Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Aug. 27, 1964, edition 1 / Page 2
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fYou’ra pgg#r happy!* EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man .■ " '■!'' 1 1 ..- And He May Be Wrong — ■ , . ’ - - The Danger Of Bigness When government grows beyond that point where reasonable people can compre hend it there is a terrible danger that is something comparable to children playing hide and seek in a railroad yard. Big government is capable of so many wrongs not out of malice but simply because of size. An example of this has forcibly come to our attention in the past three weeks, and in this order: Three weeks ago we received a news re lease from the Farmer’s Home Adminis tration outlining loan programs and ,surr prisingly a special grant program under which people would be given the taxpay er’s money for repairs and renovations to their homes. ; v To say the very cotton-picking least we were flabbergasted to hear that the Agri culture Department was taking over the welfare chores of the Health, Education and Welfare department. We talked with Representative L. H. Fountain and sent him a copy of this re lease at his request because he was just as shocked as we to lqarn that the FHA had moved into the welfare field. And we might note here that Fountain is chairman of a sub-committee of the governmental op erations committee which oversees all pro grams in the agriculture department He in turn called this to the attention of James Whitten, who is chairman of the ap propriations committee and last week a line item was knocked out of the five billion dol lar appropriation for the agriculture depart ment; thus ending, if temporarily another give-away program hidden in the fine print of the huge apparatus that has grown alqng the Potomac. Noble as the motives may be for such a paternalistic effort there is no equitable basis upon which one man must borrow and repay with interest for repairs and ren ovations to his home and another is given, an putright handout for identical purposes. Ability to repay, to work and lack of "in centive” cannot be determined with any degree of fairness so such a program begins with the utter impossibility of being fair to all citizens. I The Last Flounce From this , distance it appears that the political dead fish called Terry Sanford is making his last flounce on the beach be fore the sea gulls and sand fiddlers ,|ofe him off into limbo. Sanford’s last political flounce is over Dan Moore’s appointment of a Democratic National Committeeman. Sanford should realize that he failed to a degree no other politician ever has in his effort to pick his successor in the State House, so why should he. so recently swamped feel that be has either the prestige or the right to Question an appointment-fhat has always been rec ognized to be the prerogative of the gover nor-elect. There were many Democrats in reasonably . good standings who did not view with complete pleasure the choices Sanford made in 1960 for National Committeeman and Committee wdmast, but nobody tried publicly to discredit Sanford in the Los Angeles convention be cause of his poor choice fNfg these posts. 1 Catholic vote in North Carolina which came with the laying on of hands by Bobby Ken nedy. Evidence of LBJ’s regard for Kennedy is his suicidal decision to run for senator in a State where he doesn’t even have the legal right to vote. So- it is not unreasonable to assume that Sanford cp expect very little from the present occupant of the W h i t e House. Nor from the man who in 1965, whether that man is Johnson ‘ or Goldwater. But Sanford has proven his ability in the past to dredge up a choice plum when all around him had despaired. What Sanford lacks in ability he makes up in determina tion, andt his determination lies -principally what makes our national economy tick than the socialists of the Democratic and Re publican parties who abhor his belief in ba sic constitutional principles. - And Goldwtaer knows that our form of government is forcedly a system of com-' promise, and that no politician ever has his way 100 per cent of the time in any sphere of affairs. Even Roosevelt struck out on some points when he tried to push his be liefs beyond the political stretching point of no return. Goldwater believes our waste of foreign aid funds should be cut but he knows the practical impossibility of doing>this at once. Goldwater believes with many more Ameri cans that the farm economy would operate better without artificial efforts toward- con trol — all of which have failed completely. Goldwater knows that tobacco is a major part of the American economy and the larg est single : agricultural contributor to the federal budget. He knows that total tax col lections from tobacco products runs over three billion dollars per year and although he may believe this vital industry would be better off without the harassment of fed- , eral controls he is not the kind of political babe-in-thC-woods who would cast such an important part of the economy adrift while every other segment of the economy had V some kind of governmental protection. But you will be told frequently from now until November 3rd that Goldwater will de stroy the tobacco program. Don’t believe it. Just A Reminder pear are our individual weaknesses. For many of us the old story of the grasshopper and the ant are most fitting. Many tobacco farmers are rich for a few days and then broke again. This situation is not nearly so bad today as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it is still bad enough'to remind that the to bacco farmer is in an unhappy situation. He has to work 12 months to the year and he Dnly gets paid for about two months. Faced with this peculiar situation it is perfectly human for him to 'feel a little rich in. September and October; and perhaps* then to overspend to his discomfort a few months later. *£• ''*■ I Few of us have the-will power to really budget our, funds even when we -are paid each week, or each mohth, so the problem pf the tobacco farmer is much, much worse.? rrying to budget a two-month pay check aver. 12 months. < r ’ m one result of this lop-sided situation the tobacco farmer probably pays more in „uv I am optimistic and largely because of the providential wisdom of those men who argued out the priceless charter of our freedom: The United .States Constjtu* tion. True, this most precious document has been badly abused from time to time in it# telatively brief history. The current crop of men who ignore and warp the Constitution is not the first attempt to set aside by mil* itary might or Judicial trickery the princi* pies so clearly and concisely embodied in this framework of liberty. ■' V Lincoln suspended by military order and completely without legal power many mpst basic constitutional privileges. Jackson han dled it roughly. Roosevelt darted it. Tru man in the steel crisis jumped over it. The present supreme court ignores it completely. But all of these wounds are relatively in significant to the overall body of our con stitution. Painful, yes; deadly, no. In our country the ultimate power still remains' with the people and our government is by consent of the people, although recent ly many of us have seriously doubted if this were true*. But the public is a huge, tolerant animal; capable of absorbing tremendous, amounts of punishment and slow to move. But amazingly this slow-moving public if far, ahead of its so-caUed leaders. And at this junction-point in odr history it is my optimistic view that the yery creed of soc ialism that has been subtly woven into the fabric of our national affairs has the ele ments of its own destruction built-in. In taking from the “haves” to give to the “have nots” there always cOmes a breaking point. . .'that vague dividing line beyond which politicians cannot venture without great peril. The Russians made the tragic mistake of believing with bureaucratic sim plicity that peasants would grow pigs, and peas and meekly surrender them to the “have nrfts.” This ignorance of human na ture led to the brutal murder of millions of. these strong-minded farmers under Stalin’s early regime. But it has left Soviet agriculture hanging an the ropes- until this very ■ day — more than 30 years since Stalin said if the peas ints won’t fe‘«d the Cities, the peasants shall ilso starve and ,so be sent his police and troops to destroy the seed corn of Russian agriculture and perhaps more importantly to break the will of the Russian farmer to support the glorious era of proletarian rule which the Leninists preached but never practiced for one single minute. And so it is, I believe, in our own coun :ry that there will come a day — and it may pe November 3, 1964, when we peasants will throw off the yoke of bureaucratic waste. And of this much I am absolutely certain, whether it is this November or some other Wovethber. if; uirilJ come because that snmafe^ Continued on Page 3 ’ ftp"”""" ■ 'Wwi lilMr ' Lenoir JACK RIDER^ I Published Every Thursday tty : uL-.! • /•>._2L V ^
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Aug. 27, 1964, edition 1
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