Around the Arkansas ‘Sphere

From time to time, we like to take a look around the Arkansas blogosphere and point to some of the good work our friends and neighbors are doing:

Jason Tolbert at The Tolbert Report likes the idea of an annual sales tax holiday in Arkansas, which retailers pitched to legislators this week, and he rounds up responses from a couple of candidates in the Saline County area.

Steve Harrelson at Under the Dome takes a look at a potential legislative proposal to allow mini-trucks (off-road vehicles popular with farmers for their fuel efficiency) to be driven on Arkansas roads.

The Fayetteville Flyer launches a debate on the Arkansas lottery proposal, and readers weigh in. Meanwhile, Blake Rutherford’s Think Tank doesn’t believe that the court challenge to stop the lottery proposal will stand up.

The Griffin Room has advice for John McCain on how to deal with the current economic meltdown on the campaign trail. For a more localized approach to recent economic developments, Roby Brock’s BizBlog takes a look at how Arkansas companies’ stocks held up over the course of this week’s market roller-coaster.

The Val’s Bien blog is all behind a legislative proposal to make animal cruelty a felony in the next session of the General Assembly.

And Arkansas Project contributor Freeman Hunt, over at her home base blog, has a nice recap of recent campaign lies, exaggerations and distortions from the Barack Obama camp, which suggests that the “Hope and Change” mantra amounts to little more than a smokescreen for politics as usual.

Over at the Arkansas Times blog, Max Brantley is waxing grumpy about government bail-outs in the financial sector, and who can blame him? Max is irritable because of the effect of this week’s market activity on his retirement account, and I’ll add to the complaint: If you’re self-employed like me, you had to send a hefty check to the IRS on Monday to settle your quarterly tax obligation. I don’t usually go in for simplistic populist posturing, but somehow it makes me even less enthusiastic about paying those taxes just to know they’re going to prop up some overextended hotshots on Wall Street.

And considering that, it’s pretty clear that Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden could not have picked a worse week to lecture us on how paying more taxes is a patriotic responsibility, as noted here by the Citizens Journal blog. I think I speak for everybody when I say that it would be a great idea if someone were to kick Joe Biden in the groin.

Please follow and like us: