Eye for an eye

How the death penalty should work: The prisoners always complain about the execution. They complain it is cruel punishment. If the legislature would pass a law that they be executed in the same manner they killed their victims, [then] if by gunshot let them die by gunshot. They could, of course, opt for fatal injection or hanging. The warden should be the one to end their life. He could, of course, let one prisoner take care of the job and take five years off their sentence. The only way to curtail crime is to have swift and certain punishment. At least the governor has the balls to do the job.

Douglas C. Lingo

North Little Rock

From the web

In response to the April 20 cover story, “The Little Rock Millage Question”:

This is such a difficult issue. I have two questions. 1) Why the urgency to pass the millage now, when it doesn’t expire for many years? We have this money now, correct, and passing the millage is essentially insurance to have it in the future? I welcome anyone who can clarify this for me.  2) I am curious, under state control, what specific changes or improvements were made to assist the schools that were deemed in distress?

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Elizabeth Wilson Rogers

@Elizabeth

Not quite. The extension of the debt will allow the district to immediately access $160 million in capital that it doesn’t currently have. Think of it as getting a second mortgage on a home that you own. The district can’t pay for new construction and improvements without having the cash in hand, and the debt extension will allow it to borrow that cash. (Just as a homeowner might refinance a mortgage or take out a line of credit in order to pay for a home improvement project.) So, the debt extension really is necessary for the district to find the capital necessary to do $160 million worth of construction right away. That’s the short answer. Whether the urgency of addressing facilities needs right away trumps the urgency of getting local governance returned ASAP is a matter of opinion. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the 12.4 mills in question do not all go toward debt service, due to the fact that property values appreciate over time. Theoretically, if the district had been putting all of the annual revenue generated from the 12.4 mills into a fund for capital projects, there would be no need for a debt extension. However, that’s not practical. I could explain more if you want.

Benji Hardy

(Author of the Times’ piece)

In response to Sam Ledbetter’s support for the school millage posted on the Arkansas Blog:

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Mr. Ledbetter: “State control of the district is temporary … .” I’ll believe it only when a new locally elected school board is actually in place. They’ve misrepresented and hidden their agenda all along. They took over the district over conditions that would not have triggered take over of other districts, the same conditions that are obviously NOT used to hold charter schools accountable. No local control — no local tax hike. The voters of Little Rock can always vote in a bond issue once local control is re-established.

Perplexed

Arkansas Times, Sam Ledbetter must be a friend of yours, since he continues to get a free pass for the deciding vote, but enough of turning PR flack for him with these continued blog posts. If you want to talk “out of touch,” that was Sam Ledbetter as the Walton Family Foundation’s “reform movement” was stealing a whole district right under his nose.

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Rev Pygsterio

In response to the Arkansas Blog post “The Ledell Lee execution thread”:

The problem with this country is that we insist that “killing” is somehow different than “letting die.” When an insurance company, in order to increase profits, denies coverage of life-saving treatments, their actions produce the death of people, just as sure as if they had used a gun or machete. We would demand the life of a terrorist who pours poisons into a public water supply, but we willingly accommodate the corporation that, again, in order to increase profits, did their storage of poisonous chemicals on the cheap so that toxins ended up in people’s drinking water, as happened in West Virginia a few years back. Governor Hutchinson will demand the life of the man who kills with knife or gun but will wine and dine those who kill through spreadsheets — murder for anger is a sin in his eyes, but God and his angels shine their light upon murder for profit, as does our government. Honestly, I could well support the death penalty if it meant those CEOs also risked their own lives when they destroyed ours, but in its current incarnation, the death penalty is nothing but a war upon the poor. It is class warfare, pure and simple.

treeoftalking

Question for you, plainjim, as a former prosecutor: What’s the No. 1 duty of a prosecutor? IMO the answer has to be being as sure as humanly possible that innocent people are not convicted for crimes they did not commit. My observations of prosecutors in general is they often seem to be more interested in getting convictions and clearing case files than in convicting the guilty, no matter what that takes. Your response?

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Sound policy

Sound, the number one duty of a prosecutor is to make sure that the police have the right man before he goes forward with the prosecution. I have dismissed cases where I did not think I could prove guilt, as I am sure many other prosecutors have done. There are exceptions, but most prosecutors do not want to convict an innocent person, and in my opinion, this rarely happens. The fact that it happens at all is sad.

plainjim

In response to the Arkansas Blog post about the March for Science on Saturday:

The most drastic increase in temperature by the nth degree just happens to coincide with the industrialization of the planet. If they’d be honest and just admit that they choose profits over a livable environment, I’d have at least some respect for them. But they are cowards just looking to stuff their pockets. And, of course, they are all members of the Regressive party. Those Regressives sure do like their money, don’t they? Won’t be able to pass it down to their great-grandchildren, however, if the planet is a living hell by then. On current pace, this planet is not going to be a pretty place in 100 years.

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Slithey Tove

Listening to the head of OMB discuss why they want to cut NASA earth satellites shows how totally uninformed these losers in Trump’s Cabinet are. Someone needs to sit Trump’s ass down and make him read about the hurricane destroying Galveston, because back then we didn’t have the capability to know about early warnings. Now that we do, anyone who purposely cuts down NASA and NOAA’s ability to predict should be indicted for any deaths caused by a hurricane showing up without warnings.  The idiot class thinks the weather and climate (which scientists know are NOT the same thing) are jokes, but Mother Nature is a bitch and she always wins.  Wait until Trump’s little gilded whorehouse in Florida is under water. It is on an island, so it will be attacked from all sides, and it is not the business of government to protect a private, profit-making property. You would have thought that he learned something about that in Scotland and that seawall he wanted to build to protect his property while putting neighboring properties at greater risk.

couldn’t be better

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