Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Texarkana Gazette. Sept. 2, 2019.
An estimated one in five kids in this country struggle with hunger. And the problem is only getting worse.
There are a lot of families living on the edge. Some are homeless. Some are without work. And some cannot earn enough even with one or two jobs to keep food on the table dependably.
According to Harvest Regional Food Bank, as many as 55,000 of your friends and neighbors in Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas suffer from food insecurity.
Thousands more are just a paycheck away from disaster.
Some you may know about. Others bear their burden quietly.
But they are out there.
September is Hunger Action Month, an initiative of Feeding America in cooperation with food banks across the nation.
The goal of Hunger Action Month is to raise awareness and raise funds to fight hunger in America.
These agencies are asking local organizations, businesses and individuals to donate food, time and money to the cause.
All through September, there will be special events to help Harvest take care of those in need. Some local restaurants will donate part of their food sales. There will be fundraisers and kids’ activities.
It all culminates next month at the annual Taste of Texarkana. The Oct. 22 event brings fine food and drink from our area’s best vendors to benefit Harvest Texarkana. You can have a lot of fun for a worthy cause.
You can find more information about how you can help at facebook.com/harvesttxk/
It’s a tragedy that even one person must face hunger in a country so richly blessed. We encourage you to help as best you can.
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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sept. 3, 2019.
It’s no secret among big business, nor is it a secret among the least among us: It’s easy to get around the E-verify system in the Estados Unidos. Just turn in some papers.
The papers don’t even have to be fake papers. They can be real live documents. Or some of them might be fake documents but with real live numbers on them. But the person handing them over to HR might not be completely honest about his own identity.
That’s what an investigation by The Los Angeles Times found the other day. After all the hub-bub after the illegal alien busts in Mississippi last month, folks began to wonder: How did so many hundreds of people fake their way into jobs? And how many thousands more are out there?
The E-verify system is flawed, and how. Which you might expect of a system set up years ago. If somebody in the modern forgery business can find a real Social Security number or document—either from a person who isn’t aware his identification has been stolen, or maybe from a dead person no longer among the quick—then it’s easy enough to get somebody into a legitimate job. For the right price, and a change of name, anybody can get through a human resources check.
And that’s only a problem in states that require E-verify. Most don’t.
(How silly is it for Mississippi to require E-verify checks for employees, but not Arkansas? Talk about your loopholes. It makes as much sense as forcing background checks at a gun store, but not at a gun show. That is, no sense at all.)
The government has computers. There should be an easy way to find out if two people are using a Social Security number. Or if somebody is working after death payments have been issued. Hint: Ask somebody in IT, Uncle Sam.
La ley es la ley. The law is the law. Those who flout it shouldn’t be rewarded with American jobs. There may be a dozen ways in which the immigration problem should be fixed in this country. Chalk this one up as another. But you’d think this E-verify mess would be among the easiest to solve.
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Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sept. 3, 2019.
In community discussions about Fayetteville’s proposed entertainment district, it seems one of the major concerns is making sure the mayor knows when to say when.
No, people aren’t concerned Mayor Lioneld Jordan or some future chief executive will imbibe too much. The question is whether the town’s current and future mayors, who will be given authority to grant requests for special events under the entertainment district ordinance, will be able to say “no.”
Jordan on Thursday and earlier in the week met with business owners in the downtown area who wanted to voice their thoughts about the ordinance, which is authorized under a state law passed in the 2019 legislative session.
Act 812 of 2019 empowers qualifying cities to create entertainment districts in which alcoholic beverages can be consumed outdoors on public streets and sidewalks. Generally speaking, tourism and business advocates back the change as a way to strengthen cities’ ability to attract visitors and their spending.
Cities like Little Rock and Mountain Home have adopted entertainment districts of a more permanent nature. For example, Little Rock’s River Market area will allow people to take their drinks on the street within a four-block area on Friday nights, almost all day Saturday and during a nine-hour period on Sundays.
Fayetteville’s City Council hasn’t adopted a plan put forward by Jordan’s administration yet. At its last meeting, members encouraged more discussion with businesses affected.
Fayetteville officials so far don’t appear ready to go whole hog on a permanently activated outdoor drinking zone, although it’s been suggested that might be a goal eventually. The presence of a large college-going population, many of them under the age at which they can legally drink alcoholic beverages, appears to have introduced a dose of temperance to Fayetteville’s plans.
As proposed so far, Fayetteville’s ordinance would create a sizable entertainment district, but no permanent zone to allow outdoor drinking regularly. Instead, each event organizer would request a permit from the mayor. The request would define the operating hours and boundaries within a commercial area where the organizer would like the city to allow public drinking.
There are other limiting factors. Any event with outdoor drinking would involve closing city streets where the event is taking place. Businesses within that area could opt in or opt out. Those that participate would sell special cups, no more than 16 ounces, that could be carried out of their place of business into the streets within the defined boundaries.
Jordan, facing concerns about how often these special events will be allowed, said he’s not interested in becoming Memphis.
“If you think I’m going to have one of these every weekend, that’s not going to happen,” he told business operators Thursday. “We’re going to take our time with this thing. I’m not going to turn this into something wide open like Beale Street.”
Of course, Jordan won’t always be mayor, so it really does matter what the ordinance says. Doubt us? Donald Trump holds the same office once held by Barack Obama, Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Is there a difference?
If there’s wide latitude in the mayor’s capacity to grant permits for events, the standard of how that’s applied will likely change each time Fayetteville elects a new mayor. On the flip side, it’s probably not wise to write an ordinance so tightly that every new opportunity to hold an event requires a vote of the City Council.
Let’s think about this from an event organizer’s perspective.
If an organizer requests an event in September that’s almost identical to one the city approved back in May, what might be the city’s justification for rejecting it? Can it be rejected simply because it’s, say, the 10th special event requested in a given year rather than the third one? Does that seem fair?
In other words, won’t the mayor need a legitimate reason to treat similar requests differently? Is it adequate for the mayor to just “go with his gut” or does the ordinance need to outline some clear parameters?
As other cities weigh how to best apply the entertainment district law within their communities, finding the right balance might prove challenging. If outdoor drinking proves both popular and advantageous for businesses, it’s reasonable to expect the frequency of requests to grow.
No one we’ve heard has suggested alcohol free is the way to be in the entertainment district. English jurist John Selden advised “Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.” The challenge for Fayetteville and other communities considering entertainment districts is how to avoid getting too much of a good thing.
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