Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Sept. 19, 1968, edition 1 / Page 2
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wm. MX::®::-*?:* sswwrada EDITORIALS Never Forget That Thete Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man — — -1 And He May Be Wrong Dangerous Reacli ing moving the Congressional Record is certainly not recommended for those with faint hearts, weak stomach or sen sitive souls. , On Friday, September 6th Senator Ma jority Whip Robert Byrd of West Vir ginia took the time to tabulate the un believable arrogance of the executive branch of government full in the face of an explicit, and recent order of congress. The matter had to do with grants to am outfit called Youth Pride, Inc. in Washington, D. C., one of eight such groups whose purpose was to “provide work training experience to hard core youths.” , What it actually is, is bribery paid lavishly by taxpayers through the De partment of Labor in an effort to keep hoodlums from finishing the job they started in April of burning down the na tion’s capital. Last year Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz dished out $291,525 and Senator Byrd learned that a bit of hanky-panky went on with that small chunk of the taxpayer’s money. Payroll padding, slop py bookkeeping and a wide assortment ] of similar tricks to milk the aforemen tioned bovine biped Homo Taxuspayerus. As a result of this information reach ing responsible senators a condition was included in the labor department ap propriation as of May 28, 1968 ordering Wirtz not to give these hoodlums any more money unless and until they bad set up an accounting system satisfactory to the General Accounting Office. So what did Wirtz do? On September 6, 1968 he called a press conference to announce that he was handing the same hoodlums $3,772,010 to use as they saw fit during the coming fiscal year. The interested senators learned atxmt this by reading the newspapers, since Wirtz did not bother to let them know that he was thumbing bis official nose in the direc tion of con gress . Read this paragraph from the Wash ington, D. C. Star report on Wirtz’s news conference: "The largest part of the $17 million two - year JOBS contract is being invested in Pride Automotive Center, Inc., at 2600 14th Street North West. This nsw venture will he baaed in a gasoline service station leased from can Oil Company which will asic supplies and technical to train 155 youths for 52 Labor Department is provid one “hard core youth who has collect ed for working 53 hours for Pride, while in the same two-week pay period he was on the payroll of the District of Colum bia for 80 hours, or collecting for sup posedly wdcjdng 133 -hours in two weeks, when there jue only 186 hours in a two week period. Of course, he was kicking back part of his pay to a superior who was keeping 1dm on -the Pride payroll white he actually presented his warm body for such labors as the District of Columbia might be able to persuade from him. All of which, and much more if one cares to read this particular issue of the Congressional Record, prompted Georgia Senator Richard Russell to de clare: “1 can only say that congress has fallen on evil days when it accepts treatment of this kind and in the language of the times, sits down and lets it pass. No won der congress falls into contempt to the minds of people when it permits itself to be treated in this fashion by one of the heads of an excutive department.” Which makes one wonder what Uncle Bob Doughton would have done about such a situation when he was chairman of the house ways and means committee? But that was in the long ago when congressmen had courage enough to shoulder the responsibilities of their of fice and to put principle above log-noU in-g with these bureaucrats from the ex ecutive branch of government who bribe use into meek submission with our own damned money. Same Old Joe Natlitth Raleigh’s gift to the literati, Joe Nath an Daniels, editor emeritus of the News and Observer, has thrown up another boofc Never one to dodge ftoe publicity that might make him another buck, Joe Nathan recently appeared on a TV show to talk about his latest effort. TV man Hugh Downs wondered out loud: Why nothing had been said public ly heretofore about FDR stepping out on Eleanor. Without batting an eye Joe Nathan pointed out that The Roosevelts were not the kind of people who washed their dirty linen in public. No. They left the cleaning of stables low-born as Joe ■ by Anted more toast toe wishness to the God of Bigness. We not ask, “How good a town is?” but, * • to it?" even operate to this grand bers and, seating capacity as the salary of the number of the oongre size of the budget. Now this idolatry of size has crept into education. The Good little School to no longer good, because it cannot attract the big names, or pay the big salaries, or hire the big football team, or build the big gym, or attract the students whose search for anonymity to the crowd is ,only exceeded by their chase for “securi ty.” And now it comes to the lower eche lons of education. Here to Kinston peo ple who ought to know better are propa gandizing the population on the subject of a single central high school which to supposed to improve the quality of ed ucation and guaranteed to increase the degree of racial integration. Kinston’s school board is not alone to this lockstep down the road toward “excellent bigness”. Pittsbdrgh is in the process of building five super-scbooto to replace 17 “outdated schools” at a cost of $120 million. Pittsburgh’s great high school plan will cut across pockets of na tural and ethnic boundaries to ‘‘bring young people of varying cultures to each' of the new schools. One wonders, if one to concerned at all, what an “outdated school” really to. Oxford University, Cambridge and The Sorbonne still manage to turn out a tnif rvtsn/liiM art Kuililiintfo rtf years old, so it must be what is taught, the tools used to teach, the books and the principles toot become “outdated” since schools, like prisons, are not made of four walls . . . either old or new. It would appear that the most serious problem confronting our schools today is not old buddings, old principles or even old teachers but is rather too much of everything, too quickly to be used intelligently or effectively. National Priorities The wise assignment of priorities is as fundamental to the success of a na tion as to an individual and neither can indulge in fanciful efforts in' even the most wonderful direction while leaving first things last without absolute peril. To us it seems that -the failure of a generation of American leaders to es tablish reasonable priorities is perhaps the biggest cause of our national dis content today in the midst of so much affluence, and effluence. To spend in a generation $150 billion federal tax dollars helping every foreign country around the globe, while only spending at home much less than $1 billion federal tax dollars on cleaning up our rivers and lakes; To spend this $150 billion either for good or evil around the world while spending less than a third that amount to rebuild our badly built highways which are killing 50,000 of us each yam: and wounding another two million; To spend $150 billion dollars rebuild ing the Urnds we tore down in an as sortment of wars while suffering 12th rank in infant mortality rate here at Do spend more in a month in Vietnam than is spent in five yeans improving our crowded, dangerous commercial air ports here at borne; + To build eaeaircraft carrier that coat considerably more than the federal gov ernment is spending in an entire year to build hospitals; To spend five times as much per year on putting a man on the moon as is spent in training doctors and nurses . . . these are just a beginning few of the tong 1st of badly assigned priorities that has our country suffering today paragraphs BY jack rider There are several hilarious aWeato the George Wallace candidacy for presi dent. First is the twisting and turning being done all across the .South by both Democratic and Republican office seek ers, who stand pledged to support the nominees of their party, but who stall want to court that huge mass of voters who are going to vote for Wallace. We have seen the Teaberry Strut done by Bob Scott and Jim Gardner, each of whom freely predicts that Wallace is going to carry North Carolina and by a wide margin. And this gives rise to a lot of “albatross hanging.” The Repub licans are trying to hang Hubert Horatio Humphrey arxnmd Bob Scott’s unwilling neck and1 the Democrats are leaving no stone unturned in their effort to asso ciate -Tim Gardner with Nixon’s strong civil rights position, and with the fed eral occupation of Little Rock which was done while Nixon was Ike’s “Veep”, and to which Nixon gave :his loud and repeated Amen! At a lower level in the First Congres sional District this quick pitch step is being dome, and very adroitly by Walter Jones and Reece Gardner. Jones goes aixmi as iar out uu a nuu« wo v«v get by saying, “If the presidential elec tion is thrown into the House I will vote for the mam who get the biggest vote in the first Congressional District.” Which he freely predicts will be George Wallace. Gardner hasn’t climbed onto tKic particular limb, but he has made a lot of noise about Jones’ confession that he would vote for Humphrey since in order to be a candidate in North Carolina one has to sign a pledge that he will support the nominees of Ms party. While trying to rub some of the Wallace magic off on his effort Gardner hasn’t made too much mention of the fact that he is pledged to vote for Nixon to the same degree Jones is pledged to vote for Humphrey, and both recognize quite clearly that neither of their can didates is going to run first in their bail 1wide ■ And almost as funny as the reluctance of these Democratic and Republican standard bearers to bear the standards of their party is the almost total hick of humor among the 24-carat Wallace sup porter. I did an editorial on the radio, which I thought was pretty funny, talk ing about the strange help Wallace was getting from such people as Federal Judges A1 Butler mid John Larkins and nearly every Wallaceite who called me was 'highly indignant, and rarely was able to see the first damned funny thing about my abortive effort to be funny. And except, of course on the race issue, Wallace is about as liberal as Southern politicians grow. He believes in big government and practiced big govern ment while he was Governor of Ala bama. He likes to levy taxes and “help oeoole” with their own money. The arch-conservatives are calling Wallace a “Populist,” which is, or was a turn of-the-century type politician who favor ed taking a lot of things away from the “haves” and giving them to the “have nots." r But the average modem voter has enough difficulty trying to figure out what a “liberal”, and a “conservative” are without looking backward into his tory for anyother confusing political la bel. Anduso it goes, andjno doubt wfll continue to go right down to the wire on November 5th, when all of this con fusion will come to a head and old John Q. Public' will hide behind that mini curtain and do his duty as he “seen it.” ' Every indicator turns in the direction of a 'landslide victory for Nixon, but here in the South the True-Blue Wallace ite refuses to accept the unalterable proposition that Wallace cannot possibly get enough votes outside' the South to college the electoral vote in any stale. They dream their time away with that magic number: 84 per cent, which can be a majority in any state, but is is pred ixBtea
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Sept. 19, 1968, edition 1
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