Newspapers / The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.) / Jan. 18, 2006, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
2\ THE NEWS-JOURNAL Racford, N.C. January 18. 2006 Viewpoints Sympathy from one old goat to another When there is not much to write about, one turns to writing about his goats. Unfortunately, my oldest goat is just about to leave this world. In years past, he was the meanest one 1 have. 1 named him Jack when he was a little fellow; that was 17 years ago. I don’t know how long goats are supposed to live — not long if they are meat goats, because they become bar-b-que when they are of age. Even though resusci tating a goat would be a difficult job, if it would help 1 probably would try it on Jack. (That is, if no one was looking). Regardless he has been a pleasure and a warrior. Many chil dren have rubbed his head; for some reason he always liked children, when he didn’t have a lot of use for adults. His horns have been his meanest weapon and he knew how to use them. I am going to miss Jack. He in goat years is about my age which makes us both far from being spring chickens. Right after the new year begins, all of the freeloaders come forth. Such was the case with me in Fayetteville last week. A fellow who claimed to be down on his luck strolled up to where I was talking to a man. They all just got out of the hospital, to hear them give their spiel. This one came up with a new twist. Before he even spoke he opened his mouth and A View from the Country Raz Autry showed me his teeth, which were not very pretty. He moved them up and out, wiggling them like a worm on a fish hook. They were real as far as I could tell. Here 1 am standing in the middle of a sidewalk looking at a man’s wide open mouth showing me his teeth. 1 am sure glad the traffic was light. He claimed his teeth put him in the hospital and he hadn’t eaten in four days. 1 must confess he looked the part. He wanted two dol lars to get some food. The only food 1 know you can get for two dol lars comes at the fast food places, then you won’t get anything to drink but water. 1 started to say, “Two dollars won’t get you much food, ’ then I thought of an experi ence I had when 1 made that state ment to another who wanted two dollars. When 1 mentioned two dol lars won’t buy much food, he then asked for ten. When the drifter got the words out of his mouth, the man next to me said, “You want some food? Two Beware of scam artists, self mortgages To The Editor: Thank you for talking with me in regards to the many scams that are happening to the elderly and disabled people in our neighborhoods. Self-mortgages sound good but be aware when they can’t come up with the money. Even with a signed con tract by both parties, it takes many legal steps to undo the damages or to regain your money. Keep in mind if these people had good credit they \\'ou/ci bf going to a hank for the We Get Letters financing. ' These people play on the vulner ability of the elderly and disabled. Eventually these events end up in a foreclosure and are costly and a waste of time because legally these people own the house. Due to these people owning the house they can destroy it and it can cost thousands of dollars to repair. Not only do you have this expense you have the expense of an attorney and the cost of foreclosure. Both of which can take months. If you are lucky they have paid the insurance on the house; if not, hope that nothing catastrophic hap pens because you could end up with nothing. When a court date is set these people can file for an appeal, and it is usually granted due to their legal rights. This total process could take up to a year. Not only is this expensive it is emotionally draining and heartbreak ing to see your house destroyed by someone who couldn’t care less. Keep in mind that you cannot gain any money on back payments for the damages and/or the months waiting the foreclosure. Sincerely, Ulrike McCollum u FaveiU'\'il/c Cuts affect those who can least afford them State lawmakers planning on cut ting taxes in next summer’s legisla tive session ought to read the details of the federal budget agreement that is now just a House vote away from heading to President Bush to sign. The plan cuts $40 billion from programs that serve the poor and the middle class. The cuts affect student loans, child support enforcement. Medicare and Medicaid, and childcare. The legislation makes major changes to the major program public assistance program. Temporary As sistance to Needy Families (TANF), forcing states to impose new work requirementson recipients or lose fed eral funding. The Congressional Bud get office says the states will have to spend more than $8 billion to meet the new mandates. The plan also includes an $11 bil lion shortfall in childcare costs. Bud get officials say states need $12 bil lion in childcare money to meet the new work requirements, but only one billion was allocated. North Carolina currently has 35,000 kids on the wait ing list for a childcare subsidy «nd several counties are struggling to keep providing the subsidy to children cur- N.C. PoucY Watch Chris Fitzsimon rently receiving it. The legislation increases the co payments the state may charge for Medicaid services up to as much as ten percent of the cost of the medical service, putting some services out of the reach of poor families. States would also be allowed to scale back coverage for some current recipi ents. North Carolina lawmakers could choose not to enact these Medicaid changes and they should, but that will mean spending more state dol lars to make up the difference. You would think that child sup port enforcement would be immune from budget cuts. You’d be wrong. The budget cuts funding for state child support enforcements efforts by almost $5 billion over the next ten years. That means less money for North Carolina to track down par ents who are not paying and less money to collect and distribute child support owed to families. State lawmakers can continue these services at current levels too, but again only if state dollars are used to replace the cut in federal funding. It is a bl izzard of numbers and there are plenty more, but Congress has cho sen to cut human services to help pay for more tax cuts that go primarily to the wealthy. State lawmakers need to do three things in response. Find the state resources to make up for the cuts in North Carolina, as hu man service programs are still reeling from cuts made by the General Assem bly in recent years. Avoid the politically tempting tax cuts on the state level that will make it virtually impossible to protect programs that serve the poor and would result in thousands of people in the state going without health care, affordable hous ing, and help taking care of their chil dren. Finally, ask the members of the state’s congressional delegation who supported this budget to come to Ra leigh and explain why tax cuts are more important than student loans and helping a single mother who is not receiving her child support check. Needed: A workable plan for ecxjnomic growth As 1 travel around North Carolina and talk to both elected officials and citizen groups, the number one eco nomic issue 1 hear discussed is eco nomic growth. Communities are interested in making sure folks have good jobs that pay a decent salary. To achieve this goal, localities must make themselves attractive for new businesses or the expansion of existing ones. Then the question becomes how to do this, or more specifically, what features and characteristics of com munities are re lated to successfu I eco nomic growth. Qearly there are many candidates: workers, availability and cost, cost of living, tax levels, educa tion quality and infrastructure such as roads and public utilities. As might be expected, economists have devoted considerable time to understanding the determinants of economic growth. I daresay thismight be one of the most studied of all topics You Decide Dr. Mike Walden N.C. Cooperative Extension in the profession. What can we learn from this re search, and what practical advice can be provided to policy makers? It shouldn’t be surprising that at the top of the list of factors important to economic growth is labor. Even in today’s technological world, most businesses need to hire workers, so most studies find worker availabil ity and cost crucial in attracting new firms. Studies find that, all else be ing equal, companies prefer to lo cate where wages are lower. Yet this doesn’t mean businesses want only to hire the cheapest work ers, because “all else” isn’t always blocks up is a church which feeds ev eryday. They will feed you.” The beggar didn’t want any of that church food. "He turned to me and said, “You aren’t going to give me the two dollars, are you.?” “No, if you are too sorry to go to the church you don’t need anything from me.” A few years ago a guy gave me the sad story that he needed some money to buy some milk for his children. 1 asked him how muc.'i and he replied forty dollars. Forty dollars will buy a lot of milk. Fearing the children were hungry 1 forked over forty dollars. A couple hours later I stopped at the local store and he was shooting poo) for money, he was using my forty dollars to back his play. I found out later he wasn’t married and didn’t have any children, at least none he claimed. If you get hit in the head with a two by four often enough, you will cover it up. My parting thought: Before preach ing his First Sunday of Lent sermon the preacher called the children up to the front and engaged them in dialogue. He asked if anyone could tell him what Lent is. An eight-year-old boy raised his hand and said, “Yes, it’s what we get out of our pockets. ” 1£ :\c ko FUNDING. NO CHILDCARE. 'sr I feUT A.MjCk have To n/crs/ ever Sett)r wnex^ > NOWPLAYINCINWaLillMES THr/VEV^3)Ui William Dees and other veteran heroes equal. Specifically, worker productiv ity, or how much a worker can produce in a given period of time, varies. And more productive workers are also asso ciated with faster economic growth. So what firms really want are workers who produce the most per dollar of salary. Indeed, these are the most valu able workers. In today’s economy, the most pro ductive workers are generally those with training beyond high school. Vir tually every study of the last 25 years has found a positive link between eco nomic growth and the workforce’s edu cational level. A big reason that South ern states like North Carolina outpaced other states in growth is relatively low public college tuitions and big jumps in the number of college-educated workers. Today 's businesses need to move people and products fast and require (See W.M DEN, page 3A) Last week many of the state’s in siders were focused on the University of North Carol ina. On Friday, Erskine Bowles, the new president of the uni versity, made his first report to the university’s governing board. His outline of the challenges facing the university and the state showed the high level of his understanding of the state and the difficult tasks facing North Carolina. During the same week there were smaller groups across the state talk ing about another im|iortant'figure in the history of the University of North Carolina: William Dees, the first elected chairof the university’sboard of governors, who died in Goldsboro. William Friday, the first president of the unified 16-campus university, is due the largest share of credit for the successful launch of the new sys tem of higher education in North Caro lina beginning in 1971. But Friday would be the first to say that the leadership of Dees on the board and Dees’s friendship and support for President Friday were critical. Early on, the new university sys tem faced divisive challenges, includ ing the establ ishment and governance of the new medical school at East Carolina and a dispute with the Fed eral government over the method of desegregating North Carolina higher education. Looking back at the complicated circumstances and the passionately held positions of the adversaries, it is hard to believe that the university system survived. In times of great challenge, university governing boards often lose confidence in their university presidents, causing leader ship crises that bring down presidents, good and bad. The trust and friendship between Friday and Dees, and their close con nections with other members of the university governing board, made it certain that Friday would always have the backing of important leaders in times of trouble. Although Friday had to face a set of challenges that would have been brought down most univer sity administrators, he always sur vived and found a path Where did this close connection come from? At lunch last week, John Sanders, retired director of the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill, reminded me of the core of friendships that developed among several World War II veterans at UNC Law School. William Friday talked about the group on UNC-TV in response to a question from Di)n Curtis, who asked Friday why he decided to go to law .school after the war, "Well, you get into an experience like that war put us all in, you were thrown with so many dittcicnt people tioni all oxer every where, not only (the) United States, but foreign countries. And you realize how much you need all the education you can get. And I had always had an inkling to want to study law. And my wife, Ida, wanted to get more educa tion herself, so we agreed we’d come back. I had a great experience. I came f One on One D. G. Martin back here with Terry Sanford and Bill Aycock and John Jordan and Wi lliam Dees and Dickson Phillips, a legend ary group of people. We all went straight through and stuck together ever since, worked on things in this state.” Now that William Dees and Terry Sanford are gone from that group, we ought to remember and thank the oth ers: William Friday; Bill Aycock, beloved former chancellor of UNC- Chapel Hill; John Jordan, formerstate senator and chair of the university’s governing board; and Dickson Phillips, former dean of UNC Law School and retired Federal Court of Appeals judge. (Last week, my cousin Boyce Martin, also a Federal judge in Louisville, Kentucky, told me that Phillips is a hero to many colleagues on the bench.) As we remember and thank Will- A free press “An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.” — Joseph Pulitzer, 1904 The News-Journal Published every Wednesday by Dickson Press, Inc. Robert A. Dickson, President Anne Dickson Foglenian, Secretary/Treasurer 119 W. Elwood Avenue, Raeford, NC 28376 (910) 875-2121 . PflINTEO WITH ISOVINK Homer I’iigc; xx w\x□tlitnexvs-ioiirniil.com Ken MacDonald (ken@thenew»-|ournai.com) Publisher Pat Allen Wilson (pat(g>thenew>-|ournal.com) Editor Victoriana Summers (vicki@thenewa-)oumai.com) Reporter Hal Nunn (hal@thenewt-joumal.com) Sports Writer Hal Nunn (hai@thenewt-journai.com) Sales Representative Teena Jones (teena@thenewt-journai.com) Office Manager Linda Watson (iinda@thenewa-journai.com) Receptionist Sandra Wiggins (tandra@thenewt-journai.com) Composition Design Mantise Andrews Press Foreman email ads to: ads@thenews-journal.eom email classifieds to: classifleds@thenews-|ournal.com email legals to: legals(§thenews-journal.com Periodical Class Postage at Raeford, N.C.(USPS 388-260) Postmaster: Send address changes to; P.O. Box 550 Raeford, N.C. 28376 iam Dees and his close friends, we can thank all those who served in World War II and came back to serve and build back home. About them I wrote a few years ago: They came back from the war with more maturity, energy, confi dence, practicality, open-mindedness, discipline, love of country, and com petitiveness than any generation our country has ever seen. Then the country gave them ad- I vanced educational ’opportunities never available 16 so many Ameri cans before. With that mixture of healthy traits and education, they caused an explo sion of economic growth that under pins our country’s continuing pros perity and success. The veterans of World War 11 are a generation to cherish, to thank, and to learn from. D.G. Martin is the host of UNC- TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs on Sundays at 5 p.m. This week's (January 22) guest is Moreton Neal, author of Remembering Bill Neal.
The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Jan. 18, 2006, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75