Newspapers / The Yancey Journal (Burnsville, … / Jan. 4, 1968, edition 1 / Page 2
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* * *' ■■■•*' . 1 ESTABLISHED JULY, 1836 , IRENA P. POX, EDITOR k PUBLISHER MISS. ZOE YOUNG. ASSOCIATE EDITOR THURMAN $ BROWN, SHOP MANAGER ARCHIE H. BALLEW, PHOTOGRAPHER & PRESSMAN PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY BY YANCEY PUBLISHING COMPANY SECOND CLASS POSTAGE PAID AT BURNSVILLE, N. CL - THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 1968 NUMBER EIGHTEEN SUBSCRIPTION RATES $3.00 PER YEAR OUT OF COUNTY $4.00 PER YEAR Scene From Top O’ The Hill By: #Sck Kelly All of us at, the year doubtless reminisce. Some how or oluer, when we recall the past, we remember only the pieasant or the com.cal th.ngs that happened. I suppose if you insisted upon recalling the mis erable experiences, you would go nuts. In any event, sittng in the living room on New Year’s Day, Blanche and I talked about many things, and * nee she is a good listens, I love to' talk with her (some folks clam, I should say “at” her). Somewhere along the line we recalled the birth day party for her father when the old Judge reached 92. That brought out some conversation about her nephew, Thomas Pat rick O'Brien, who is an Assist ant Attorney General up in West Virgin.a. That part about Tom my is relatively ur.mportant. The important facets about this lad are that he is a handsome man. must be in his early th r ties. has a splendid personality, anl has a wife who is out of this world Tommy is almost as for tunate as 1 am in the wife-de partment What I mean is that if I were awarding four prizes for relatives with fne wives, Tommy would get the fourth prize I would award the f.rst three to myself This wife of Tommy’s has only (me defect It is not considered a n ajor one by some people, i probably won't keep her from going to heaven when she dies because the Lord, I understand, is broad tended. However, the fact remains that this beautiful, lovely, personable girl is not, I repeat, not Irish She is French. She met her hfisband when he served wth the JAG’s office in Paris, as a Captain. Os course Tommy, being a young man, as sumed he had gotten his Com m ssion on merit and I never bothered to explain to h'm that his Pappv and his Grand-Pappy used a little influence to get it for him because I feared .it m ght hurt his ego a bit. Any way. the important thing about him is that he met th s gal Anne Marie, who speaks delight fully in broken Engl sh and iooks Hrrifie in mini-skirts. Also she can cook out cf this world. A'so sf’.e has produced a beautiful Ixy-child who is handsome en<xigh to be Irish and who was named Thomas Patrick O’Brien the 4th or sth or whatever. When you watch that kid burbling and trawling about, you sort of feel good all over. You know you are l<x k ng at the future and it look.-. pretty good. During the Judge’s party, thii gal k dded with Blanche about mv haying been in Charleston seme months before when I had tnk. a herself and Tommy out to < i.'ht. Her remarks were highly < pl mentary about me. Tom my cut in and stated I had ruin e l him at the Club because of a, t r,g like the last of the big slanders. That expression rang a bell with me, and then I re numbered why. I recalled a long tme ago af ter a similar dinner where I had taken a gentleman and his wife and I had grabbed the check.) It frightened me no end because the total read $520.65. That dinner came about due to my being on a plane en route to R'o de Janeiro, during the War. Among the passengers on board were an opera singer named Mary Kirk and her hus band. She was a huge, heavy gal with lots of talent whle he was a shortish sort of a chap with temperament. He had a good thing going for h'm. I think he was her manager or something Ike that. Finally we landed m Rio and I suggested that they be my guests at din ner. Since we all stepped at the same hotel, it was no ploblem. South American dinners start much later than we are accus tomed to start. In any event. we cabbed to d nner at whatever place was the prevalent spot to go. Naturally, since I was young and thought stupid things were important, I let the head waiter tr the Maitre d’ know that the lady was an important opera singer from the Unted States who had come to Rio to perform for the “Season”. It received the effect I desired. We got too much attention at our table from the hred hands. People from other tables car. e over and got autographs from Miss Krk. A few of them, to be on the safe side I guess, even requested one from me. Matter of fact I sign ed "John L. Sullivan” no less than a half a dozen times. The dinner was terrific. No one held back. Least of all me. Eventually, the moment' of truth arrived. The water brought the bill. I looked at it, as is customary. Aga n, as is custom ary, 1 had a general adea of the top limit that it should be which was, roughly, about fifty bucks. Anythng around that and I wouldn’t bother to tote up the items. Brother! When I saw that tote of $520.65 I began to sweat as I added the items. Amazing ly, they were correct. My face must have betrayed my feelings because this singing lady en quired “What’s the matter Ir ishman? Bigger than you thou ght?” I turned the sheet to her. She busted out laughing at what I thought was 9 most un-funny circumstance. As I stared at her she suggested “Div de it by 20. You’re dealing in lucky-bucks down here.” Then I remember ed. Braz 1 used regular figures but their dollar was a Cruzeiro, and our dolar, thank God, was 20 Cruzeiors. Thus the bill was only some $26.00. I had k made. I pulled out my lucky-gucks and put a 1,000 cruzero note on the bill, gestured that the waiter, the mine steward, and the other hired hands should have a ball, and we left amdst the smiles that people always be6tow upon idiots. IT NEVER FAILS ~~ r " ' HELi-o ounces: we w . -ga GOT You* TSL6GRAAA UH.pJ IF HE Wg.»6 MV GOLQ SAYWG YOU v<c«e ik! UM&B [ 7-TJgeTS THIS K TH6 MoSPiTAu. AMO -T.TuS AMO J V *•/ MUMOUeO Hi* SMARECP. 2 li£6£)6i) ExlitA ) - SUnT \ 111 H 5 CAM PIM j UMCLE TITdS ’ V\ MUM rta^o TO \ J CSTAT6 AFTER. A HERITAGE FOR THF WORTHY Above all else, 1967 ' appeared to be a year when the verities were quesyt.onel in politics, in economics, in religion and in virtually every otner e.ement of the structure of preeent-day soc ety. What does it all mean? No one today seems to know. Seme claim the tearing down of old standards reflects what might be called a healthy re maissance of advanced thought. Others view with forebod ng a trend they fed is leading to a moral breakdown and anarchy. The experts are the most con fused lot of all. Sometimes their judgments of coming events are hidcrous. Typical of their ina bliy to assess the future was the recent statement of one of this country’s leading financial authorises that devaluation of the Brtish pound was unlikely because the English program of austerity was so fundamentally reassuring as to make a crisis improbable. By the time th : s particular forecast was in print, the Br tish pound had been de valued, and no one knows what the future holds for the mone tary systems of the world. Out of all the confuson of 1967, cne sact v has become clear ly obvious self-government it self is on trial. This is so be-* cause the very truths wh'ch are the ma nstay of self-government are being altered cr swept away one after another truth* that were once called “self-evident." These truths have to do with financial responsHiTty, the in tegrity of the family, the invio late rights of persons and prop erty under the law and concepts of individual self-rel'ance and initative that are inreoarah'e from freedom tinder representa tive government. A gradual de cline in respect for these prere quis tes of liberty was never more apparent in the observa tion of many people than during the crucial months of 1967. Outwardly, the United States is invmcgle. But, the founding fathers warned nearly 200 years ago that the greatest danger to the American experiment in free government could well come from w thin. A debauched cur rency. a weakening pride in in dividual independence and the gradual ascendancy of state au thor.ty are undeniably changing the outlook for const tutional government as we have known it in the United States. Irew now living have the capac ty to view the present area as it will be recorded in the history books at S'me distant time in the future. Our present civil zation, and more specifically our own coun- try, measured by material pro gress and the potential for fu ture progress, opens a vista that staggers the’ imagination. The piecepts under which civiliza tion has advanced to this point, and wh'ch have broight a greater measure of weli-be'ng to more people than has ever been known in the world before, must have a validity that the hippies, the malcounters and the anti-American demonstrators have failed to perceive. No political party, no single group at cit zens is solely to blame for the dsmal drift that has put self-government on trial, and as the elections of 1968 ap proach,, we should expect no miracles from our elected repre sentatives. They but reflect the temper and att hides of the elec torate. The signs became abun dant during 1967 that a turning Print has been reached in the affairs of the world and of our country. As we enter 1968, every one ri us should resolve to be worthy of the heritage of self government —a heritage for which 500.000 men <n V«et Nam ere laying their lives on the line. Sodal Sorority Nows By: D. C. Nichols Q. I think I read somewhere that since 1949 the maximum Soc ad Security ret rement gene ffts have scarcely mors than doubled, lagging behind the tax increases. Aiso, 1 be.ie»e that with every tax hike the worker wader age 40 is at a further dis advantage. Is this right? A. No it’s wrong. To begin with, in the last 18 years Social Security has grown into a broad, comprehensive soc al insurance system that can hardly be compared with the small and very limited program existing in 1949. But even if we consider just the ret rement benefits <and at that only the maximum benefit, which of course has increased less than have the lower bene fits) the maximum monthly benef t payable to a worker re tir ng at age 65 has increased frem $45.60 in 1949 to $160.50 in 1967. So Wd see that the prerent maximum la nearer to four than to three times the 1949 max mum retirement benef't However, it's a serious mis take to think of the present Soc ial Security program as simp’y a ret'rement system, overlook ing the otherv vjtallv >«•(* previsions added mostly since 1950. For -'nstance a vonn? fam ily nowadays has survivors pro tection under Social Security that can be worth vn to $75 000, SBO,OOO. or even *>oo 000 in re turn for a modest total paid by the worker in payroll taxes dur ing fra lifetime- and eonniiy valuable disability insurance protection. Tbig should be reas suring to younger workers w**o mav quest'on w>»*nt the> security tax dollars are “buy ing." (In la«rf week’s column we gave examples illustrating what people who pay the maximum in taxes con g«t brek in the "average lifetime." The fact is, though, that since the examples of future benefits had to be fig ured on a "static” basis as suming no further rises in wage levels, beneft increases, etc., even after the workers’ retire ment or death the future be nefits paid would assuredly be higher than the figures given.) Social Security is a dynamic system that undoubtedly will be improved in the future as in the past as our dynamic na tion's economy -grows. There’s no real doubt that, in the natural democratic process, workers will in future get more protection relative to their overall tax con tributions than any calculat : on based on a “static assumption” would indicate. The original Soc al Security Act passed in 1935 provided for a 1% tax rate, for the employe and the employer, on a wage base of $3,000. (The wage base is the maximum yearly amount and creditable under this program.) The same 1% tax rate and the .r- sar-.e $3,000 wage base were st : U in the law in 1949 as the last * year that both applied. Since 1949 the tax rate has increased to its present 4 4%, wh’ch will cent nue until 1969, and is sch eduled to go up gradually in fu ture years. Also since 1950 the taxab’e earnines base has risen gradually to its present $6600, and will rise to *7ROO next year. Onpress has felt it necessary to ra se the taxable base now and then, in view of rising ware lev els and to keep th s tax contribu tory svstem wage-related and essentially geared to the free entornrise svstem. •Next Week's column w : H <y»n t'nue clarifying the background and rrovisio ns of the new Amendments.)
The Yancey Journal (Burnsville, N.C.)
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Jan. 4, 1968, edition 1
2
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