In the news
It was a busy week, all right
ASESSION OF the Legislature has come, which always presents a danger, and now has gone, which is always a relief, and now We the People can breathe a little easier till the next one. This time the Ledge did some good work— like pass an $ 87- million bond issue to help finance a Lockheed- Martin plant for job- hungry South Arkansas, which should mean a lot of work and investment there for years, for decades, to come.
Of course there will always be those purists/ obstructionists who object to mixing public and private funds for joint projects— as if ours hasn’t been a mixed economy since Alexander Hamilton gave us a visionary economic program that included a national bank and a national tariff. Long before that, this continent was settled by various corporations establishing colonies for the crown from New England to Virginia.
But that’s not the way Cecile Bledsoe, a state senator from Rogers, sees it. “I just have a philosophical difference with those things,” she explains. “I think it’s picking winners and losers.”
Indeed it is. Winners like Lockheed-Martin, South Arkansas’ economic future, the U. S. military, and the whole military- industrial complex on which the national defense has long depended on. The loser would be all those of us left out of that investment. While it was in session, the Ledge also fooled around with next year’s election calendar. Arkansas is now to join the SEC primary, which gives the South an earlier, bigger say in choosing the next president. It’s a way to spoil the Christmas season with a lot of politicking. Steel yourselves for a bunch of not very original campaign speeches and cliches- galore lying in wait for the innocent voter. (“The future lies ahead!”) The least surprising headline of the week appeared on Page 8A of Friday’s paper: “Homicides surge,/ arrests drop after/ Baltimore protests/ Residents say no police to be found; officers cite hostility, fear of arrest.”
Why, sure, demoralize your police force and the muggers, rapists and killers take over. Meanwhile, a study out of Hendrix College has confirmed what long has been an open secret: The at- large seats on Little Rock’s board of directors are just a way to assure that white voters continue to dominate the board. Is it time to take a chance on democracy at last? For if democracy means anything, it means letting the people rule— without fixing the elections. For good or ill. To quote the late great H. L. Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Meanwhile, in another part of the world, Moscow’s latest tsar, Vladimir the Dread, has denied that Russian troops are taking part in his country’s seizure of eastern Ukraine and various other conquests. Just to make sure no records of this aggression are kept, Tsar Putin has signed an official decree that allows his regime to keep Russian losses secret. Like the whole world doesn’t know what’s really going on. And that was the week that was. Glad it’s over.