LITTLE ROCK — “All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”
-H.L. Mencken OH, MENCKEN. Thou should be living at this hour! Your country has need of thee!
On second thought, maybe it is better that you’ve departed this vale. A newspaper is about to praise a bunch of politicians. Arkansas politicians, yet. (Wasn’t it a bunch of Arkansas politicians who prayed for Mr. Mencken, interfering with his work and causing, as he put it, ringing in his ears?)
But sometimes a newspaper has tolook about and call it like it sees it. In the last few weeks, the lawmakers at the Capitol have surprised even the most skeptical and doubtful among us. That is, they’ve done some things right.
Oh, it’s not been a perfect session, this one. But that’sbeyond what a body can hope for. If a legislative session is generally good, and passes a few good bills and knocks away a few bad ones, then the paper should say so. For example:
The House has passed a bill that would cut the state’s capital-gains tax on some property. In a state that could use every bit of capital it can get, this is good news. Now let’s let those who create jobs create even more of them. And not in surrounding states, but here at home. The governor calls this voodoo economics. So did George Herbert Walker Bush when he was running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1980. If faulty memory serves, Ronald Reagan’s tax policies weren’t exactly bad for the country’s economy.
Not to be outdone, the Arkansas Senate has passed bills that would cut taxes, too. Most notably on the bread and milk and other groceries we all need. Including those who make little money. After all, the poor spend the greater portion of their income on food, so why should the state continue to tax it? The Senate voted 35-0 to reduce the sales tax on groceries from 2 percent to 1.5 percent. That’s almost enough. Now they need to pass another bill to reduce it to the lowest number the state Constitution will allow.
The governor has been heard on this issue, too. He has been in favor of reducing the grocery tax-bit by bit by little bit. And he’s made headway over the years. But reducing an injustice like the grocery tax shouldn’t be a gradual thing.
Take the thing behind the barn and kill it with an ax. Please.
IT SEEMS in every session these outrageous days the rest of us are going to have to listen to the anti-immigration crowd. The most we can hope for is that when they start with their conspiracy theories and email campaigns, the majority of lawmakers will see reason. Just as a committee in the House ofRepresentatives did last week.
There was a bill, HB 1292, that would have denied certain public benefits to illegal aliens. Public benefits, as in benefitting the public.
Did the original bill actually suggest we deny pre-natal care to expecting mothers? Even though those children become Americans the second they are born on this soil? How would that benefit the public? Answer: It wouldn’t. A Republican governor named Mike Huckabee knew that. So does the current governor, a Democrat named Mike Beebe. It’s good to know that doing the right thing for the least among us is a bipartisan effort. At least at the top.
Deny immunizations to undocumented workers and their children? So they can get sick and work along sidethe rest of us, and send their children to schools with everybody else’s? Was the purpose of this bill to make Arkansans-those here legally, illegally, and whose status is uncertain-sick? Even the sponsor of the bill, Jon Hubbard, had to backtrack andamend his bill several times as even his eyes were opened to the unfortunate possibilities. In the end, the House Committee on State Agencies, etc., decided just to kill the whole thing. Some things are unsalvageable.
Another House committee decided not to punish the children of illegal immigrants who were brought here in their youth, and have done well enough to enroll in college. As if they’ve been here in Arkansas most of their lives, paying taxes and making their families proud. Which they have.
Imagine making it more difficult for a young person to attend college! What was all that stuff about the tired and poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Or was that just talk, not meant to be taken seriously? Thank you to House members who blocked this legislation.
LAWMAKERS have also taken some (baby) steps toward reform when it comes to lawmakers becoming lobbyists. They’ve passed a bill to push protesters even farther away from funerals. And they’re trying to make it easier for water systems to add fluoride to drinking water. All good ideas.
The House also passed a bill that would create a sales-tax holiday one weekend every August so that parents can buy clothes and school supplies. Given that surrounding states already do this, it only made sense. Why should a Wal-Mart in Magnolia lose business to Louisiana, and a clothing store in West Memphis lose business to Tennessee? Keep the money home.
It’s heartening to see a lawmaking body do the right thing so often. (Especially when you compare what the honorables are doing in Arkansas to the pandemonium in, say, Wisconsin.) We’ll keep an eye on the paper for even more good news. If they can keep it coming, that is.
Now back to regularly scheduled editorializing . . . .
Editorial, Pages 74 on 02/27/2011