Marion Progress

WHAT HE DOESN'T ADMIT
(The Cleveland Star)

Candidate McDonald makes a vote getting political speech, and votes are what he is after. He does not tell the whole truth about North Carolina but just enough to cause one not acquainted with all the facts to think that he is a man of destiny to save the state.

Candidate McDonald says the corporations are paying ten million dollars less taxes than they did in 1932. He doesn't admit that the reason for this is that the corporations were making money then and could and did pay. The reason for their not paying as much is because their profits were cut by the depression. Their property taxes, however are the same as any individual land owner and in addition they pay other taxes whether they show a profit or not. For instance, five textile plants, amounting to twenty percent of the mills in Cleveland county are in receivership now or have closed because of insufficient funds. We are told that 25 per cent of the Gaston county mills are in financial trouble.

Textile plants do not constitute all the corporations in North Carolina, but they give employment in normal times to 270,000 and if Dr. McDonald would strike them another tax blow while they are still down would he not also deal a deathblow to those employees who depend on industry for their wages?

Dr. McDonald, the promising candidate, says he would raise the income tax to ten per cent on incomes in the higher brackets. He does not admit that the income tax is already as high as our constitution will permit.

The young man who has never made a Democratic speech in his life except in the interest of his own candidacy does not admit that the state now raises 44.7 percent of its general fund revenue from corporations. No other state raises as large a percentage.

He insinuates there are high and inefficient men holding positions of trust and honor in Raleigh. No other state has as low a percentage of cost for general administrative purposes as North Carolina, 4.5 per cent of its general fund.

No other state spends as large a percentage of its total general fund revenue for educational purposes as does North Carolina. Dr. McDonald will not admit that record when he promises to cut the taxes from the masses and make somebody else pay for better schools.

He does not admit that the governor cannot drive through every piece of legislation he advocates. The Chief Executive can recommend to the General Assembly, but he can't vote or veto. Suppose he should be elected. Certainly he would recommend everything he has promised to do, but the legislators from every part of North Carolina would see how visionary, impractical and fanciful his college mind is and would refuse. Then his alibi would be, "well I did the best I could. I recommended my platform and that bunch wouldn't accept it. I have done the best I can. Under our constitution a governor can't succeed himself, but you elect my picked man as my successor, give him a sympathetic legislature and we will yet do the things I promised."

By that time, four years will have elapsed, if his movement hasn't collapsed. Land taxes might be restored schools shifted back to the counties to support, roads returned to their original districts, state's credit gone its bonds (70 per cent of which are held by North Carolinians) selling at eighty cents on the dollar again.

Yes, there are many things Dr. McDonald does not tell or admit. He wants the position of governor so bad that he is promising everything and explaining nothing.