SUNDAY MARCH 28, 2010
Editor Roy Ockert Jr. (870) 935-5525
OPINION
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ THE JONESBORO SUN
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EDITORIAL |
Outlook in 2010 shows progress T
he economy isn’t completely rosy here if you ask Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas and area food pantry officials, who say they’ve had record demand during this recession. Arkansas’ unemployment rate was at 7.7 last month, high for us, but better than the 9.7 reported nationally. And there have been layoffs in the region in last year or so. We know some of us are suffering. There probably isn’t a business in the region that hasn’t done some belt tightening and procedural evaluations. Those are big words for ferreting out where waste can be cut, from buying cheaper toilet tissue to temperature control to keeping fewer materials on hand before they’re needed. Some of this stuff could have benefited us even if there wasn’t a recession. Some companies have used the recession to find their weaknesses and build on strengths. Some are now starting to rehire those they laid off. Nestle Prepared Foods did a $60 million expansion and added 200 employees in recent months. Even Frank and Darrell Kelley, who own American Agviation with its 12 employees in Walnut Ridge, hope to build their staff to 150. American Agviation is the only company licensed to build and rebuild the Ag Cat bi-wing agricultural application aircraft. The Kelleys also want begin new production of Ag-Cat aircraft at the Walnut Ridge facility, which they say can create as many as 150 new jobs and make Arkansas the “world’s ag air capital.” Hooray for them for their positive outlook and entrepreneurial spirit. And hooray for all of us in NEA, where those characteristics are common. Because of that, we changed the name of our annual “Progress” edition to “Outlook,” which you’ll find in today’s paper. The “Progress” edition looked back at strides made in the previous year in the areas of industry, business, medicine, real estate sales, finances, economic development, quality of life, charity and more. But progress must be evaluated differently during a recession — maybe not in the number of jobs gained or businesses opened, but in jobs not lost, in the new ideas that surface and the clever ways people and companies have saved money,
found new business and survived. Triumphs can be measured in where we think we’re going as a business region and a community. That’s why we renamed the section “Outlook.” It’s all about where we’ve been and where we think we’re going. We have good news. Home building is down, but building is still happening. And existing homes are still selling much better than in other areas of the nation, although a bit slower than in other times in this region. Area real estate agents expect sales to jump as soon as good weather hits, and they don’t seem overly concerned about the national slump. Northeast Arkansans seem to be as charitable as ever to their neighbors in need. New food pantries have popped up in the region, and more money than expected was raised for the Flo and Phil Jones Hospice House. That resulted in more rooms being built in the initial phase instead of later as planned. The Mall at Turtle Creek reports increased traffic. While some businesses ceased operations, other new companies and restaurants came to Jonesboro. We’re amazed at the number of Asian restaurants alone. And now we have numerous Italian restaurants. The whole Delta region comes to Jonesboro for shopping, entertainment, medical treatment and other services. Other businesses remodeled, expanded or moved to larger facilities. Developers are still working like bees in the downtown area, which gets lovelier and more exciting every day. Area schools are using stimulus money for long-awaited upgrades, and Arkansas State University is partnering with companies such as newcomers Nice-Pak and Nordex USA to ensure a trained work force. That’s just good for everyone. As a whole we still seem to be a darned sight better off in many areas than other parts of the country. Local businesses and citizens have soldiered on through the recession in classic conservative, hard-working style. Folks here seem to have their thinking caps on and noses to the grindstone. It’s working. Northeast Arkansas’ outlook is great. We hope you’ll read all about it in “Outlook” today.
Next up, education WASHINGTON — After more than a year when the spotlight remained fixed on the doctor’s office and the hospital room, attention switches this week to the classrooms of America. On Monday Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will announce the firstround winners of the Race to the Top, the $4 billion competition he set up to reward the states with the most ambitious David S. plans for improving their Broder | public schools. When I asked Duncan what he hoped people would say about this unprecedented contest, he responded: “So many were skeptical when we announced this a year ago as part of the stimulus package. I hope they realize now that a very high bar has been set.” Because the winning plans are so good? I asked. “So good, and so few,” he said. Duncan, the rangy former Chicago schools chief who plays pickup basketball with the president, has been given what none of his predecessors in the Education Department ever had: a huge chunk of cash, borrowed from abroad as part of the 2-year $787 billion effort to rescue the economy from collapse. Fifteen of the 40 states that submitted plans were named as finalists in the Race to the Top earlier this month, along with the District of Columbia. The winners will pick up millions for their improvement projects. That this is happening when state after state and school district after school district have seen their regular budgets slashed by the recession-crippling domestic economy simply increases Duncan’s leverage. We know he will use it to increase the role of charter schools, the customized public alternative to the failing conventional models, and to spur other efforts to change the way that teachers are recruited, trained and deployed — especially for youngsters from meager financial households. But we don’t know where. And we don’t know how successfully Duncan can exploit this windfall to move the bureaucracy of education in ways that produce dramatic results. As it happens, Race to the Top is just
one of two major initiatives Duncan has launched to try to change the face of America’s public schools. The other is the effort to rewrite and reauthorize in Congress the largest federal aid to education act, now best known by the name George W. Bush gave it, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Duncan wants to preserve what is most distinctive (and controversial) about that law, the insistence that elementary and high schools test their pupils regularly to determine how every significant subgroup is doing, with the aim of reducing racial and gender gaps. But he and the president have urged Congress to rewrite both the standards and their implementation in a variety of ways that promise to be more rigorous but less intrusive than NCLB. They are helped by the fact that 48 of the 50 states — all but Texas and Alaska — have agreed this year to write a set of common standards for math and English studies, providing a benchmark for schools without invoking the heavy hand of Washington. It’s too soon to know what Congress will do with the Duncan plan or even whether NCLB reauthorization will fit onto the legislative calendar. So far, the most critical comments have come from the heads of the two big teachers unions, which could doom these changes in a Democratic Congress. But Duncan, after his experience in Chicago, has learned the value of keeping the lines of communication open and not accepting the first “no” as final. The day I saw him, he’d had breakfast with one of the union chiefs. More remarkably, the bipartisanship that marked the passage of NCLB — with Democrats George Miller of California and Ted Kennedy partnering with Bush — remains possible even after the war over health care. Duncan credits Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a former secretary of education now in the Senate, and Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, another Republican, as helping shape the proposal. Achieving the kind of change Duncan is promoting would be a great gift for the country, especially when so many states are being forced by budgetary pressures to skimp on their commitments to education. © 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
Pondering the whirlwind Ben Ponder, and other things A bit of a whirlwind just came through the office. Its name was Ben Ponder. It’s from Mountain Home. It’s an unlikely but intriguing 34-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress in the 1st District. He had me at the metaphor. This baby-faced chap was explaining why he came home from earning a doctor’s degree at Northwestern in EvanJohn ston, Ill., then studying Brummett | at a seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, and doing other interesting things. It was in part, he said, because his native Ozark hills, while not epic and grand and majestic in the way of the Rockies, are “cotton-dress pretty.” Maybe you need to be a guy. If I tried to explain, I’d use the rest of the space — on how it’s not the flashy, overly fixed, designer-conscious look that appeals, but the simplest fabric from the simplest pattern worn most simply against simple sun-bronzed summer skin. Excuse me. I’m lost in a Springsteen lyric: “The girls in their summer clothes pass me by.”
dmosesso@jonesborosun.com
What we need, Ponder says, is a restoration of a guiding principle he found in his study of our greatest founders. He calls it ‘legislating with posterity in mind.’ page dissertation on the politics of our founders, whom he thinks he knows better than they knew each other — on account of his having read their diaries. He got into SBC management in St. Louis for a short while. But the heavy travel of the management ladder wasn’t what he was seeking. He taught both at Northwestern and as a graduate assistant at the University
of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He did some political consulting in Chicago, including in a U.S. Senate Democratic primary in 2004 for an opponent of a fellow named Barack Obama. He designed a little venture capital project in renewable energy, backing out only because the investment banking sector collapsed. Four years ago he and the wife and four kids came back to Mountain Home, where dad was the popular town pharmacist, so the kids could ride their bicycles between quiet cul-de-sacs and a creek and fish at the family cabin on the White River. He took a job managing state Sen. Percy Malone’s chain of pharmacies. Now, with Marion Berry retiring, he is taking a shot at Congress in defiance of a conventional wisdom that the race will go to one of three establishment Democrats — Chad Causey, Tim Wooldridge or Steve Bryles — unless the Republican revolt lifts the GOP guy, Rick Crawford, who has the agricultural radio network. Ponder rejects the notion that serving on a congressional staff, like Causey, or in the state Legislature, like Wooldridge and Bryles, best qualifies one to go to Congress. He counters: How about one trained to appreciate and understand history, and experienced in the health-
Editorials represent the voice of The Jonesboro Sun. Editorial columns, letters to the editor and other Roger Brumley, production manager Lorri Householder, circulation director articles that appear on this page and the opposite page represent rbrumley@jonesborosun.com larkless@jonesborosun.com the opinions of the writers, and The Perry Tidwell, pressroom manager Larry Earnhart, mailroom manager Sun may or may not agree.
Roy Ockert Jr., editor royo@jonesborosun.com
David R. Mosesso, publisher
Somebody stop me. This was about politics. Ben Ponder. Oh, yes, Ben Ponder. Nice kid, uncommonly bright, driven to serve and to achieve. He has a Ph.D. from elite Northwestern, where Dale Bumpers once matriculated. Ponder got the doctor’s degree with a 900-
Jeremy Erling, controller jerling@jonesborosun.com
Lisa A. Lynn, advertising director llynn@jonesborosun.com
care industry, and a student of, and nearinvestor in, renewable energy? He speaks my language, saying the liberal-vs.-conservative construction is outdated and bores him. What we need is a restoration of a guiding principle he says he found in his study of our greatest founders. He calls it “legislating with posterity in mind.” By that principle, he said, you will behave with strict fiscal responsibility and perhaps get called a conservative. But then you will behave on energy and agricultural issues with sensitivity to your environmental legacy and probably get called a liberal or a tree-hugger. It’s no matter. The most important thing, he said, is that he not leave his four kids with “a hundred-year mortgage on a house they can never live in.” That’s a pretty good metaphor, too. He said health-care reform won’t really work until we take the profit-seeking essence out and convert our insurers to nonprofits not beholden to shareholders first and sick people later. He probably doesn’t have a chance. But he ought to get a careful listen. Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansas news.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
MONDAY Andrew DeMillo: Dustin McDaniel emerges as new Republican target.