Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Jan. 1, 1970, edition 1 / Page 2
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.Mm THE TALENT AND ABILITY TO SlWCfED ... THE REST IS IIP TO YOU. '5 -—-■ Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man _____ And He May Be Wrong At Year End As 1969 becomes an inflexible page in the history of mankind there are signs for guarded optimism, not only for our own country but for the world as a whole. Everything, of course, is not all rosy. It never has been and never will be but the plusses for the future, in our view, out-number the minusses. The super-power standoff situation in ternationally has brought at least the United States and Russia to that point where they realize the suicidal aspects of all-out war, and the nationalistic virus that is epidemic all over the world leaves very little room for colonialism, whe ther it is manufactured in Moscow or Washington. And* as we have bloodily and expen sively discovered in Vieinam inflation is nowhere more violent than in the care and feeding of infant nations. The Rus sians tp a lesser degree have found what an expensive bauble a Castro can be;and the United States taxpayers have a doz en of these bush league potentates eat ipg out \ of-their pocket for everyone the Kremlin has adopted. So the super-power standoff today is to try to keep these brawling brat type nations from becoming so involved mil itarily and emotionally in world affairs that they might trigger the unthinkable. An all-out war in which nobody would be winner. these sore spots on the international anatomy Include the tenuous between Israel and its »nd ism. In Asia there seems to be an easing of the pain in some areas that have given diplomats and generals headaches in the past. The one running sore is still in Vietnam, but there is a solid basis for believing that President Nixon is engaged in a disengagement there that wll solye that problem in time to assure re-election in 197?. Why Not Now Before many more generations have been born and burped' it will become necessary to alter a very large part of the thinking that is traditional for the most of us insofar as housing is con cerned. New materials, new systems and new thinking will bring luxury housing with in the reach of every American before this century is ended: The big question is; eventually,.why not now? _ The materials and technology availa ble at this moment could wipe out every substandard hovel in the nation more quickly and more easily than it has put four men on the moon and brought them back to earth — and for less money. But before this space-age technology can be put to work thpre has to be a great deal of education done on the body politic, and in particular that seg ment which now lives in substandard issue do the vot is worse? igUfyambling and prostitution are worse than the in fluence of organized crime on society. 'There are arguments on both sides, but at this stage of our affairs the majority believes it would be worse to legalize these throe sources of syndicate money than to have these admittedly bad hab its of mankind legalized. But no it is, or was, with alcohol. No one can insist very realistically that al cohol in all its forms does not injure a great many people — many of them innocently. But when alcoholic bever ages were outlawed briefly the problem grew immensely worse than before and so that experiment was ended.. The issue, of course, is not whether we shall have drugs, gambling and pros titution, but whether we shall have them legally or illegally. England with 40 million people has fewer than 100 drug addicts. There are estimates that New York City alone has more than 100,000! What is a drug addict? A person who for physical or mental reasons needs the relief of drugs. The addiction may start from either end of this $pectrum For relief of physical pain the drug be comes a mental necessity dr from in volvement due to mental causes the drug then becomes a physical necessity. What makes this problem so great in the United States and so small in England? Here if a person becomes ad dicted, except in most unusual circum stances he is forced to get his drugs illegally and pay exhorbitant prices. In England an addict can get all the drugs his body can tolerate for a few cents a day, and so may remain gainfully and legally employed. Here all too frequent ly because of the high price of drugs a large per cent of addicts turn to crime in order to get the money. jor fixtures, and the same unit that in cluded bath, lavatories, commodes would also lend itself to the laundry for each home. * ^ The labor saving in this simplified plumbing alone would reduce the cost of a home by a very large per cent and the same kind of thinking1 applied to all other ^phases of home construction could put an end to the housing short age that forces such a large per cent Of the nation to still live in Victorian in convenience. Those who insist upon remaining con ventional would, of course, have the right, anti-the prieo of conventional housing would be lowered since the la bor and materials now consumed by lowered-priced housing would be more available than at present for industrial construction. Public housing is the first area in which bold steps should be taken and there is some evidence that the Nixon Administration is moving, if slowly, in this inevitable direction. A committee, named for its ch man Milton Eisenhower, has come up with a long-winded assortment of sup posed findings and recommendations that has to stand beside anything published in 1969 as a work of artful fiction.. Firstly, it continues to twang on that single string of the sociologist banjo, which says over and over that criminals: are not the cause of crime; that society is to blame for not having anticipated the inner yearnings of every thug who preys upon the public. President Nixon accurately summed it up while campaigning last year by saying; “We cannot explain away crime in this country by charging it off to poverty. The role of poverty as a cause of the crime upsurge in America has been grossly exaggerated.” But this committee that has just blown $1.6 million of the taxpayers^ dollars up in one puff of pinkish smoke still insists: “The way in which we ean make the greatest progresi toward reducing vio lence id America is by taking the ac tions necessary to improve the condi tions of family and community life, for all who live in our cities, and especial ly for the poor who are concentrated hi the ghetto slums.” The committee wants to spend $25 billion more per year on such paternalistic projects. Criminals are not criminals because they are poor. Poor people are not auto matically criminals. It is the grossest slander ever mumbled by any over educated jerk to infer that there is a direct ratio between poverty and crime. If this illogical pipe dream were true what would our country have been like in the Thirties when 98 per cent of the people were poor? According to the FBI there were 4.5 million serious crimes recorded in 1968, and of course the number has grown -in the year just ended. But there are 100 million adults in our country, and sincejmany criminals are guilty of com mitting many more than one of the crim es recorded the number of deliberate criminals runs to well below four per cent of the total adult population. But during 1968 and every recent years weak - minded judges, maternal istic paroles boards, permissive juries, and imbecilic supreme court decisions were turning criminals loose far faster •than the police could roupd them iip. If this sounds like an exaggeration con sider: In 1967 there were 5,518,420 persons arrested ip the United . States by 4,566 law enforcement agencies that file reports with the FBI. Yet at the end of that year there were less than 200,000 of that nearly six million in jail. The other 5,800,000 were back out on
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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