Edwards Rural Plan Is a Good Beginning
Hooking up rural America to the Internet is a good idea, but if Sen. John Edwards really wants to help struggling family farmers he should convince congressional colleagues they should cut corporate welfare to agribusiness conglomerates. On the campaign trail in Iowa, Edwards harkened back to his upbringing in rural North Carolina before proposing a billion-dollar program designed to bolster economically hard-hit farming communities. Besides improving high-speed Internet access, he wants to set up tax-supported rural development zones, promote alternative renewable fuels and offer teachers monetary incentives to work in thinly populated areas.
Focusing on Southern and Midwestern farming states makes sense for Edwards. Democrats have no chance of regaining the White House in 2004 without votes from politically conservative farm states. And his rural roots and success in helping our state’s tobacco communities set new economic goals could give him an edge in the Iowa primaries.
Worth a closer look is his proposal for rural economic revitalization zones similar to incentives for reviving blighted inner-city neighborhoods. Farming communities face the same daunting task of re-directing traditional economies to high-tech businesses. Making them eligible for tax credits and federal business development money would provide a welcome boost.
At first glance, the Internet initiative sounds gimmicky, but rural residents deserve the same information access as city dwellers. Improved Internet access already is helping some rural North Carolina counties attract new business. And promoting agri-based alternative fuels, primarily ethanol, is worth pursuing because it boosts corn production, eases dependence on foreign oil and cuts vehicle air pollution.
That said, Edwards should go a step beyond and suggest ways of correcting the ills of the Bush administration’s 2002 farm legislation with its ineffective subsidies that don’t reach the nation’s dwindling farm families. Commodities programs intended to help small farms survive during hard times instead provide millions of dollars to mega-farms and corporations far removed from driving tractors and plowing fields.
Government figures show 8 percent of farming operations account for almost three-fourths of agricultural sales. The top 10 percent of farm-subsidy recipients collect two-thirds of the money. The mega-farm trend seems irreversible. During the Great Depression a quarter of Americans lived on farms. That has dwindled to just 2 percent.
Edwards’ ideas are a good beginning, but the greater priority is meaningful farm policy reform that benefits farmers, consumers and taxpayers — not giving bloated subsidies to big businesses.
— The News & Record
of Greensoboro
June Makes a Year’s Dream Come True
Jupiter did not live alone atop that holy mountain; early on he took a good-looking wife, the goddess Juno, as queen of heaven. She became a busy mother with her arms full of unruly young ‘uns needing tending. So it remains as her month dawns. June’s arrival occurs when earth prepares to don its summer crowns of glory.
North of the Arctic Circle, it’s a season when land and sea, bog and muskeg, bask under the sun’s continuous light. Not until mid-month will the fiery globe attain its highest point, furnishing a full 24 hours of illumination of all that lies above the Arctic Circle — a short, frenzied few weeks in which this spilling of sunlight allows waterfowl time for a hurried courtship, nest-building, incubation and the conversion of egg to a flying novice.
Down here in Carolina, the action takes no slower a pace. Creamy pink dawns and golden mornings, middays with lazy white clouds adrift, build into thundering castles
under afternoon sun and heat. Ragged-topped cumulus clouds rise in the west, spinning winds and flickering fire from Thor’s hammer and dragging dark rain tails behind.
On the lawns below, it’s a race between blades of grass and lawnmower blades. Transforming from flower to fruit, tiny clusters of grapes building on the vine soak up the sun’s energy. The second hatching of gape-mouthed nestlings already flutters at the feeder. Wide-mouthed swifts, swallows and martins sweep the evening skies of insects, while bull bats (nighthawks) soar into the darkening heavens.
As they say, “A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon.” The sweetest grass is cut before the equinox, while the energy is building the leaf; after that, the energy is invested in nature’s ultimate goal, seed. June is a year’s dream coming true.
— The News & Observer
of Raleigh
Autopsy Bill Is
A Waste of Time
If you’ve ever wondered whether state legislators are wasting their time and your money in Raleigh, wonder no more. They’re squandering both on a bill to fix a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
The bill seeks to make it impossible for newspapers, television states and Internet sites to publish autopsy photos.
Mind you, there is not a shred of evidence that a North Carolina newspaper or television station has ever published such a photograph. There is not a shred of testimony that a newspaper or TV station wishes to do so.
But never mind the facts. Because of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt’s death in the Daytona 500 in 2001, Florida legislators rushed to make it illegal to print photos of his autopsy. Florida news organizations wanted the photos to review NASCAR’s pronouncements about the cause of death — and subsequent examinations of those photos have brought to light more information about the cause of the popular racer’s death.
Still, legislators in other states have sought to limit access to such photos as a way to prevent publication on the Internet, where gruesome autopsy photos often wind up. North Carolina legislators have been among those who wish to protect surviving family members and the public from having to see such photos.
That concern is misplaced. The greater danger from limiting access lies in limiting, however slightly, the opportunity to review the work of medical examiners when they pronounce a cause of death. Limiting such access could inadvertently impede criminal investigations as well. Where, pray tell, is the public good in that?
North Carolina lawmakers have recognized these potential problems and have crafted a compromise that allows any member of the public to view autopsy photos, but not to make copies. A version approved by the Senate Judiciary I Committee Thursday also allows physicians to borrow the photos for the purposes of a re-examination, and allows medical textbook publishers to print them once they have been, in legislative parlance, “anonymized.”
This bill thus violates North Carolina’s longtime tradition of making public records available to anyone, for any purpose, even if that purpose is upsetting. It sets up a new category of records — those which are available for inspection but not for copying.
This may be the ultimate example of legislative action to deal with a circumstance created from whole cloth. When the Senate debates the bill, its members should reflect on what other bills they ought to adopt to address problems that, so far as anyone knows, do not exist in North Carolina.
— The Charlotte Observer
Take Mike Tyson
At His Word
Iron Mike Tyson, prizefighter and convicted rapist, announced in a Fox Television interview last week that he remains so angry over his rape conviction 11 years ago that he wants to rape his accuser and her mother.
Now this is a man with fire in his belly. No, make that hate. Tyson has always seemed a bit low on the wattage meter, and his declaration of a desire for sexual retribution against the woman who sent him to the Big House only confirms it.
As Iron Mike, now sporting a Maori tattoo on his face, put it, “I really do want to rape her and her mama.”?
Tyson, a former heavyweight champion, claims he didn’t assault Desiree Washington, a beauty contest hopeful, in 1991. A jury didn’t believe him. He got six years in stir, but was released on parole after three years.
A recent spate of domestic violence crimes against women has raised once again how far the law can go in protecting a woman. Tyson’s threat suggests the law doesn’t go far enough. He should be taken at his word and treated accordingly by the criminal justice system.
This guy not only looks dangerous, he is dangerous.
— The Herald Sun of Durham
‘Little bitty’ Tax Cut Bathes Us in Red Ink
President Bush chided Congress not to come forward with a “little bitty” tax cut. It more than obliged.
In what amounts to a game of smoke and mirrors, GOP congressional leaders presented the White House with a plan that assuredly will deepen record budget deficits rather than provide a short-term stimulus to an ailing economy. A complicated timetable implements tax breaks, reduces them, then brings them back again over the next decade, raising the bill’s price tag closer to a more realistic $675 billion than the advertised “little bitty” $350 billion.
To convey a more affordable appearance, nine of the 10 tax cuts will expire before 2013 and most disappear after two years. But engaging in such fiscal gimmickry conceals the true cost over the long haul — a likely $1 trillion.
Pleasing the ones who brought them to the dance, GOP legislators fashioned a bill heavily skewed toward the wealthy. Taxpayers earning $1 million annually will get an average $93,500 tax cut. Middle-income households will save a paltry $217.
Is your income less than $25,000 annually? Don’t bother to look; there’s nothing there for you.
Fortunately, child care credits and tax relief for married taxpayers offer some hope of quickly pumping money into the economy with refunds of as much as $1,100 showing up in paychecks by late summer. Those refunds may bolster consumer spending and create jobs, but economists doubt that an energized cash flow from high earners will trickle down to the most needy. Accelerating provisions of the 2001 tax cut, for example, had little impact. And the uncertainties of fluctuating business tax breaks stretched over several years may sour small businesses on moving ahead now with capital expansion projects.
Long-range investment decisions cannot be made on here-today, gone-tomorrow tax rates.
Local governments, however, get an unexpected windfall. More than $20 billion in fiscal relief is earmarked for states and cities, which will make it easier for them to balance budgets without draconian cuts or tax hikes.
But last-minute concessions designed to jump-start the economy do little to replace the more than two million jobs that have vanished in the past two years, nor do they factor in costs of rebuilding Iraq, the war on terrorism and homeland security.
The creative “new math” approach merely saddles future generations with staggering budget deficits instead of getting today’s legions of unemployed victimized by a changing economy back on the job.
— The News & Record
of Greensboro
