Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Jan. 7, 1965, edition 1 / Page 2
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Okay, guys-—Let’s harmonize! WjLI WWfflmi m mheuitmM EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man - ---- -And He May Be Wrong The New Administration This week a new, and we hope better hand will take the helm of North Caro lina’s ship of state. Dan Moore will take the mess left behind by Terry Sanford, and Moore has at least one consolation: It will be extremely difficult for him to look bad by comparison to his immedi ate predecessor. Sanford has ruled with one eye on Chapel Hill and the other on Washing ton, D. C. He has paid little notice to the more basic needs of the State as a whole and has continued the practice so crudely installed by Luther Hodges of governing with malice toward all who were not willing to bend their knee to his imperial design. Moore made few promises in the long campaign that led him to the governor s mansion. But among those few was one to use every power of his office to push through a major east-west highway to serve our deepwater ports and the great recreation areas that abound in greater degree in Coastal Carolina than any where else in the nation. If Moore does nothing more in his administration than to realize this one broad design his will be an extremely fruitful term for Eastern North Caro lina. Hodges set the pattern of building roads where the traffic is, so obvious ly that is where the traffic stayed. On paper the Hodges plan looked good enough to be swallowed by the General Assembly, but it was venal enough to set back Eastern and Western Carolina at least 10 years. If Moore can cross one more major hurdle and return highway spending roughly to the places where the money is collected his name will be one to be hallowed for generations to come. Since Hodges hoodwinked the General Assem bly most counties of the state have paid and paid and a handfull of counties in the Piedmont have gotten the lion’s share of road building funds. We wish Moore a lot of luck because he’ll need it when he bucks some of the bureaucrats left over from the Hodges and Sanford administrations. Congressional Duplicity In 1956 Adam Clayton Powell swap ped whatever political influence he had to the Eisenhower Administration in ex change for the parole of one of his co thieves from prison and the quashing of an income-tax evasion charge against the self same Right Reverend Powell, who in addition to being the dues col lector at the world’s largest negro Bap tist church is also a member of the United States House of Representatives. Democrat Powell is now chairman of the house committee on education and labor. There were no penalties exacted from him for his political treason and he remains one of the biggest guns (among other things) in the Democratic Party. November two southern white congressmen of Democratic faith sup ported Republican Barry Goldwater. Now the majority of the Democratic members of tine house have stripped these two of their seniority and attempt ed to kick them out of the party. Of course Powell is a negro — at least about one-sixteenth negro — and this touch of the tar brush gives him license to do as he damned well pleases. Congress in general and its Democrat ic majority in particular are doing noth ing to encourage a greater sense of re sponsibility in all people and most es pecially in our most irresponsible ethnic bloc, the negroes. In fact, in deference to the “followers” in congress, the fashion of today seems to be one that glorifies the irresponsible. Teen-aged nuts are running major col leges, criminals in court and in prison have ten times as many “civil” rights as the people they prey upon. So perhaps it is nothing .more than to be expected that congress should fol low the pattern and exhibit just one more instance of duplicity in the handl ing of different members in different fashions. About County Taxes When Equalization Day rolls around on March 22nd there will be a good many property owners on hand'to ask ques tion of the Lenoir County Board of Commissioners. Recently new valuations of all real property in the county have been mail ed out and as usual valuations are high er. A majority of the squawks are com ing from people who own farm land and the next collection of gripes is coming from people who own run down urban property that happens to be in valuable real estate areas. Farmers who have had their farms on the tax books at about one-tenth their present market value are now find ing that considerable boosts have been made. For over a decade residential and commerical property in Lenoir County have been on the books at about one third of market valuation. Such property has borne an unjust share of the over all county tax burdeh. Farms selling for $50,000 were on the tax books for $5,000. Land being pur chased by the county itself for over $3, 000 per acre was on the tax books for less than $300 per acre. Now some changes will have to be made, or hell will break loose around the court house in general and the com missioner’s room in particular. Farmers argue with logic that their land values have been inflated, but so has the price of homes. Houses built for $2,000 just 20 years ago now sell for $12,000. It is not fair to keep the value of the farm relative low, while contin ually boosting the value of homes and commercial property. Ad Valorem taxes are theoretically supposed to be based “at value,” or at a fixed per cent of “value.” This latin phase means much or nothing, depend ing upon how fairly the county commis sioners put it to work. Pay The Fiddler In the past week 121,000 notices have been mailed from Washington to ev ery school official in the nation — in public as well as private schools. This is the first of a deluge of bills that will be mailed from Washington in the near future, reminding the popula tion of the price it voted to pay last November 3rd for the “Great Society” of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Among the items endorsed along with LBJ was a little package called “The Civil Rights Bill,” which spells out very clearly that every form of federal mon ey can, and, indeed, must be cut off to every organization that is not totally in compliance with the spirit as well as the letter of “civil rights” legislation. Along with every educational institution in the land there will also follow such organizations as 4-H Clubs, hospitals, Home Demonstration Clubs, nursing homes, libraries, parks, playgrounds — in short every facet of life both public and private will have to come to heel or the tremendous financial presssures of Washington will be brought to bear. For those who doubt the force of this law which over 61 per cent of the people accepted along with LBJ let them consider such industrial giants as Du Pont, which has had to knuckle under to the bureaucrats in Washington in the hiring of workers and promotions of those they already have. This “civil rights” law carries the sec ondary boycott ten times further into the economic bloodlines of the nation than anything the most vicious union leader dreamed about. DuPont had to bow because it sold fibers to companies who in turn made cloth which they sold to other firms who made uniforms being purchased for the armed forces. This law not only covers those who sell directly to the government either services or materials, but even unto the third generation of suppliers to those who are unlucky enough to hold the prime government contracts. With over a fourth of the gross na tional income passing through the fed eral government it is easy to see the awesome impact of this “law”. PARAGRAPHS BY JACK RIDER Among the various efforts involved in the “Economic Opportunities Act of 1964” is something called a “Job Corps,” which is a new name for the old Civil ian Conservation Corps concept of Roosevelt times, when thousands of un employed young men went off to live in camps and to do good works for a few bucks a month. In the 30’s the CCC worked wonders for many boys and helped many fami lies survive in those terribly tight times. But I wonder if this approach today will work. Back in the ’30’s there was no difficulty in recruitment of many more than the number of people who could be taken in the CCC camps. But the specter of hunger, cold and malnu trition haunted a vast percentage of us in those dark days. Now we are living in the midst of the greatest plenty the world has ever known. There are countless jobs await ing young men who are willing to work. But the nation, so we are told, has roughly five per cent adult unemploy ment. But one of the major reasons for this is that a very large percentage of those who are loafing are loafing by choice rather than by hard chance. So what is going to cause this same bum who won’t rake leaves, wait on ta bles, do short order cooking, clerking in a store, wash cars, pump gas or drive a truck to suddenly get working reli gion and go off to the wildwood to build roads and plant trees? I sincerely hope that I’m wrong, but I’m afraid that solving economic and employment problems is a lot easier when 30 per cent of the nation is unem ployed than when five per cent is. Of course, we live in the era of statistics. Nobody really knew how destitute the nation was in the ’3G’s because statisti cians were also out of work. Today I suspect that a goodly part of our “em ployment problem” is in duplication of statistics. Or possible triplication, if there is any such word. There have always been, and I hope there always will be some drones in our society. And lately the Russians have even admitted that they, too, have some unproductive citizens. Full employ ment doesn’t mean that everybody has to work; only those who want to, and each one of us knows many people who are unemployed by choice. Multiply this by more than 3,000 counties and you see the statistics begin to mount up very quickly. When you add to these unemployed by choice the seasonal worker, the part time worker who doesn’t want a full time job, kids who work in the summer and go back to school in the fall you see that the percentage begins to shrink. And then ask yourself right this minute: How many adult breadwinners do you know who are out of work and who real ly want to work? Name one. There is going on a painful transition in our society; one that no other nation ever experienced. This is the accelerat ed change from an agrarian to an in dustrial society. Of course, it began a long time ago, but it never really hit high gear until after World War II when the vast technological processes of our country were turned loose on food pro duction. So long as the shift from farm to fac tory was gradual the dislocations were not critical, but in the past 20 years _ Continued on Page 3 JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER, PUBLISHER Published every Thursday by The Lenoir County News Company, Inc., 403 West VERNON AVE., KINSTON. N. C., PHONE JA 3 2378. ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER MAY 8. 1848, AT THE POST OPTICS AT TRENTON, north Carolina, UNDEf the Act op March 8, 1878. SY MAIL IN FIRST EONS—88.00 PER Year. Subscription Kates payable in Advance. Second Class Postaoe Paid at Trenton, n. c.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Jan. 7, 1965, edition 1
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