Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / June 28, 1962, edition 1 / Page 2
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mmi -_______ Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man . ■ ■ • '. -And He May Be Wrong Most Frequent Promise In North Carolina politics the most fre quent promise has been to “take the high way department out of politics.” Every governor, or candidate for govern or since the state took over the road sys tem has made this promise. None to date has kept the promise, and most have not even made a passing lick at trying to keep the promise. We have had slide-rule formulae, which proved to l;e more political than a greedy ward heeler. Wfe have had high level policy making highway commissions, who were go ing to put service above self. And currently we have a broadened highway commission, aimed at bringing the building of roads closer to the people who pay for them and ride on them. The highway department is a government within a government, or perhaps, more cor rectly a government o v e r a government; since its size, its simple inertia and its ob stinate determination make it the perfect implement for political maneuvering. Kinston, for instance, now has been hand ed the dirty end of a political stick insofar as the routing of two of its major highways are'concerned. In spite of the fact that the routing pre ferred by Kinston officials and the over whelming majority of its citizens was ori ginally recommended by the present chief administrative officer of the highway de partment politics has intervened and a sec ond-best, and much more expensive routing is being jammed down Kinston’s clogged throat. Getting the most of vthat’s best for the least money is a very simple but very cor rect principle that should be engraved in the minds of every person who is charged with spending the taxpayer’s money. Yet the highway department in its cur rent efforts in Lenoir County has insisted on reversing this desire. To Messrs. Belk And Sharpe Henry Belk of the Goldsboro News-Argus and Bill Sharpe of The State Magazine agree that an east-west toll road would be nice, and they point out that if a fellow doesn’t want to ride, on a toll road, he doesn’t have to. But the major factor that Belk and Sharpe ignore is that the people, whose major travel demands carry them eastward!]!; and we?t wardly in North Carolina have chipped in hundreds of millions of dollars of their money to help build north-south highways in- North Carolina that are toll free. If they want to, be fair about it, they should suggest now that tolls be .changed, on the north-south, as well as, the east who. insist that federal aid does not mean federal control.) The vast area of the North Carolina coast al plain has with a minimum of complaint made its multi-million dollar contribution to the building of the Piedmont throughways, super-highways and downtown boulevards. We say again that it is adding a gross fi nancial insult to the huge road building in jury that.has already bean done to Eastern Carolina to suggest that the east-west sup erhighways our development needs be made toll roads. • Since they hav.e used up all the federal money available to North Carofina, which actually represented about one-fourth the amount the state should have gotten, the grading and giving widest distribution to salacious pornography in print surely seems designed to lower the moral tone of the na tion. t -1 : '' The decline and fall of the Roman Em pire resulted from just, such,reasoning. It could be argued with some success that the Ramans didn’t design their decline and fall, and that it came about as the result of excessive abuses of the good Roman life. Today supporters of the supreme court might also attempt to excuse the excesses to which the highest court has gone with the same logic, or illogic; since it would basically follow that no group of leaders would want to deliberately aid and abet the termination of their own way of life. But, a supposition cannot be,avoided when so much is done to warp our way of life out of round that perhaps a majority of these jurists is dedicated1- to changing the American Way of Life. Of course, change is inevitable, and it is easy for a judge, an editor or a general to decide to goose history along by pushing 'events in the direction they prefer. ( It simply folBows; so far as we’re concerned that the supreme court is pushing our na tion in what we think is the wrong direction. Entirely Justified A The criticism ®! .last week’s panel of Le noir County jurort by Judge William J. Bundy was entirely justified by the cynical way in which three jury panels found three men not guilty of drunken driving. Judge Bundy’s entire comment is includ ed in this week’s paper, and every citizen who believes in law enforcement ought to read it carefully and remember it well, be cause law can be enforced no better than the people in a community wish it to be. Since the criticisms of Judge Bundy were addressed only to those jurors who served in the three cases involved, we also along with the judge’s remarks include the jury panel for each of the three cases in which noV guilty verdicts were rendered. Too Often Forgotten Next week as citizens of the United States celebrate the Fourth of July, or Independ ence Day as some prefer to call it, there is one point that is too often forgotten. And that very simply is the long, bloody, difficult interim between July 4, 1776 and September 3, 1783 when the treaty of peace was signed in Paris between the United States and Great Britain. Not until that date — more than seven years later, was the independence of these United States recognized formally. Thus, seven years of war and negotiation lay between the declaration and the real ization of those principles which too many of us take for granted today. And even more true today than then, News Company, Inc., 403 Ave., Kinston, N. C., Phone <ABy Mail I I have found that the easiest way to de flate these self-inflated types is with a pin-' prick of humor, rather than with a broad sword- I am working on such a project at the moment, and the score is about even stevenbut this is my turn- at bat Back in May I got a long questionnaire from the high and mighty clerk of the United States District Court for Eastern North Carolina. I don’t know what his name is, but there isn’t but one of them, I hope. This questionnaire had to do with my fit ness to serve as a juror in the federal courts. The Constitution says every man “shall en joy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and District wherein *the crime shall have been com mitted.” But the administrative flunkies who run the courts have preempted to themselves the selection of jurors, and by this questonnaire they select and eliminate who shall try you if you are hauled into federal court Well this questionnaire, so far as I was concerned, was just one more in the long line of junk mail that floats accross my desk from assorted tax paid bureacrats who have their snouts stuck in the federal trough. But it had the saving grace of being just a little more absurd than most federal question naires,. and more sloppily drawn insofar a9 its specific' questions were concerned: . • Example: “Married Or. Single?” I thought that a silly question deserved a silly ans wer, so my answer was “Yes”. That’s a pretty fair sample of the way I answered the questions on that little old questionnaire. Another instance: What education do you have?—Not, mind you, what schools you have attended, but grossly: What education do you have ? . Well, to shorten a stupid story; after I returned my questionnaire with iny silly an swers to its silly questions I-got a lordly command from none other than The Chief Judge, one Algernon L. Butler; a Sampson County Republican, who Eisenhower . eased onto the public payroll for the rest of his natural life at $22,500 per annum, plus $3,000 per year expenses, plus, plus, plus plus. You wouldn’t expect a man named Alger non to have a sense of humor and he does not. In choice legalese, he informed Wilbur Jackson Rider that the questionnaire was “not acceptable”, and enclosed another for me to fill out under “penalty of perjury”. How a lawyer can so loosely toss the per jury threat at other people is another sil ly. question that comes to mind at about this point. I sat down in my most austere frame of mind, and under “penalty of perjury” filled out The Chief Judge’s form 1492% and sent it baek fo him, but not without a few choice words of my own, on the general subject of people who have no sense of humor, sense of balance and little realization of the fact that they are servants, not lords. You may have guessed the answer, which by now should be pretty obvious. It reads, in part — “Mr. Rider states in the question naire dated May V, 1962 that he has a dis ability impairing his capacity to serve as a juror. On the basis of the questionnaire submitted by him, I concur in his opinion. I do not consider him qualified for jury ser vice in the federal court:"
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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June 28, 1962, edition 1
2
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