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fULBRIQHT
fib,
PENTAGON
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
__" _" _i_ And rid May Be Wrong
Suggestion to Governor Scott
Governor Bob Scott in his first year in
office has alienated more voters in
less time than any governor since re
construction days. There is one simple
political stroke that would almost in
stantly regain him all the friends he
has lost in this brief period, and at
the same time gather to his banner
perhaps more new friends than he had
voting for him in 1968.
And that simple political stroke would
be to call a meeting of the 159 school
boards of North Carolina and tell them
that they had his backing and the total
support of every branch of the state
government in taking steps to save the
public school system of North Carolina.
By urging these 159 school boards to
return to their respective school districts
and begin immediately implementing
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 says that no child
shall' be barred from, any school for
which that child is academically equip
ped1 because of race, creed or national
origin.
To enforee this law strictly and firm?
ly, and1 do no more.
To refuse even to sit down with the
constant passing parade of faceless
bureaucrats out of Washington who have
far exceeded their authority by trying
to jam forced racial integration upon
all students, white and colored alike,
whether they want it or not.
To refuse even to answer the illegal,
despotic aberrations of power madden
ed federal judges, h. ,,
In short to go back to the basic busi
ness .of education.
.Whether one likes R or not, iintH R
cipal which permits a parent to choose
between schools of his district that he
feels best for his children . . . and that
is the law, and that’s all the law de
mands.
xne law does not demand closing per
fectly good school buildings to permit
children to be transferred into schools
they do not wish to attend.
The law does not demand that school
boards spend huge sums of money to
build new schools with one hand while
closing existing buildings in good —:
with the other hand.
&ut school 'boards have not had from
Luther Hodges, nor from Terry Sanford,
nor from Han Moore the kind of moral,
financial and legal support they need
and deserve to bolster their courage
against these external, illegal usurpa
tions by HEW gestapo agents and fed
eral judicial flunkies.
If a majority of those 159 school boards
would follow this pattern it is as cer
tain; as day following night that these
20th century carpetbaggers would'
sneafcawaytnto the dark to dusel -their
living from others more pliant and less
courageous.
Tyranny exists when good people are
willing to let bad people work their evil
will. Tyranny exists when intelligent
people become accessories to total
idiocies. Tyranny exists when wronged
people come to accept their burden as<
the price of peace.
the more one spends the more one pays
with an accross-the-board sales tax.
' These same opponents also insist upon
arguing that the ad valorem tax is a
tax that penalizes' the rich and favors
the poor. This ignores the fact that
the ad valorem tax is passed on to the
consumer, whether it is the poor per
son who rents a cheap apartment or
the rich person who buys a T-bone steak
that has been grown on some heavily
taxed pasture land.
In order to really get to the basic
facts of life insofar as tax equity is
concerned one has to be able to under
stand, and accept that all taxes are con
sumer taxes. No tax is really paid until
the product or the service is used. True,
the tax may be levied and collected,
but the tax is never really paid until
the consumer consumes.
Refineries pay gasoline taxes to the
government and then collect them back
from the car or truck driver. Distilleries
pay huge levies on whisky and beer
but they recoup those taxes when the
drinking man drinks, and not before.
The theater owner pays a tax on .each
ticket, but he collects that tax from
the movie, goer, and so it is without ex
ception with every kind of tax, If cannot
possibly be any other way.
Employers withhold income taxes from
the worker’s paycheck, and remit them
to the government, but it is the sweat
of the worker’s brow or the product
of his brain that is actually paying the
tax . . . not die boss . . . and the
people who consume the products that
are being made or use the services be
ing performed by that worker absorb,
not only the wages he takes home but
the withholding tax that the worker nev
er saw.
When this is understood and accept
ed no one can rationally oppose the ba
sic principle of the sales and use tax
that is applied at an equal rate and to
all commodities and services in trade.
can compare with the degree of racial
segregation in the “model” schools of
the national capital. And yet it is from
this biased bosom that so much milk
and-honey flows on this particular sub
ject.
We see the schools of Greenville clos
ed, the athletic program of Rocky Mount
schools completely disrupted the ath
letic program of. Richmond schools
completely cancelled. Hardly a day pass
es without another school being burned
because of this anarchy that white co
wardice has unleashed in the public
schools -upon whieh we have- lavished
so much money and so much affection
for so many years.
There it is, Governor Scott, do you
want to be a leader of this white
cowardice as your immediate predeces
sors in office or would you like to use
a little of that Scott grit your daddy
graduates who 'filled hundreds of file
cabinets with profound studies. Another
lesser chunk of the North Carolina Fund
went for printing fancy brochures that
were either filed and forgotten or more
often tossed in a waste basket.
One such brochure filed, but not for
gotten, that has been on my desk or
‘North
about it for some time is titled,
Carolina’s Present and Future Poor.” It.
includes the summary of a great deal
of work by some well-intended sociology
majors and it is interesting, and even
in places as amusing as anything could
be on such an unhappy subject as pov
erty.
One of its first conclusions is that
Baptists are the poorest people in North.
Carolina. On the poverty scale 59 per
cent of the Tar Heel “Pore Folks” were
found to be Baptists, 16.2 per cent
Methodists, 10.1 per cent “other Prot
estant,” 7.1 per cent “Fundamentalist”
which creates, thus statistically, a com
pletely new religion in North Carolina
since, the study further reported, 6.1
percent of the ‘Tore Folks” have no relig
ion, .8 per cent are Roman Catholic
and surprising to those who are asked
frequently to contribute to Jewish
charities, the North Carolina Fund re
ports no Pore Jews in Fair Tar Heelia.
So if you haven’t made your decision
yet it might be worth your time to stu
dy these percentages unless of course,
you are the kind of person who is look
ing for his “reward” on the other side.
And then there’s another summary
sheet on which the question was asked
of a group that is called “The Working
Poor,” which is what most of us are af
ter helping to pay for the cost of such
studies of poor folks. The question is:
Would you move to get a good job?
If you think you know the answer you’d
better wait for the rest of Ibis para
graph: 33.1 per cent said, Yes, without
question they’d move. Another 18.6 per
cent said, “Yes, but with reservations,
7.6 per cent wouldn’t say yes or no, and
40.7 per cent said, “Hell, no!”
Winch can be interpreted several dif
ferent ways. One is the hog way, which
says one mud hole is as good as another,
and another is that the “Pore FoHts” real
ly don't realize how bad off they are