In Regards to Conscience | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I lean Democrat, but vote my conscience without regard to party. I was part of the first Title XX Funds committee for the Santee-Wateree 5 county district in SC (early 70's). That included counties from Sumter to Bishopville and Camden to Florence. Me and the Administrator for our hospital (both white) went to represent Lee County. At that meeting to apply funds recently granted with LBJ's "War on Poverty," we sat and observed: 80% of the representatives were black, we thought it was a preliminary meeting, in reality it was to vote on projects to be funded. Somehow us white guys didn't get the message. The black folks came with projects typed up and some to them an inch thick!

    I asked a question and made an observation:

    For every dollar collected in this 5-county area, how much is used for administration before it comes back to us in Title XX Funds? (The Federal Representative had no clue) We are a blessed nation and should help the truly downtrodden and destitute, but if we start one single project which makes anyone want to stay on Title XX for a minute more than necessary, we have not done anyone a favor. (We funded programs which made it omfortable to be poor) Well, we are on the 5th generation of Welfare recipients who are not stupid. They hold seminars to maximize their income from any program. Some of them are making more sitting than they can possibly make working. Something is wrong. It needs to be changed to a "workfare" program (that is a term used in Nash County now). Before you get a dime, you work in a public project the same 40 hours as taxpayers---PERIOD!


Five Best Sentences
    1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.

    2. What one person receives without working for...another person must work for without receiving.

    3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

    4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

    5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they worked for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

    Can you think of a single reason for not sharing this? Neither could I......