Dear editor: Pay attention to details

Dear editor:

It is all in the details:

What did the recently completed Arkansas General Assembly do, in public and privately? Some things they want known are widely publicized but many others do not come out until someone reads the buried fine print and tries (too late) to question it.

State politicians appointed a study commission (seems to be a very popular political tool of our new governor), then doubled their legislative pay, gave wealthy investors a 50 percent tax cut, and us a 1 percent tax cut, plus cut $1 million from meals on wheels.

Just surfaced is their gift to businesses and Entergy with the recent revelations about Act 725 (thanks George) and slap to us: a 13 percent rate increase for our electric service, an increase of less than 2 percent for large business, and stops the Public Service Commission from intervening; another new favorite of the ruling class, preventing public involvement. Entergy is a monopoly and now no oversight on our costs!

Yet another scary national/state problem is the number of new laws written and actively supported by the super wealthy and special interest groups. These laws are passed from state to state, a back door approach to national laws. Almost identical laws on abortion, taxes, attacks on labor, legal marijuana and others are being passed by state after state.

In last year's Arkansas election, the ruling party got a "Trojan horse" law passed, supposedly increasing oversight on political ethics (at least that is what the proposal's title stated), but it was really a large increase in term limits; limits that were strengthened only two years before (their investors want them around a long time). A recent AP article in The Sentinel-Record shows how the exact wording of that new "Ethics Law" almost prevents the state Ethics Commission from enforcing anything, even if it is caught and reported.

The mail carrier who flew his gyro-copter into the congressional lawn is a hero; he had the courage to gain public attention on corrupt politics. For the politicians, money is power and they have tons of both. They have nothing to fear; the few citizens who do vote keep electing them, they keep increasing their own term limits, they write their own "rules of conduct," and the Koch brothers type keep paying their keep.

Jim Pumphrey

Garland County

Editorial on 05/20/2015

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