Arkansas Blog

Then 2 of those lucky people could get together, pool their money and buy them 1 lot of 100 FEMA trailers @ $5000.00 a piece.

Then with a little work, they could sell them FEMA trailers at double their money to people like zelda and each of them could split 1 million dollars! I'll call this Mississippi FEMA math!

Better yet why doesn't Beebe buy up all the FEMA trailers with the surplus state money and have one whoppin trailer sale and double that surplus by the end of the year?

We're already the FEMA trailer storage capital of the world, we could line them suckers up along I-40 and the world would beat a path to our door!

Remind me to have another pimento cheese sandwich for lunch....that sandwich enabled me to do math today! Now that's some brain food!

I don't know how much each of the 2000 workers would be paid each year. Let's say $20,000 a year, which would be a pay rate of $10/hour.

At that rate, 2000 x $20,000 equals a payroll of $40 million a year.

The key is that this is OUTSIDE money coming into the state. In 12 years the half billion of state gifts is paid back and after that it's outside money rolling into Mississippi for the next 50 years.

The thing with the lottery is it's mostly just Mississippi people passing the same money around to other Mississippi people. No extra wealth comes from that.

But when you have the big auto plant, it's $40 million (and probably more) of outside money coming in every year. That adds to the state's wealth, and adds to it in a good way, by putting it directly into the pockets of people who will spend it all every year. That should be a really big boost to their economy.

Maybe they'll come spend some in Arkansas as tourists, or perhaps they'll come here on mission trips to help the poor Arkansas neighbors build some basic housing or something.

LMAO Dbi, but have a plate of oysters, in addition to restoring brain cells they contribute to friskiness.

I think we should have shipped an entire boatload of oysters to Bush's FEMA , I doubt it would have helped, there's just so little people can do about a "Brownie" complex..
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How high does the skirt need to be for Arkansas to sell itself on the streets of corporate America? What is the lowest Arkansas will sell its workers for? When we have to bribe companies to move here, when do we reach a point of diminishing returns? Are we really going to enforce those paltry "claw-back clauses?"

I've had good friends in UAW who have had to move frequently for decreasingly low wages and benefits as the car companies have leveraged more concessions from the workers. Once revered, they have become itinerant workers, now in the same category as immigrants - looking for the elusive better life.

Over and over, Arkansas has been the pimp, selling Arkansas workers to the lowest bidder. It's time that we respected our citizens and defined a new future.

Arkansas should stop being a corporate pimp. We should throw off the 19th and 20th century anachronisms and promote, rather than demote our workers.

Jim, last week there was a thread about states who have positioned them selves for jobs in the 21st Century tech market. Arkies were listed at the bottom.
What must we do to catch up? Join India for $10 day labor ?
China is producing 350,000 engineers per year. We are producing less than half that.
We are one of the most illiterate in a nation that has now fallen to 37th in World Literacy rates.
Please post a solution.
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I have been a member of a commission to look at the nursing shortage in Arkansas. One of the findings was that over 10 years, if we added 9000 nurses to the workforce, we could more than have the impact of an automobile plant and that it would be statewide, rather than localized (eg, West Memphis, benefiting other states). This is only one example of how the state's economic plantation development are unable to move the state past the 1800's.

This estimate did not include other health professionals - pharmacists, physcal therapists, respiratory therapists, and other ancillary personnel. As the population ages, these services are becoming more desirable.

Let's look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, rather than who is bribing the current governor. Survival is at the peak. If we were to make Arkansas into a health center, the furture would be assured.

While other states are trying to attract obsolete technologies, we can pioneer the future.

Except for that "drive-by comment" about the Nutt plane's landing gear problem (posted elsewhere on this blog), you are making a lot of sense today, Lendall. Your thought-provoking comments above are worthy of note in all quarters.

While I'd love to agree with you Jim, I hate the health care "industry."
$24,000 for a 17 hour hospital stay does not seem reasonable to me.
In fact, it feels like robbery.
I really think we need universal health care, paid for with sin taxes.
And I am a sinner, ok?

Blue Ridge, it is unfortunate that you "hate" doctors, nurses, and hospitals that probably saved at least 100 lives in Arkansas today and every day.

And just so you know, few if any patients pay what they're actually billed for medical/hospital services. If the patient is insured, probably at least 80% of the bill is paid by the insurer. If he's "underinsured," then Medicaid or Medicare (see taxpayers) pays the bill, but far less than the cost of services. If the patient is not insured at all, nobody pays the bill, except those of us who help fill this gap by paying a higher premium for our own health insurance.

Physicians and hospitals throughout Arkansas write off hundreds of millions in bad debts and charity every year, and the figure nationally is staggering, according to The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, and other publications that have reported extensively on this subject.

Yes, medical bills are very high. PET scanners, lithotripters, high-tech pharmaceuticals, and other medical supplies and devices don't come cheap. Nor does a 24/365 highly educated workforce.

National health insurance? Hey, I'm all fer it, and hope we have it sooner than later. But you better be revising your household budget, because your taxes are fixin' to go way up to pay for it.

Sorry durangokid, I smell a medical or insurance company paycheck lurking in your bank account. If I was a Ford dealer I'd slip a little praise into any comment about fiery Pintos too.

As someone without medical insurance, someone who can't get medical insurance I can tell you right now that I cannot figure out a way to pay the 3500 bill I owe for 13 visits where my blood was drawn exactly like someone who gets this for free at a local blood bank when donating blood.

The only difference is when they take a liter of my blood they toss it in the trash....oh and they charge me $264 dollars for this proceedure done for free at a blood bank....plus you get some juice and a cookie at the blood bank.

There is no Medicare for me, and I don't drive away from my bills in my welfare Cadillac. So I've done the American thing, I've stopped my treatments. Since the charges and bills are from the planet Mongo, it's easy to think about just walking off.

I find it much harder to stiff someone handing me a reasonable bill for services rendered. But when handed a fantasy bill, why not fantasize about tossing it in the trash?

In today's NY Times there was an article about the increasing numbers of the solid middle class that are going it without health insurance. Soon only the very wealthy will have insurance and the middle class folks like me will be lining up behind the poor at local Emergency Rooms because that will be the only affordable medical care available.

The only way that is affordable is by tossing the bill when you get it. Much sympathy to our troops at Walter Reed, but 1/3rd of our nation already lives in medical care hell and it's getting worse everyday.

Now....I'll be OK if I can snow 2 blood banks over the line in Oklahoma into taking my blood out every 3 weeks for free. And I've still got to find 3500 buck to get honest with that red brick medical center across town. Unless your a Walton, you might find yourself in my situation in a couple of years. So start girding your loins now.

Ya got me, DBI! Well, sort of. By that I mean I ain't a medicine man or an insurance boy, but I do confess to being the grandson of a physician and surgeon who practiced in Arkansas from 1907 until he died of cancer in 1940.

The problems with which you're dealing as a result of being uninsurable are truly lamentable. You are one of 47 million Americans in this situation, including my closest friend who, incidentally, lives in Fort Smith.

I never encounter a member of Congress that I don't pound on the fact that this country MUST adopt a national health insurance plan, and soon. I hope I can count on you to do likewise.

Actually, considering that premiums would not have to be paid, along with the insurance companies (about 1/3 of our present health care bills), most of us would actually end up paying LESS for our health care when it is all said and done. If you look at other countries that have universal health care, they pay quite a bit less and EVERYONE gets the health care.

Let's do away with the ads for drugs (the only other country in the WORLD that even ALLOWS the drug ads is New Zealand), the cut the insurance companies take, and all that blasted paperwork!

That should about do it, with some left over for other things we need.