http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2013/02/14/halter-slams-lottery-scholarship-bill Comments On: Halter slams lottery scholarship bill by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Sat, 25 May 2013 08:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
From the beginning, I've not understood why there is no need-basis for this scholarship. Do families earning over $120,000 (or whatever amount would make the numbers work out) really need the scholarship money the same as middle class families? Of course not. DO PEOPLE REALIZE THAT ARKANSAS IS ONE OF ONLY THREE STATES WHOSE STATE SCHOLARSHIPS DO NOT INCLUDE A NEED-BASIS FOR RECIPIENTS?

Eliminating the upper third or fourth of income earners is the most reasonable way to reduce the number of recipients and maintain the integrity of the program. If the intent is to increase opportunity, then we should be true to the intent. Give struggling families teh assistance the need to get a good education.
Posted by Greg Graham]]> Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:57:03 -0600 Arkansas Times
Either s/he's mentally deficient or a committed troll, and there's no real cure for either.

Thanks for making it even clearer than I did. If anyone couldn't grasp your comparative examples, s/he has no grasp at all.

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:58:07 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by the outlier]]> Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:42:00 -0600 Arkansas Times
So if the pile of scholarship money has shrunk, the sensible adult way to handle the downturn is to give FEWER kids the FULL RIDE because giving them less than half what they need means THEY DON'T GET TO GO TO COLLEGE. It's very very simple math here.

If you offer less than have what it costs to go to college the only kids who will go to college are the more well off whose parents can cough up the other 3000 dollars...this plays right into the Republicans plan to always shout that the kids going to school on the Arkansas Lottery Scholarship money are kids whose parents could afford to pay their way.

Let try this....if you have a whole cow you get milk. If you have half a cow, you get no milk and you have a bloody, fly-infested mess in your yard. If your sister lives 300 miles away in Kansas City and needs your bone marrow to save her life and you can only afford the gas to drive 150 miles away from your home....you're sister is a goner.

If a ticket to the Super Bowl costs 1000 dollars and 10 of you want to go to the big game but you only have 5000 dollars, what do you do? You can give all 10 people 500 dollars and NO ONE GOES TO THE SUPER BOWL. Or you give 5 people 1000 dollars and those 5 people get to go to the Super Bowl and if you're lucky they'll bring you back a T-shirt.

I've got another one about condoms and Girl Scout Camps but I'll spare you. Our crooked, greedy, now Tea Baggery state legislature never liked the idea of a scholarship lottery and they've been plotting since the first day. They know this proposal will be the end of the scholarship lottery and NO ONE should help them kill this miracle that's sent at least 30 thousand extra Arkansas kids to college. Kids who never dreamed they'd ever get the chance to go.

Sandy Hook was horrible, but what our legislature is fixing to do will condemn thousands of bright Arkansas kids to a life of working in a chicken plant or a cement plant or a paper mill or cleaning up piss on isle 7 at a Wal-Mart.

We're letting the Republicans and corporate Democrats in our ledge kill the only golden goose Arkansas has seen since the Interstate Highway went thru back in the mid 1960s. Handled sensibly the lottery scholarship could weather the bad economy but switching to handing out less than half of what it takes to go to college means death to this one good thing we've got going on.

I wish I had a magic wand to show what Arkansas will be like 20 years from now IF our kids had the lottery scholarship working as planned. We wouldn't even know this place. Our legislature of 20 years from now would be crowded with intelligent people...not the petty thieves we have now. Our state wouldn't be famous for sucking hind tit since 1836, 20 years from now. People might come to our state to build businesses that use well paid brains instead of poorly paid strong backs.

I'm telling you, you wouldn't even know this place. But if we let our current legislature kill the lottery scholarship, you'll sure as hell know this place 20 years from now because it will look like it does today, hungry, mean, backwards.....or worse.

My youngest is a couple of months away from finishing her 3rd year at the U of A in Fayetteville. She's been on top of everything, in the top part of her class all 3 years, she's won awards, represented our state in DC, invited into Sigma Nu or Pi or whatever it's called. She's been a fantastic student and had a fabulous experience and will give back more to Arkansas in the future than the scholarship has given her. And without the full lottery scholarship she earned with 12 years of good grades and achievements, she'd be flipping burgers because mag and I work hard but not in jobs that pay big money.

If the legislatures pulls the rug out from under her before her final year in college is over, I'll sell our damn house to get the money because there's no way we're going to let the ball drop now.
Posted by DeathbyInches]]> Fri, 15 Feb 2013 03:03:44 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by santhony]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:05:21 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by LinCo_Progressive]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:04:09 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by santhony]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:09:56 -0600 Arkansas Times
It appears to me that the proposal reduces the number of students who will get an education by lowering the awards to the extent that they don't provide enough money to meet expenses.

Yes, it is true that reducing the number of students who receive the higher awards also reduces the number of students who get an education, but that would occur without the legislature's proposed action. And as I read it, he was objecting to the legislature's proposal.
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:39:09 -0600 Arkansas Times
Professional politicians don't have to work to make a living. Tell me how many of the members of the Arkansas General Assembly work for a living?
Posted by plainjim]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:26:33 -0600 Arkansas Times
There is less money in the program. There are two options, reduce the amount of the scholarships, or reduce the number of scholarships. Halter seems to support a third approach. Complain about it and offer no other alternative.
Posted by santhony]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:08:03 -0600 Arkansas Times
"if this gets out we're all going to lose our jobs..."
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archi…

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Posted by eLwood]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:15:07 -0600 Arkansas Times
If the amount of money decreases, the individual amounts will be available for fewer people. Looks pretty simple. The amounts are still large enough to help the recipients get an education; there will simply be fewer recipients.

So why does Halter have to propose ANYTHING? Basically he seems to be complaining about the proposal and telling people to leave the system alone. If the legislature does nothing, the system will self-correct by providing the same amounts but for fewer people.

It doesn't take rocket surgery to figure this out.

And I think Halter has a perfect right to bitch, because the legislature is destroying his baby. He managed to get a good thing in place, and the Republicans are hell-bent to wreck it.

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:44:41 -0600 Arkansas Times
There is merit for the graduated approach since many four year colleges are running what amounts to a two year program because 70% of the dropouts happen in the freshman and sophomore years.

His major failing, and I told him so when he was in NWA, was turning the ASL over to legislature for cronyism to set in. That's what's ruined the ASL, the perception of crookedness and corruption. It takes years to overcome.

When Bullshit Ernie was caught fudging/altering the figures to over-pay his cronies in the bidness a heavy hammer should have fallen but the lege cronies had no backbone and still don't. The Commission, created by the Legislature and overseen by it, has been an utter failure regarding ethics and prosecution which should have happened. Our fearless crony in the Attorney General's office could have stepped in to investigate and prosecute but he too had no backbone.

Ark students are hurting, like the rest of Arkansas, for the misgivings and crimes of cronyism in government, esp the General Assembly. It's corrupt and it hurts us all.

That was young Halter's major failing, turning over running the ASL to standard, corrupt Ark cronyism. It's never done a damn thing for our state and never will.
Posted by eLwood]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:40:15 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by BeachHog]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:30:17 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by 70%er]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:28:23 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by santhony]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:09:27 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by HolyGuano]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:36:06 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by vs4]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:35:41 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by BeachHog]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:18:00 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by couldn't be better]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:53:54 -0600 Arkansas Times
Typical politician. Complains because the scholarship is being cut, but doesn't propose any solutions to the problem. What would he do? Continue with the current scholarship amount despite there being no money for it?
Posted by santhony]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:38:53 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by vs4]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:15:36 -0600 Arkansas Times
For Republicans this is a feature not a bug.
Posted by the real any*mouse but login hates me]]> Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:54:32 -0600 Arkansas Times