Luke Judge

David Cheek owns and operates Southern Variety & Collectibles on Middleton Street — one wing of the downtown “L” in the upper Moore County municipality. He moved his gun and antique shop from the old theater building on Salisbury around the L to its new location after selling it to the nonprofit Robbins Village Theater Foundation. The foundation is restoring the theater as an attraction for the northern part of the county.

With advice from the state under the Small Town Main Street program, Robbins is working on a redesigned downtown area centered around the theater and other unique shops in the onetime mill town. Job losses there have been catastrophic, with some third of those who live there at or below federal poverty levels.

Cheek wanted to see new stores in Robbins, so he thought he would open one himself. now, partnering with son-in-law Jackie Davis and Stoney Horner, Cheek has opened Robbins Small Engines just across the railroad tracks opposite the historic Elise Depot. it held a grand opening Saturday.

Davis ran Outback Sportsman in Robbins in the old Ithaca textile plant and has a shooting preserve he manages. He works on bows and arrows for local hunters and that will also be part of the services offered at the new shop.

“Jackie has years of experience working on boats and guiding hunts,” Cheek said. “He repairs and will be selling fishing equipment. That includes worms, minnows and crickets — everything you’d need to catch a big one.”

“We’ve known each other probably 15 years at least,” he said. “He worked up at the saw shop, at Glover’s over in Biscoe and at Amicks in Asheboro before. now he can go to work in his hometown and stay closer to his wife Wanda.”

“If you don’t know how to replace the line on your weed eater, just bring it up,” he said. “We’ll replace it for you right there while you wait. It’ll take less time than going to some big box store and trying to figure out what to get and how to put it on.”

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An Agriculture Department program was supposed to bring broadband access to rural areas that didn’t have it. instead, it often brought broadband to suburbs that did.

An Education Department program spent $911 million to create schools-within-schools but achieved only "modest or neutral" academic improvement.

Another education program – designed to help parents and children learn reading together – spent $1.6 billion. But a study found it had little effect.

And another education program spent $157 million to help older children read. the result? "No difference in performance," one study said.

Republicans and Democrats are not in harmony about much of the federal budget, but they have now agreed that these things shouldn’t be in it. they slashed the programs in a short-term budget deal that was approved by the Senate and signed by President Obama on Wednesday.

Watchdog groups call it a start.

But they say this move is less a display of the "new" Washington’s budget-cutting bravery than a revelation of the old Washington’s inertia: these programs had survived for years, despite persistent troubles.

"It’s really what happens next that will show whether they’re serious" about cutting the budget, said Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. "these are the easy ones."

The budget deal, which will put off a government shutdown for at least two weeks, includes $4 billion in spending cuts. A few Democrats raised objections to the reductions, arguing that they will shortchange education.

The bill passed 335 to 91 in the House, and 91 to 9 in the Senate.

Among these reductions – the first casualties of this term’s congressional budget fight – four items stood out that together would have cost $433 million. Over the years, they have demonstrated how hard it is to kill a federal program.

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