The Legislature convenes for the fiscal session on Feb. 13. It is time for you to contact your legislator and tell them 3 things.
Freeze the budget, absolutely do not increase our State budget by one penny.
Find, waste fraud and abuse within the State budget and eliminate it.
Fund only necessary and proper government functions.
Remember, to tell your legislator. Freeze, Find and Fund.
We must start this conversation now before the session begins because they are already planning what to do with your money. Its you money,  tell them how you want it spent.

Thomas
Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social
theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National
Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective. He is currently a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Sowell was
born in North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York. He
dropped out of high school, and served in the United States
Marine Corps during the Korean War. He had received a bachelor’s
degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Columbia
University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate degree
in economics from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Sowell
has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell and
University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for “think
tanks” such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980 he has worked at
the Hoover Institution. He is the author of more than 30 books.

By
Dr. Sowell

The
current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration
to date of what President Barack Obama’s America looks like. It
is an America 
 where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and
incompetent rule.    It is 
 an America where those who have sacrificed nothing
pillage and destroy the lives of those who have
sacrificed greatly.   It is an
America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers 
and thieves.    It is an
America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare and murder are all
promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American 
civil society.

It
is an America where humans have been degraded to the level
of animals: 
 defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid
of basic hygiene. It is an  America where
the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a 
 free press and individual rights, have been
rejected.  It is an America where   our
founding documents have been shredded and, with them, every person’s 
 guaranteed liberties.

It
is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American  people,
but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, 
 Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson,
Louis Farrakhan, liberal   college
professors, union bosses and other loyal liberal/Communist
Party members   will live in
opulent splendor.

It
is the America that Obama and the Democratic Party have created with
the 
willing assistance of the American media,  Hollywood , unions,
universities, the  Communist Party of America, the
Black Panthers and numerous anti-American   foreign
entities.

Barack
Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in four
years than 
any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the beginning
of what he  and his comrades are capable of.  

The
Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step in their plan for the  annihilation
of America .   “Socialism,
in general, has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual 
could ignore or evade it.”

Thomas Sowell 

Some Belated Parental Advice
By MarybethHicks
10/20/2011

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?”As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” – now known as    “OWS” – whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards:  “Everything for everybody.”

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.  Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:

• Life isn’t    fair . The concept of justice – that everyone should be treated fairly – is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.” No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons . Is it fair? Stupid question.

• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots,    because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical. While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

• Your word is your    bond . When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for – literally.

• A protest is not a    party. On Saturday in New York , while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun.    Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival.    You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

• There are reasons you haven’t found jobs . The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting.    Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.

Marybeth Hicks
Marybeth Hicks is the author of Don’t Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left’s Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom (Regnery Publishers, 2011).

With the discussion of the Garvee bonds reaching a fevered pitch I again would like to bring a little clarity to the subject. Now the argument seems to be we must borrow money because it is good for the business environment in Arkansas. The best way to answer this rationalization is to exclaim, Hogwash! Hogwash is what happens when Arkansas politicians use our negatives to further their argument to continue business as usual. Of course we know that the business I refer to is the extraction of our hard earned money to support politicians and their special interests. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that every time the government tells us they can fix what ails us, if they just have a few more of our tax dollars is a lie. Here are just a few “truths” they forget to tell us. First there are many studies and surveys out there that evaluate just about anything but I did my level best to bring you the latest and best info I could find. First my good friend Curtis Coleman, (he is a good friend) states in his blog,” Good roads are essential to good business….Bad roads will be unquestionably bad for Arkansas business.” And he is exactly right but, let’s follow the bouncing ball and see where it leads us. Arkansas has been ranked 12th in the nation for the largest highway system so, let’s see if this translates into business growth. Numbers don’t lie; people do, so let’s talk numbers. Reports show Arkansas had an improvement of overall highway performance rankings of three spots from 2007, but still below a 27th-place ranking in 2006. Still, Arkansas moved well beyond its 46th-place ranking in 2000 and continues to improve. Arkansas roads are improving so now let’s see what business is doing. Arkansas ranks 32nd in the nation of, Americas Best States for Business! Hooray for Arkansas! Unfortunately however we fell from 31 in the previous year. Going backwards is not a good sign. Now this part that should scare the daylights out of you, Arkansas is tied with CALIFORNIA for Best States for Business yet California is ranked 16th in the nation highway performance rankings. So the real question is; if highway performance rankings improve business shouldn’t California be rated better for business than Arkansas or are there other factors involved? There are many reasons businesses move into a state and roads are a small portion of that equation. First and foremost is business and capital goes where it is welcome! Arkansas ranks 39th in this category, Arkansas has pulled up the welcome mat for business long ago. Business also goes where there is access to capital, Arkansas ranks 40th in this category. Business will go where there is a quality of life for its employees, Arkansas ranks 43rd in this category. Business goes where there is innovation and technology, Arkansas ranks 44th in that category. These are four categories where Arkansas scores lower than transportation and infrastructure, yet they would have you believe that the “Emergency” is roads. So if more roads aren’t the answer, and better roads aren’t the answer, and spending more money is not the answer; what is? Maybe it’s the question. The real question is what can be done to improve Arkansas in the categories it is weakest in instead of the categories that are the easiest to fix. If you want more bang for your buck you should invest it where you see the greatest return. A “good deal” is only a good deal when you can afford it! I’ll finish with this. My wife when she was younger (she’s still young) had a great way of keeping me from being concerned about the money she spent. Instead of telling me how much she spent on an item she would tell me how much she saved! As hard as I would try I could not get her to stop trying to justify spending money she should not have spent. To fix this I finally devised a plan. I told her that we should begin planning ahead for vacation and that she would be responsible for the vacation fund. From then on when she would come home and tell me how much she saved I would tell her to take the money she saved and put that money in the bank for our vacation. Then I would ask her what the balance was. Of course she would roll her eyes and exclaim nothing! Then I would tell he that is exactly how much money she saved us. If you can’t put the money in the bank and use it for something it’s not saving, it is anything its funny accounting. So the next time a politician says he’s going to save the taxpayer money tell him to take that money instead of his paycheck and see what he says!

Just Sayin’