No Arkansas has gone without a loaf of bread for want of 6 to 9 cents on the dollar and starved a miserable death. The loudest people opposing the grocery tax are the simpletons who hate all taxes and nearly all the services they fund. Poor? Nah.<\/p>\n
All the Northwest Arkansas state senators \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even those who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very enthusiastic about it \u00e2\u20ac\u201d signed on this week as co-sponsors of a bill that would cut the state sales tax on groceries by half.<\/p>\n
Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, was among a number of senators who became co-sponsors of a bill to halve the sales tax on groceries. But, reports the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he is not enthusiastic.<\/p>\n
‘The people really believe they want it, and I don’t guess I got elected to protect the people from themselves,’ Bisbee said.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Actually, Senator, the purpose of nearly every law you can think of serves “to protect people from themselves.” -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s not fair to blow up a quotation of a state legislator, even adding context to show that he or she probably did mean it the way it sounded. But when remarks fall into your lap, courtesy of alert journalists, who can resist? I have written previously about opposing the repeal of Arkansas charging sales […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":240,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/10\/tax-the-poor\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":0},"title":"Tax the Poor","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"October 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Replace the grocery tax; don't repeal it. (This is an Arkansas Brick.) It's not too late to put in your 6 cents' worth -- that's the amount of state sales tax in Arkansas, before municipalities add on theirs. Nothing can happen until the Legislature convenes in January, but various state\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":276,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/half-a-loaf\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":1},"title":"Half a Loaf","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":360,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/09\/no-gaming-without-representation\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":2},"title":"No Gaming Without Representation","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.\" -- \"Gordon Gekko,\" Wall Street, as quoted in imdb.com Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock If \"greed is good,\" as the fictional financier Gordon Gekko\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":294,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/03\/unprepossessiveness\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":3},"title":"Unprepossessiveness","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY, Monday July 2, 2007, hypothetically -- The Arkansas State Police arrested the executive editors, managing editors and editorial page editors of two prominent newspapers at 11 this morning, no one being in their offices before that. At 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the measure forbidding the spelling of the possessive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1575,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/09\/school-tax-tables\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":4},"title":"School Tax Tables","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"No More Foolin' for Schoolin' Brick by current policy does not give political endorsements. Now that the Fayetteville School District's high school plan is set for a public vote, in about 10 days, all I should do is create a nice neutral analysis. Yawn. Better: Just lay out some facts,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":231,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/09\/no-pox-on-this-tax\/","url_meta":{"origin":262,"position":5},"title":"No Pox on This Tax","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A pox of this tax, or a tax of this pox, (twist of Falstaff's line of Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 2) We should, as these editorials all attest, vote \"yes\" to all four of Fayetteville's tiny tax increases. Northwest Arkansas Times, and the Demzette. Should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}