OK. Maybe it is a brilliant political maneuver, new Gov. Mike Beebe’s vow to cut the sales tax on groceries in Arkansas. It has given him several advantages. Meanwhile, the state is among the poorest in the Union, and reducing even an inherently unfair tax will tax what feeble services Arkansas manages to offer: education, […]
A few days ago, the president made a joke at his own expense by referring to his, the “Republic Party.” He was a guest at a gathering of congressional Democrats. Days earlier, the president made reference to the “Democrat Party.” He was being inarticulate. That in large part is what got him elected to the […]
Speaking of technology, and these days who isn’t, how can any regular person deal with the biggest contradiction in retail (though not as big as between what they charge and what’s in my account). From not only the advertisements but consumer journalism, your living room is supposed to have flat-screen LCD plasma four-wheel-projection HD televisions […]
Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It’s the outcue for the audio column on NPR’s Morning Edition that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper published a book of his, […]
The reportage dichotomy keeps coming up. Who’s in charge: the people in the article or the people creating the article? How about a few terse examples, with questions we can consider over lunch. As noted yesterday, a school stopped what it called a gang initiation. In it local officials again say real gangs — just […]
Several Bentonville [Ark.] High School students were suspended last week after being caught on camera in what school officials believe was a gang initiation, according to Bentonville Superintendent Gary Compton. Compton described the incidents as a possible ‘gang jump-in’ that took place Jan. 22 and 23 at the high school. ‘We believe it was a […]