Letters to the Editor

Mark his words In a December 18, 2025, local radio interview with Fire Chief Marvin Harrison, Town Talk host John Charles Rose said, 'You need a new station.' Chief Harrison responded, 'Yes we do...we are going to have a new fire station soon and it's going to be special because we've had personnel that definitely deserve it, and that's all I care about.' According to him, we need a new fire station because his people deserve it. That's all he cares about? Not because it will make the fire department more efficient or effective. Not because it will save lives or property. Not because it will lower our homeowner insurance rates. No, his priority is clear. We need a new fire station because his employees deserve it. Wrong reason! But understandable when we consider the financial cesspool that spawned him and many of our recent hires. Regarding the 'need' for a new station, he said, 'It's one of the first things I noticed when I got to town. Because that's not what I'm accustomed to.' He was accustomed to needlessly and recklessly spending millions of taxpayers' hard earned money. As Interim Division Chief of Budget and Logistics, he was shoulder deep in $8,000,000 in Rocky Mount Fire Department cost overruns which, according to the NC State Auditor, are now costing Rocky Mount taxpayers millions and millions of dollars in increased taxes and fees. He also said, 'We need a new fleet in our department as soon as possible.' We can't keep employees and can't staff the vehicles we have now. No problem more spending won't solve, right Chief? Since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, we need to mark his words. Unless something changes soon, we will be paying for his profligate spending for decades. At least those who can't flee the county will. Commissioners, had you not abdicated your legal hiring/appointing authority and given it to our county manager on January 8, 2024, you could have prevented this fiasco. It's becoming clearer by the day who you represent, and it's not us. Joseph McMahon Kittrell When will Socialism succeed? Socialism is much in the news today, especially among younger people. More older people already understand that Socialism/Communism has been conclusively proven to be a complete, total and deadly failure. This then is mostly for younger people ignorant of the historical facts that their elders have lived through. Socialism is an ideology or a mental invention of a utopian organization. It pretends to allocate the wealth of the nation equally or evenly among all people so everything is 'fair.' This inherently means that no one is responsible to create wealth as it is awarded evenly by some presumably pure government. That government has to own and take from us all the income and wealth before it can redistribute it back to us. You are no longer responsible to create the income and you no longer get more than the government wants to give you. In short there is no incentive for you or anyone else to produce the wealth. A description of this by Russians under their failed USSR was 'The government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work for it.' Free market Capitalism is not a mental invention or an ideology. It is a recognition of human nature and the laws of nature. Its strength is that it creates an incentive for each of us to go to work each day and to produce wealth which we can then keep for our own use. In Capitalism everything is not even or equal but is 'fair' based on the value of the wealth contribution that each of us is individually able to make. We are all created equal in the sight of the God and the law but we are not all equal in ability. The result of incentivized individuality is the greatest, most creative economy in history, lifting the entire population to the greatest standard of living and life in history from bottom to top. The answer to when socialism will succeed is 'When pigs fly.' Bob Herford Henderson