School-Move In Mid-January

OtSTMtUTIO tv I A TIMIS fttNOCATI

Because of construction delays the new city Middle School move will not be made during the holidays as was scheduled.

The new schwl is bt'ing built on Arlington Boulevard near Hooker Road. Plans had tieen made to move from Agnes Fullilove to the new facility so that classes could begin there after the holidays.

Now school officials say it will be mid-January txdore a move can be made.

The move would have been easier to make with the extra time available during the holidays. That is not possible now, however and we suppose the city sch(K)ls will just have to make the best of the situation.

Ingram's Names Added To Growing List

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner John Ingram joined the growing list of candidates for the U. S. Senate Democratic nomination.

The winner w ill have the formidable job of facing Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in the November

THIS AFTERNOON

election tor the six year term of office.

Ingrams battles with the insurance companies have made him well know^ in North Carolina.

His entry into the Democratic field of candidates should mean quite a fight during next years campaigning.

Budgets 'Beyond Control'

ByBILLNOBUTT

RALEIGHThere is some sad and pessimistic news for Tar Heels as a new year begins: control over governmental spending and relief from spiraling ta.xes dont appear to have much chance.

Inflation continues to drive the cost of living upward: and that hits government's pocketbook just the same as the family purse. Briefly put: government will spend from 10 to 15 percent more just to keep doing business as usual. .Any new offerings will up the ante even more Admitted, the income for government also increases with inflation. .As more money is earned and spent, more taxes are automatically paid. Thats the prime reason government revenues continue to rise even without a tax increase. Thats also the reason those much-heralded tax cuts never seem to help individuals a great dealthe trimming is offset by inflationary salary increases which push the recipient into a higher tax bracket w here he pays more despite the thought he is paying less.

Some tools There has been some attention to late at state and

federal levels of government to Zero-based Budgetting. and to Sunset laws. It is now becoming clear, however, that neither holds promise for immediate change in direction for government spending. nor impact of such proportions as to sharply alter the upward pattern.

.An overview of governmental spending practices and procedures may help illustrate the problem. At the foundation, legislative group (the Congress, the General Assembly, the Town Council, the Board of County Commissioners is supposed to set overall policy goals and general directions to be implemented by the executive branch.

But the legislators dont have the time, staff, expertise. and access to knowledge and information which the executors have: so the executors bring in a draft budget to get things started.

The chief executive ( President. Governor. Mayor. Chairman, or Town Manager pri vides opportunity for all the operating agencies under his control to submit budget proposals privately.

.Most bureaucrats shoot

the moon knowing full well things will be cut. Additionally. the agency bosses assi^ the grim budget chore to budget officers rather than program people.

In sum, so much internal politicking goes into that draft budget that by the time

NOBUTT

the chief executive lays it before the legislators it has become not just a guide, but a proposal. The jockeying which went into its production and the information which dictated decisions will never be known to the public or the legislators.

The proposed spending program thus becomes The Budget and the executors cry foul at any legislative tampering.

Hie Law

Once the anticipated trimming has been don^. the budget authors get downright obnoxious about further cuts: they will warn of unschooled children, marching police or fire protectors, striking gar-

bagemen. and vehicles falling apart at the seams. Further, mandates of the law (federal is the favorite one will be pointed out as requiring this, that, or the other. The legislators have no way of refuting such legal citations or warnings of dire consequence and usually succumb eventually to approval.

(Examples: laws dictate students-per-teacher: square feet per jail inmate or hospital patient; gravel depths in roadbeds; bathrooms per mile on Interstate highways; runway lengths and widths: daycare workers-per-child: right-of-way widths; handicapped entrances and toilets: safety equipment: and so on and on and on.

Then there are the public pressuresorganized groups, lobbyists, self-interest organizationsdemanding special consideration. Meanwhile, public employees, now better organized than ever, keep the heat turned on for added pay and fringes.

Any wonder legislators (federal, state, or local) are wrestling with little success with runaway government spending?

THE INSIDE REPORT

Tax Reality And Rhetoric

By ROWLAND EVANS and ROBERT NOVAK

WASHINGTON - When a feisty Gerald R. Ford breezed through town last week offering all manner of advice for his successor in the White House, one tip to the President was widely echoed by Democratic politicians: what little tax reform you now propose is still too much.

The unveiling of President Carters tax package shows heavy emphasis on a $25 billion tax reduction to stimulate the economy with only a symbolic smattering of his once ambitious tax reform. But former President Ford told newsmen over breakfast that even a smattering would delay tax reduction far too long. That is one Ford judgment concurred in by important Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee, who want tax reduction and tax reform divorced.

Such a divorce would recognize that the old recipe of tax cuts sweetening the sour taste of fax relorm is an illusion It is one of many tax reform illusions shattered

this year, the biggest of all being that a total rewrite of the Internal Revenue code could bring equity, social justice and redistribution of income. The events of 1977 show that kind of talk flies on the campaign stump but crashes in the real world.

Jimmy Carter was perhaps the last official in his administration to take seriously his campaign promises for a radical revision of the tax .system he called a disgrace to the human race during the campaign. Just two months ago. the President was sticking to a tax reform program of unprecedented breadth including tougher tax treatment for capital gains.

But whereas the vague notion of reform as a campaign i.ssue delighted voters, the prickly details of reform as a legislative proposal outraged taxpayers. Democratic Congressmen tried to explain to the W'hite House that there simply is no constituency for tax reform, drawing the private reaction from presidential aides that courage is in short supply on

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Capitol Hill.

The tide began turning when the Treasury and Council of Economic Advisers began to look on tax reduction not as a sweetener for tax reform but as an indispensable end in itself to help the economy particularly after the massive, unscheduled in-, crease in Social Security payroll taxes. At the same time, the Treasury turned against tougher capital gains taxation. The inevitable decision to jettison a comprehensive tax reform that could only drag down a needed tax cut was resisted to the end by the President.

What little tax reform is left consists mainly of face-saving by Mr. Carter. The proposal to permit deduction of only 50 per cent of the cost of business meals satisfies Mr. Carters overblown cam-paign crusade against three-martini lunches, a legacy from the 1972 McGovern campaign.

But the cost of face-saving will be a lobbying campaign by the restaurant industry that would slow the tax packages progress. Nor is countervailing support likely from Congressmen who feel no political gain in cracking down on tax-deductible meals. They fear specific anger from lower-middle income purchasing agents and salesmen about to lose perquisites of their jobs would swamp vague approval from the general public.

What really could slow down the tax cut. however, is the proposed tighter tax treatment of income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. concerns. With millions of corporate revenue at stake, the fight would be intense and prolonged.

Jerry Fords prediction that even these limited reforms would delay passage of the tax cut until next September at the earliest is no exaggeration. Consequent-ly. Ways and Means Democrats would like to go ahead with the tax cut quickly and worry about time-consuming tax reform later.

There is ample precedent for this. No combined reduction-reform has passed Congress since 1964.

The matter is put succinctly by Rep. Abner Mikva of Illinois. a key Ways and Means member. As a liberal and Carter loyalist. Mikva was instrumental in exposing to the administration the folly of its original tax reform plans. Now, he is telling the President this: if you really want your tax reduction, cut it loose from what remains of tax reform.

This poses another choice for Mr. Carter between campaign rhetoric and governmental reality. The way his tax package has turned out shows his selection, however reluctantly, of reality. Now he is being advised to get rid of the remaining rhetoric.

Strength For Today

A FAITHFUL SERVANT

One of the most noted men of the nineteenth century was I/)uis Pasteur. Yet the opposition and persecution to which he was subjected almost passes belief. To judge from the many accusations hurled against him. he was a cheap and stupid charletan.

After many years of experiment, he grew antibodies in his laboratory which made dogs immune to rabies. But becau.se of the bitter opposition to his work, he was afraid to try the treatment on humans. Then one day a mother brought to Pasteurs

laboratory a little boy suffering from bites inflicted by a mad dog. Pasteur knew what the attempted cure might cost death for the boy, disgrace and probably prison for himself, and certainly the end of his work as a .scientist. But he took the chance, even though, as he said later, my hand trembled.

He also prayed, for Pasteur was a man of faith. And after many anxious days the certainty of the cure was established, and the name of Pasteur rang round the world.

-by Elisha Dou^ass

o meet the energy crisis, I hereby declare:

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAItP

When I said Id have the boys out of the trenches by Christmas... I didnt say WHICH Christmas.

By JAMES J. KILPATRICK

Shepherd In A Pickup

SCRABBLE. VA. - Not long ago. Readers Digest carried a little quote from Robert Frost the great New England poet said he could sum up everything he had ever learned in only three words: Life goes on. Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains at Christmas time, the lesson tends to sink in.

The words themselves constitute a simple statement of fact; there is no particular inspiration in them. Nothing in the phrase suggests that, what is to come will be any better or any worse than what has gone before. We have only the assurance, born of centuries of observation, that life is eternal. The condition we think of as death is no more than a different form of life.

To the casual eye. most of our countryside is dead this time of year. The pastures have faded from a pale green to a dull brown. A few tan leaves still cling to the oaks, but the other trees are bare. Ten months of the year, we have some variety of

wildflower growing on the roadsides; now there are none. In the kitchen garden, the perennial herbs evince no sign of life. Most of the time, the very air is still as death. Smoke rises from our chimneys, pencil-thin, straight as charcoal scratches on the sky. The farm ponds are dark stones of onyx set in ice.

Ordinarily we have activity all around us. Everything is in motion people, tractors, birds, rabbits, flags, lawnmowers, youngsters playing tennis. The garden produces vegetable crops so rapidly that a bean patch has to be picked two times a day. The summer clouds like clipper ships go cruising through the mountains. .Now in winter one bleak day slides silently past another. We had only nine hours and 19 minutes of daylight on Wednesday, or so the almanac said: by the time the pale sun pushed over Red Oak Mountain and penetrated the gray shrouds, it was 10 oclock in the morning and. the day half gone This is how/

Say

Other Editors Hold Up Show

(Greensboro Daily News)

Senate and House conferees closed up shop this week without reaching an agreement on a national energy plan. President Carter called their action "regrettable. Were it not the Christmas season, you could think of less charitable words for this congressional knee-buckling.

The nettlesome issue which has the committee split evenly down the middle is natural gas pricing. The irony is that nearly everyone is agreed the price of gas is too cheap and ought to go up The question is whi^ gas, and how much the price ought to rise. These questions have stumped the committee since it started talking about natural gas three weeks ago.

The House of Representatives, you may remember, went along last summer with President Carters proposal to increase the price of newly discovered gas from $1.47 per thousand cubic feet to $1.75a substantial increase. After that, the price would go up about 9 per cent a year, with eventual deregulation the goal.

But the Senate balked at that idea. It voted narrowly to deregulate the price of newly discovered gas altogetherthat is, to lift price controls. In this earlier House-Senate division were planted the seeds of disagreement today.

In the conference committee called to resolve House-Senate differences, there have been compromises galoremost of them endorsing higher gas prices than the administration wants. But the administration has been willing to compromise in order to break the energy deadlock and move on to other parts of its energy packagenamely, an equalization tax on wellhead oil and a special tax on industrial users of natural gas and oil.

But diehard liberals and conservatives on opposite ends of the spectrum have refused to compromise. The liberals myopically think the pVice of gas can and should remain absurdly low forever. Conservatives side with the oil industry. They want the price to jump to high market levels immcHliatelywith callous regard for poor people who cant pay their winter heating bills.

Well, compromise is the name of the game, and if these folks cant agree to agree, then perhaps they ought to be replaced. In fact, that suggestion has already been raised by one of the conferees. Sen. Bennett Johnson, D-Louisiana. The national energy plan is too important to fall prey to the whims of 18 men. They are holding up the show. Perhaps they ought to let someone else to the job.

it is in winter. In Rappahannock County, we say, things are dead. ^

But. you see, it is not so. In summarizing his ac-cumulated wisdom. Frost was expressing an eternal verith. Life goes on. One minute at a time, the days grow longer Beneath the frozen crusts of our fields, an insect world is not dead, but merely sleeping The life that will manifest itself three months hence in tree frogs and katydids and honeybees has not ended. Under the wet leaves, acorns even now arc bursting, struggling to put down their roots, the whole marvelous proc-ess of birth, growth and decomposition follows a pattern as inex orable as the equinoctial procession Life goes on.

We thought of these ancient patterns and rhythms the other night. We had been reading the Christmas story as Luke told it in his second chapter. He spoke of shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, A little before 4 ocliKk in the morning, 1 happened to awake; 1 had an uneasy feeling of lights where there ought not to be lights, and I peered through a bedroom window toward the western pastures.

It was my neighbor Jimmy Falls in his pickup truck. His headlamps bored two yellow cones of light through a cold and drizzling rain. He had 36 cows out there; most of them had already calved, but one cow was in trouble. He had heard her bawling cry, and interpreted its meaning; and he had come out in the pickup truck, precisely as the shepherds in Luke, to watch over his flock by night.

I asked him about it the next day. It had been a case of twin calves, successfully delivered. He took one of the calves and put it to a cow whose own calf has been stillborn the day before, and mother and adopted child took instantly to each other. Life goes on.

This is a part of the meaning, it seems to me, of the whole life of Christ. Christmas and Easter, birth and resurrection, are all bound up together. When we deal in miracles, the birth of a black angus calf are matters of degree. We are dealing with patterns, with cycles, with a magnificent plan that embraces the turning of a planet and the gestation of a cow.

On the night that Christ was born, the shepherds and the wise men came on foot, or they came by camel, to attend the birth of a man by (Continued on page 5)

Opines Coast Is Key

By DAVID TOMUN Actoclated Press Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -North Carolinas coastal region may hold a key to the economic survival of the entire state in the decades just ahead, says Sl Charles Vickery, D-Orange.

Vickery makes this heavy^ weight assertion from a curious platform he is co-chairman of a study connmission assigned to find out whether the state should seek creation of a Sea World marine tourist attraction for North Carolina.

But the sute senator from Chapel Hill cant help viewing this rather modest task as he does many other things as a small piece of a mudi larger and grimmer picture The state's economy, Vick7 says, is in trouble.

Our economy basically rests on four areas of support, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

First thats agriculture, and I dont think anybody denies that in the next 20 years that area is goii^ to feel a considerate pinch, Vickery said, referring to government antimoking efforts and threats to reduce or dismantle the federal price supp(l program for tobacco.

Then theres textiles, he added. Everyone knows those products can be made more (CoitfliHied on page 5)

40 Years Ago Today

December 28,1937

One hundred and eight families were helped through the Thrift Shop during this Christmas season. Sixteen duplications were prevented and four known duplications occurred due to non-cooperating organizations. All organizations in Greenville but two did cooperate. The Thrift Shop secured the names of the children and sent cards to them for the Flanagan community Christmas tree.

William Knudsen, president of General Motors Corporation, announced employment in General Motors plants throughout the United States would be reduced by about 30,0(X) employees, effective January 1.

Knudsen said, The recession in business makes a readjustment of the working force necessary.

The reduction in Michigan, he said, will approximate 20,000 employees.

LyimCaveily

Free Trade Concept Strained

By JOHN CUNNIFF AP Business Analyst

NEW YORK (AP) The concept of international free trade as a vehicle for world prosperity is being strained by the realities.

So huge have been Japanese exports to the United States, at least in relation to its purchases, that organized labor is pushing for restrictive legislation, contending American jobs are being lost

Labor is not without support from government and business either, although American officials are currently seeking to negotiate restrictions on im

ports rather than issuing quotas or raising tariffs.

Japan, which has built up an $8 billion annual surplus with the United States, has rebelled against proposed limitations, indicating at one point that it could shave the surplus only by $1 billion.

Germany and some other European nations also are disturbed by the U.S. reluctance to permit certain goods, steel for example, to be imported at what are said to be prices below production costs.

Japan and Germany, insists the United States, should be doing more to expand their own economies, thereby

making them more likely markets for U.S. goods, instead of attempting to accumulate more and more dollars.

By declining in value, the dollar, meanwhile, has been seeking its own remedy to the trade imbalance, now running at an annual rate of better than $27 billioa

A declining dollar has the effect of making foreign goods cost more in the U.S. market, and U.S. goods cost less in markets abroad. Few monetary authorities, however, believe a declining dollar can do the job alone.

In fact, the continued dollar shrinkage could have domestic repercussions, one

of the more dangerous being a flight of capital from the United States, thus making it more difficult for business to borrow.

After exhibiting what some Europeans refer to as malign neglect, President Carter has now indicated the U.S. government will attempt to maintain greater order in foreign exchange markets by stabilizing the dollar.

Most trade authorities agree that a stable currency, preferably the dollar, is absolutely needed if international trade is to prosper. When values of widely used currencies fluctuate, trade is thrown into chaos.