Arkansas Times - August 13, 2015

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NEWS + POLITICS + ENTERTAINMENT + FOOD / AUGUST 13, 2015 / ARKTIMES.COM

Ten days that shook Medicaid State’s renewal process leaves thousands in insurance limbo

BY DAVID RAMSEY, BENJAMIN HARDY, LESLIE PEACOCK

Photography by Nancy Nolan 2

AUGUST 13, 2015

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AUGUST 13, 2015

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COMMENT

The Medicaid debacle From the web, in response to stories posted on the Arkansas Blog in the past several days about the Department of Human Services’ Medicaid renewal system that, among other problems, gave people only 10 days to supply income information to keep from being kicked off their plans: I have a friend that was living with me a couple of years ago and used my home address. She had the hardest time getting them [DHS] to change her address.

Ambetter said she had to go to the website. The website wouldn’t process the address change. DHS said she had to go to Ambetter. After considerable effort she finally found someone at DHS to change her address. At least I am conscientious enough to keep her mail for her and drop it off to her from time to time.

Ambetter is also alerting their insureds that they may be getting a letter from DHS and to respond quickly.

So, I’m hoping the insurance companies that are part of the private option will help their insureds navigate the system to get their insurance reinstated.

My point mostly being they don’t have a good system in place to get an address changed either.

imjustsaying Do you remember the time when people used to be making jokes about the Soviet bureaucracy? That’s long ago. Nowadays, the joke is on us. And who’s responsible? Republicans taking any opportunity they can to make citizens’ interactions with Repub-controlled government as unpleasant as possible.

I hope some of the people who got kicked off unjustifiably — especially those who did send in the requested documentation and still(!) were terminated — will sue the ass off the governor and his henchmen. This was a deliberate political decision to find a way to kick people off of health insurance, and the reason isn’t even saving money (it’s federal money after all), it’s pure and unadulterated sadism. They just get a kick out of seeing people needlessly suffer. (Sidenote: Ohio Gov. John Kasich explained his decision to expand Medicare by quoting the Bible. Result: Self-anointed Bible-thumpers hate him.)

TM In the spring, I attended a legislative task force meeting on teacher and state employees insurance. The tone was sometimes hostile when discussing certain conditions. In dealing with a new 4

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

policy on hepatitis C, it was implied some cases were a product of drug abuse or other behavior. At least Cecile Bledsoe offered that many medical professionals were often exposed to hepatitis C. It was stated that people with diabetes and other conditions be charged a $750 per month penalty if their condition is not under control. It was stated that, if these people would control their conditions, prices would be cheaper “for the rest of us.” Of course, several of the young men sitting on the committee appear on course to develop the same conditions. If legislators are this hostile toward STATE employees and teachers, it can be assumed they would be even more insensitive to citizens using the public option.

aqua blue The sad thing is, I completely believe this is an accident. I’ve worked with the state’s IT departments, and it’s not pretty. Arkansas, due to its size, has the most to gain from well-implemented systems. Sadly, in large part because they’re not willing to pay for it, and the leadership doesn’t know how to use email, let alone build complex systems, we instead shoot ourselves in the foot with the very tool that should be rescuing us. It’s especially ironic, given how much our politicians extol the virtues of private enterprise, that they can’t recognize the market at work when they can’t hire good employees.

odoketa It’s been nine months since Hutchinson was elected office. He should have

had his team prepared for this. Remember how our state Repubs were screaming when Obamacare had its computer issues?

Well, the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, now. I don’t see them screaming for a screwup that occurred on their watch.

We shall see how Asa handles this.

It would be great if those who were dropped and needed to refill life-saving prescriptions could show up at one place and get these matters resolved. I nominate the governor’s door tomorrow morning.

jj

Poison Apple It’s like Gov. Asa got drunk and tattooed a big swastika on his forehead ... this private option scandal. It’s his ugly baby and he should have known better than to birth it.

As someone who unfortunately has some tedious health problems I can tell you lots of long stories about what happens when I can’t get my medicine or insulin pens. My young doctor avoids working on Fridays and due to my lack of attention I’ve had to go without insulin over the weekend.

So if, thanks to Team Asa I couldn’t buy insulin for a month ... one of my nine cats would have to take over my typing duties on the AT blog.

Why would a politician happily screw up someone’s delicate health? Are ALEC or the Koch brothers worth killing an innocent person? And how could Asa live with that on his conscience? Doesn’t Asa’s vengeful god make little notes about things as important as this?

We can scorn crack dealers and meth heads all we want but really ... who’s worse? A guy selling you drugs or a guy knowingly kicking sick people off the health insurance rolls? I’m sure Republicans sleep well at night. I just don’t know how they do it?

deathbyinches

Well, the Republican screwup of state government is well underway and their ability to employ those who are incapable of thinking is working well. They will, of course, double their workload since probably at least 80 percent of those cut off by the state will have to be re-enrolled with more labor on their part as well as screwing health care companies who will have to re-do their work.

Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to just stand outside and drop 20-pound anvils on your foot since the same amount of public good would have occurred and they wouldn’t have looked like the fools they are?

couldn’t be better This debacle is a planned debacle. Sabotage was inserted in the plan from the beginning by the GOP. Like many of you repeatedly say, they don’t want to help the poor. They might set one up in the first place as a sop to the many, deluded poor who, for some welldesigned reasons, tend to vote Republican. Yet they only want it to operate long enough that they can blame Democrats or dark people when it goes belly up.

It’s a devious plan to have it both ways and it works — at least here in the South.

Smiling Asa is the perfect figurehead for a bunch of hateful, vicious, selfish people who make up the Greedy Old Patriarchs party in Arkinsaw.

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In response to reporting on the Arkansas Blog about the major change to the Little Rock teacher’s union contract: Asa saw Scott Walker effectively destroy the public employees unions in Wisconsin, and took a lesson from him.

I’m afraid it is all but over for the Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association.

I don’t know anything about the Little Rock situation, but across the nation, a lot of the public employee unions have brought widespread public distrust upon themselves. I am a union man; however, I never belonged to one. The Newspaper Guild local at the Arkansas Gazette had already been defeated and put out of business by the time I went to work there.

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AUGUST 13, 2015

5

EYE ON ARKANSAS

WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the Week:

STUART BOWLES

— Curtis Hagerty is the dentist in question at Russellville’s Hagerty Family Dental, but the idea for the message originated with his wife, hygienist Tisa Hagerty. “We thought it was funny,” she told the Huffington Post, after a picture of the sign went viral. “And it’s true. The dentist doesn’t hunt lions. Or anything else.”

Deal or no deal Word leaked Sunday that the Little Rock School District — which was taken over by the state Education Department in January — would offer its unionized employees a difficult choice.

Under a draft proposal released Monday by Superintendent Baker Kurrus, the Little Rock Education Association will maintain its status as a local union with exclusive negotiating rights on salary and benefits, but the terms of its lengthy, 50-year-old contract will go by the wayside. That means teachers and other workers stand to lose a number of protections they’ve won over the years.

However, there’s little the LREA can do when the state holds all the cards. If the union pushes back too hard, it risks its contract being dissolved unilaterally (as happened in the Pulaski County Special School District after a state takeover there). LREA President Cathy Koehler urged restraint, saying, “I fully anticipate that we will continue to be a part of conversations moving forward.”

As the Times went to press Tuesday evening, LREA members were preparing to meet to consider the offer. Students return to the district’s classrooms next week.

Maybe settle for veep?

In a telephone poll conducted before last week’s Republican debate, Donald Trump bested Mike Huckabee in Huckabee’s home state.

Among 428 likely GOP primary voters in Arkansas, 26 percent said they’d 6

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

FIBONACCI FEVER: Sunflower by Stuart Bowles, from the Eye on Arkansas Flickr group.

vote for Trump, compared to 22 percent for the former governor. Trump continues to lead the cartoonishly crowded Republican pack both nationally and in Southern states as a whole — even after a debate performance in which he gleefully rejected ruling out a bid for the White House as an independent, drawing ire from his rivals. He then outdid himself by insulting Fox News host Megyn Kelly for asking him a tough question about his history of crude remarks toward women. Trump the frontrunner: It’s remarkable, it’s horrifying and, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s a little bit delightful. (Huckabee, meanwhile, continues to hover around fourth or fifth place in the Republican field in national polls.)

Date set for Ellison trial The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last week affirmed a lower court ruling that two Little Rock police officers are not immune from a lawsuit in the 2010

death of Eugene Ellison. Ellison, 67, was killed in his apartment at a complex where the officers were providing private security. The officers, Donna Lesher and Tabitha McCrillis, had argued the suit against them should be dismissed. Lesher shot Ellison after he allegedly became belligerent that the officers entered his home uninvited to check on his “welfare.”

The unanimous ruling by the threejudge panel means the case can now proceed. Judge Brian Miller has set the trial for Nov. 2.

The long goodbye to coal Entergy Arkansas, the state’s largest electric utility, indicated that it may shut down the White Bluff power plant near Jefferson by 2028. The proposal to shutter Arkansas’s biggest and dirtiest coal-burning facility came as part of Entergy’s response to an Environmental Protection Agency plan to improve air quality and reduce haze. The utility said it’d be cheaper to wind down operations at White Bluff than install expensive scrubbers to make it cleaner.

It’s a hopeful sign Arkansas might be changing its outdated, coal-loving ways, especially combined with new investment in renewables and natural gas

(which at least burns cleaner than coal). Yet Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge continues to fight the feds tooth and nail on every regulation issued by the EPA, including new ones intended to combat climate change. Some folks are stuck in the past.

A shooting in Blytheville On Saturday night, a dozen people were wounded and one killed — 19-year-old Adline King — in the Northeast Arkansas town. But despite a large number of eyewitnesses, police have yet to identify a gunman. Scott Ellington, the prosecuting attorney for Mississippi County, is pleading for anyone with information to step forward.

OPINION

Hypocrisy watch

P

olitical opposition is one thing.

Hypocritical opposition is another. A couple of examples popped up over the weekend: • DONALD TRUMP He won’t be president. He’s a crude bully. But ...

I would like to say something to those who laughed uproariously when he protested that he’d only called Rosie O’Donnell a fat pig and who lustily cheered his criticism of political correctness. Shut up if you plan to criticize Trump for maybe or maybe not suggesting he got a hard time from Fox’s Megyn Kelly because she was menstruating. Male chauvinism is male chauvinism — against friend or foe.

• GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY. This is much more important.

Lives are at stake.

Arkansas is months behind and illequipped — at least in part because of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s refusal to fill open state jobs — in performing the income verification process for Medicaid recipients.

Of course eligibility should be checked regularly. Of course it should be checked for the 250,000 or MAX so people newly BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com added to health insurance thanks to the state’s private option version of Medicaid expansion authorized under Obamacare.

As many as 50,000 may lose coverage, mostly for failure to complete paperwork on the eligibility check (if they got paperwork at all). Can you think of a Republican who’s uttered a word of outrage about state incompetence?

Who’s demanding an investigation?

They weren’t so silent about the glitchplagued Obamacare rollout.

The difference here, of course, is that many Republicans WANT tens of thousands to be ineligible for government-paid insurance. Many of them want Obamacare to go away entirely.

Gov. Hutchinson is not in that number.

Bomb deals

I

f what you knew about the Iran nuclear agreement were the apocalyptic warnings of Iranian terrorism and another Jewish holocaust — Mike Huckabee’s contribution to the narrative — you would never suspect that we have had five decades of entirely futile efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons by what we thought were either rogue nations or the good guys.

That includes the secret and despairing efforts of four presidents — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon — to stop Israel itself from making the bombs and setting off a nuclear competition with Muslim countries.

You would never know that the agreement between Iran and the six global powers, led by the United States, promises to be the first successful effort to stop or seriously restrain a nation’s nuclear-weapons development. The deal curbs Iran’s suspected weapons program and allows inspections in return for an end to global oil and financial sanctions.

The letter to the president last week from 29 of the nation’s leading physicists and nuclear authorities endorsing the agreement described it as having “more stringent constraints than any previously

negotiated nonproliferation agreement.”

That is small praise if you follow nonproliferation’s ERNEST sad history and DUMAS our feckless part in it, but it should give you far more comfort than the blind claims by such as Huckabee and Arkansas’s Sen. Tom Cotton that the deal is a green light for Iran to build bombs, attack its neighbors and endanger us right here in Arkansas.

Here is an illustrative point. Huckabee, trying to leap ahead of other Republican presidential candidates in characterizing Barack Obama’s latest crime against humanity, said the agreement leads Israelis “to the door of the ovens.” How exactly are you leading them to the door of the ovens if the Israelis have the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems of any nation outside the great powers?

Even if the deal with Iran were no stronger than its Republican critics say, it would be by far the best we have ever done to curb nuclear ambitions. Lacking diplomatic leverage, we could only

might be eligible for another. They are He NEEDS Obamacare money and the surplus it provides for other services to terminated for non-response without balance his tax-cut-reduced budget. But, a review of circumstances. needing to cater to the rest of his party, • *Most of those being terminated have he also isn’t doing anything important no income. That is, there is no doubt to fix the problem. they are eligible for Medicaid. The Former Times staff writer David state knows who they are. By fedRamsey has been writing in detail on eral rules, they should be automatithe blog and in the paper about the many cally eligible if the state has reliable flaws in the state process, some perhaps information that they have no income. even illegal under federal standards.

• If someone IS newly ineligible for What’s wrong with the Arkansas prothe private option, Ramsey has discess? Among others: covered big problems in the state’s • The state asks for proof of income mechanism to move people into subfrom some whose income data shows sidized health marketplace coverage. them still eligible for Medicaid, That, again, probably makes Republiincluding some whose income has can legislators happy. They took pains gone DOWN. to block spending on people to guide • The letter went out in envelopes with consumers through a new and complicated process. little indication of what they were In one of Ramsey’s reports, he says about — junk mail in appearance — to people being asked for the first time it all comes back to Hutchinson. Why, about income verification. The letters he asked, is the state imposing a 10-day also were vague. response period that is wreaking havoc • Phone lines were jammed. on the lives of eligible beneficiaries and • The 10-day window for response is creating a bureaucratic nightmare?

There is one plausible answer: The arbitrarily short. It might even be illegal. Federal regulations seem to majority of Hutchinson’s party likes the require at least 30 days. result —fewer people on Obamacare.

• *The state is deeming people ineligible Or they enjoy seeing poor people pay for one part of Medicaid though they a cruel price for government help. despair as the Soviet Union and China stole our secrets and made the bomb and sigh as allies France and Britain did the same. But we tried, feverishly at times, timidly more often, to use diplomacy and sanctions or the threat of them to stop Israel, India, South Africa (it subsequently gave the bomb up), Pakistan and North Korea from joining the nuclear club. You know how they all turned out.

Let’s revisit them anyway. They offer a clearer perspective on the Iran deal than the Huckabees and Cottons can provide. Israel is a good place to start.

Since it was virtually a client state of the three Western nuclear powers, its atomic efforts were a ticklish problem, particularly for the United States.

France, with an assist from the British, actually furnished Israel technology and materials.

When President Eisenhower, months before leaving office, expressed concern about what appeared to be a nuclear reactor spotted by his U-2 spy planes, Israel explained that it was a textile factory but put it off limits to inspectors. Ike’s successor, John Kennedy, demanded inspections (privately, of course), refused a White House meeting with the Israeli prime minister and twice in 1963 wrote letters to the prime minister and his successor

threatening total isolation of Israel unless inspectors were allowed. Israel gave in, ,but it proved useless because inspectors were denied access to key parts of the facility. The next year President Johnson tried vainly to stop Argentina from selling yellowcake to Israel. Israel conducted its first nuclear test in 1966 and the CIA informed Johnson that Israel was building bombs. The CIA maintained in a secret report to President Carter later that 206 pounds of highly enriched uranium that went missing in 1965 from a nuclear company in a Pittsburgh suburb went to Israel. An FBI investigation of the missing uranium hit a dead end.

President Nixon continued the pressure but, according to documents declassified eight years ago, he then reached a permanent solution with Prime Minister Golda Meir at the White House. Both nations would adopt a policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” The U.S. would pretend not to know about Israel’s nuclear program and Israel itself would be vague about it. The policy prevails today, though the Defense Department slipped up last winter and acknowledged that Israel had an arsenal of 80 to 400 weapons.

Spurred by territorial disputes with Pakistan, India developed the bomb in 1974, over quiet diplomatic protests from the United States. On the eve of CONTINUED ON PAGE 21 www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

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ARKANSAS TIMES

o establish my credentials, here’s something that happened to my wife and me a bit before last year’s tragedy in Ferguson, Mo. We’d taken our daily three-mile walk with the dogs along our gravel road, where encountering three vehicles is a busy day. Often we see nobody.

We’d paused on a wooded hilltop far from any neighbor. Deer, coyotes, bobcats and even bears cross from the ridge to the river, requiring lots of investigative sniffing.

A quarter-mile further on, two burly young black men riding ATVs stopped at a turnoff. One gestured in our direction. They exchanged words, and then turned and drove directly toward us. They weren’t anybody we knew.

Did their being black contribute to our uneasiness? Yes. Virtually all crime in our rural Arkansas county is family-related. But down in Little Rock where we’d lived for many years, things are different.

Was I afraid? Not really. People have always left me alone. We were also accompanied by two Great Pyrenees and a German shepherd. The Pyrenees have never shown aggression toward humans, but they’re extremely powerful and fearless.

I have seen Jesse, the male, shake and throw a full-grown coyote like a rag doll.

Actually, it was the dogs that had drawn the men’s interest. They pulled up, dismounted and removed their sunglasses — always a reassuring gesture — and asked what breed they were. They turned out to be cousins of my friend Wayne, a U.S. Forest Service employee who does tractor and chainsaw work in his off hours, warm and personable like everybody in his family. We had a lively conversation.

Because we’re incurable wet-noodle liberals, we’ve often talked wistfully about this incident. We’d all four met each other exactly halfway, as if no racial divide existed. Actually, I think it was a country thing. In a county with more cows than people, nobody acts like a stranger.

It ain’t heaven, but it’s definitely not Ferguson.

Now then: “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

You know the late Michael Brown never GENE said that, right?

LYONS It was a mediaamplified fiction. According to the 86-page Department of Justice report on his tragic death at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson, “there are no witnesses who can testify credibly that Wilson shot Brown while Brown was attempting to surrender.”

Instead, he was charging. A footnote adds that no eyewitnesses “stated that Brown said ‘don’t shoot.’ ” This column has already quoted more of the DOJ’s painstaking investigation than a recent lengthy New Yorker profile of Darren Wilson that stirred righteous anger in the usual places: Salon, Slate and Charles Blow’s column in the New York Times.

Up to a point, Jake Halpern’s profile of Wilson, unemployed and halfway in hiding after a year spent receiving death threats (and something like $500,000 in donations) from people determined to cast him as either a racist murderer or a hero, was relatively even-handed.

To his credit, Wilson resists both roles. He sees himself as a decent cop blindsided by fate in the form of an enraged 6-foot-4, 300-pound kid who attacked him for no understandable reason. He tries not to think about whether Brown was a “bad guy” or a confused kid. “I only knew him for those 45 seconds in which he was trying to kill me,” Wilson said, “so I don’t know.”

He emphasized that cops don’t “have the luxury of dwelling on the past.

“We can’t fix in 30 minutes what happened 30 years ago,” he said.

“We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer.

I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment. … I’m not a psychologist.’”

Nor was he mayor, police chief or even a shift sergeant of the Ferguson CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

GOP’s rightward rush on abortion

W

ith the recent hidden-cam videos of Planned Parenthood medical officials discussing the harvesting and sale of fetal tissue driving domestic policy debates in Congress, it was natural that issues related to reproductive health would be a focus in last week’s much-watched Fox News GOP presidential debate. The surprise was not that the candidates voiced their disregard for the organization that has been a punching bag for Republicans since the Reagan era, but that so many of the candidates boxed themselves in on the broader issue of women’s reproductive health. Key moments from last Thursday will likely create lasting harm as the party seeks to retake the White House in 2016.

Considering the faction that serves as his shaky toehold in the nomination battle, it was natural that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee argued for policy that he termed “even more bold” than opposition to continued federal funding for Planned Parenthood. That “bold” stance — that the due process rights in the Fifth and 14th Amendments should be applied to fetuses from the moment of conception and that the president should use his full powers to defend those rights — is grounded in shaky science and shaky jurisprudence. Huckabee said his contention that life begins at conception “is affirmed by modern science and every unique human DNA schedule, which is present at conception.” The notion of a “DNA schedule” is apparently a Huckabee campaign creation. Just as creative is his legal theory that is recognized by no American court and would promise to disrupt numerous aspects of jurisprudence — from basic inheritance law to innumerable components of the criminal code.

Because Huckabee offers no real threat to gain the nomination, his legal and scientific fictions have little lasting meaning. Decidedly more relevant were the statements during the debate of two of the three most likely GOP nominees at this moment: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

(The third, Jeb Bush, had his own challenges on the topic of women’s health just a few days before the debate.)

In a question regarding his views on abortion, Walker reiterated his refusal to allow exceptions — including an excep-

tion in the case of severe risk to the life of the mother — to his pro-life views. Fox News moderator Megyn JAY Kelly asked conBARTH cisely: “Would you really let a mother die rather than have an abortion?” Channeling an infamous 1988 Michael Dukakis debate moment, Walker coldly concluded: “… I’ve said many times that that unborn child can be protected and there are many alternatives that would protect the life of the mother.”

Walker failed to present the “many alternatives” that women in such a dire situation would have at their disposal.

While decidedly more elegant than the Nixonesque Walker, Sen. Rubio countered aggressively Kelly’s question about the breadth of exceptions that Rubio would allow, emphasizing that he had never argued for an abortion exception in the case of rape and incest. Rushing to the right of most on the crowded stage, Rubio said, “I’ve advocated passing a law that says that all human life, at every stage of its development, is worthy of protection — in fact, I believe that law already exists. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.” It was a good applause line with a partisan Republican crowd in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena; general election voters will respond to the concept quite differently.

While used in targeted mail and social media advertisements, women’s health issues became an overarching component of the 2012 Obama campaign. The issue was clearly key to the monstrous 20-point gender gap rolled up in the race, but there was also evidence that the issue resonated with men desiring equal opportunity for the women in their lives.

There is no evidence that, no matter the current challenges facing Planned Parenthood (which, despite weeks of damaging press, maintains a net positive rating with general election voters according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll), support for women’s health has lessened as a winning issue for progressives. In its desire to make clear its opposition to Planned Parenthood the present crop of Republican candidates is marching its party, which must broaden its appeal in 2016, into an abortion trap difficult from which to disentangle.

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AUGUST 13, 2015

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s a run-up to the last four seasons of Razorback football, Pearls About Swine has busted up the schedule month by month and tried to peg every game. Let’s just say that 2012 was a huge, Dave Kingman-style whiff.

We made up for it last year by correctly identifying the Hogs’ progress most of the time; our prediction was that the team would get to 7-5 and beat LSU and Ole Miss in the process, and the only slipup was a misread of the Georgia game in Little Rock.

The consensus national view of Arkansas has morphed drastically over the past 12 months. When the Hogs got battered in the second half of last season’s opener at Auburn, there were mournful wails that the program was still buried beneath its own prior problems, with a half-cooked defense and a one-dimensional offense. It all changed quickly, though, and as Robb Smith’s defensive unit began to flourish and gain confidence throughout a vicious schedule, the offense similarly was bolstered. Brandon Allen gained footing for the first time as a Hog signal-caller, the offensive line coalesced and protected him, and it all culminated in the Razorbacks pulling a winning season out of the jaws of anguish.

Now the prognosticators see this team as one that theoretically falls short of contender status, but has been so competitive and fiery that this fall may represent the precipice of getting to those heights.

Recent speculation has the Hogs at 8-4, which again would be a step forward if the team can then summon another bowl win, but I know you’re all mostly waiting to see if Pearls will completely blow it like it did when John L. Smith was lurking around campus with five dollars to his name, or stay on the same finely tuned targeted path it forged last year.

Here’s a look at the first third of the schedule: UTEP at Arkansas, Sept. 5 — UTEP has the look of a traditional openinggame patsy, but there’s an odd similarity between the programs. Sean Kugler, like Bret Bielema, is in his third year, and he also took a miserable 2013 team (2-10, 1-7 in Conference USA) and reshaped it into a fine competitor in a matter of months.

The Miners went 7-6 in 2014, just like the Hogs, and actually ended up with a 5-3 league mark that could have been better but for a narrow defeat at Western

Kentucky in midNovember.

That’s the surface view, though.

Unlike the Hogs, who shook off that BEAU loss to Auburn and WILCOX then turned out to be damned salty the rest of the way, UTEP had some ugly marks on its backside, namely a 55-3 walloping by Louisiana Tech and listless, lopsided defeats to Rice and Utah State in two of the Miners’ final three games. This isn’t to suggest that the Miners are paper tigers, but they simply lack firepower and depth. In this one, Alex Collins breaks it clean early on a 75-yard touchdown run that is the longest he’s had on his own turf, and the Hogs cruise from there. Allen is able to rest most of the second half after the Razorbacks build a 31-7 halftime advantage, and we get our first look at third-string quarterback Rafe Peavey in the fourth quarter. Hogs 48, Miners 17.

Toledo at Arkansas, Sept. 12 — The lone War Memorial Stadium game of 2015 is against a Rockets team that, like UTEP, appears laughable. Then you consider that (a) Toledo is a stellar 26-13 under fourth-year coach Matt Campbell, and (b) the Hogs haven’t looked strong in the capital city since Bobby Petrino’s final game there in 2011, a walloping of Mississippi State. It’s as if the team feels burdened by the travel and unsettled in the spartan old place.

This, accordingly, isn’t the projected cakewalk it would seem to be. Toledo quarterback Logan Woodside emerged as a pure and confident thrower last fall, and he’ll test an Arkansas secondary early and often, even putting the Rockets ahead briefly in the first quarter with a long scoring throw. The fun ends thereafter when Brandon Allen sets out on a careerbest four-touchdown game, and Hunter Henry catches two in front of an adoring hometown crowd. Hogs 38, Rockets 22.

Texas Tech at Arkansas, Sept. 19 — The game that arguably cemented the Hogs’ rebuilt reputation last year was the one in Lubbock, where a lot of enthusiastic Red Raiders fans, buoyed by their debonair gunslinging coach, Kliff Kingsbury, felt like they had an SEC team right where they wanted them. Arkansas hadn’t beaten any team of note in quite some time, and the Raiders were coming off a CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

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THE OBSERVER

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T

he Observer loves poetry, but we will never be a poet. Our mind does not work that way: all that passion heat and mindful pressure crushing the boring charcoal briquettes of existence into diamonds.

The Observer has, however, collected quite a menagerie of Arkansas poets in our life over the years. So we called in some favors for you, dear sweltering reader: MOONLIGHT Moon swimming in its lunar waves thinking of you such dreams when pulled under the current of sleep to be carried out to sea adrift in the tidal pull that is your name — Randi Romo

A PASSING THOUGHT OF SARTRE What sacrifices, Jean Paul, for a stroll to the Café de Flore with an intellectual woman, or the blank stare of a page seducing you to procreate thoughts instead of babies?

You placed all bets on the horror of words to soothe the beating of a book’s paper wings, to ease the sour taste of disappointment; a feast of ideas gone slightly off.

No. That wasn’t it at all.

It was more the look in the eye of a coming storm, the furious dance of crimson clouds or rain coming down like a razor’s edge making you laugh, making you long for a life in a garden with a child, and never a word spoken.

— Paula McCauley Shelton

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They line the sidewalks like bored policemen keeping the crowds dumb. You want to know why none of them have dive bars off their lobbies instead of stools wiped clean after every ass. You want to know why we still live here when every other kingdom calls.

We walk until we find two beers under a tin roof and splinters in our elbows. It’s a hundred degrees out. It feels like a hundred ten. It’s not yet the end of July and we had to get out of that old house to escape the heat before we stripped naked and pressed our bodies to the hardwood like animals.

We wear only what we have to today, ragged old shirts and shorts that show we’re interested in being men. I used to be embarrassed by my nothing shoulders and below them a chest that blossomed barbed wire too early.

Isn’t it funny how we run from things that make us beautiful? Once I wanted smooth skin and everything clean. Now I want the hair of dark places. I want to drink these beers to cool us off then screw when we’re buzzed on a bed that’s scratched and clawed but has never seen a better day than this.

— Bryan Borland

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AUGUST 13, 2015

11

Arkansas Reporter

THE

IN S IDE R

Fort Smith nursing home owner Michael Morton is cooperating with the FBI in the bribery case of former judge Michael Maggio, the Democrat-Gazette reported Tuesday. As judge, Maggio reduced a verdict against a Morton nursing home by $4.2 million. He has since pleaded guilty to bribery by an unnamed party to reduce a nursing home verdict in return for political contributions. No one else has been charged, but facts are that Maggio received contributions from Morton arranged by former Republican Sen. Gilbert Baker.

Quick comment: It is not at all customary for a target of a criminal investigation to willingly speak with federal investigators. Morton has said all along — he could do no other, given public record — that he made political contributions to Maggio as well as many other candidates for judgeships.

He expected nothing tangible in return, he said, just good judges like Maggio.

It is devilishly hard to prove that a campaign contribution amounts to a quid pro quo for action by a public official. Morton’s willingness to talk is a scrap of circumstantial evidence that he’s not at risk in the federal probe.

It is sometimes easier to prove what conduits for and recipients of campaign money said and did. Particularly when there are phone records and a willing witness to talk about whom he talked with.

It is clear from other sources that Morton, Maggio and Baker are not the only political figures being considered by federal investigators in this probe.

Others received Morton money, too.

That’s not evidence of a crime, but, given Maggio, it’s prudent to take a look.

Home services phase-out affects 2,300 The state Health Department has notified home health workers — 500 on the state payroll and 1,800 or so contract workers — that the agency will phase out its home services program because of financial constraints and competition from the private home health companies.

About 13,000 Arkansans get the service through Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance. It can include a nurse visit for everything from routine

Watchers’ web

in July 2009, the Arkansas State Fusion Center has a staff of four permanent state employees and a handful of other staffers assigned there by outside law enforcement agencies on a rotating basis. ParticiState Fusion Center gathers data from local, pating agencies include the Department of state and federal law enforcement. That Homeland Security, the Arkansas Departtroubles privacy advocates. ment of Correction, the Arkansas Crime Information Center and others.

BY DAVID KOON The Fusion Center privacy policy says the center will seek and retain information f you’re like most Arkansans, you San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Houston. for a number of reasons, including information that “is based on a criminal prediprobably didn’t know the state had a As many fusion center critics note, there Fusion Center, much less what it does. are no uniform federal guidelines governcate or possible threat to public safety,” A hub for the sharing of informaing the operation or scope of fusion cenand/or “is useful in a crime analysis or in ters, the information they can collect, or tion between local, state and federal law the administration of criminal justice and enforcement agencies, the Arkansas how long that information may be stored. public safety.” The guidelines go on to say: State Fusion Center “The ASFC may retain inforis housed at Arkansas mation that is based on a level State Police headquarof suspicion that is less than ters in Southwest Little ‘reasonable suspicion,’ such as Rock, and has a deditips and leads or suspicious cated team of analysts activity report (SAR) inforparsing and distributmation.” A suspicious activing intelligence gathity report can originate with ered by law enforcelaw enforcement, but also ment as it comes in. can originate from the pubIt’s one of over 75 state lic, including, as has happened, and city fusion centers SAR reports filed about people scattered all over the deemed suspicious merely for United States. The centaking photos of public propDATA DUMP SITE: The Fusion Center, which collects information from police erty and infrastructure. ters collect data from agencies, is housed at State Police Headquarters. local law enforcement The policy goes on to say but also share inforthat the center will not seek mation with one another and the federal That non-uniform regulatory landor retain information about “individugovernment, creating a kind of neural scape, access to federal intelligence gathals or organizations solely on the basis of network that includes thousands of law ering, and the idea that fusion centers their religious, political, or social views enforcement entities, from tiny police might be collecting, sharing and storing or activities; their participation in a pardepartments all the way up to federal information on fringe groups of Ameriticular noncriminal organization or lawful agencies like the INS, CIA and FBI. cans who’ve committed no crimes, has event; or their races, ethnicities, citizenBill Sadler, a spokesman for the State had privacy advocates up in arms since ship, places of origin, ages, disabilities, Police, said that “99 percent” of the daythe first fusion centers opened. Fusion genders or sexual orientations.” to-day work of the Fusion Center involves center critics haven’t only come from Rita Sklar, the executive director of collecting and distributing information outside government, either. An October the ACLU of Arkansas, said that while the 2012 report by the bipartisan U.S. Senate on multijurisdictional, mostly run-of-theACLU believes it’s important for federal mill crimes. However, many privacy advoPermanent Subcommittee on Investigaand state agencies to be able to share data cates, including the ACLU of Arkansas, are tions stated that the centers “often prothat might prevent terroristic attacks, the concerned about the system’s hunger for duced irrelevant, useless or inappropriprocess needs to be transparent and performed under strict guidelines to protect data and where that might lead. ate intelligence reporting to DHS, and privacy as information is being gathered.

The first fusion centers were estabmany produced no intelligence reportlished in 2003, and quickly spread across ing whatsoever.” Other parts of the same “Who can collect it, what can be colthe country with the encouragement of report found that some fusion centers had lected, how is it validated, how is it used?” the U.S. Department of Homeland Secuemployed constitutionally questionable she said. “Most people don’t even know these things exist, so it’s been cloaked in rity. Every state in the U.S. has at least intelligence gathering on groups and indisecrecy. It needs to come out in the open one of these intelligence hubs, with some viduals, while others had wasted public states having multiple fusion centers at money on items like spy cameras and large and there needs to be legal guidelines that the state and local level. Texas, for examflat-screen televisions to watch cable news. are open for scrutiny by the American ple, has not only the Texas Joint Crime Created by a proclamation by Gov. people. People should be able to find out what kind of information has been gathInformation Center, but also centers in Mike Beebe on May 19, 2008, and opened

I

BRIAN CHILSON

FBI talking to Morton

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21 12

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

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THE

BIG

INSIDER, CONT.

PICTURE

health checks to wound care and more intensive services.

A letter from Dr. Nathaniel Smith says the agency will work with those currently receiving services to make a switch to a private provider of services.

Details are not yet available.

A department spokesman said the program was “barely breaking even” because of an 18 percent decline in revenue and a 28 percent drop in patients because of competition. The legislature was notified of the coming change at a committee meeting Monday.

CATA out of bag: BRIAN CHILSON

Now Rock Region Metro METRO MAESTRO: Central Arkansas Transit Director Jarod Varner with one of the new natural gas-powered buses.

CATA IN LITTLE ROCK HAS QUIT PUSSYFOOTING AROUND: The Rock Region Metro has rolled out, with 15 snazzy new compressed natural gas buses and the entire fleet of 58 equipped with free Wi-Fi. Plus, starting in September, you’ll be able to text the Rock Region Metro or download an app to let you know when the next bus will pull up to your stop. New bus stop signs will tell you more than you’re standing at a bus stop: They’ll show route maps — what a concept! — and information on how text to get your schedule.

Trolley stops showing the new Rock Region Metro branding have been unveiled and the new buses hit the streets Tuesday. Jarod Varner, CATA director, is aiming for bigger improvements: He wants a bus system with a “hierarchy” that fits the needs of Little Rock commuters. That means a bus rapid transit (BRT in CATA-speak) routes that would shuttle people

between downtown and points west with pickups only 10 to 15 minutes apart, stopping at stations instead of shelters; “flex zones,” where travelers could schedule pick-ups on smaller buses from mini-hubs to the larger transit system; and more buses in North Little Rock so that people trying to travel from east to west — say from Pulaski Tech to McCain Mall — don’t have to go to Little Rock first. “It’s all about modernizing,” Varner says. If RR Metro can “put the service where it needs to go in a format it needs, we will generate more demand.”

Varner also believes that an improved public transit system would have a positive impact on economic development, and the transit authority board agrees: It has approved a plan to seek a referendum on a ¼-cent tax that would provide $23 million for the new plan. CATA’s new website will reflect the new name: rrmetro. org.

WHAT’S NEW?

FREE WI-FI IN ALL BUSES

ROUTES POSTED AT STOPS

IMPROVED ROUTE SYSTEM (UPCOMING)

BMI checks had no impact, study says

USE APP OR TEXT TO GET DETAILS ABOUT YOUR BUS ARRIVAL TIME (UPCOMING)

Remember when Arkansas schools were measuring students for their body mass indexes and, theoretically, sending letters to parents about results (“fat letters,” as they were indelicately known)?

A study of Arkansas juniors and seniors published in the Journal of Adolescent Health shows the BMI information had virtually no positive impact on health. Kevin A. Gee, an assistant professor of education policy at the University of California and the author of the study, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The typical 16-year-old’s reaction to getting a letter at home and having your parents tell you to eat right and exercise, would be, ‘Don’t nag me.’ ” Gov. Mike Huckabee, who had lost 100 pounds and published a book on fighting obesity, was a proponent of a school-based fight against overweight children.

New Children’s Hospital details The Arkansas Times reported on its blog recently that Arkansas Children’s Hospital would open a facility in Springdale on 37 aces donated by David and Robin George. A spokesman for the hospital did not reply to the Times’ request for confirmation. The confirmation came last week, when ACH announced it will build a 225,000-square-foot. 24-bed hospital on Interstate 49 between Don Tyson Parkway and Highway 412. It will include an emergency department and five operating rooms. A spokesman for the hospital said a capital campaign to raise around $70 million is likely. The board of directors of the hospital is still figuring outfinancing.

www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

13

The Arkansas Medicaid mess

Nearly 50,000 lose their insurance despite the fact that many remain eligible.

BY BENJAMIN HARDY, DAVID RAMSEY AND LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK

REVISED EDITION: After much confusion with earlier versions of this envelope, DHS added a clear message to its correspondence requesting information from beneficiaries.

14

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

S

ylvia Classic says she first became aware that her family had lost health insurance when she received a call from her pharmacist last week. Classic, 35, is a resident of Conway and a computer science major at the University of Central Arkansas.

She suffers from severe Crohn’s disease, a chronic autoimmune disorder that has required a portion of her intestine to be surgically removed. To control the condition, she’s prescribed an injectable medicine that her doctor hopes will prevent further surgery and complications. She takes two shots a month, which cost $3,000 each. Classic’s son also takes an expensive medication for attention deficit disorder.

Last year, Classic and her husband made a combined income of $18,907.

That made them both eligible for insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to cover lowincome adults, which in Arkansas is commonly called the private option.

Eligibility under the private option is limited to people who make less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which for a family of three is about $20,000 annually. Classic’s son was covered by a separate Medicaid program for children, ARKids, which existed before the ACA and has different income eligibility standards.

Since then, her husband lost his job, and the family’s year-to-date income for 2015 is effectively zero, not counting some nonwage income from Classic’s student loans and financial aid.

Nonetheless, all three members of the household were among almost 36,000 Arkansans who were kicked off of their health coverage on July 31. Insurance for another 13,000 people across the state will terminate at the end of this month. The cancellations are the result of a statewide sweep of Medicaid performed by the Arkansas Department of Human Services in an attempt to weed out those beneficiaries whose incomes are too high.

Yet Classic’s income clearly qualifies her for Medicaid. Like tens of thousands of other people who’ve recently lost coverage (or soon will), DHS terminated her insurance not because it actually determined she was ineligible, but simply because it flagged her account as needing additional information. The agency says it sent letters to each of these beneficiaries, giving them a 10-day deadline to provide documents verifying their income, and beneficiaries failed to respond in time. But the Times has spoken with many people

who say they have repeatedly attempted to respond to DHS’ request and have been unable to make contact. Some say they were told by a DHS worker over the phone that the letters were received in error and that they should do nothing.

Others, like Classic, claim they never received the letter in the first place.

It’s not surprising that the verification process for a major new program has been messy and complicated.

What is surprising is that the state has made that process much more difficult by insisting on a rule that has greatly amplified the bureaucratic headaches: instituting the 10-day window, which is the shortest amount of response time the state could give before it terminates insurance benefits. Giving beneficiaries only 10 days to respond to a confusing piece of mail — which they never expected to receive in the first place — has led to bottlenecks at DHS and an unnecessary loss in coverage for tens of thousands of people whose income makes them eligible for Medicaid, many of whom depend on their insurance for essential medicines.

Classic and others who have lost their coverage can likely get it back after jumping through the necessary hoops.

Beneficiaries who were terminated for failure to respond have 90 days to send in the requested information, in which case DHS says they’ll be re-enrolled without starting the application process over from scratch. Classic is attempting to do that now. But it’s unclear how long it will take to actually reinstate coverage, and in the meantime she’s watching her supply of medication dwindle.

On Aug. 4, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson ordered a two-week grace period on sending new termination notices, acknowledging DHS was struggling to deal with a backlog of responses from beneficiaries. However, the governor refuses to budge on the issue of the 10-day window itself.

“The challenge is not the 10-day notice requirement,” he said at a press conference last week. “The challenge is processing the information. … The federal government determined that it should be a minimum of a 10-day notice. ... I believe they determined it was adequate.”

Whether federal Medicaid regulations allow such a short window is actually a matter of some dispute, since federal rules demand a 30-day response window for Medicaid renewal. “It is clear that the 10 days is in violation of federal Medicaid regulation,” said Tricia Brooks, a senior fellow at the

It’s unclear whether the governor knew the extent of these details last week when he said there was merely “anecdotal evidence” that some people whose coverage was terminated were Medicaid eligible.

Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University and an expert on Medicaid eligibility and enrollment practices.

DHS interprets the law differently.

What’s certain is that the 10-day window is a policy choice: It could be longer if the governor wanted it to be.

Brooks said she was unaware of any other state that has imposed a 10-day response period during the renewal process in the way that Arkansas has.

“The thing you have to appreciate here — many of these people have moved into coverage for the very first time,” she said. “And then they get this confusing letter and they have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing.

What’s distressing is that I don’t think Arkansas has been paying attention to the lessons learned in the other states for the renewal process and picked up some of the strategies that we know soften the blow when all of this hits.”

Who’s being flagged

Ironically enough, the turmoil coincided with yet another piece of news highlighting the virtues of Medicaid expansion.

On Monday, the polling organization Gallup announced that Arkansas had made greater gains in insuring its citizens than any other state over the past two years. In 2013, the rate of uninsured adults in the state was 22.5 percent.

In 2015, that figure is now 9.1 percent.

The dramatic progress has been the direct result of the private option, a controversial policy compromise over Medicaid expansion struck between former Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe and Republicans in the legislature in 2013. Under the private option, Arkansas uses federal Medicaid money to purchase private insurance plans for adults whose household incomes fall below 138 percent of the federal poverty line. In Arkansas, that’s a lot of families: Before DHS began removing people www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

15

What to do if your Medicaid coverage has been terminated and you believe you are still income-eligible:

LESS THAN CLEAR: An example of the income verification letter received by thousands of Medicaid recipients.

16

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

•

Collect documents that verify your income. This may include paycheck stubs, or a tax return if you are selfemployed.

•

If you are unemployed, state this in a signed letter.

•

Contact your local DHS county office for guidance.

•

You have 90 days after your coverage termination date to be reinstated, if you are actually eligible and provide the information requested

•

Be aware that the 90-day period is not the same as the appeals process established by DHS. Most people whose insurance ended and who are still eligible should be able to get their coverage back without filing an appeal

BRIAN CHILSON

from its rolls, almost 250,000 individuals had gained private option coverage since enrollment first began in January 2014.

Now, almost 50,000 Arkansans, most of them private option beneficiaries, have either lost coverage or are scheduled to lose it at the end of August.

To be clear, the state has a responsibility to ensure the integrity of its programs by enforcing eligibility standards.

And there’s no doubt some people who qualified for the private option in 2014 now make more money and need to transition off the program (many of those people are likely eligible for ACA subsidies to help purchase a plan on the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, something they’ll never receive information about from DHS if their coverage is terminated via the 10-day process).

To handle the immense task of vetting the income of hundreds of thousands of new beneficiaries, DHS rolled out a new automated verification system that flags people whose income has increased. But by design, the verification system also flags large numbers of beneficiaries who are in fact Medicaid eligible, according to the state’s own data.

DHS is relying on wage information from the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services to determine whose income situation needs a closer look. One obvious category of people is those who experienced an income change that suggests they moved significantly above the line for income eligibility. However, it turns out that DHS also flags others beneficiaries who would appear to be eligible for the program based on the wage data.

Some parents with very low incomes who had changes in income up or down were flagged because even though they are clearly eligible, they may have moved from one category within Medicaid to another. And the DHS system also flags any beneficiary who makes zero income, such as Classic. (Although Classic supports herself in part from student loans, this income doesn’t generate a pay stub and therefore wouldn’t show up in Workforce Services data.)

“I think it’s reasonable to assume that a significant number [of people who’ve lost their insurance] are probably still Medicaid eligible,” DHS director John Selig said. “I think frankly a large number are zero [income].”

Selig said DHS is required under federal rules to check on any situation in which a DHS beneficiary shows no workforce data, although Brooks, the Medicaid expert, disagreed with this interpretation of federal requirements.

DAMAGE CONTROL: Governor Asa Hutchinson and DHS Director John Selig.

Selig also acknowledged that approximately 40 percent of private option beneficiaries have previously attested to no income at all when they originally applied for coverage (and it should be noted that those applications were verified previously by DHS due diligence).

Given that, it’s reasonable to surmise that many or most of those who have just been terminated are people who showed no income. If someone legitimately has no income, they are Medicaid eligible. It’s unclear whether the governor knew the extent of these details last week when he said there was merely “anecdotal evidence” that some people whose coverage was terminated were Medicaid eligible.

That’s not all. Some beneficiaries who were flagged for a significant increase in income may actually be eligible as well, because Workforce Services data — measured during the most recent quarter — doesn’t distinguish between pay that is temporary and pay that is regular.

Greg and Erica Lemons of Hot Springs say that’s what happened to them. Although Greg hasn’t been able to find full-time work since he was laid off from his bank job in 2014, his wife found a short-term job grading tests for Pearson, a testing company, this spring. The couple has only made about $6,000 so far this year between the two of them, but the $2,279 that Erica Lemons made during a single month of temporary work f lagged them both for income verification.

To some extent, such mistakes are to be expected in the rollout of a major new program such as this one. It is not unreasonable that some people who are eligible have been flagged.

But because DHS requires a response from beneficiaries within 10 days, and because the system itself was woefully underprepared to handle a massive volume of verification responses within such a short span of time, chaos ensued.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

17

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BIG ORANGE

Shake Up Happy Hour, Mon-Wed 2-5pm - classic shake flavors (choc, van, straw) are half-price.

Must say “Savor the City” to redeem your offer.

Limit one per day, one offer per guest.

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BigOrangeBurger.com

AFTERTHOUGHT BISTRO & BAR ALL ABOARD RESTAURANT & GRILL AMERICAN PIE PIZZA Half-price “lil” engineer meals. Donating 1% of Restaurant Month sales to Potluck and Easter Seals Arkansas charities. (LD) 6813 Cantrell Rd. 975-7401 All-AboardRestaurant.com

Free slice of cheesecake with purchase of 14” pizza. (LD) 10912 Colonel Glenn Rd.

$7.95 ultimate two person nachos. $11.95 salsa, cheese dip and guac with chips. $6.95 black bean burger sliders (no meat). Daily drink specials are offered. (LD) 12111 West Markham 313-2612 AnotherRoundPub.com

@ THE CORNER

A.W. LIN’S

BAR LOUIE Half-price Bruschetta Pomodoro: tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil, parmesan crostinis.

Not valid with other offers. (LD)

BEST IMPRESSIONS RESTAURANT 10% off daily special. Blackened catfish Po’ boy with jicama slaw.

(L) 501 E. 9th St. 907-5946 BestImpressionsRestaurant.com

BOBBY’S COUNTRY COOKIN’

BOOKENDS CAFÉ

PB & Bacon Jam burger Combo for $8.99. (L) 201 E. Markham St. 400-8458 thecornerlr.com

BIG WHISKEY’S

Half-off appetizer with purchase of any entrée. (LD) 225 E. Markham St. 324-2449 Facebook.com/BigWhiskeysLittleRock

BLACK ANGUS

Two Hamburger Steak Dinners $13.

Includes hamburger steak, baked potato or fries, salad and bread. $1 off #6 Hickory Burger Combo. (D) 10907 N. Rodney Parham Rd. 228-7800 BlackAngusCafe.com

BOULEVARD BREAD CO.

valid with any other discount. (LD) 3201 Bankhead Dr. 235-2000 Bostons.com

1920 N. Grant St. 663-5951 BoulevardBread.com

CAFÉ BOSSA NOVA

CAFÉ BRUNELLE Spaghetti Bolognese, $11.50. (LD) 17819 Chenal Pkwy.

448-2687 CafeBrunelle.com

CAFÉ @ HEIFER

CANTINA LAREDO Special Restaurant Month menu Three-courses for $17.99 per person.

CAPERS

COMMUNITY BAKERY

COPELAND’S

CRAZEE’S CAFÉ

DAMGOODE PIES

7626 Cantrell Rd. 221-9696 CrazeesCafe.net

6706 Cantrell Rd. 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd.

500 Pres. Clinton Ave. 10720 N. Rodney Parham Rd. 664-2239 DGPies.com

Free frites or pimento cheese appetizer with purchase of dinner Free appetizer with any entrée purchase. Dine-in only. $10 max value. Not entrée. Dinner Only. (D)

CANTINA CINCO DE MAYO

One free cheese dip or guacamole with entrée purchase. Buy two dinners and two drinks, get $5 off. Mariachi band every other Sunday! (LD) 25 Rahling Circle 821-2740 CantinaCincoDeMayoLR.com Free cookie with your choice of any purchase. (BLD) Downtown: 1200 Main St. 375-7105 WLR: 270 S. Shackleford Rd. 224-1656 CommunityBakery.com Free small salsa with any food order. (D)

18

Buy one sushi special, get second one of equal or lesser value for half-price. (LD) 17717 Chenal Pkwy., Ste. 101 821-5398 AWLins.com

BOSTON’S RESTAURANT & SPORTS BAR

Get a free appetizer with the purchase of any 2 daily specials or dinner entrées. (LD) 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd.

614-6682 CafeBossaNova.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ANOTHER ROUND PUB

Three-course meal $25. Soup or salad, an entrée, any dessert.

Dining room only. (D) 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663-1196 AfterthoughtBistroAndBar.com

207 N. University Ave., Suite 130 280-0407 CantinaLaredo.com

Half-off fried pickles or artichoke and spinach dip with entrée purchase. (LD) 2602 S. Shackleford Rd. 312-1616 copelandsrestaurantlittlerock.com $2 off any whole Sammie. (LD)

THE BUTCHER SHOP

Half-price drinks and appetizers 5-7pm Mon-Fri, bar area only. (D) 10825 Hermitage Rd. 312-2748 TheButcherShopLittleRock.com

15% off any grilled sandwiches. (L) 1 World Ave. (Heifer Village) 907-8801 Heifer.org

225-1900 AmericanPiePizza.net

Pleasant Ridge Town Center 11525 Cantrell Rd., 228-0444 BarLouieAmerica.com

$1 off dinner and a drink. Mon and Fri only. (L) 301 N. Shackleford Rd., Ste. E-1 224-9500 BobbysCountryCookin.com

(MAIN LIBRARY CAMPUS)

Southwest chicken wrap, chips and canned soda $7.75. (L) 120 River Market Blvd.

918-3091 CALS.org/about/locations/cox.aspx

CACHE RESTAURANT & LOUNGE

CAFÉ 201 (CROWNE PLAZA)

CAJUN’S WHARF

CAMP DAVID RESTAURANT (HOLIDAY INN PRESIDENTIAL)

Free dessert with entrée purchase and a special bar snack with drink purchase during happy hour 4-6pm. (D) 425 Pres. Clinton Ave. 850-0265 CacheLittleRock.com $33 Prix Fixe 3-course restaurant month menu. (LD) 2400 Cantrell Rd. 375-5351 CajunsWharf.com

Buy one entrée, get one free.

Equal or lesser value. (LD) 201 S. Shackelford Rd. 223-3000 CrownePlazaLittleRock.com

Buy two entrées, get an appetizer for half-price. Dine in only. (BLD)

600 I-30 and 6th St. 975-CAMP(2267) HIPresidential.com/Dining/campdavidrestaurant

CAPITOL SMOKEHOUSE & GRILL

CIAO BACI

10% off any plate lunch. (L) 915 W. Capitol Ave. 372-4227 CapitolSmokehouseAndGrill.com

Early Bird Special: Three-course dinner for $25 from 5-7pm – will change weekly. (D) 605 N. Beechwood St. 603-0238 CiaoBaci.org

COPPER GRILL

CORKY’S RIBS & BBQ

COTIJA’S MEXICAN GRILL

DAVE’S PLACE

DEMPSEY BAKERY

DIANE’S GOURMET

$30 Prix Fixe 3-course restaurant month menu. (LD) 14502 Cantrell Rd. 868-7600 CapersRestaurant.com

$15 Prix Fixe 2-course restaurant month lunch menu. (L) $30 Prix Fixe 3-course restaurant month dinner menu. (D) 300 E. 3rd St. # 101 375-3333 CopperGrillLR.com Ham and cream cheese on cranberry orange bread $7. (L) 210 Center St. 372-3283 DavesPlaceRestaurant.com

$1 off Cajun shrimp dinner. (LD) 12005 Westhaven Dr. 954-7427(RIBS) CorkysBBQ.com/location/littlerock

Free sugar cookie with lunch purchase. (L) 323 S. Cross St. 375-2257 DempseyBakery.com

Free small cheese dip with the purchase of an entrée. (L) 406 S. Louisiana St. 371-0733 Find us on Facebook

Buy three casseroles and get one free, same size and price. (L) 11121 N. Rodney Parham Rd. 224-2639 Dianes-Gourmet.com

DOE’S EAT PLACE

One free dessert with steak purchase. Limited to one per table. (LD) 1023 W. Markham St. 376-1195 DoesEatPlace.net

DOUBLETREE PLAZA BAR & GRILLE

FLYING FISH

Crab Cake Sandwich. Seared jumbo lump crab meat and our Cajun spiced rémoulade on a brioche bun $10. (L) 1023 W. Markham St., 372-4371 Doubletree3.Hilton.com

EMBASSY SUITES ATHLETIC CLUB BAR & GRILL Your choice of a free dessert with purchase of the Tavern Burger.

11301 Financial Centre Pkwy.

312-9000 ext. 2033

FRANKE’S CAFETERIA

GARDEN SMOOTHIE

GREEN LEAF GRILL

HEIGHTS TACO & TAMALE CO.

HILLCREST ARTISAN MEATS

Your choice of chili or cheese dip with an order of tamales 2:30-5:30pm.

5805 Kavanaugh Blvd.

313-4848

10% off purchase of any Arkansas-made pantry items on our shelves. (LD) 2807 Kavanaugh Blvd., Ste. B 671-6328 Facebook.com/HillcrestArtisanMeats

LARRY’S PIZZA DOWNTOWN

Purchase one entrée, receive a small salad or one vegetable for free. (LD) Market Place Shopping Center 11121 N. Rodney Parham, 225-4487 Regions Center Building 400 Broadway • 372-1919 FrankesCafeteria.com

Hot boiled shrimp 1 lb. $16.99.

(LD) 511 Pres. Clinton Ave. 375-3474 FlyingFishInThe.net

THE FOLD

Free queso with purchase of three taco plate. (LD) 3501 Old Cantrell Rd. 916-9706 TheFoldLR.com

River Market Ottenheimer Hall

Taste of Mexico at the salad bar. Free super fruit fresca with purchase of salad. (L) 601 S. Gaines St. 818-0166

IRIANA’S PIZZA

J. GUMBO’S

JACKIE’S MOBILE CAFÉ

KILWINS

Buy one ice cream and get one of equal or lesser value free.

415 Pres. Clinton Ave. 379-9865 Kilwins.com

50¢ oven-roasted wings. Offered in Naked, Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo, Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ, Sweet Red Chili or Teriyaki. Choice of ranch or blue cheese dressing. Dine-in or carry-out. Six wings minimum order, no maximum limit. (LD) 1122 S. Center St., 372-6004 LarrysPizzaOfArkansas.com

LAS PALMAS III

LAYLA’S GYROS AND PIZZERIA Gyro sandwich, french fries and drink $7.50. (LD)

LITTLE GREEK RESTAURANT

THE LOBLOLLY CREAMERY

LOCAL LIME

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MEXICO CHIQUITO

MIDTOWN BILLIARDS

OLD MILL BREAD

THE OYSTER BAR

THE PANTRY & PANTRY CREST

PAXTON’S PIZZA

PONCHITOS MEXICAN GRILL

POTBELLY SANDWICH SHOP

THE PURPLE COW

RADUNO BRICK OVEN & BARROOM

RED MANGO SMOOTHIE & JUICE BAR

THE ROOT CAFÉ

ROSALIA’S FAMILY BAKERY

SANTO COYOTE

$1 off green smoothies. (BLD) 5621 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663-2500 RedMangoUSA.com

Weekday Breakfast Special: 20% off your breakfast entrée. Available Tues-Fri, 7-11 am. (B) 1500 S Main St. 414-0423 TheRootCafe.com

SKY MODERN JAPANESE

SLICK’S SANDWICH SHOP

SO RESTAURANT – BAR

SONNY WILLIAMS STEAK ROOM

SOUTH ON MAIN

15% off any whole pizza (LD).

201 E. Markham St. 374-3656 IrianasPizza.com

Buy one combo #1-15 and get one of equal or lesser value at 25% off. (LD) 10402 Stagecoach Rd. 455-8500 LasPalmasArkansas.com

Beer Food Happy Hour, Mon-Thurs 2-6pm – half-price small beer snack with entrée purchase. Must say “Savor the City” to redeem your offer. Limit one per day, one offer per guest.

501 Byrd St. 319-7275 Facebook.com/Lost40Beer 15% off your total bill. Alcohol, tax and gratuity not included. Just say “Restaurant Month”. (LD WLR location) (D Hillcrest location) 722 N. Palm St., 725-4945 11401 N. Rodney Parham Rd., 353-1875 LittlerockPantry.com

One free marinated olives appetizer. One per table. (LD) 1318 Main St. 374-7476 RadunoLR.com All appetizers half-price. (LD) 11525 Cantrell Rd. 224-4300 SkyLittleRock.com

Half-off fresh fruit smoothie with the purchase of sandwich or wrap. (L) 400 Pres. Clinton Ave. 244-9964

$1 off any large bowl entrée. (LD) 12911 Cantrell Rd. 916-9635 JGumbos.com

6100 Stones Dr., 868-8226 9501 N. Rodney Parham, 227-7272 LaylasGyro.com

Two drinks, one appetizer, two entrées $15.99. (LD) 13924 Cantrell Rd. 217-0700 MexicoChiquito.net

Medium Pepperoni $2 off. $9.24 + tax. (LD) 13420 Otter Creek Pkwy.

455-4242 Facebook.com/OCPizza

Biscuits and gravy 99¢. Cookies: two for $1. (BL) 101 E Capitol Ave., Ste 116 375-3420 SlicksMenu.com

15% off any fish dinner. Excludes one piece fish. (LD) 838-6167 facebook.com/JackiesMobileCafe

Buy any salad, pita, or platter and receive a second one at halfprice. Equal or lesser value. (LD) Pleasant Ridge Town Center 11525 Cantrell Rd. #905 223-5300 LittleGreekRestaurant.com

Maggie’s turkey salad sandwich weekend special $5.50 during happy hour, Sat & Sun 3-8pm. (LD) 1316 Main St. 372-9990 MidTownAR.com Purchase two entrées and receive free queso. (LD) 10901 N Rodney Parham Rd. 246-5282 Facebook.com/PonchitosMexicanGrill

Special Chef’s Menu: Threecourse, $45 per person, new menu each week.

3610 Kavanaugh Blvd.

663-1464 SoRestaurantBar.com

(INSIDE GREEN CORNER STORE & SODA FOUNTAIN) Purchase our summer combo: one small waffle cone + any handcrafted soda, limeade or lemonade and get 50¢ off. (AD) 1423 S. Main St., 374-1111 LoblollyCreamery.com $1 off when you buy from our new Grab and Go Sandwich and Deli Station. (LD) 12111 W. Markham, Ste. 366 228-4677 OldMillBread.com Free cookie with sandwich purchase. (LD) 314 S. University Ave., Ste 160 660-4441 PotBelly.com

Get a free Sonho with any $10 purchase (before tax). Limit one per purchase. (BLD) 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd.

719-7035 CafeBossaNova.com/Rosalias-Bakery

Sonny’s Frog Legs with Citrus Butter appetizer for $12.50. (D) 500 Pres. Clinton Ave., Ste. 100 324-2999 SonnyWilliamsSteakRoom.com

Free cheese dip with purchase of chicken or veggie fajitas or enchiladas, Mon-Thurs. Must say “Savor the City” to redeem your offer. (LD) 17815 Chenal Pkwy.

448-2226 LocalLimeTaco.com

$2 off one lb. shrimp. $1 off half lb. shrimp. (LD) 3003 W. Markham St. 666-7100 LROysterBar.com

$2 off milkshake (excludes alcohol). Must say “Savor the City” to redeem your offer. (LD) 8026 Cantrell Rd., 221-3555 11602 Chenal Pkwy., 224-4433 PurpleCowLR.com 10% off any food purchase. (LD) 11610 Pleasant Ridge Rd. # 110 225-1300 Santo-Coyote.com

Free appetizer with purchase of two entrées (Mon-Fri 11am-2:30pm). (L). Buy one bar snack, get one for half-price during social hour (Tues-Sat, 4-6pm).

1304 Main St. 244-9660 SouthOnMain.com

THE SOUTHERN GOURMASIAN

STAR OF INDIA

SUSHI CAFÉ

See special “Savor” menu for great deals on both sushi and entrées. (LD) 5823 Kavanaugh Blvd. • 663-9888 11211 Cantrell Rd., #120 • 954-7866 SushiCafeRocks.com

SWEET SOUL Free cookie with purchase of Southern Classic Plate. (L) 400 Pres. Clinton Ave., River Market Ottenheimer Hall 374-7685 LittleRockSweetSoul.com

TAZIKI’S MEDITERRANEAN CAFÉ

TRACY CAKES

TRIO’S RESTAURANT

THE VEG

WASABI BAR & GRILL

ZAZA

Free cookie with purchase of entrée. (L) Three-course prix fixe $25. (D) 219 W. Capitol Ave. 313-5645 TheSouthernGourmasian.com Buy three cupcakes, get one free.

(LD) 10301 N. Rodney Parham Rd. 227-4243 TracyCakesAR.com

15% off dinner entrée. (D) 301 N. Shackleford Rd., Ste. C4 227-9900 LRStarOfIndia.com

Half-off desserts with entrée purchase. (LD) Half-off selected special Restaurant Month wines by the bottle. (D) Specials are for dine-in only.

8201 Cantrell Rd., Ste. 100 221-3330 TriosRestaurant.com

Veggie burger for $5. Code word Herbie Hancock. (L) 400 Pres. Clinton Ave. River Market Ottenheimer Hall

838-3634 Facebook.com/TheVegLR

15% off two entrées. (L) 101 Main St. 374-0777

Say the phrase “Happy seven year anniversary Taziki’s” and receive 10% off. (LD) 12800 Chenal Pkwy., 225-1829 8200 Cantrell Rd., 227-8291 TazikisCafe.com

Salad & Dessert – half-price gelato when you buy any entrée size salad. Must say “Savor the City” to redeem your offer.

Limit one per day, one offer per guest. (LD) 5600 Kavanaugh Blvd.

661-9292 ZazaPizzaAndSalad.com www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

19

“The envelopes looked like junk mail and I honestly thought they were a solicitation from some television cable outfit.”

A needlessly narrow window

Despite the federal 30-day rule for the renewal process, Gov. Hutchinson and DHS Director Selig maintain that 10 days is the minimum federal requirement for response time to these verification letters. However, it’s also clearly a policy choice — the state could choose to give beneficiaries 30 days, 45 days, 90 days or even longer to respond. The longer one thinks about the logistics of a 10-day window, the less sense it makes.

First, consider that the private option is a new program governed by rules so complex that state and federal authorities sometimes disagree on their interpretation. Many of its beneficiaries haven’t had health insurance in years, or ever in their adult lives. They’re more likely to have fragmentary income and more likely to move between residences more frequently.

Moreover, beneficiaries were asked to provide paperwork that may be hard to immediately come by (such as multiple pay stubs from the previous month).

Most people were likely never informed beforehand that they’d have to submit financial information at a moment’s notice. And many people of all income levels leave town for part of the summer. It’s for all these reasons and more that private insurance companies typically give consumers at least 30 days to respond to important notices.

DHS argues that the 10 days aren’t as firm as they seem. The state built extra days of wiggle room into the process; so, in practice, cancellation notices might be sent out 15 or 20 days after the original letters go out. Meanwhile, the actual termination of coverage doesn’t become official until the end of that month. The governor’s office and DHS officials have argued that this means beneficiaries have a de facto response window longer than 10 days.

The biggest problem with the 10-day window is that it made it impossible to do the kind of sustained outreach necessary to communicate with a hard-toreach population about a confusing new process. It left very little time to bring in other stakeholders or community 20

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

organizations to lend DHS caseworkers a hand in tracking people down and guiding them through the process.

The insurance companies that actually provide these policies — and therefore are highly motivated to contact their clients and continue coverage — were only brought in in late July, after the 10-day clock had begun for the first round of beneficiaries. Multiple sources have told the Times that insurance carriers and brokers expressed concern about the challenges of communicating with beneficiaries and getting a response so quickly.

Internal data from the insurance companies suggested that 25 percent of the addresses DHS had on file were no longer good. Selig acknowledged that insurance companies told DHS officials this during meetings as the process began, but said that the actual percentage of bad addresses was much lower. In any case, it was clearly a major problem. In just one of the state’s seven coverage regions, Selig said, they had 6,000 pieces of mail returned undeliverable.

Then there are the letters themselves, which were undeniably confusing. They contained a phone number, but callers were unable to get through to a live person, according to several beneficiaries. They reference a 30-day “appeals process,” while not telling beneficiaries that they actually have a 90-day period to send in their information and get insurance reinstated. The first round of letters sent out in June demanded payroll verification but provided no instructions for unemployed people to verify their income was zero.

(DHS later began attaching an FAQ clarifying that the unemployed should write and sign a letter stating that they do, indeed, have no income.)

One Times reader who narrowly avoided losing coverage wrote, “The envelopes containing the notice of income verification were plain and nondescript with no indication that they contained a very important document with a time limit for response.

The return address was the Access Arkansas Processing Center in Batesville (rather than the Arkansas Department of Human Services, which would have gotten my attention) and that did not make any impression on me whatsoever since I have worked only with Ambetter of Arkansas since we got our insurance. I was only on the Access Arkansas web site one time to get to and complete the application for the Affordable Care Act two years ago and

have not been on that site since. The envelopes looked like junk mail and I honestly thought they were a solicitation from some television cable outfit.”

DHS has now changed the look of the envelopes to make it clear the enclosure is about Medicaid benefits.

Experience in other states suggests that best practices include multiple verification letters, not just one (with clear labeling communicating urgency). Follow-up attempts by phone or other contacts would also help — something that’s not possible to do in a 10-day window, especially without help from insurers or other organizations. Thus began a process that was doomed to end in confusion and cancellation notices.

Finally, it’s not just beneficiaries who’ve struggled with the 10-day window. It’s also DHS. Multiple beneficiaries have told the Times that local DHS offices were themselves unprepared to field questions about the confusing letters. Since termination notices began arriving, the agency has been inundated with such a high volume of calls and letters that Gov. Hutchinson — although he still won’t extend the 10 days — lifted a hiring freeze on some DHS positions and authorized overtime pay for workers to process the backlog.

It may be cold comfort for those who’ve lost coverage — and for state officials trying to clean up the mess — but Arkansas is not alone in facing difficulties implementing systems for renewal and eligibility verification in the wake of Medicaid expansion. Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said that many states have been struggling with this process.

“This is one (of many) of the timetested public policy debates in Medicaid: The desire to make enrollment/ reenrollment as easy as possible for the beneficiary versus the desire to ensure program integrity, and that no public dollars are being spent unnecessarily,” Salo wrote in an email to the Times. “Every state struggles with finding the right balance between the two, and going too far towards either pole leads quickly to serious problems.”

At this point, with almost 50,000 terminations of coverage — many or most of them impacting Medicaideligible beneficiaries — it’s hard not to conclude that Arkansas swung overzealously to one pole. This led quickly to serious problems, indeed.

WATCHER’S WEB, CONT.

ered [about them]. It’s their information.”

Another troubling aspect of the fusion center concept, Sklar said, is that there appear to be no guidelines as to whom the information can be shared with once it has been collected. She noted reports of fusion centers sharing information with private-sector corporations.

“I think it would make anybody uneasy to know that they are not just gathering information on terrorists, but on anybody who may have fallen under their scrutiny for some reason or another that we don’t know,” she said. “Every state fusion center operates pretty much under its own guidelines, and we don’t think that’s right, either. We think there should be a uniform set of guidelines so we know what’s going on.”

In March 2013, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis caused an online stir among privacy advocates and fringe political groups after he told a Northwest Arkansas television station during an interview (during which he insisted on being seen only in silhouette) that the center was focused, in part, on collecting information about anti-government groups.

Arkansas State Police spokesman Sadler said the ASFC isn’t keeping tabs on anti-government groups.

“I think what [Davis] was referring to,” Sadler said, “is that any anti-government group [that] might plan a rally, or who might plan some type of protest, that information would be retained and shared with law enforcement agencies in the area where this group may plan to stage a protest, or stage some sort of event.”

As an example, Sadler talked about a Ku Klux Klan rally held in Monticello in late July. Sadler said there was “a lot of information being shared with local law enforcement” before the rally.

“That information passed through the Fusion Center,” he said, “and was shared with area law enforcement agencies just so they would be aware to be on guard should there be trouble.”

Asked if it was proper for the Fusion Center to be compiling and distributing intelligence on a group planning what appeared to be a legal and constitutionally protected gathering, Sadler said: “I think you have to realize, if you look across the country at some of these gatherings, occasionally there are outbursts of violence, and it would be irresponsible of law enforcement, particularly a state agency, if they knew that there was an individual that had infiltrated that group that may have a criminal record, who is known, based on his arrest records, to carry weapons. Then why not share that with the

local law enforcement agency?”

Sadler said it’s important to note that the Fusion Center “does not retain any records of individuals as far as phone calls, names, addresses.” He described it as “an information-sharing facility about known events [and] known threats.” Sadler said that the day-to-day work of the ASFC is sharing information on incidents that might be occurring in multiple jurisdictions: missing persons reports, people passing stolen or falsified checks, and thefts. That information can lead to the discovery of larger patterns. As an example, Sadler said that examination and analysis of reports could lead to the knowledge that someone might be assembling the materials for a bomb like the one that destroyed Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995.

“If a law enforcement agency such as a sheriff’s department made a report internally to their department that a large amount of ammonium nitrate had been stolen, and that deputy goes in and files his report, then the sheriff’s department shares that with the fusion center,” he said, “and within a day there’s a report from two of three counties over that a large truck also containing some diesel fuel had been stolen. At that point in time, [for] the analysts in the fusion center, that would be, through their training, a red flag.”

Sadler said that sharing intelligence on mundane crimes and helping small departments identify suspects are “really the bread and butter” of the ASFC, accounting for the vast majority of its daily workload.

He said information was rarely pushed down to the center by federal agencies.

“Now, does that mean that we don’t get information of some national concerns?” he said. “Sure. That’s passed along. But I think it’s important, if you’re going to do a story on the Fusion Center, that you make it very clear that the Fusion Center does not retain any records of individuals as far as phone calls, names, addresses. It is an information-sharing facility about known events, known threats. … There is no classified information that passes through.”

Asked about the privacy concerns of groups like the ACLU, Sadler said that the ASFC follows the U.S. Constitution as they go about their activities.

“Just because you have a Fusion Center doesn’t mean you can go out here and start putting on your Secret Squirrel uniform and start looking at people’s emails and phone records,” Sadler said. “Privacy is a concern among the public, but law enforcement knows — at least the Arkansas State Police knows — that we have to abide by the United States Constitution and the laws of the land.”

DUMAS, CONT.

the Indo-Pakistani war, Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s future prime minister, famously announced: “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass and leaves for a thousand years, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. The Christians have the bomb, the Jews have the bomb and now the Hindus have the bomb. Why not the Muslims, too, have the bomb?”

So, while Ronald Reagan explored the idea of ridding the planet of nuclear weapons with the Russians, the Muslims of Pakistan, with British help, built the bomb. Pakistan, which harbored al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Sunni terrorist groups, then sold its nuclear formulas to North Korea and Libya. Pakistan was sort of an American ally courted by Reagan and subsequent administrations, but

unfriendly megalomaniacs ruled North Korea and Libya.

Bill Clinton and the Russians worked out a deal with North Korea to stop its weapons development and sign the nonproliferation treaty, but when George W. Bush denounced North Korea, Iran and Iraq as “the axis of evil” and prepared to invade Iraq, the Koreans and Iranians got busy with their nuclear programs again. North Korea withdrew from the nonproliferation treaty and built its first bomb. Despite a succession of multipower agreements negotiated by Clinton, Bush and Obama, North Korea continued off and on to build bombs and threaten its neighbors and the United States with annihilation.

But those Iranians, see, are bad dudes and only Barack Obama would trust them.

PEARLS ABOUT SWINE, CONT. surprising 8-5 year.

Instead, Arkansas bowled over the Red Raiders, basically smothering them in the second half to the point that Texas Tech barely even got its hands on the ball.

It was a pivotal point for both squads, as the Hogs rode that momentum forward and the Raiders regressed to a 4-8 team.

Texas Tech still won’t have a defense, and the Raiders won’t have any semblance of a fan presence on the Hill for the rematch. This is Jonathan Williams’ time to demoralize a foe, and he runs for a career-best 203 yards and two scores in the rout. Hogs 51, Red Raiders 21.

Arkansas vs. Texas A&M (Arlington), Sept. 26 — For the first time since the Aggies entered SEC play, Arkansas has its best shot to take the upstart newbie down a few notches. They arrived in 2012 with swagger and Johnny Manziel, and

the Hogs were a pitiable shell of what they had been. So after three wins in succession in Jerry World from 2009 to 2011, when the matchup was a contractual nonconference game, the Hogs gave away three SEC games in a row, but came agonizingly close last year in an overtime loss.

As much as anything, that one revealed the duality of the Jim Chaney offense. It was at times brilliant and daring on the pristine turf of north Texas, only to stall and be beset by misfortune and bad timing at others. With Dan Enos in charge, this offense is far more consistent, and Arkansas plays a turnover-free game and doesn’t get sidetracked by penalties. En route to a 4-0 start and a Top 15 ranking, the Razorbacks harass Aggie quarterback Kyle Allen all afternoon and end up with the most satisfying September in years in the books. Hogs 34, Aggies 17.

LYONS, CONT. PD, a place he didn’t make any more than Brown did. He was a grunt riding alone in a patrol car who stopped two shoplifting suspects only to find himself in a harrowing struggle that lasted roughly 60 seconds, from beginning to end.

Justice Department investigators concluded that credible eyewitness testimony — and there was a lot — confirmed Wilson’s perception of Brown as “a deadly threat” and states that “it was not unreasonable for Wilson to fire on Brown until he stopped moving forward and was clearly subdued.”

Ugly, tragic and unavoidable.

Nevertheless, Blow sees in Wilson a “calculated coldness, a willful obliviousness” and “repugnant” racism. That’s basically how it goes. On the sentimental left, nobody’s allowed to ask what made Brown pull a strongarm theft in broad daylight and then commit suicide by cop.

I strongly suspect a psychotic episode.

On the reactionary right, Brown’s simply a “thug,” and progressives are name-calling hypocrites who leave it to guys like Darren Wilson to deal with the consequences of their own feckless romanticism. So we curse each other and very little ever changes. www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

21

Arts Entertainment AND

made a name for himself and his artistic style. You can see his work at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center at Ninth Street and Broadway.

‘COLOR STUDY’: Multimedia work by Ariston Jacks.

ALTER IMAGES

A Q&A with Ariston Jacks.

How did you get your start in drawing and painting?

Art is something I’ve always done. I wasn’t one of those kids with a bunch of friends, so I kept myself occupied. I played with my toys and drew. My mom had always encouraged me, and after she died when I was in the seventh grade I became more serious about my art. I took my drawings with me everywhere I went, even working on them when I was supposed to be doing classwork. In seventh or eighth grade I started drawing pictures for people for 50 cents to a dollar.

In high school I was a nerd. I didn’t really fit in anywhere, so I hung out in the art room with my art teacher Ms. Hines. Ms. Hines thought I was talented, went out on a limb and introduced me to the chair of the art department at UAPB. They offered me a scholarship to go to school for art, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Art probably saved my life. All of my other friends that I grew up with — I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood in Pine Bluff — a couple of them passed on, some have been to jail, and I’m one of the few who escaped and was able to travel the world because of art. I thank God for that ability. Well, I believe everyone has the ability to create, so I thank God for the stubbornness to stick to it and not be drawn away from it because of pop culture. But art is coming back into popular culture because of social justice movements. I think art is going to be one of the major careers of the future.

KAYA HERRON

A

riston Jacks is a Pine Bluff native who served six years in the U.S. Navy before returning to Arkansas and earning an art degree from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 2002. Jacks creates multimedia collages that combine imagery from ancient African cultures, Americana and social phenomena of the 21st century. With an Afrofuturist influence, he references mathematical equations, cultural icons and philosophy in creations that meld luminescent powder with acrylic paint, images he calls “alter images” that cause 22

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

“blackness to become a positive visual element.”

In 2008 Jacks earned a master’s degree in studio painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Since then he’s taught art classes at UA- Pine Bluff and conducted community art workshops as the co-founder of the V.I.T.A.L. Artist’s Collective. Most recently he served as the art coordinator for the Creative Expressions Program at the Arkansas State Hospital. With exhibits from Dallas to Louisville and across the Atlantic in Paris, Jacks has

Where have you traveled recently?

A few years ago I went to Sierra Leone with a suitcase full of art supplies to teach a workshop for a non-profit out of New Jersey at the local university. The schedule got mixed up and the workshop was canceled, so I ended up teaching a class at an amputee camp instead. Many of these people had their hands, feet and legs cut off during the revolution. I initially didn’t plan to give away all of the art supplies, as these were supplies I had used to do all of my workshops over the years. Interestingly enough, everyone didn’t speak English. So when I opened the suitcase and

ART ‘PROBABLY SAVED MY LIFE’: Jacks said some of the people he grew up with have died or gone to jail.

started handing out art supplies for people to use during the workshop — one of the school teachers was my translator — the kids got the supplies and they were happy and excited, some took off running, some left the room, and in less than 10 minutes all the art supplies in the suitcase were gone. Afterward there were only three or four people left in the room who were ready to work. I taught a class with the help of my translator to the few children who stuck around. That night the children who had stayed in class taught those who had left earlier with the supplies.

When I came back the next day, I had a full class of students with half-completed pieces of artwork. I communicated through my translator that I wanted them to draw from their own culture to create, and their drawings started to change.

They chose subjects from their environment as opposed to the first days’ pieces — of white Jesus, rappers with big gold chains, things that they perceived that I would identify with as an American.

It blew me away, after I had explained how important it is for them to express their own culture and not get caught up in American pop culture. I told them, “I’m here to learn from you and I don’t think that I can teach you anything but how important it is to look within yourselves to create and not outside your community. What’s going on with you is important.” At the end of the week, with almost no instruction, I saw some of the most magnificent artwork I had ever seen. All I had done was demonstrations on different supplies and how to use them and

A&E NEWS

ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com

‘ORIGIN 9’: A 2015 work in acrylic, ink and glitter on wood panel.

they created works that looked like they had been drawing and painting for years!

It was amazing what they were able to create in a four-day workshop.

I brought back a couple of the pieces that they had asked to be shared and photographed some of the others. The experience showed me that all people need is the opportunity and the resources and the ability that they have will come through. Opportunity and resources are important for any young person that is aspiring to create, and many of them don’t get it. I didn’t get it as a young black child and I see plenty of other children that don’t. I didn’t start to have these opportunities until I started my career at 32. I’m now 42 and people tell me I’m doing well, but I don’t think so, only because I know I could do more if I had the resources and the opportunities.

What about photography?

Photography is not my main medium; I think of it as more of a support medium.

I capture images that are meaningful, documentarian, photojournalistic — they tell a story — those are the pictures I tend to keep as photographs [as opposed to mixed media pieces]. The only photography instruction I’ve had was a one-semester course at UAPB. That’s why I say, if you’re just given the opportunity, you can do something great.

I was given the opportunity to go to Africa for the first time and shoot photographs in exchange for one of my paintings, actually. The director of a nonprofit

had seen my work online, and a painting that she just had to have. She called me up and at the time the painting was listed at $4,000. She said, “That’s a lot of money. I have all of my money tied up in this Africa trip right now.” And I told her I had always wanted to go to Africa, I wish I could go. And she responded, “Really? My photographer bailed on me. Would you want to go?” Of course I said yes. I gladly gave her that painting and that’s how I went to Africa for the first time. We traveled to Germany, Swaziland and Namibia. That first trip opened my eyes to so much. It made me realize how much I didn’t know about the world. Now I focus my attention on what’s happening in the world and not just what’s happening right around me. My direct experiences are my family — my nucleus — who inform me, but coupled with my view of the big picture, life itself and my global experiences help to shape my work. My work has changed as the result of my travels and become more Afrofuturist in nature as opposed to my earlier works.

What is your goal as an artist?

My ultimate goal as an artist is to have a private foundation that generates millions of dollars to make a place for the people in underserved communities to experience art. To create a center, a huge complex that allows people of all ages who have a desire to create to come free of charge and create. I’d like to have a team in place that can help these new artists find ways to build their talent, find local clients, venues to showcase their work and sell to collectors around the world. Imagine a painting done by a kid from Pine Bluff, hanging on the walls of a collector’s home in Berlin, Switzerland, London or Cape Town. That would be amazing. That’s what I want to do. I want to change lives.

What are you working on right now?

I’m going back to Namibia next month to reconnect with some of those people I met on my first trip, for a few cultural photoshoots and an artist residency. I’m excited. I’m in a place now where I’m working on my art, starting a company that’s centered around art and looking forward to a career steeped in truth.

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NEXT UP FOR THE ARKANSAS Times Film Series, at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 20, at the Ron Robinson Theater, is “Hands on a Hard Body,” a 1997 documentary about the contestants of the annual Longview, Texas, competition to see who can keep their hands on a pickup truck the longest. The Oxford American put the film on its essential Southern documentary list and Quentin Tarantino, who commissioned a new 35mm print so he could screen it at his L.A. theater, has called it one of his favorite documentaries of all time. Tickets are $5.

THE 24TH ANNUAL HOT SPRINGS Documentary Film Festival has announced its opening film and other plans for the event, which will be held Oct. 9-18 at the Arlington Hotel. The festival will kick off with a screening of “The Primary Instinct,” featuring the life stories of actor Stephen Tobolowsky (inspired by Tobolowsky’s popular podcast), who will be in attendance. Former St. Louis Cardinal Lou Brock will attend for the screening of Larry Foley’s film “The First Boys of Spring,” about Hot Springs’ baseball spring training history. For more information visit hsdfi.org.

THE WALTON ARTS CENTER IN Fayetteville has announced that tickets for its 2015-16 season are on sale as of this week. The season will feature over 40 productions, including “Kinky Boots,” “Mamma Mia!”, “Annie,” “A Night with Janis Joplin,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical” and more. Purchase tickets by calling 479-443-5600 or visiting waltonartscenter.org.

COMING UP IN THE SEPTEMBER live music calendar: At the Walmart AMP in Rogers, Bryan Adams (Sept. 19) and Kid Rock (Sept. 25); at Verizon Arena, Kelly Clarkson (Sept. 3); at Revolution, Of Montreal (Sept. 7); at Juanita’s, Zella Day (Sept. 14) and Lil Durk and Gunplay (Sept. 24); at the White Water Tavern, Roger Hoover (Sept. 1) and American Aquarium (Sept. 23); at South on Main, Anat Cohen (Sept. 3), The Bo-Keys (Sept. 18) and Lera Lynn (Sept. 24); and at Stickyz, Yarn (Sept.

3) and Local H (Sept. 10).

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23

THE TO-DO

LIST

BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK AND WILL STEPHENSON

THURSDAY 8/13

MALCOLM HOLCOMBE

8:30 p.m. White Water Tavern. $7.

Fans of Guy Clark or Harry Crews or Robert Mitchum would find much to admire about Malcolm Holcombe, the itinerant songwriter and North Carolina native. There’s his graceful, associative storytelling; his gruff, absurdist

humor; his guitar playing; his unkempt but nevertheless endearing shabbiness.

His songs are concise poems about lonesome, rural revelation and blue-collar alienation. If he read that sentence, he’d probably sniff and spit and laugh and say something dismissive, but he’s the one who writes folk songs with lines like,

“Way down in the woods, the dogwoods survive ’round the blades of the briars and Virginia Pines.” He writes deliberately and ornately, and in between songs he tells stories (jokes?) that are just as entertaining as the songs. He reminds me of Blaze Foley. He reminds me of a poem by Mark Strand called “Man and

Camel.” He reminds me, especially, of a guy I used to know in Conway named Ben, who drove a motorcycle, ate gasstation pickles every day and once read me a short story he’d written about an axe murder. Holcombe comes to Little Rock every few months, and you should catch him whenever you can. WS

Moody Brews at the Historic Arkansas Museum, where two new exhibits — “Katherine Rutter & Ginny Sims,” paintings by Rutter, a Delta Exhibition artist in 2014, and pottery by Sims, and “Pop Up in the Rock: The Exhibit,” Bethany Berry’s photographs of Create Little Rock and StudioMAIN’s PopUp events and 3D installations of street fixtures — are opening. John Willis & the Late

Romantics will provide music. Over at Gallery 221, artists will be painting on shared canvases while you watch in “Round Robin,” which sounds fascinating and potentially violent. You’ll also see work by Tyler Arnold, Kathi Couch, Jennifer “EMILE” Freeman, Tracy Hamlin, Greg Lahti, Sean LeCrone and others there. Work by Lahti is also at Arkansas Capital Corp. Group,

where the show “Different Landscapes,” also featuring photographs by Brennan Plunkett and drawings by Robert Bean (and wine and hors d’oeuvres by Margie Raimondo), continues. The Cox Creative Center opens “Art by Design” by Sandra Marsen, and the Old State House Museum will have folk music by the Mockingbirds. A cool front is moving in; you can do it. LNP

FRIDAY 8/14

2ND FRIDAY ART NIGHT

5-8 p.m. Downtown galleries. Free.

The Butler Center opens the exhibition “Disparate Acts Redux,” paintings by three of Arkansas’s best known artists — David Bailin, Warren Criswell and Sammy Peters — in time for the monthly downtown gallery stroll and roll (via trolley). Also on tap: free beer from

RED ALERT: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” starring Peter Sellers, screens at the Ron Robinson Theater at 7 p.m. Saturday, $5.

SATURDAY 8/15

‘DR. STRANGELOVE’

7 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. $5.

Despite being one of the founders of (or, at least, original contributors to) The Paris Review, Terry Southern spent most of his career laughing openly at the “Quality Lit Game” while he cashed checks from dashed-off screenplays and best-selling erotica. This is underselling him pretty profoundly — he wrote “Twirling at Ole Miss,” the urtext for 24

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

New Journalism; co-wrote the screenplay for “Easy Rider”; and was called “the most profoundly witty writer of our generation” by Gore Vidal, etc. But given his abilities, there was also the sense that he was essentially an underachiever, a slacker who didn’t take anything seriously enough to ever produce a really consistent, lasting work. And this would be true, were it not for “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb,” the 1964 comedy he wrote for director Stanley Kubrick. “I’d always had a notion that people in power positions in movies must be hacks and fools,” he later said of Kubrick, “and it was very impressive to meet someone who wasn’t.” Creatively, Kubrick was Southern’s near opposite: a notorious perfectionist, for whom each work had to be (and arguably was) a masterpiece. Together, they made a film

that combined both sensibilities. It’s funny, subversive, loose and weird; it’s also formally brilliant, full of breathtakingly original filmmaking (the last and best of Kubrick’s work-for-hire projects, before he went full-tilt visionary). Peter Sellers and George C. Scott are hilarious and quotable, and the film’s dissident vision — of an American government that’s fundamentally incompetent and absurd — is timeless. WS

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 8/13 Saxophonist and Osceola native Cameron Ross performs at The Joint as part of its Music Innovators Series, 7:30 p.m., $10. Comedian Mike Speenberg is at the Loony Bin at 7:30 p.m., $7 (and at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $10). Dallas-based heavy metal supergroup Hellyeah (featuring members of Mudvayne, Pantera and Nothingface) plays at Juanita’s with Eyes Set to Kill, 8 p.m. The Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society presents its Composers Showcase at George’s Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville, 7 p.m., $20-$25.

FRIDAY 8/14

GOOD TO BE BAD: Whitesnake performs at the Walmart AMP at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, $31-$65.50.

SATURDAY 8/15

WHITESNAKE

7:30 p.m. Walmart AMP. $31-$65.50.

The story of David Coverdale is fraught with failure, self-discovery and pathos. Born in a seaside village in northeast England called Saltburn-bythe-Sea, Coverdale endured years of anonymous striving before finding his voice with Whitesnake. He had a band called The Government, for instance, and even fronted Deep Purple briefly (post-”Smoke on the Water”), before going solo with an album called “White

Snake.” It’s a good title — he liked it so much he decided to adopt it in place of his own name. It is poignant now to read the interviews he’d later give in the leadup to the release of his defining statement, the 1987 album “Whitesnake” (not to be confused with the earlier “White Snake”). Because that album — it featured the iconic power ballads “Here I Go Again,” “Still of the Night” and “Is This Love,” and solidified the band’s international success — wasn’t the band’s first, it was its seventh. In the press, Coverdale swore the album

was his last attempt; if this one didn’t catch on, he said, he’d hang it all up and head back to the English seaside. The key to the record’s breakthrough has been debated for years (many point to the addition of former Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes), but it must have at least partly been this very real, palpable desperation. He wanted to sell out arenas, to address not just hardcore rock fans, but everyone. “Like a drifter I was born to walk alone,” he sang, though he dreamed of universality. He wanted it so badly he reached out and grasped it. WS

ising: They played SXSW, were featured on MTV’s “120 Minutes,” toured the country sharing bills with the likes of Cheap Trick, Alex Chilton, Cracker and All. Before long, however, as drummer Shayne Gray told the Times in an interview last year, “there were several ‘Spinal Tap’-type things that happened.”

When the label asked them to change their band name, “we refused,” Gray said, “and because of this we were often misplaced in record stores under ‘Funkadelic’ or ‘Techno.’ ” More seriously (and oddly), the label opted to experiment with the debut album, releasing it as “one of the world’s first ‘AudioVisual Compact Discs.’ ” The record

consequently came with a sticker warning listeners about the potential for “damaging and/or blowing up your speakers.” The album opened with the sound of a needle drop, which many listeners mistook, Gray said, as “their speakers blowing up, or so it was said.” To me it seems pretty impressive that the band’s album was considered actually, physically dangerous, but the Squid broke up soon afterward.

Its members have continued to record and tour in groups like The Dangerous Idiots, Glittercore, Duckstronaut and more. The new album, appropriately, is titled “We’re Back. What Did We Miss?” WS

SATURDAY 8/15

TECHNO-SQUID EATS PARLIAMENT

9 p.m. White Water Tavern.

Saturday night marks the reunion of Little Rock power pop band TechnoSquid Eats Parliament, back with a new album after what the members call a “20year hiatus.” The group, which boasted one of the most memorable band names of the mid-’90s, also suffered one of the era’s strangest and most unlucky fates.

In 1992 Aaron Sarlo, Mark Pearrow, Clay Bell and Shayne Gray signed with Memphis label Ardent Records after impressing at the Arkansas Musicians Showcase (then sponsored by Spectrum Weekly). Things seemed prom-

The Arkansas Travelers play the San Antonio Missions at DickeyStephens Park at 7:10 p.m. Friday and Saturday (6:10 p.m. Sunday), $6-$12.Christian post-hardcore band As Cities Burn plays at Revolution with Foreign Sons, Canopy Climbers and Sean Michel, 8 p.m., $12 adv., $15 day of. Engine plays at Maxine’s in Hot Springs with Little Rock’s Whale Fire and Daniel Amadee and Gold Light, 9 p.m., $5.

The Ron Robinson Theater screens Tim Burton’s 1988 classic “Beetlejuice” at 10 p.m., $5.

SATURDAY 8/15 The Color Vibe 5K is at Barton Coliseum starting at 9 a.m. Nashville Christian rock band Red plays at Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater in Hot Springs with Thousand Foot Krutch, 7 p.m., $54.99. Old Salt Union plays at Juanita’s, 7 p.m., and Highly Suspect performs at 9 p.m., $12. Fredrickson Hellfire plays at The Lightbulb Club in Fayetteville with Jeh-Sea Wells and Drawing Blanks, 9 p.m. After “Dr. Strangelove,” the Ron Robinson Theater screens “Good Will Hunting,” 10 p.m., $5.

TUESDAY 8/18 The Joint in Argenta presents Stand-Up Tuesday, hosted by Little Rock comedian Adam Hogg, 8 p.m., $5. Pop singer Andy Grammer performs at Revolution with Public, 8:30 p.m., $20.

WEDNESDNAY 8/19 Austin band Honey and Salt plays at Vino’s, 7 p.m. Local jazz duo Guido Ritchie and Steve Hudelson play a free show at South on Main as part of the Oxford American’s Local Live series, 7:30 p.m. Country singers Wade Bowen and Randy Rogers perform at Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $20 adv., $25 day of. www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

25

AFTER DARK All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please email the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. San Antonio. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

SATURDAY, AUG. 15

MUSIC

THURSDAY, AUG. 13

MUSIC

Arkansas River Blues Society Thursday Jam. Revolution, 7 p.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

Cameron Ross. The Joint, 7:30 p.m., $10. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Even Odds (headliner), Byron (happy hour).

Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road.

501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Hellyeah, Eyes Set to Kill. Juanita’s, 8 p.m. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com.

“Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m.

Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Josh Abbott Band, Ray Johnston Band.

Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $17 adv., $20 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Malcolm Holcombe, Dana Louise, Jared Tyler.

White Water Tavern, 8:30 p.m., $7. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

The Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society Composers Showcase. George’s Majestic Lounge. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226.

Open Jam. Thirst n’ Howl, 8 p.m. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994.

RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7-9 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

Mike Speenberg. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., $7.

10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. Corpus Christi. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

FRIDAY, AUG. 14

MUSIC

All In Fridays. Club Elevations. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317.

As Cities Burn, Foreign Sons, Canopy Climbers, Sean Michel. Revolution, 8 p.m., $12 adv., $15 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

Engine, Whale Fire, Daniel Amadee and Gold Light. Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $5. 700 Central Ave., Hot 26

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

KEEP YOUR HEAD UP: Pop singer Andy Grammer performs at Revolution at 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday, $20.

Springs. www.maxinespub.com.

Goose, Amasa Hines. George’s Majestic Lounge.

519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226.

Grayhaus (headliner), Brian Ramsey (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Route 66. Agora Conference and Special Event Center, 6:30 p.m., $5. 705 E. Siebenmorgan, Conway.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

Terminus (record release), Auric. The Lightbulb Club, 9 p.m. 21 N. Block Ave., Fayetteville. 479444-6100.

Upscale Friday. IV Corners, 7 p.m. 824 W. Capitol Ave.

COMEDY

“HOGNADO!” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Mike Speenberg. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and

10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

DANCE

Ballroom dancing. Free lessons begin at 7 p.m.

Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 8-11 p.m., $7-$13. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501221-7568. www.blsdance.org.

Contra Dance. Park Hill Presbyterian Church, 7:30 p.m., $5. 3520 JFK Blvd., NLR. arkansascountrydance.org.

“Salsa Night.” Begins with a one-hour salsa lesson. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

EVENTS

LGBTQ/SGL weekly meeting. Diverse Youth for Social Change is a group for LGBTQ/SGL and straight ally youth and young adults age 14 to 23. For more information, call 501-2449690 or search “DYSC” on Facebook. LGBTQ/ SGL Youth and Young Adult Group, 6:30 p.m.

800 Scott St.

FILM

“Beetlejuice.” Ron Robinson Theater, 10 p.m., $5.

1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib.ar.us/ ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

ROCK < < SPANISH Q Apartments Q $199 MOVE-IN SPECIAL • NEW MANAGEMENT! UNDERGOING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR RENOVATION • Close to Schools & Shopping • Swimming Pools Fitness Center • Tennis Court Washer/Dryer Connections 24 hour Emergency Maintenance • Bilingual Staff Feed the Kids After School Program OFFICE: 501-221-6080 11300 MESA DRIVE LITTLE ROCK, AR 72211

Foulplay Cabaret, Christian Lee Hutson. Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $10-$12. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. www.maxinespub.com.

Fredrickson Hellfire, Jeh-Sea Wells, Drawing Blanks. The Lightbulb Club, 9 p.m. 21 N. Block Ave., Fayetteville. 479-444-6100.

Groovement (record release), Henry and The Invisibles. George’s Majestic Lounge. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226.

Highly Suspect. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $12. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com.

K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501492-9802.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Lucious Spiller Band. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9:30 p.m., $5. 107 River Market Ave. 501372-7707. www.stickyz.com.

Nerd Eye Blind (headliner), Chris DeClerk (happy hour). Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 and 9 p.m.

2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf.com.

Old Salt Union. Juanita’s, 7 p.m. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.juanitas.com.

Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org.

Red, Thousand Foot Krutch. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, 7 p.m., $54.99. 1701 E. Grand Ave., Hot Springs.

Techno Squid Eats Parliament, Sea Nanners, The Inner Party. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

Whitesnake, The Dead Daisies. Walmart AMP, 7:30 p.m., $31-$65.50. 5079 W. Northgate Road, Rogers. 479-443-5600. www.arkansasmusicpavilion.com.

COMEDY

“HOGNADO!” An original production by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $22. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Mike Speenberg. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., $10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell and Cedar Hill Roads.

Head of the Class Bash. Clinton Presidential Center, 9 a.m. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 3708000. www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org.

Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd.

Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market pavil-

ions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info.

Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.

FILM

“Dr. Strangelove.” Ron Robinson Theater, 7 p.m., $5. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib. ar.us/ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

“Good Will Hunting.” Ron Robinson Theater, 10 p.m., $5. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals. lib.ar.us/ron-robinson-theater.aspx.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. San Antonio. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

Color Vibe 5K. Barton Coliseum, 9 a.m. 2600 Howard St. www.arkansasstatefair.com.

SUNDAY, AUG. 16

MUSIC

Irish Traditional Music Session. Hibernia Irish Tavern, 2:30 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road.

501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com.

Karaoke. Shorty Small’s, 6-9 p.m. 1475 Hogan Lane, Conway. 501-764-0604. www.shortysmalls. com.

Karaoke with DJ Sara. Hardrider Bar & Grill, 7 p.m., free. 6613 John Harden Drive, Cabot.

501-982-1939.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 8 p.m., free. 111 W. Markham St. 501-370-7013. www. capitalbarandgrill.com.

COMEDY

Deric “Sleezy” Evans, Moufpiece, Lil J. The Loony Bin, 6 p.m., $15. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.

EVENTS

Artist for Recovery. A secular recovery group for people with addictions. Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, 10 a.m. 1601 S. Louisiana.

SPORTS

Arkansas Travelers vs. San Antonio. DickeyStephens Park, 6:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway, NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs.com.

MONDAY, AUG. 17

MUSIC

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Open Mic. The Lobby Bar. Studio Theatre, 8 p.m. 320 W. 7th St. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

TUESDAY, AUG. 18

MUSIC

Andy Grammer, Public. Revolution, 8:30 p.m.,

$20. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton.

Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

COMEDY

Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

“Latin Night.” Juanita’s, 7:30 p.m., $7. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.

EVENTS

Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd.com/ stores/littlerock.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 19

MUSIC

Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbistroandbar.com.

Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.

Drageoke with Chi Chi Valdez. Sway. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582.

Guido Ritchie and Steve Hudelson. South on Main, 7:30 p.m., free. 1304 Main St. 501-2449660. southonmain.com.

Honey and Salt. Vino’s, 7 p.m. 923 W. 7th St. 501375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.

Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com.

Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 President Clinton Ave. 501-3724782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com.

Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com.

Wade Bowen and Randy Rogers. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $20 adv., $25 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. www.rumbarevolution.com/new.

COMEDY

The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.

DANCE

Little Rock Bop Club. Beginning dance lessons for ages 10 and older. Singles welcome. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 7 p.m., $4 for members, $7 for guests. 12th and Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www.littlerockbopclub.

POETRY

Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show.

Maxine’s, 7 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive.com/shows. html.

ARTS

THEATER

“Hairspray.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, through Aug. 29: Sun., 11 a.m.; Tue.-Sun., 6 p.m., $34-$36.

6323 Col. Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. murrysdinnerplayhouse.com.

NEW GALLERY EXHIBITS, EVENTS New shows in bold-face ARKANSAS CAPITAL CORP. GROUP, 200 River Market Ave.: “Different Landscapes,” paintings by Greg Lahti, photographs by Brennan Plunkett, drawings by Robert Bean, woodwork by Steve Plunkett, reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night, food

by Margie Raimondo. 374-9246.

BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “Disparate Acts Redux,” paintings by David Bailin, Warren Criswell and Sammy Peters, opens with reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Weaving Stories and Hope: Textile Arts from the Japanese Internment Camp at Rohwer, Arkansas”; “State Youth Art Show 2015: An Exhibition by Arkansas Art Educators,” Underground Gallery, through Aug. 29. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790.

COX CREATIVE CENTER, 100 River Market Ave.: “Art by Design,” works by Sandra Marson, through September, reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Hotel Pines: Light through the Pines,” photographs by a dozen art photographers of abandoned Hotel Pines in Pine Bluff, through August. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 918-3093.

GALLERY 221, Second and Center streets: “Round Robin,” painters will work on others’ canvases, 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night, works on display through Aug. 31.

11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM GALLERIES, 200 E. 3rd St.: “Katherine Rutter & Ginny Sims,” paintings and pottery, through Nov. 8; “Pop Up in the Rock: The Exhibit,” through Oct. 4; “Art. Function. Craft: The Life and Work of Arkansas Living Treasures,” works by 14 craftsmen honored by Arkansas Arts Council; “Suggin Territory: The Marvelous World of Folklorist Josephine Graham,” through Nov. 29. Reception 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night, with live music by John Willis and the Late Romantics and beer from Moody Brews. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351.

OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham: Folk music by Mockingbird, 5-8 p.m. Aug. 14, 2nd Friday Art Night; “Different Strokes,” the history of bicycling and places cycling in Arkansas, featuring artifacts, historical pictures and video, through February 2016. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m.

Sun. 324-9685.

FIVE CHOREOGRAPHERS–

ONE WINNER!

PRESENTS

WORKS FROM OUR 2015 CHOREOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

AUGUST 22, 7 PM UALR CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

FOR TICKETS

BALLETARKANSAS.ORG 5 0 1 .2 2 3 .5 1 5 0 www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

27

Dining

Information in our restaurant capsules reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of readers who think we are in error.

B Breakfast L Lunch D Dinner $ Inexpensive (under $8/person) $$ Moderate ($8-$20/person) $$$ Expensive (over $20/person) CC Accepts credit cards

WHAT’S COOKIN’ PREPARE TO PORK OUT: The second annual Little Rock Bacon Fest is coming up Sept. 19 at the Arkansas State Fairgrounds. The day begins with a calorie-burning Bacon 5K fun walk/run at 10 a.m. — sign up before Aug. 30 to get the $25 registration fee — and the festival officially opens at 11 a.m. Live music by Four West, local merchant booths, a kids’ zone with inflatables, a cooking contest, a beer garden, a bacon-eating contest and bacon concession items: It sounds just swine.

General admission is $5 in advance and $10 day of show; kids 8 and under are free (up to 2) with paid adult admission. The Bacon 5K registration fee is $35 after Aug. 29. Proceeds benefit the State Fair Scholarship Program. Tickets are available at www.arkansasstatefair. com.

DINING CAPSULES

AMERICAN

1620 SAVOY Fine dining in a swank space. 1620 Market St. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-1620.

D Mon.-Sat., BR Sun. AFTERTHOUGHT BISTRO AND BAR The restaurant side of the Afterthought Bar (also called the Afterthought Bistro and Bar) features crab cakes, tuna tacos, chicken tenders, fries, sandwiches, burgers and, as entrees, fish and grits, tuna, ribeye, chicken and dumplings, pasta and more. Live music in the adjoining bar, also private dining room. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. Full bar, all CC. 501-663-1196.

ALL ABOARD RESTAURANT & GRILL Burgers, catfish, chicken tenders and such in this trainthemed restaurant, where an elaborately engineered mini-locomotive delivers patrons’ meals.

6813 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. 501-9757401. LD daily.

ALLEY OOPS The restaurant at Creekwood Plaza (near the Kanis-Bowman intersection) is a neighborhood feedbag for major medical institutions with the likes of plate lunches, burgers and homemade desserts. Remarkable chess pie. 11900 Kanis Road. Full bar, all CC. $-$$.

501-221-9400. LD Mon.-Sat. THE BOX Cheeseburgers and french fries are greasy and wonderful and not like their fastfood cousins. 1023 W. Seventh St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-372-8735. L Mon.-Fri. ORANGE LEAF YOGURT Upscale self-serve national yogurt chain. 11525 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-227-4522. LD daily.

VICTORIAN GARDEN We’ve found the fare quite tasty and somewhat daring and different with its healthy, balanced entrees and crepes.

4801 North Hills Blvd. NLR. $-$$. 501-758-4299.

L Mon.-Sat. WHITE WATER TAVERN Good locally sourced bar food. 2500 W. 7th St. Full bar, all CC. $-$$.

501-375-8400. D Tue., Thu., Fri., Sat.

ASIAN 28

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

Yes, Fu Lin For filling, cheap, good Chinese

W

hen it comes to food in Chinese restaurants, the running joke is that no matter how much of the stuff a person eats, hunger is sure to arise within an hour. Fans of this joke obviously have never eaten at West Little Rock’s Fu Lin, which is serving up some of the tastiest Chinese in the city, doing it for cheap and presenting the sort of solid, quality cuisine that can keep us full for hours.

Where to begin? Well, all the appetizers are pretty fantastic, so we decided to get them all at once by ordering the Pu Pu Tray ($8.95), a delightful sampler that includes two each of egg rolls, crab rangoon, beef and chicken cho cho, and tempura chicken. The tray also came out sporting a small charcoal-fired brazier that spit and sputtered at us during our first course; this was a little disconcerting, and made reaching across the table for the sweet and sour more than a little dangerous.

As for the actual appetizers, they were delicious. The egg rolls and crab rangoon were both crisp and fresh from the fryer. There was nothing out of the ordinary about either item: The rangoons were stuffed with the vaguely crab-scented cream cheese we’ve come to expect, while the egg rolls were full of shredded cabbage, carrots and pork. Still, we’ve had both items in soggy, depressing forms so many times that these light, crunchy versions hit the spot.

The two cho cho items (commonly referred to as “stick meat”) were also tasty. The chicken was seared nicely on the grill, tender and moist. The beef wasn’t quite as good, but the sweet and spicy sauce that drenched everything left us happy. The tempura-battered sweet-and-sour chicken was also quite good — so good in fact that we wished we had ordered more than just the two pieces that came with the sampler. All in all, this was one of the best appetizer samplers we’ve ordered, and for two people it makes a wonderful start to the meal.

We continued on with a couple of

bowls of soup. The egg drop ($2) was rich and mild, with a nice texture. The hot and sour ($2) didn’t fare quite as well; although it was tasty enough, we prefer it more on the hot side than the sour — this was exactly the opposite.

Still, for diners who don’t enjoy spicy foods as we do, this soup would be a great choice.

and while the crunchy water chestnuts did a good job holding in the flavor of the sauce, we just couldn’t get past the dominating flavor of the peppers. An order of steamed rice on the side was light, fluffy and sticky just like we like it.

Given the meal we had at Fu Lin, we’ve decided to place the restaurant on our regular rotation of “cheap eats” joints. Several other menu items caught our eye, including a Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, Orange Beef with Broccoli and a tasty-sounding Sesame Beef. The kitchen is quick and efficient, and everything we were served obviously was cooked fresh to order. It’s a nice change from some

DON’T POOH POOH THE PU PU: Platter is great way to start a meal.

When it came time for entrees, we were equally pleased. First up was the General Tso’s Chicken ($8.50), and although we know that crispy-fried bites of chicken swimming in a sweet, spicy neon orange sauce probably isn’t the healthiest thing we could order, we were impressed with how the breading held up to the sauce. A side order of fried rice ($2.75) was tasty enough, although there really wasn’t much to the dish beyond rice and a few scattered vegetables. As a vessel to soak up the sauce from the General Tso’s chicken, though, it did its job quite well.

Our last entree, the Kung Pao Chicken ($7), was probably the weakest part of the meal. Unlike the General Tso’s, the chicken here was diced small and lacked much flavor. Large chunks of green bell pepper overwhelmed the rest of the dish,

versions of these dishes we’ve had that waste away in pans on a steam table, and given the friendly service, there’s no reason not to make Fu Lin your next stop for Chinese.

Fu Lin

200 N. Bowman Road 501-225-8989 QUICK BITE Fu Lin is a steal at lunch, with combination platters starting at just under $5. Each combination comes with an entree, egg roll and choice of steamed or fried rice — a filling and delicious meal for just a few bucks.

HOURS 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

OTHER INFO Full bar, all credit cards accepted.

BELLY UP Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com

DINING CAPSULES, CONT. CHI’S DIMSUM & BISTRO A huge menu spans the Chinese provinces and offers a few twists on the usual local offerings, plus there’s authentic Hong Kong dimsum available. 6 Shackleford Drive. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-7737.

LD daily. 17200 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-821-8000. LD Mon.-Sat., D Sun. 3421 Old Cantrell Road. 501-916-9973.

CHINA TASTE Conventional menu with an online ordering system (though no delivery).

9218 Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol. $-$$.

501-227-8800. LD Mon.-Sat. KOBE JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE & SUSHI Though answering the need for more hibachis in Little Rock, Kobe stands taller in its sushi offerings than at the grill. 11401 Financial Centre Parkway. Full bar, all CC. $$-$$$. 501-225-5999.

L Mon.-Sat. D daily.

NEW FUN REE Reliable staples, plenty of hot and spicy options and dependable delivery. 418 W. 7th St. No alcohol, all CC. $. 501-664-6657.

LD Mon.-Sat. THE SOUTHERN GOURMASIAN Delicious Southern-Asian fusion. We crave the pork buns.

Made the transition from food truck to brickand-mortar in 2015 to rave reviews. 219 West Capitol. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$. 501-3135645. LD Mon.-Sat.

BARBECUE

CAPITOL SMOKEHOUSE AND GRILL Beef, pork and chicken, all smoked to melting tenderness and doused with a choice of sauces. The crusty but tender backribs star. Side dishes are top quality. A plate lunch special is now available. 915 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, all CC. $-$$. 501-372-4227. L Mon.-Fri. HB’S BBQ Great slabs of meat with a vinegarbased barbecue sauce, but ribs are served on Tuesday only. Other days, try the tasty pork sandwich. 6010 Lancaster. No alcohol, No CC. $-$$. 501-565-1930. LD Mon.-Fri.

EUROPEAN / ETHNIC

ALI BABA A Middle Eastern restaurant, butcher shop and grocery. 3400 S University Ave. No alcohol, all CC. 501-379-8011. BLD Mon.-Sat. BANANA LEAF INDIAN FOOD TRUCK Tasty Indian street food. 201 N Van Buren St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-227-0860. L Mon.-Fri. THE PANTRY Owner and self-proclaimed “food evangelist” Tomas Bohm does things the right way — buying local, making almost everything from scratch and focusing on simple preparations of classic dishes. The menu stays relatively true to his Czechoslovakian roots, but there’s plenty of choices to suit all tastes. There’s also a nice happy-hour vibe. 11401 Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-353-1875. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat. STAR OF INDIA The best Indian restaurant in the region, with a unique buffet at lunch and some fabulous dishes at night (spicy curried dishes, tandoori chicken, lamb and veal, vegetarian). 301 N. Shackleford. Beer and wine, all CC. $$. 501-227-9900. LD daily.

ITALIAN

GUSANO’S They make the tomatoey Chicagostyle deep-dish pizza the way it’s done in the Windy City. It takes a little longer to come out

of the oven, but it’s worth the wait. 313 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-374-1441.

LD daily. 2915 Dave Ward Drive. Conway. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-329-1100. LD daily.

NYPD PIZZA Plenty of tasty choices in the obvious New York police-like setting, but it’s fun. Only the pizza is cheesy. Even the personal pizzas come in impressive combinations, and baked ziti, salads and more also are available.

Cheap slice specials at lunch. 6015 Chenonceau Blvd., Suite 1. Beer and wine, all CC. $-$$.

501-868-3911. LD daily.

VESUVIO Arguably Little Rock’s best Italian restaurant. The cheesy pasta bowls are sensational, but don’t ignore the beef offerings.

1315 Breckenridge Drive. Full bar, all CC. $$$.

501-246-5422. D daily.

LATINO

CANTINA CINCO DE MAYO Friendly, tasty American-ized Mex. 3 Rahling Circle. Full bar, CC. $$. 501-821-2740. LD daily.

CASA MEXICANA Familiar Tex-Mex style items all shine, in ample portions, and the steak-centered dishes are uniformly excellent. 7111 JFK Blvd. NLR. Full bar, all CC. $$.

501-835-7876. LD daily.

LA VAQUERA The tacos at this truck are more expensive than most, but they’re still cheap eats. One of the few trucks where you can order a combination plate that comes with rice, beans and lettuce. 4731 Baseline Road. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-565-3108.

LD Mon.-Sat. LAS DELICIAS Levy-area mercado with a taqueria and a handful of booths in the back of the store. 3401 Pike Ave. NLR. Beer, all CC. $. 501-812-4876. BLD daily.

MOE’S SOUTHWEST GRILL A “build-yourown-burrito” place, with several tacos and nachos to choose from as well. Wash it down with a beer from their large selection. 12312 Chenal Pkwy. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-223-3378.

LD daily.

SUPER 7 GROCERY STORE This Mexican grocery/video store/taqueria has a great daily buffet featuring a changing assortment of real Mexican cooking. Fresh tortillas pressed by hand and grilled, homemade salsas, beans as good as beans get. Plus soup every day.

1415 Barrow Road. Beer, No CC. $. 501-2192373. BLD daily.

TAQUERIA JALISCO SAN JUAN The taco truck for the not-so-adventurous crowd.

They claim to serve “original Mexico City tacos,” but it’s their chicken tamales that make it worth a visit. They also have tortas, quesadillas and fajitas. 11200 Markham St. No alcohol, No CC. $. 501-541-5533. LD daily.

TAQUERIA SAMANTHA On Friday and Saturday nights, this mobile taqueria parks outside of Jose’s Club Latino in a parking lot on the corner of Third and Broadway.

300 Broadway Ave. No alcohol, No CC. $.

501-568-5264. D Fri.-Sat. (sporadic hours beyond that).

TAQUERIA Y CARNICERIA GUADALAJARA Cheap, delicious tacos, tamales and more.

Always bustling. 3811 Camp Robinson Road.

NLR. Beer, all CC. $-$$. 501-753-9991. BLD daily.

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ALPHA OMEGA NAPA VALLEY CHARDONNAY 2012 ELSEWHERE $54.99 - SPECIAL $39.99 Our friend and winemaker Jean Hoefliger created this highly rated (92 WS, 91 RP) delicious Napa wine back in 2012, it’s reaching peak maturity and is RTD (ready to drink). Floral notes of orange rind and citrus intermixed with subtle background oak combine to deliver a porch pounding medium to fullbodied wine. Great wine for a killer price!

BEST LIQUOR STORE Rahling Road @ Chenal Parkway • 501.821.4669 • olooneys@aristotle.net • www.olooneys.com www.arktimes.com

AUGUST 13, 2015

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ANNOUNCING THE 2015 ARKANSAS TIMES WHOLE HOG ROAST benefiting

WHOLE HOG

Argenta Arts District

SATURDAY, NOV. 14 Argenta Farmers Market Events Grounds 5 until 9 PM

benefiting

Argenta Arts District

WE ARE STILL ACCEPTING:

AMATEUR TEAMS are considered individuals or businesses not connected

to any particular restaurant, food truck or catering companies. Amateur teams will be preparing at least 30 pounds of pork butt. Amateur teams wanting to enter our People’s Choice “Anything but Butt” will need to provide 30 pounds of options such as chicken wings, thighs, ribs, goat, stuffed jalapenos, anything besides pork butt - be creative. This is a separate award for amateurs only. Edwards Food Giant is offering 20% discount on meat purchases. Entry fee: $150

Arkansas Times and the Argenta Arts District are now accepting both AMATEUR and PROFESSIONAL TEAMS to compete in our 3rd annual Whole Hog Roast

BEER & WINE GARDEN Gated festival area selling beer & wine ($5 each)

PROFESSIONAL TEAMS are considered restaurants, catering companies and food trucks. Professional teams will be preparing a whole hog from Ben E. Keith Company Entry fee: $500 and includes the whole hog, pick up by Nov. 11

Each team must provide two sides serving at least 50 people each.

CURRENT ROAST COMPETITORS AMATEUR TEAM: L.A. Smokers (Levy Area Smokers)

• Ticket holders will cast all the votes via “Tokens” • Three tokens will be provided to all ticket holders, additional tokens are available for sale • Three Winners will be chosen: PEOPLE’s CHOICE FOR Best professional Team, • Best Amateur Team and THE Best Amateur “Anything but Butt” Team.

ARKANSAS ALE HOUSE · COUNTRY CLUB OF ARKANSAS MIDTOWN BILLIARDS · SO RESTAURANT-BAR Deadline to enter: September 18

To enter, contact Drue Patton dpatton@argentadc.org or Phyllis Britton phyllis@arktimes.com 30

AUGUST 13, 2015

ARKANSAS TIMES

ONL PLEASE V

MOVIE REVIEW

ARKANSAS TIMES MARKETPLACE

‘IRRATIONAL MAN’: Parker Posey and Joaquin Phoenix star.

Love and death in Rhode Island Woody Allen returns to the Russian novel.

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be Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) has had a tough life. His wife has left him. His mother poisoned herself when he was 12. His best friend was a casualty of the Iraq War, the victim of a landmine or, some say, a beheading. These details and others have received a wide airing in the academic world, where Abe is a star philosophy professor and a new hire at a sleepy Rhode Island college. He promises, as one faculty member phrases it, to “put some Viagra” into the department. But the excitement the campus feels for Abe’s arrival is balanced by Abe’s own lack of it. Beset by writer’s block as he attempts to tackle Heidegger and fascism, openly slugging from a flask as he walks across campus, unable to please any of his would-be sexual partners, Abe is a man in crisis.

Such is the setup for “Irrational Man,” Woody Allen’s latest, which takes aim at the age-old struggle between thought and action. Abe is a thinker, not a doer — one wracked by a perception of life’s meanPLEASE VISITinglessness.

US AT WWW.EDWARDSFOODGIANT.COM The question throughout the film is whether and how Abe will escape this torpor. Love is a ready outlet. Will he choose Rita (Parker Posey), a chemistry professor with similar existential issues and an equally robust thirst for booze? Or will he go for Jill (Emma Stone), his eager student? The outcome is patently obvious from the early going. The film’s real driving tension is not these romantic doings.

Rather, it is whether Abe will spring into motion in some other way.

A potential vehicle emerges in the form of a divorced woman who is fighting for custody of her children. The judge in the case, who seems to favor the ex-husband’s side, is a pretty rotten guy. He has been “censured several times” but, implausibly, “never reversed on appeal.”

That was probably the only line that

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gave me an audible rise. Some other halfhearted one-liners aside, Allen is not really aiming for humor here. Rather, the film develops into an allusion to “Crime and Punishment,” a book by an author who, unlike Allen, does not have a reputation as a funnyman. Allen has played the Russian novelists to light effect in the past, but this time he opts to go heavy. Abe could probably do a lot of things to help the divorced woman. Putting an ax through the judge’s head — or a more subtle and cinematic version of that — is perhaps not the most rational. But that’s the thought that enters Abe’s mind. Will he or won’t he? What are the moral implications? And can he get away with it if he does?

The film aims high but ultimately can’t reach those lofty ambitions. Its dialogue too often falls flat. (Perhaps your typical undergrad really does profess to her middle-aged paramour to “love it when you order for me,” but such lines are better left on the cutting-room floor.) Rather than developing the characters, the script relies excessively on character voiceovers — a technique that’s a bit more effective with Abe, since most of the intrigue revolves around the activity in his brain.

The women are primarily foils for Abe and nods to the obligatory romantic plotline. And Allen has a supremely strange vision of campus life, though I suppose there might be a college somewhere at which professors eat in the cafeteria and neck with their students in front of the academic buildings.

Phoenix is superb, though, with his expanded paunch and his detached air.

The character is of a piece with his recent portrayals of madmen and outsiders — I’m thinking of his turns in “The Master,” “Her” and “Inherent Vice.” Anyone compelled by those performances shouldn’t miss this one.

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31

New Categories!

Bar (Central Ark.)

Drinking brunch

Bar (Around the state)

Patio or deck for drinking

Bartender (Central Ark.)

Cocktail list

Bartender (Around the state)

Coldest beer

Bar for live music (Central Ark.)

Martini

Bloody Mary

Margarita Bar for live music (Around Local brewery (Central the state) Ark.) New Bar Local brewery (Around Wine bar the state) Sports bar National brewery

VOTE! NOW! 1st round

August 6-25

Pick-up bar

Locally brewed pale ale

Finalists announced

Gay bar

Locally brewed IPA

August 27

Dive bar

Locally brewed stout

2nd round

Hotel bar

Liquor store

August 27 - September 15

Neighborhood bar

Brewpub

Winners announced

Bar for pool, darts, shuffleboard or other games

Beer selection (bar or restaurant)

September 17

Beer selection (retail)

October 15

Bar for food Happy hour

Issue date

Wine selection (retail)

ARKTIMES.COM/TOAST15 32

AUGUST 13, 2015

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