HEY! (HAD ENOUGH YET?)

The way I view things the Arkansas lottery is a good lesson learned. The people of our state, myself included (although I voted against the lottery) it appears voted to implement something without doing our due diligence.
Two-thirds of those who went to the polls voted to implement the lottery. What that means is over 66 percent of the people in the state said that they “trusted” the government of Arkansas to initiate a program involving millions of dollars on the off chance our schools would receive funding. Wonder what the thought process was of those pulling the “yes” lever? Suppose they were thinking of the children, the schools or the people of Arkansas that would be sucked into the lottery “scheme”.
I submit that is not the case at all. I believe that most likely they were thinking “wouldn’t be nice if I won a million dollars?” When one might argue we should all have been thinking, “I need some specifics here. If I vote for this and allow state officials to over see a program where literally millions of dollars at stake, who is in charge here? What are they going to get paid to run this? How many employees will be on the payroll? How is the money divided between the workers, the winners and the schools? In other words all the questions and arguments that are going on right now should have been occurring before WE THE PEOPLE gave our stamp of approval.
Evidently our Governor and Lt. Governor failed to do their due diligence as well. It seems after Grant county Sherriff Lance Huey was hired for $115,644.00, Gov. Beebe stepped in admonishing the commission which then voted to cap annual salaries at $80,000.00 without a review.
So here we are months later with the people realizing once again that we have allowed ourselves to be fooled. Now we are desperately trying to shouting “Hey wait just a minute here. That’s not how we envisioned this! What are you people doing?”
These questions, and more, should have been asked on the front end. We, as citizen, must start taking our voting seriously- rather than taking the attitude “Oh! That sounds good! He looks like a nice man. Let’s go pull the lever and have a beer.”
In my estimation we Arkansans got what we asked for, a classic scam. Hopefully in the future, (like when the school district is asking for $115 million bond to build an $83million high school by raising the local millage by 4.9) we will do our necessary due diligence and discover the actual facts before we give away our money.
Friends, this still is a government of, by and for The People. The People just need to remember that being a citizen in a free society requires real work. If not taken seriously, results like those we are seeing today (and have been living with many years): An over- reaching, over-spending, arrogant, self-indulgent government will only continue likely worsen.
Join with me today to say HAD ENOUGH YET?! No longer will I vote for any person, any law or any other issue about whom I’ve not personally done my home work. If we do that together -UNITED- we CAN expect great change. It’s the only way.