Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Nov. 2, 1967, edition 1 / Page 2
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And I though w* were paTs, fv EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man --And He May Be Wrong Good Questions iDatu jrccu at tiixa ocaouu ao wc auuuai harvest of suckers is reaped by the “County Agricultural Fairs” the ques tion is asked: “Why harass local gamb lers when wide-open gambling is per mitted at these glorified carnivals? Why assume a puritannical community stance about pornographic magazines in drug stores and filthy movies in the theaters when the absolute most vulgar displays are permitted at these so-called fairs. These are good questions. They an swer themselves. A community can hard ly embrace fixed gambling one week of the year and take pride in its “pro priety” the other 51 weeks of the year. The community cannot support the most debauched exhibitions of carnality one week of the year and take solace in the support it gives to its churches the oth er 51 weeks of the year. We all very well know this, including the organizations whose good names are used in the" sponsorship of such crim inality. But we . tolerate it, generally in tilv uauiv Ul UfTVVIl VUHiiVJJ U*UVV money being raised is being used for “worthy causes”. This is the ancient principle that any means are proper if one arrives at a good end. Christopher Dawson has said, “As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.” We can properly paraphrase Dawson, to say: “As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to promote good, then their evil becomes indistinguish able from the good they set out to do.” This page has certainly never made any effort to establish for itself a corner on the prudery market. But it has al ways attempted to stand for the prin ciple that the law of man and of God is made for every man, every day of the year, and to violate this concept is to threaten the very continuation pf West ern Civilization. Howland Mad Motor vemcies commissioner itaipn Howland is howling mad. Newly annointed with this commis sionership Former Journalist Howland wants to cut the bloodshed on our high ways. This is a noble desire, and one we can all surely share. But few of us are ready to accept the absurd prescription he dashed off last week. Howland wants to increase the high way patrol by 124 per cent — from 811 men to 1811 men. Howland wants to confiscate cars and trucks of those convicted of drunken driving. Howland wants to strengthen the auto mobile inspection laws. Howland could best increase the ef fectiveness of the highway patrol by. per suading his friend governor Dan Moore to appoint some superior court judges who would quit directing not-guilty ver dicts for drivers whose blood alcohol content was .18 per cent, as the most recent Moore appointee James Exum did at the last term of Greene County Su perior Court. Howland could take more dangerous drivers — including arunxen drivers on the highways by vastly improving the law pertaining to the issue of drivers’ license. Proving a man’s drunkenness by chemical analysis, or by expert witness is difficult as Judge Exum’s verdict proves, but more than 25 per cent of the people driving today should not be licensed. The chronic drunk, drug ad dict, accident prone driver should not, in the first instance be issued a driving license. Possession of a driving license is not a divine right, nor even a civil right. It is a permissive act of government, and government in North Carolina has been, and still is far too permissive in this realm. Lastly, the most careful inspection of a car today does not prove that it will be safe tomorrow, or next month, or 11 months from now. The laws we already have, pertaining to the operation of im properly equipped motor vehicles are all we need if patrolmen didn’t have to waste their time waiting in superior courts for judge* and Jtoies to torn loose drunken drivers. * Washington Trickery Rational people may wonder why a federal statistician last week issued a statement that $9,191 was the minimum annual need for a family of four to live on a modest scale. Examination tends to support the pre mise that this statement is not so stupid as it sounds on is face, despite the fact that the federal minimum wage is $1.60 per hour, or just $3,828 per year. The purpose of this kind of statement coming out of Washington is to push the taxable base higher and higher. Only by deliberate expansion of the aver age income, by whatever means, can federal taxes come within shouting range of federal spending. ,, This, of course, is the purpose of the federal minimum wage law. There is ut terly nothing humanitarian about such /laws. When the federal income from social security taxes is based on a $6, 600 per year maximum, the government is losing 8.8 per cent tax on every dollar less than $6,600 that every worker is earning. The same of course applies to in come tax, and an assortment of other taxes, visible and hidden. if minimum wage laws were humani tarian in concept, rather than economic, some provision under the law would be made for the unemployables — the un skilled, who can never become skilled. But the law has worked in exactly the opposite direction, forcing more and more of these borderline workers off private payrolls and onto the wide as sortment of federal doles that are now being tossed wildly around. So this little federal statistician who issued such a typical Washington lie, was not just simply exhibiting his ignor ance or his malice. He was pouring more gas on the inflationary fires that must flame higher and 'higher for fear all the steam will run out for this affluent so ciety. Typically Sanford Former Governor Terry Sanford has gone deep into the heart of the lost colo ny and prescribed toll roads as a remedy for the economic pains being suffered in that vast super-higbwayless land east of 1-85. Tins is a typical Sanfordism. For near ly a generation now gas tax money has been constantly siphoned out of East Carolina to cover the Piedmont with concrete, asphalt, cloverleaves and fenc ed in super-roads. Now that they are getting somewhere toward the tail end of this monstrous spending program in the Piedmont San ford suggests that we Easterners put in toll roads, while they have free roads in the Piedmont. Funny thing; some Easterners are stu pid enough to buy such a package, be cause it is wrapped in the double-talk of “political practicality”. There is only one fair way to spend tax money. It is not a very complicated way. Even the average governor, or the average legislator, or the average high way commissioner ought to be able to understand it. Spend about the same amount of tax money in an area that is collected in an area. Now the Piedmont politicians tell us that this would penalize the East because we pay less taxes than the Piedmont. Horse radish! What has been happening in recent times is that all the tax money collected in the Piedmont has been spent in the Piedmont, and nearly all the money col lected in the East has also been spent in the Piedmont. For example: Lenoir Countians an nually pay about $2,640,000 in gas taxes to the state. Set aside one million of that for maintenance and overhead and that would leave about $1.6 million per year for new road work. In the past 14 years — since Luther Hodges and the Piedmont politicians de stroyed the principle of spending road money in fairly dose relation to where it is collected Lenoir County has had less than four million dollars in new road money. If Lenoir County had gotten its fair share the figure would have been closer to $21.6 million. Multiply this figure by the SO counties east of 1-85 and tbe enor PERSONAL * .! PARAGRAPHS ’V JACK RIDER "I. * One day last week a young woman dropped by to ask my help in circulating a petition that urges congress, and the President to quit trading with “The Enemy”. She was utterly sincere, and I support both her effort and her logic, but later in the same day, while scan ning the Congressional Record I came upon some statistics which make me wonder how thtyr young woman, or any one else is going to be able to identify the enemy. Her petition was most basically against trade with the communist bloc, but in the first nine months of this year 57 so called “Free World” ships of 384,100 deal} weight tonnage delivered materials of war to North Vietnam. This number included 47 British ships of 286,600 tons, five Cyprian ships of 53,000 tons, three Maltese ships of 32,700 tons and two Italian ships of 20,000 tons. Further, in the period between June 1965 and September of this year 932 ships have delivered materials of war to the North Vietnamese, who have now killed nearly 14,000 American boys and wounded another 110,000. Of that 932 ships 239 were from the “Free World”, most of them from nations still receiv ing economic aid from the same Ameri cans whose boys they are helping to kill In that same period when 239 “Free World” ships were helping to kill our boys there were just 306 Russian ships delivering materials of war. So the ton nage of death-dealing equipment deliv ered to North Vietnam by our “Mends” was almost equal to that delivered by the Russians. This young woman who called on me is the wife of a Du Pont worker. Dacron is manufactured by Du Pont under li cense from Imperial Chemicals, a British firm, which holds patent rights to Da cron. If we quit trading with the British enemy, would this involve shutting down Dacron manufacture by Du Pont? England is also the largest single cus tomer for our locally grown flue-cured tobacco. In the latest year for which I have figures we exported $413 million worth of tobacco, and England got near ly half of that total. So I wonder just how far we can go with this business of cutting off trade with “The Enemy”? International trade, like international affairs is too complex for the average one of us to comprehend. Most of us, my self particularly included, are far too prone to cutting the world up into blacks and whites. But the spectrum of trade, and diplomacy runs erratically from those two extremes. If this philosophy were carried to its logical extreme it’s not likely that we could carry on any foreign trade. Our nearest and dearest neighbor, Canada, trades freely with Russia, selling the Soviets huge amounts of wheat which is used to feed men, who build guns, which kill our boys. But we also need to keep in mind that Canada is not the only country guilty of such Soviet trade. Our country has indulged in it too; not only selling Russia food, but selling strate gic materials used in military machines . . . and the trade still goes on. There are so few areas of absolute black and absolute white in this venal business of world affairs that the aver age citizen — Russian or American _ has no reasonably accurate way of de ciding whether our country is right or wrong, and very largely because so few of us really know what our country is officially doing, and certainly not WHY it is doing, whatever it is doing. mity of this thievery becomes apparent And it is still going on. During one year of Hodges’ reign more highway money was spent in Forsyth County alone than in all the counties combined east of 1-85 Now, toll roads? Hell no! , 4.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Nov. 2, 1967, edition 1
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