capital defenders have been saying for many years, the system doesn’t do that. Those condemned to die are not those who committed the worst crimes, but rather those with the worst luck, or the worst lawyers.
....
http://www.aclu.org/blog/capital-punishmen…
Is it possible that opposition to the veteran's support center could be Waterloo for both Mayor Stodola AND Rep. Tim Griffin?
eLwood makes a good point above. As someone who has practiced law for a number of years, I have noticed that leniency is always easier for judges to grant if the Defendant comes to court in a neatly pressed suit with a good shoeshine. It doesn't depend so much on the crime as the Defendant. Moreover, if you can afford a high-priced lawyer, you are more likely to get leniency than if you have to depend on a public defender--and it is not that the public defender is any less competent, it is simply because he has less influence. Now. let the judges start howling.
Beth,
The nations that have no government aren't free, think Afghanistan, somolia etc.
Are you referring to the Federal govt. Overriding states rights to regulate marriage, medical marijuana etc?
Just happened to catch an interview with Republican Dabbs, complaining about the "obstructionist" alderman heading the recall petitions. She said something along the lines of the alderman having come forward with nothing for the good of the city. I thought the petition would by itself prove her wrong.
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