Arrogance Abounds

I don't know much about coaching football, but I can smell the arrogance of elected officials and public employees a mile away. Razorback football coach Houston Nutt is a prime example of an egotistical state employee who thinks he's above criticism about the job he was hired to do.

Seven Southeast Conference football teams are ranked in the Top 25, and Arkansas is in the cellar at 0-3. Nutt, who is quite well-paid, says he is not concerned with public perception about the job he is doing. “I don’t worry about that at all,” he said yesterday. “All it’s doing, it’s wasted energy. It’s wasted oxygen. Don’t do it. Don’t worry about anything.... When you start worrying about all that, you’re taking away from what you are supposed to do.” No, Houston, it is not taxpayer comment about job performance that takes away from public employees doing what they are hired to do. It's called public opinion, which is supposed to count for something in state government.

“I don’t worry about that at all,” Nutt said. “I really don’t. ...The contract they’ve given me, it’s real clear. It says 2012. It doesn’t say you’re gone 2007, 2008. It says 2012." That smug response only points out that the University of Arkansas made a bad decision; it doesn't mean that the criticism is unjustified or worth considering.

And George Bush is coming to Benton County to meet with a hand-picked group of business supporters. He will ignore the fact that when he came into office, we had a budget surplus and international good will, both of which he has squandered. He will brag that his annual budget deficit, a result of uncontrolled war spending and tax cuts for the wealthy, is now $163 billion a year. He will brag about his veto of health care for children. Arrogance abounds. It is too bad we can't buy out his contract that runs only to January 2009.