Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / April 23, 1970, edition 1 / Page 2
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Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man __ And He May Be Wrong Which Direction Congressman L. H. Fountain this week takes a lengthy and specific objection to the welfare reform bill that was approv ed in the house last week. Much of Fountain’s objections is extremely well based. Our only* question is: If not in this direction, Which direction? Fountain and everyone else with the remotest knowledge of the welfare pro gram as it presently exists knows that it has failed! in the very first instance: Which is to get able-bodied people off welfare, rather than making welfare a way of lifer Families are now into the fourth generation, who have known no thing but the slender debilitating exist ance that lies at the end1 of a welfare check. The Nixon proposal includes some seed in the direction of taking people off welfare. The catch is that the plan would add a great many more before taking any off welfare. Those who ob ject say there are far too manyloop holes in the plan, and that those who didn’t want to work could escape work by a number of tactics and still remain eligible for the “guaranteed income.” Of course the basic cleavage is philo sophical: On the one side there is the professional sociologist’s point of view which holds that welfare aid is a right, and recent, supreme court decisions tend to support this socialistic promise; while on the other hand there are those, such as ourselves, who refuse to accept the ugly premise that any able-bodied per son has a right to the earnings of ano tion. When every major newspaper in the United States is filled every day of every week with endless listings of job availabilities there is no excuse for any able-bodied person holding his hand out and expecting to have it filled with tax money taken from people who are will ing to work. Of course many people would have to move in order to fill these jobs, and they may have to do work they feel beneath their dignity and ability, but that is their decision. They may either starve with their dignity or eat with an honorable, well-paying job. Congress to Blame When any individual or group, of in dividuals abdicates its responsibility in serious 'affairs it cannot blaine others for taking action — even the wrong action. This is eternally true in the long, tragic bloodletting in Southeast Asia for which congress is to blame. We are now learning seven and even eight years after the fact that American troops have been committed! to action in which more than 200 have been killed in Laos. This has resulted from con gressional abdication of its control oyer the executive branch of government. Congress has dodged its duty in many areas but in n«Turea has this been more painful, at home and ahwifc than in that tortured comer There is a where public integration fire that are interested in private- schools, and whose children are in private schools should keep their mouths tightly shut on every aspect of public schools. This is a very sorry argu ment ‘V; Because every citizen, whether he has children or not, whether he is involved in private schools or not whether he approves or disapproves of what is, hap pening to our public schools, has a huge vested interest in those public schools. Over 70 per cent of every local and state tax dollar every citizen pays goes to the public schools, and with • each passing year an increasingly large per cent of the federal tax taken is being di verted into .the same channels. * Our fridnd Luke Blanchard pointed out last week in the Hertford County Herald that his paper’s editor got lost on this same deadend argument, to which Blanchard said, argument' was about like saying prisoners should be the only persons to have a say in the the affairs of prisons. This is not a really new attitude of the educator, nor of most others who labor in the taxpayers’ vineyard. Their general attitude is that the taxpayer is to their project about like the cow is to the dairy industry: An animal to be milked regularly and bred just often enough to keep the milk flowing freely. It has always been, and it will always be a matter of irrigation to public em ployees when the public asks questions or makes suggestions about the use of public money. These bureaucrats feel about the kicking taxpayer the same way a dairyman feels about the kicking cow, and if these bureaucrats had, their way they’d lock the kicking taxpayer in an anti-kick frame while they stripped him of his last drop of money milk. They have several designs on the draw ing boards for these anti-kicking devices but so far none has been perfected, which causes at least some of these bureaucrats to forget the old story about the fellow who killed the goose that lay ed the golden eggs. of the White unlucky Congress has the aibility to create its own sources of information upon which it makes decisions and) it does not have to accept the lies, half-truths and damn ed lies that are cooked up by executives^ who are living in the gilded cage of al most total isolation that falls upon that House. vjuugi coo is closer to the people than either the judiciary or the executive branch of government, and as such it owes it to the public as well as to itself to be as modern as necessary to keep. pace with these other isolated arms of the federal government. „ There is a great deal of evidence to - support the view that congress is out of step with the times and unable to keep up yrith the pace of events. Per haps it is totally correct to say that a modern nation cannot be ruled by com mutes; that the strong executive is an absolute requisite in this nuclear age. But if one accepts this premise, autocracy from which our ancestors fled is, just around a fe# more election unnecessarily withthe most mgr ed gasoline in the nation the 1969 . sian of the General Assembly unan mously suffered another fit of suprem gullibility. This was unanimously pass ing a constitutional referendum that is to be voted on in November calling for a so-called reorganization of the state government. 1 •’ This stepchild has been hanging around Raleigh,. growing a beard and smelling a little worse with each passing; session, but last year somehow some body dressed this red-headed brat up aud it was adopted by this not much lament ed legislative aggregation. On paper this child may sound fairly handsome,, but it Cannot stand dose ‘ ~ animation. It calls for the reduction o units of the state government from what its protectors daim to be 317 state agen cies to 25 or less agendes. This is the first place where this child’s breath be gins to take the paint off the wall, and cud the wall paper. ■pie plain truth is that there are only 59 departments of record in the state government. That 317 figure was con jured up by the propagandists by adding up all of the crossroads chowder socie ties we , have such as the Arts Council,, the Richard Caswell Memorial Commis sion, the Edenton Historical Commission, the Frying Pan Lightship Marine Mus eum Commission, The Good Neighbor Council, the Coordinating Coundi on Aging, the Historic Bath Commission, the Historical Hillsborough Commission, the Historic Murfreesboro Commission, the Historic Swansboro Commission, and on and on and on. The next aspect of this stepchild that cannot stand close scrutiny is the prom ised saving of $50 million dollars per year. This is an outright lie. Instead, it will add several million dollars per year to the cost, of government . . . since if the voters buy this pig jn this poke it will give the governor another dozen or so highly priced cabinet level appointees and each of these mil come equipped with a high-priced office, high . priced staff and all the other appurten ances of high political office. JONES COUNTY JOURNAL Jack Run, Publisher Published evi County News ritag* Street, ] But the silliest of all the reasons for the General Assembly adopting such a catch-all of nonsense is that every one of these many governmental agencies — whether you use the: flim-flam figure of 317 or the real figure of 59 — every one of these with the exception of the seven council of state positions is a creation of the general assembly and anyone or all of them may be merged, abolished, or expanded at the will of the general assembly. There is no earthly intelligent reason - for- this constitutional amendment, and that perhaps is why the 1969 general as sembly unanimously embraced it as it embraced a great many more unneces sary things such as cigarette taxes, soft drink taxes, and giving our state the most highly taxed gasoline in the United States. : 't.V
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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April 23, 1970, edition 1
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