Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

On my mind: What are they thinking up there?

Im glad to know my tax dollars are hard at work in Little Rock. Lets see, so far this session, the legislators have raised their own pay at a larger percent than they increased funding for our schools. Theyve cut the taxes on groceries to help everyone, and they cut the income tax for the poorest citizens of our state. I think Gov. Beebe called them the little man when he was campaigning.

All in all, the session seems to be going fairly well  some good bills, some questionable. And then theres the downright ignorant bills. Well, theyre ignorant in my opinion.

You might have seen coverage on some of the local television stations about the resolution introduced to clarify the proper spelling of the possessive form of Arkansas. Now I would write it Arkansas with the apostrophe and no s. Thats not the way one member of the General Assembly wants it spelled.

Rep. Steve Harrelson , a Democrat from Texarkana, thinks the s ought to be there. I think Arkansass looks wrong. In a television story I caught last week, an English professor from UALR said it was right either way. Im not an English professor.

Heres another thing I found interesting. The resolution was one of those non-binding resolutions. I dont exactly know what that means, but it sounds to me like even if the resolution is approved it doesnt mean anything. It still wont matter how we spell the word.

So, in my opinion, this is a waste of taxpayer dollars to even be discussing this resolution. These guys and gals only get together every other year, so Im sure they can find something better to talk about that may actually be beneficial to their constituency.