As of Sunday morning, the day after April Fool's Day, the winningest lottery ticket yet recorded in this state's foolish history of gambling--a jackpot of $177 million--was waiting to be turned in. No doubt a lot of suckers out there felt the green-eyed monster called envy tighten its hold on their grasping souls as they read all about it in Arkansas' Newspaper, unaware not only of the immense odds against their hitting the jackpot but that the fix was already in, since the only sure winner in this sucker's game is the house.
For the convenience store that presumably sold the winning ticket in Stuttgart is in line to pick up a $50,000 bonus for doing so. So says Bishop Woosley, which is not an ecclesiastical title but the name of the well-paid croupier who runs this numbers racket on behalf of We the (gullible) People of Arkansas.
Bishop Woosley sounds delighted at the prospect of reeling in more poor saps who haven't figured out how the game is played and who benefits by it besides those like himself who run it. "You always hear that in a small state people never win, and this kind of disproves that. So hopefully our players will understand that you can actually win the jackpot. It will be a big deal for us for sure." Here's a free translation of The Bishop's always elevated comments: Having put out all this sucker's bait, the Lottery's director now stands ready to start reeling in ever more gulls, much like the operator of a gambling casino waiting for more customers to wash up on his ever-hospitable shore. As they surely will, for there's still one born every minute.
There's an inverse ratio between gambling and the financial health of cities all across this state. Yet Congress is leaving all this money on the green-felt table by refusing to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would enable states to collect sales taxes from remote retailers. The result: Towns in Arkansas and well beyond are starving at this banquet as the good times roll across the country. To cite Dean Kumpuris, a city director of the municipality in the dead center of the state, on the latest spin of the roulette wheel that is state revenue: "There are not words to tell you how bad this is for this city, or all cities in the United States."
Dean Kumpuris says he'd like to send this state's profit-and-loss statements to Arkansas' congressional delegation and tell every one of its members: "Look what you are doing to us. Get off your duff and do something about this. We are having a real problem. Get up or we are just going to die on the vine here. Fifty percent of our budget comes from tax revenues. So if you have a negative flow of income and you have contracts [with city workers and contractors] with step increases in it, guess what's going to happen. We will be two or three years from now where we were 10 years ago." And the downhill slide may only have begun.
Little Rock's mayor, Mark Stodola, can only second the motion as he watches the decline and fall of the state's most populous city, its leaders quarreling over how to spend money they haven't got. What a sad spectacle. "The debate over how that money is being spent at the state level is having a big detrimental impact on getting this [Marketplace Fairness Act] passed. I don't want cities to be a sacrificial lamb and stand on this issue in defeat because of what the state might want to do with the money as opposed to what we need the money for." Now if not sooner.
"Every one of these people [on the state's Revenue and Taxation Committee]," continues Dean Kumpuris, "represents a community, and every community is not going to get the money that would be beneficial to them because of this bill [being held up in a legislative committee]. To me, tell them to go find someplace else to play politics. Don't do it on the one [bill] that affects every community in this state."
Unfortunately, his words seem to have fallen on deaf ears, for the sponsor of the bill--state Representative Dan Douglas of Bentonville--says the bill is "going to run just the way it is or die just the way it is." If we didn't know better, the gentleman from Bentonville is just determined to hold Little Rock back while northwest Arkansas forges ahead.
But whatever fate might await a self-disgraced judge named Michael Maggio, no one can convincingly accuse him of being a gambler. He's bound to know that, despite being sentenced to 10 years in the Big House, he's kept on appealing and appealing, apparently aware that the wheels of justice grind slow but maybe unaware that they can grind exceeding fine. Justice may be delayed, but in the end not defeated. To quote his counsel, "It's no fault of former Judge Maggio that it took that long to get here. He's not fleeing. He's not going anywhere. He's even here in the courtroom for the arguments. He's ready to submit to judgment if that's what happens, but he hopes to get a trial." And start the clock ticking all over again. That's no gamble, for the painfully slow procedure that is the appellate process is, in his case, more of a legal strategy. And he seems to be employing it for all it's worth, if not more. But one of these days, one of these fine days, Justice might yet catch up with him. We'll see, and so will the whole state.
In the meantime, the rains have come and the U.S. Corps of Engineers says more than half the levees in the state (53 percent, to be more precise) have faults. It's as if heaven were weeping for poor Arkansas, always being diverted by its politicians, bribe-takers and other such elevated riff-raff. God save Arkansas, for its leaders don't seem at all ready to do so.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 04/05/2017