Worst beef Best canceled In January, the Arkansas Inaugural Gala, the state’s contribution to the slate of Washington, D.C., balls surrounding the inauguration of Donald Trump, had to be canceled after organizers admitted they hadn’t sold a single ticket.
Best lonely
In March, former Gov. Mike Huckabee was unmercifully mocked for
that resembled Donald
When local blogger Russ Racop asked a Little Rock Police Department spokesman why LRPD Chief Kenton Buckner wasn’t issued a ticket after a March 2 incident in which Buckner rear-ended a car at Markham and Spring streets, Racop was given a copy of a memorandum authored by Little Rock City Manager Bruce Moore that stated it was LRPD policy that police officers were never issued tickets after traffic accidents in city-owned vehicles, even if they were at fault.
Trump, with Huckabee
Worst perk pattern
attempt to start a Twitter beef with rapper
Second worst judge
video in which Snoop
Worst judge In October, former state District Judge Joseph O. Boeckmann of Wynne plead guilty to federal counts of witness tampering and wire fraud related to allegations that Boeckmann had used his position on the bench for years to take lewd photos of young men who came before him, some of the most desperate of whom, according to investigators, he recruited as paid sexual and sadomasochistic partners.
Best freedom! In April, the “Chocolate Covered Cherry Freedom Act of 2017,” sponsored by Rep. Jana Della Rosa (R-Rogers), was signed into law.
Worst insult to hardworking grit tanks A petition was filed in February on change.org asking that the mayor of Conway rename the city’s “grit tank” — a round tank that gathers and agitates raw sewage prior to its being treated — after Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway). The petition has over 2,500 signatures as of this writing.
Snoop Dogg over a music
“shoots” a fake gun at a clown
calling Snoop “Poop Dogg” and showing his street cred by making a reference to the 16-year-old Baha Men novelty hit “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and longest-running festival lost almost $300,000 in its final year. Organizers blamed competition from other festivals and the rising cost of performers’ fees for the move.
Worst hearse In August, Little Rock police and several other agencies engaged in a highspeed chase with the driver of a Hummer SUV that had a full-sized casket strapped to the roof. When he finally pulled over near the town of White Hall, the 39-year-old driver was arrested on several charges, including fleeing and reckless driving. The casket, thankfully, was empty.
Worst sweeper In June, a Rogers woman and her infant son were injured when a wayward street sweeper careened off the road and crashed through the wall of their house.
Worst serious
Following a March presentation to the Little Rock Rotary Club, Arkansas After celebrating its 40th anniver- Department of Correction Director sary in June, Riverfest announced that Wendy Kelley closed by asking if any it was closing shop. The state’s largest of the audience members would like
Worst anniversary present
Best perk
his cornball
In March, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson (R-Little Rock) filed a one-sentence bill that proposed to “preserve the right to be left alone.” The bill was still pending when the legislature adjourned.
In April, the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission issued a letter of admonishment to Circuit Judge William “Bill” Pearson, whose jurisdiction includes Pope, Johnson and Franklin counties, after he pleaded guilty to two charges related to a January incident in which he blew through a DWI checkpoint near Clarksville while driving drunk, then led police on a short chase before a state trooper rammed Pearson’s truck to end the pursuit.
The bill offsets the cost of the tax break by hiking up the tax on candy and soft drinks. But completely unrelated, it also reduced the tax on soft drink syrup and paid for that by raising taxes on unemployment benefits and digital downloads.
to volunteer to witness one of the eight executions the state had scheduled for April. “Temporarily, there was a little laugh from the audience because they thought she might be kidding,” acting chapter president Bill Booker told a local news station. “It quickly became obvious that she was not kidding.”
Worst ordinance In May, a new ordinance put under consideration by the Little Rock City Board proposed making it illegal to feed free meals to more than 25 people in a city park without a permit, with groups barred from serving such meals more than two times a year at any park.
Worst ‘therapy’ Documents uncovered in January related to the state’s General Improvement Fund, a taxpayer-funded, $50 million slop for legislators, revealed that between 2013 and 2015, $41,698 had been paid to a Saline County company run by a former insurance agent that provided “ozone therapy,” a quack medicine technique that’s about as effective at preventing and treating disease as regular ol’ breathing.
Worst soda scam The legislature passed a bill, pushed by Governor Hutchinson and signed into law in February, that creates a tax exemption for military retirement pay.
Moore’s memorandum noted that the Cops Don’t Get Tickets After Accidents policy was also true for the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, the North Little Rock Police Department and the Arkansas State Police.
Worst ‘fair trials’ A report by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project about Arkansas’s plan to execute eight death row inmates over an 11-day period in April noted that the inmates scheduled to be executed included a man with an estimated I.Q. of 70, another who regularly reports seeing his dead father and ghostly dogs walking around inside the prison, an inmate who was represented at trial by an attorney who was allegedly drunk and another whose defense during his original trial — including attorney’s fees, travel costs for witnesses, lodging and food — cost a grand total of $6,641.95.
Worst faith in the memories of inky wretches The Arkansas Department of Correction initially announced that during the executions in April that reporters serving as media witnesses to the executions would not be able to bring pens and notebooks into the execution viewing room, with ADC spokesman Solomon Graves telling the assembled media, “I trust your ability to be able to clearly and concisely report what you would have witnessed” — which called into question just how, exactly, Graves thought reporters, most lacking a photographic memory, could manage to do all that clear and concise reporting. After arktimes.com DECEMBER 21, 2017
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