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Like mushrooms in a cow patty, signs promoting the Little Rock sales tax increase have begun popping up in the neighborhod.

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So now we see how city leaders plan to strip down the messaging on a 200 percent increase in the city sales tax — from a half-cent to 1.5 cents — to raise a half-BILLION dollars over 10 years, including a $38 million slush fund to be controlled by business community insiders with a decided anti-worker political slant.

* 1. Fear of crime. But I thought Mayor Stodola had said Little Rock was safer than it had been in years.

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* 2. A steaming pile of bull that this tax will create jobs. Some new government jobs, yes. (And that part is OK by me.) I’ll point you again to an analysis in The Economist about the notion of government creating job engines by building office parks. But, it’s also true that we wouldn’t be the first group of gullible voters to be snookered by this pie-in-the-sky talk. Thus its use here. In a congressional district where voters elected someone who said the Bush tax cuts have been good for the deficit, it’s not a bad bet.

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