W O RDS
Parlay voo? Featuring the imaginations and talents of Arkansas students and top local designers Sunday, April 21, 2013 Clinton Center • Great Hall Little Rock, Arkansas Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Show starts at 7 p.m.
Bazaar will start immediately following the Fashion Show Fashion show is FREE* and open to the public; however, reservations are required. Reserve your seats by emailing operationslr@clintonfoundation.org or by calling 501-748-0425.
1200 President Clinton Avenue • Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 501.374.4242 • clintonpresidentialcenter.org
“Obama’s budget was due in February, Watson.”) but administration officials said it was Our discussion delayed by the year-end fiscal negotia- of jig got Angie tions and resulting tax changes. It is to wondering also about gig, as in arrive on Capitol Hill hours before the president dines Wednesday evening with “He has a gig playDOUG a dozen Senate Republicans — his second ing cello at Red SMITH dougsmith@arktimes.com such parlay in recent weeks.” Lobster.” Gig, like Sounds like the president and the sena- jig, has several tors will be meeting at the race track. A meanings, including “a job, usually for a parlay is a kind of wager, in which the specified time; especially an entertainer’s gambler bets his winnings from one race engagement.” Random House says this on a subsequent race. A meeting to discuss slangy usage of gig dates from the late disputed matters is a parley. 1920s; the origin is “uncertain.” Another meaning of gig is “a light, twoElaborating, he admitted that only one wheeled, one-horse carriage.” Only one was like snow, the other more like milk: horsepower? Why then, one wonders, did Angie Wilson asks where “The jig is up” Curly refer to his Surrey with the Fringe comes from. Jig has several definitions, on Top as a “gig,” even while assuring Lauincluding “a kind of lively dance” and “any rey that she’d sit behind a team of snowof several fishing devices that are jerked white horses. Ah, so many uncertainties. up and down or drawn through the water.” The rite stuff: There’s also one involving race. But none of those is the origin of “The jig is up.” “Since the spill, local residents and According to Merriam-Webster and members of the media have received conother sources, jig also means, or once did, flicting information about the size and “trick, game.” This usage has largely van- scope of the spill. The spill is significant ished except for “The jig is up,” meaning in its own rite, but also in the red flags “The game is over. You’re done.” (“The it raises for the Keystone XL tar sands jig is up, Moriarty. Keep an eye on him, pipeline.” WEEK THAT WAS
It was a good week for...
presents our fi rst ev er
rooftop screening “Bloody Mama” starring Robert DeNiro and Robert Walden
April 12
7pm
River Market Tower
With special guest Actor Robert Walden Must purchase a 2013 LRFF pass to attend, and you can get one at
LittleRockFilmFestival.TicketLeap.com Made possible by:
10
APRIL 11, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
BIG RIVER STEEL. The House overwhelmingly approved, 78-17, legislation to issue state bonds for the startup Big River Steel mill proposed for Mississippi County. The state is prepared to put $125 million in incentives into the project in the hopes of creating more than 500 jobs. A supermajority of the House still must approve a budget bill before the proposal is finalized. The legislation has been approved in the Senate previously.
enough votes to clear the three-fourths majority needed in both chambers to pass the required appropriation is the political question of the session.
It was a bad week for...
THE FIRST OF MANY LAWSUITS. Two residents of the neighborhood affected by the ExxonMobil pipeline spill are named plaintiffs in a class-action suit targeting ExxonMobil. The suit argues that the pipeline carrying Canadian crude was in unsafe and defective condition and the break has diminished the value of property all along the pipeline.
TAX JUSTICE. House Speaker Davy Carter’s bill to cut capital gains originally included a 70 percent exemption on gains of $5 million or more. A tax break only for millionaires. Last week, he amended it to include a total exemption for capital gains in excess of $10 million. That’s a gift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the very wealthiest in Arkansas. For those on the opposite end of the income spectrum, Carter’s amendment also increased the standard deduction by $200 in 2015 and $200 more in 2016. A Democratic proposal has called for raising the standard deduction from where it currently stands — at $2,000 — to $5,000.
EXPANSION. The Senate and a House committee advanced enabling legislation to expand Medicaid in Arkansans through the “private option,” which would give low-income Arkansas access to private insurance paid for by government subsidies. The legislation is sure to clear the full House. Whether the architects of the plan, Senate Pro Tem Michael Lamoureux and House Speaker Davy Carter can muster
WORKERS BETWEEN JOBS. Without debate, the Senate passed legislation requiring random drug testing of people receiving unemployment benefits. No mention in the bill of drug testing all the unemployed members of the legislature periodically. But that was only salt in the wounds to the unemployed, who would see their unemployment benefits cut by $126 in another proposal that narrowly passed the Senate.