Top-5 Reasons to Support and Buy The News-Journal This Week

Editorial: The regime that controls the Hoke County Commission is raining financial terrorism down on the newspaper to silence voices that don't always toe the party line.

The front-page, above-the-fold headline says it all—“Editorial: Freedom under fire.” In all honesty, Catharin Shepard is straightforward and polite in her detailed explanation of the assault. Her writing is family friendly, a habit I do not feel compelled to follow any longer.

This week’s The News-Journal worth picking up at a newsstand. It’s time for all good men and women to come to its aid and here are five good ways to do so (along with a bonus):

1. Stage a local Tiananmen Square protest by standing proudly in the front of the line, unmoving, screaming “Freedom” as you purchase a hard copy of this week’s The News-Journal. There won’t be any tank threatening your life, but we’ve intercepted communications that indicated jack-booted storm troopers are already gathering to burn any that remain. Don’t delay.

2. Stick it to the man: Subscribe, reinforce the resistance, stand up for freedom of the press and help Hoke County rejoin the Republic.

3. Better yet, enlist in the resistance by taking out a full-page ad in the newspaper, four color, that states simply, “The only freedom of all is in a free press”—Thomas Jefferson. Make sure the bottom, in fine print reads, “Paid for by the blood of patriots since 1776.”

4. Buy a copy of the newspaper and place it reverently at the base of the James A. (Love Me or Leave) Leach bronze bust we paid for at the new pool. Important Tip: Don’t mention the eerie way the sculpture makes him look like Lenin busts in the Kremlin, if you value your life anyway.

5. Attend a commission meeting and hold up a copy of this week’s The News-Journal every time one of them speechifies or yells in the unintelligible English you wish you could spank them for. Another Important Tip: Two of them would savor a public spanking. DO NOT make the offer.

6. Bonus: Contact Allen Thomas and let him know his decision not to support the attempted financial assassination of the county’s 120-year-old newspaper is greatly appreciated, but it does not grant him the right to wash his hands like Pontious Pilot. Tell him to grow a pair and find a way to bring the critical legal ads back to the county, where they belong—accessible to his constituents.

Shepard’s story is a frightening tale that explains why you should follow one or more of the tips. It includes villainous commissioners angered when they were asked how much taxpayers were paying them for incompetence. Those officials conveniently forgot public documents are, err, public, yours, mine, the newspaper’s. Oops, damn, let’s hire attorneys to keep things hidden before “Mom finds out.” Immature minds work that way, you know.

They even tossed out law-abiding constituents who mentioned secrecy in their decisions. Some residents were threatened with overnight stays at the local gulag, with an offer of reducing the sentence after the proper amount of groveling. Never mind due process, send out the Gestapo, contact the thought police, there’s a dissident in our midst.

Hoke County, in the first of its revenge moves, placed legal ads in a Cumberland County rag—paying extra cash to exact its first ounce of revengeful flesh. The order to do so was a verbal one from the commission, which I verified independently, by phone, with the person given the instructions by the dimwitted illuminati.

Your taxes are paying those extra fees, BTW. That also means you no longer have an easy and inexpensive means of finding legal notices—repossessions, county auctions, rezonings, etc.—that by law are supposed to appear in a qualifying newspaper near you.

Oops, you didn’t know a new apartment complex was going up next to your farmhouse? Sorry. We posted it in a paper distributed miles away because, well, getting even was more important than serving Hoke County residents.

The paper dutifully reported all the antics, but never lost focus on serving its neighbors. That’s a difficult task when a financial knife is being twisted in your back by politicians intent on maintaining a tight chokehold on the county by stifling free speech.

*For the record I don’t not write for, own any portion of or have any vested interest in The News-Journal. I do, however, understand the free flow of accurate information and the exchange of opinions is the very foundation of Democracy.