The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 26, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Aldermaston, England, that a violent explosion had rocked Britain's large hydrogen bomb research base this date after someone had dropped an explosive charge, killing two men and injuring one other. Officials announced that there had been no radioactive hazard to the staff or the general public. The explosion had caused doors and windows to rattle in the village 2 miles away, where 300 people lived. Fire engines had screamed through the village streets, but there had been no panic. One 19-year old boy, a clerk at the ivy-covered post office, said that they got used to living close to the facility. The British Atomic Energy Commission said that the accident had occurred as the explosive was being unloaded from a vehicle. The vehicle had been destroyed and a fire had broken out, damaging a nearby building extensively. The explosive had been of a conventional type and no radioactive materials had been involved, according to the Commission. The base was on a leafy lane near the village of Aldermaston and was screened by trees. Reading on the Thames, ten miles from the plant, was a manufacturing center with 100,000 people. The base housed Britain's largest hydrogen bomb plant. In an accident at the plant the previous month, seven scientists in a laboratory had been contaminated by a sudden release of radioactivity. The Commission had described it as just a minor accident. The village was a site picked by anti-nuclear campaigners the previous summer, marching from London in slow procession to emphasize their opposition to the hydrogen bomb.
At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, it was reported that the Air Force had once again postponed indefinitely the launch of the Discoverer satellite which it was hoped would go into polar orbit. The two-stage rocket system had come within 30 seconds of launch on two different occasions the previous day and in each case, authorities had halted the countdown for undisclosed reasons of a technical nature, according to the Air Force. The launch attempt was being conducted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and launch preparations were expected to be resumed as readiness of the vehicle permitted. The launch had originally been set for January 21 and had been postponed when a personnel error had permitted red fuming nitric acid from the second stage to contaminate the Thor intermediate range ballistic missile serving as a booster stage. A dozen satellites, planned for north-south orbit, had been scheduled for launch during the current year from Vandenberg.
In Mexico City, it was reported that striking Mexican rail workers had until noon this date to return to work or face dismissal. Two-thirds of the nation's rail system had been tied up by the strike, but a slight break in the strike had put some key trains back in operation on Wednesday night. The wage strike by many of the country's 70,000 railway workers had been the first major domestic crisis of President Adolfo Lopez Mateos since taking office on December 1. The walkout had begun at noon on Wednesday, affecting 9,170 miles of the 14,030-mile Government-owned rail system. The Government had promptly ruled that the walkout was illegal and had threatened the workers with dismissal if they were not back on the job by noon this date. Troops were guarding railway yards and stations, but only two minor incidents had been reported.
In Las Vegas, it was reported that hungry farm workers who had traveled hundreds of miles, desperate for a six-dollar per day job, only to find neither work nor shelter, had received brighter prospects this date, able to thank a slight, compassionate man dressed in black, the Reverend Richard Crowley. For days, they had barely enough food to keep them alive, as they camped in the open along ditch banks, without protection from winter rains and freezing nighttime temperatures. They took their drinking water from irrigation ditches used by cattle and many of their children had become sick. Cotton crop failures in Arizona had thrown the people out of work and they had heard rumors that crops were ready to be picked in Nevada's Moapa Valley near Overton, 65 miles northeast of Las Vegas, causing about 300 therefore to head north. They had found the harvest late and farm housing already bulging with hundreds of other workers who had followed the crops. Until the onion, radish and tomato crops ripened, there would be far more workers than jobs. Father Crowley, a Roman Catholic priest, had said that the only thing they had to bargain with was their hunger. He had visited the camps daily in a borrowed truck, with meager offerings of food and clothing which he had collected from donors. For a week, the State Labor commissioner had been on the scene, sent by Governor Grant Sawyer, largely at the urging of Father Crowley. The Labor commissioner said that he thought things were in pretty good shape at present. The migrants, American citizens of Mexican, black and white descent, now had tents set up by the National Guard and new housing would be finished within two or three weeks. The harvest was beginning, providing work. The workers averaged six or seven dollars per day and several members of a family usually worked during a long day, according to the Labor commissioner. Authorities were beginning inoculations against typhoid. The executive secretary of the President's Committee on Migratory Labor, Tod Potter, had planned an on-the-spot survey this date for Secretary of Labor James Mitchell.
In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that the appearance of extra Highway Patrolmen and a steady rain had served to minimize activities of strikers at the Henderson-Harriet Cotton Mills this date. Crowds of about 150 persons each had stood in a pouring rain and watched as about 100 or so workers had reported to their jobs at the North Henderson and South Henderson plants of the mills. Only three instances of rock-throwing had been observed. Boyd Payton of Charlotte, the regional vice-president of the Textile Workers Union of America, had been cheered when he arrived at the picket line during the morning. He had been lured to the door of his motel room early on Tuesday and struck on the head with a pop bottle, and had been released from a hospital the previous day. Governor Luther Hodges had sent in 14 extra Highway Patrolmen the previous night, bringing to 29 the number on the scene. Nine patrol cars lined up bumper-to-bumper to shield workers arriving at the South Henderson plant. Meanwhile, a Federal conciliator was scheduled to arrive this date to participate in the negotiations. Already present were a member of the North Carolina mediation board and another Federal mediator. Mr. Payton said that the much-disputed arbitration clause in the workers' contract would be discussed. Following the previous day's meeting, Mr. Payton had said that a new approach to the arbitration clause, which was the primary bone of contention, had been explored. About 1,200 workers had struck the mills on November 17, after management had insisted that a longstanding clause calling for arbitration in settling disputes would be omitted from the new contract. There was more violence on the picket lines the previous day at the company's two plants, which had reopened on February 16, with several cars carrying non-strikers having been pelted with pop bottles and rocks. Police had quelled those outbursts.
In Lincolnton, N.C., it was reported that the driver of a car involved in an assault remained at large this date as State Highway Patrolmen pushed their search for the brutal assailant. A patrolman, 28, the father of two, lay in a local hospital recovering from multiple injuries after being run down by a car in Lincoln County the previous day. The unprovoked incident had baffled members of the Patrol, and they had worked most of the night searching for a car which the struck patrolman had described as a 1955 Chevrolet, but had turned up nothing. The patrolman had stopped to investigate a car with two men inside as they parked facing out of a little lane leading onto an isolated rural road. The patrolman had left his car and walked toward the parked car, stopped and returned to his vehicle to obtain something he had forgotten. Without warning, the two men had gunned the Chevrolet and had run him down. He said that he remembered rolling over the hood of the car, had blacked out and regained consciousness in a ditch, with blood on one of his hands. He managed to crawl to his car and had driven 2 miles from the spot where the attack had taken place, although not recalling any of it the previous day. Another patrolman had found the stricken patrolman on the road after the latter had managed to call Salisbury headquarters via radio. The other patrolman had found the stricken officer half out of his car, leaning over the door, seemingly in a daze, with his uniform dirty and bloody. A sergeant said that it appeared that the officer had run across bootleggers waiting to make or pick up a delivery, but that the belief was based on hunches. Roadblocks had been established over a 20-mile area, but had since been removed. The patrolman had suffered a slight concussion but had a good night, according to hospital officials, and might be released and sent home later this date or the following day. He had suffered multiple bruises.
Bill Hughes of The News reports that a man had been arrested and all except $55 of the loot he was accused of taking in a robbery of a Weaverville branch bank the previous day, had been recovered, according to the Charlotte FBI office this date. The 52-year old man had been arrested during the morning by police and FBI agents and charged with the robbery, with most of the stolen loot having been found scattered about the Weaverville City dump. Officers had picked up $2,782 from the dump and the bank had listed the amount taken as $2,837. Some of the bills recovered had still been in the paper bag allegedly used by the man in the robbery. A .38-caliber Belgian automatic pistol had also been found with the bag. The man was arrested on a street in Asheville, was questioned and then officers sped to the dump to locate the loot. A bank teller and the manager had been held at the branch bank at gunpoint the previous day by a bandit fitting the arrested man's description. Officers said they had also impounded the man's 1947 black Chevrolet.
John Kilgo of The News reports that the City would be about $15,000 richer if persons who owed fines for parking tickets the previous year would settle their debts. The captain of the traffic division said this date that about $7,500 worth of outstanding parking tickets were in the hands of people living in Charlotte, with the remainder held by people residing out of state, the latter being hard to collect. The captain warned that persons who had failed to pay their tickets needed to settle up in a hurry, indicating that the department had sent out repeated letters telling them to pay their tickets, but they still had drawers full of tickets which had not been paid. One man could have settled his debt with the city the previous day for eight dollars, but now a warrant had been signed against him and it would cost him $21. The captain said that most people could get off for one or two dollars at present, but when he signed a warrant against them, it would cost them $13 in additional fines.
Dr. William P. Angers, a counseling psychologist in New York City, provides this date's edition of the "Lenten Guideposts", indicating that on one of the busy Manhattan streets recently, he had seen a young man lean shakily against a doorway and then slowly slide to the sidewalk. He had hastened to help, but when he touched the man lightly, he had gazed at him blearily and mumbled: "Go 'way. Don't need help." He then closed his eyes and sighed that he was drunk. Dr. Angers had indicated to him that he did need help and encouraged him to see what some hot coffee could do for him. He learned that he was 22, three months out of the Marines, and was drunk in the middle of the afternoon. When he began to reach sobriety, in response to the question of what his trouble was, he said: "The world's against me, that's all. It's as simple as that." He finds that it was not so simple, that his real problem had been that he had a wife, two children and no job, had tried hard but that no one would hire him, and now he had given up. Dr. Angers urged him to give him a call, that he was in the business of helping people with job problems, handing him a card which read: "Consulting Psychologist, Vocational Service Center". The Center was a division of the YMCA and had come into being because of the hordes of job-hungry veterans returning to civilian life after World War II. At present, 5,000 men and women of all ages came to them each year for counseling, to take their tests and to browse through their files containing more than 40,000 job classifications. Their primary aim was not just to find jobs for people but just the right jobs, important in finding employment. Within a few days, the Marine had come to his office and Dr. Angers discovered that while he had been in service, he had been a dental assistant briefly and had so enjoyed the work that he wanted to become a dental technician in civilian life, but had always been turned away because he lacked enough experience and because no one was willing to give him on-the-job training. Dr. Angers arranged for him to take their tests, for which the Veterans Administration paid the fee, and those tests had shown that he possessed sound intelligence, an agreeable and friendly personality and would probably make a good dental technician. The VSC, working with the VA, had found him the job he was seeking and a government subsidy had made it possible for a dentist to hire him and provide him training simultaneously. The Marine had not been a typical case of unemployment, as in their work, there was no such thing, with each individual having a different problem, though with certain aspects repeated. Feeling that people were against him, the Marine had felt defeatism when obstacles stood in the way of his desires. His second failure had been one of ignorance, not knowing of the VA and VSC, which were ready to assist him. Whenever a person came to their service for assistance, Dr. Angers tried to ascertain whether they were looking for the right job and if they understood what their qualifications were. But there were other cases of a person who could not find a job after having been dismissed from a position. The rest of the piece is on an inside page.
In Wichita, Kans., it was reported that Dr. Henry Pronko of the Wichita University psychology department had stated that the effect of the tranquilizing drug meprobamate on a "normal person" appeared to depend on "how much faith" the subject had in the drug. "Actually, cottage cheese would relax a person if he had enough faith in it," according to the professor. He and Dr. Grant Kenyon, an assistant professor, had tested the effects of the drug on 51 volunteer students in an experiment undertaken for the National Institute of Mental Health. Both professors stressed in their report that the experiment had no bearing on immediate therapeutic situations and referred only to the drug in a controlled situation involving "normal people". Dr. Pronko said that when the drug was taken according to prescription, patients usually took it over a prolonged period of time, and their experiment had involved a "one-shot affair".
A photograph on the page appears to show an anguished Vice-President Nixon being manhandled by police officers somewhere. But since we cannot read yet, you will have to determine what the fracas was about yourself. Who knows? Maybe it was because of the story presented on page 3-A.
On the editorial page, "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Public?" finds that the same general rhetorical effort had been performed since 1953 in the Legislature regarding legislative secrecy, with the outcome never in doubt, that there was no change, it being customary that a voice vote would permit legislative committees to hide the public's business from the public's eyes.
The ritual had been repeated on Tuesday in the State House, with the usual outcome. It finds it difficult to understand the insistence on committee secrecy rules, seldom, if ever, invoked except in meetings of the subcommittee of the Joint Appropriations Committee, and then only to enforce anonymity. It appeared to be an occupational disease of most legislators to think that they somehow acquired a property right over what they saw and did, which was nonsense and a betrayal of the public interest.
It finds that when a person went to the Legislature, they walked onto a stage and could not hide, having to take a few rotten eggs from time to time, not expected to be sheltered from public opinion as the people wanted to see what the person was doing and how they were doing it. It was the way people learned of government and developed the ability to vote intelligently. It finds that the public clearly had a right, without reservation, to know what went on in the committees of the Legislature, as many decisions were made there and many pressures applied to the decision-making process. Those pressures needed to be seen, identified, discussed and evaluated in the open.
It finds it regrettable that Mecklenburg Representative Frank Snepp had found it necessary to resurrect perhaps the most vapid argument in favor of secrecy in government, as he had pointed out that the Constitution had been drafted in "executive session". He was correct, as the document had been written in a session so bound in secrecy that no minutes were maintained and members were enjoined by their honor not to reveal the way they had voted. But when it was learned that the constitutional convention had met in secrecy, a bitter wave of criticism had swept through the 13 colonies, such that on August 30, 1787, Thomas Jefferson had written to John Adams: "I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their young members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions and the ignorance of the value of public discussion."
In consequence, several states, North Carolina among them, had refused to ratify the first draft of the Constitution because its framers, behind closed doors, had cut away all of the great principles of freedom for which the colonists had so valiantly fought in the Revolution. During that angry controversy, the Bill of Rights had originated.
Some secrecy still existed at all levels of government, but it suggests that it would disappear in time as being utterly contrary to the interests of a free people.
"Harvey W. Moore: The Loss Is Great" indicates that the deceased former Mayor of Charlotte, who had just died at the age of 74, had never really retired from the public scene and was still interested in community betterment and was actively involved in daily struggles for civic progress, despite his final term as Mayor having ended 34 years earlier, in 1925. It finds that such earnest and continuing concern for the practical problems of a city's political and economic well-being was all too rare at present, one reason why Mr. Moore's loss had been so great.
Mr. Moore had learned early in life that good citizens were not merely spectators but informed participants in government and in civic affairs generally. In addition to the time he gave to civic affairs, he also had been a successful businessman, a leader in the state's textile industry and had been rewarded with some of the highest honors that industry could offer, having served as president of both the North Carolina Cotton Manufacturers Association and the Carded Yarn Manufacturers Association. He had also been founder of the Cotton-Textile Institute and had headed the American Cotton Manufacturers Association as chairman of the board. In 1948, he had been a member of the textile mission from the U.S. to England.
"His death robs the community, the state and the nation of a good and useful citizen."
"An Escape Valve for Future Striking" finds that whether or not the Henderson Mills strike was settled speedily, there was something left to consider for arbiters and state government. When negotiations stalled or collapsed, the local tenor of feelings was well known, with everyone concerned knowing when tension was in the air and when there was the threat of violence. It urges that the time to move was before ugliness erupted and before harsh words turned into harsher action. The situations evolving into fighting usually were born of events from negotiations, from feelings which were inevitable when primary issues such as wages became deadlocked. One escape valve would be to move the site of bargaining from the local scene, divorcing it as much as possible from the prevailing emotions, as negotiations in calm surroundings could be more effective.
It finds that Governor Hodges had been correct in moving in the State Highway Patrol to help combat the violence at Henderson, but upon reflection, it suggests that it might have proved a saving grace for the Governor also to have recommended a shift of union and management negotiations to Raleigh. Removed from the emotional atmosphere of Henderson, the orderly process of collective bargaining could have been sped up.
It finds that any lesson taught from the Henderson strike had been learned the hard way and that other ideas to prevent violence on the industrial scene ought be advanced before it occurred again. "People already cracked by brickbats make poor listeners."
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Gone with the Can Opener", indicates that most people found Sunday dinner to remind of the way some thumb-handed men played piano strictly by ear, "something you eat merely because eating is a habit. It is arranged the hit and miss way a womanless wedding is thrown together for a small town charity."
It indicates that Sunday dinner had once been as big as King Kong and "juicy as the first roasting ear. The plans and preparations of the housewife may not have been so enormous as the quartermaster program for the Normandy invasions, but the mother was the epitome of indefatigable dedication. She evidently assumed the next seven days would take on the proportions of an Old Testament famine. And she had no more use for a can opener than Billy Sunday had for a brewery wagon."
The woman at the kitchen range, which seemed "bigger than the battlefield at Manassas", was more powerful and important than the President, completely absorbed as a master craftsman preparing a supreme offering with unrecognizable knowledge and certainty.
"After dinner everyone was as stupefied as Scattergood Baines after being turned loose in a pancake factory. No one would have had the energy to turn on TV had it existed. But, that was a stodgy era when simple people were addicted to acute indigestion rather more than cards and spades on the moon."
Perhaps the latter reference is to
"shooting the moon" in the game of hearts, but otherwise,
we can make little sense of it from any current events regarding the
moon shots being attempted by the U.S. and Russia in their
satellite programs. No one was playing card games
Drew Pearson again looks at the appointment by the President of Admiral Lewis Strauss, former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, to become the new Secretary of Commerce, indicating that many people in Congress had wondered why he had been appointed when no person in the Administration had been so severely criticized by Congress previously.
He indicates that the inside reason was that former Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who had influenced the President's economic policies more than anyone else in or out of the Government, had recommended Admiral Strauss for the position and the President had accepted the recommendation immediately. Ordinarily, the President did not like to tangle with Congress regarding appointments, but when Mr. Humphrey had recommended the Admiral, he had not hesitated.
Meanwhile, Congress had charged the Secretary-designate with several deceptions, five of which he had listed the previous day. The latter of which had involved the Admiral's speech in October, 1956, in which he had claimed that the Shippingport, Pa., atomic reactor built by Westinghouse on a subsidy of 100 million dollars from the Government, would be the world's first large nuclear project power plant "exclusively for civilian use". But Representative Mel Price of Illinois, a member of the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, had said that he supposed that the Admiral thought that by using the word "exclusively", he could slough over the fact that the British were placing in operation during that same month a full-scale nuclear power plant which would produce both electricity and plutonium. He had asked, "Would it be that he is trying to gloss over the fact that this country is falling behind Britain and Russia in nuclear power development through the stagnation of our own program which he, himself, is largely responsible for."
Later, Kenneth Davis, a subordinate of Admiral Strauss and director of AEC reactor development, had flatly contradicted the Admiral, indicating that Britain was already seven years ahead of the U.S.
Another area of deception which Congress had found was regarding the danger of strontium 90, the deadly radioactive poison which got into children's bones and might affect future generations. For a long time the Admiral had fought a battle inside the AEC against revealing the danger of strontium 90 to the public. Now, five years later, the President had recognized the danger by entering into negotiations with Russia for the ending of future nuclear testing.
Walter Lippmann finds that demands for the immediate appointment of a new secretary of state were arising from an incomplete analysis of the situation, as Secretary of State Dulles had administered the office under the President in such a way that no person could replace him during his lifetime. Whether as titular Secretary or as senior advisor to the President, he was the first authority in foreign policy, impossible to replace.
He indicates that the situation was unique in modern American history, as no President had ever before delegated to his Secretary of State so much power over the issues of war and peace, a power, though delegated by the President, which had become deeply connected with the personality of Mr. Dulles. It could not easily be disconnected from his personality and there was no other man to whom the President could now delegate it. A new person would be subject to the actual views of Mr. Dulles or to the views attributed to him by those who believed they knew all that was in his mind.
In one way or another, therefore, a way would have to be improvised under which, for the time being, Mr. Dulles would retain the final responsibility of the great decisions, an awkward arrangement, but under the circumstances, the best which was possible of the moment. It could not be resolved by appointing an Department outsider, such as U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., John J. McCloy or General Alfred Gruenther, as they would be as subject as Undersecretary of State Christian Herter to the overriding authority of Mr. Dulles. They would also need many months of schooling in the work of the Department before they could hope to administer it. Thus, there could only be a working arrangement between the White House, Walter Reed Hospital, where Mr. Dulles was being treated, and the State Department, to last as long as Mr. Dulles believed he could perform his role and did not determine to retire totally from public life. It was hard to imagine how the hybrid arrangement would work at the proposed foreign ministers meeting with the Soviets and the NATO allies, but it was not impossible to imagine such an arrangement. Had Mr. Dulles not been stricken, it would have been unlikely that much would come of such a meeting between him and Andrei Gromyko of Russia, who was not among the highest ranks among Soviet rulers.
Negotiation about the ultimate issues of war and peace had to be between the leaders of the nations, at least those with final power to make decisions, in the case of Russia, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Britain, Premier Charles de Gaulle of France, and what he terms the regents who exercised the legal powers of the Presidency and the personal powers of Mr. Dulles.
The visit of Mr. Macmillan to Moscow had been decided on before Mr. Dulles had become ill but it was propitious, now that Mr. Dulles was ill, for while in the technical sense, the latter was not present, it was the type of communication which Mr. Macmillan was having with Mr. Khrushchev which had to come before a successful negotiation. It would be necessary even if the Kremlin had accepted at once the invitation to a foreign ministers conference, for such a conference would have little prospect of success if there were no understanding reached in advance at the summit of the great powers.
Joseph Alsop begins by quoting Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota to Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, that they should not come up with their "scheme" until they had a chance to "operate" on Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. The two unlikely Democratic allies in the Senate, one a liberal and the other a conservative, were teaming up because the farm program of the Secretary had gotten out of hand.
All conservatives had been aroused by the extravagant farm subsidies paid during the Truman Administration to agriculture, but the total cost had never gone beyond 1.25 billion dollars. The Brannan Plan of former Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan, predecessor of Mr. Benson, had been expected to strangle American agriculture in creeping socialism and bankrupt the Treasury, but had never reached a cost beyond about 2 billion dollars. By contrast, the conservative, sound-dollar, free enterprise policies of Secretary Benson had produced a requested budget of just under 7 billion dollars for agricultural appropriations for the following fiscal year. The 9 billion dollars worth of surpluses which Mr. Benson had managed to accumulate would cost above 1.25 billion dollars in mere storage and handling charges, a larger sum than President Truman had ever paid to farmers themselves.
Since the spenders had been driven out of the Agriculture Department at the beginning of the Eisenhower Administration in 1953, administrative costs had risen by about 900 percent. Mr. Benson's bill for farm subsidies the following year was around 4 billion dollars, or about twice the estimated costs of the Brannan Plan.
Even the farm-state Senators had begun to be alarmed by the inflation of the expense of the farm program, and thus were not only preparing to operate on Mr. Benson, but were also preparing a substitute program of their own.
The groundwork was being done by Senators Talmadge, Humphrey, Stuart Symington of Missouri and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. Senator Talmadge, one of the sharpest intellects in the modern Senate, was the primary director and inspirer of the effort. Since the Congress was rarely able to impose new major policies on the executive branch, it was doubtful whether the effort of the four Senators would bear immediate legislative fruit, but even if the bill they were preparing did not pass, it was virtually certain to become the Democratic farm plank at the nominating convention in 1960.
The scheme of the proposed legislation involved retention of existing special schemes for tobacco, wool and other special crops, while all other crop controls would be jettisoned and all the main crops sold on the free market at home and abroad. Subsidies in the form of parity payments would then be provided to producers of wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, corn and milk, but only on that share of the crop consumed domestically. Special arrangements were provided to liquidate Mr. Benson's staggering surplus stores in a gradual manner. Above all, it was provided that no individual farmer could receive a subsidy payment in excess of $12,500. Primarily because the large farmers were left to shift for themselves, the whole scheme was estimated to cost only about 2 billion dollars at present prices, or half the costs of the subsidies which had been requested by Mr. Benson.
The sole design of the scheme was to preserve and assist an endangered American asset, the independent farming population. Socially, biologically, and historically, it was well worth the national investment. All previous farm programs, having no limitation on the subsidy check, had instead mainly assisted the large, semi-industrialized farmers. The one proposed was intended to aid only the family-sized farm. Whether or not the scheme was well-designed, its principle, he finds, was certainly correct.
Doris Fleeson indicates that Senator Proxmire, in his attack on the monopolistic character of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's management of the Senate, had been far more closely attuned to the wave length of the 35 Democratic governors than to that of the 64 Democratic Senators. The governors were those who foresaw danger in the compromises of Senator Johnson, which placed the party in the center politically. But governors were much closer to the political range of the voters and more isolated than Senators. Constituents could not care less how governors got their political effects, but paid attention to the results.
She indicates that Washington had always tended to become absorbed in the technical maneuvering of the House and the Senate, as much as what was actually done. It had been dazzled by Senator Johnson's technical proficiency, almost entirely responsible for the praise and press which he had received. He had rarely permitted Democratic conflict to emerge on the Senate floor, utilizing his skill in cloakroom maneuvers to avert it. Even so, he could not get so much attention if the performance at the White House had not been so lackluster, having become a bore to both press and public.
It was equally true that if a Democratic president occupied the White House, he, and not Senator Johnson, would be the focus of attention. What such a president would say and do would be the party line, and if he followed the Democratic tradition, he would be a strong and commanding leader, with Senator Johnson forced to fall in line.
The point of Senator Proxmire was that Senator Johnson was in a rut, arguing that the latter was compromising major issues from habit no longer dictated by necessity, now that there was a strong Democratic majority. It was a bold stand to take, as Senator Johnson had power and could be on occasion vindictive. Senator Proxmire, however, had the courage to do what many Democratic Senators had been too timorous to attempt. Because they had not been challenged by a strong President, they had taken the easy way with Senator Johnson, getting by with it because of the Senator's technique of obliterating the sharp and controversial points of the issues, leaving the public apathetic and poorly informed.
"With no strong winds then blowing from any direction, it has been more comfortable for Senators to quell their doubts and fears about the real wisdom of Johnson's course while awaiting whatever direction time and circumstance may provide."
A letter writer thanks the newspaper on behalf of the Blood Center, Motor Service and Gray Lady services, for its picture of their new volunteer and canteen chairman, indicating that a particular woman had been of great help in their current recruitment of volunteers.
A letter writer from Clinton, S.C., indicates that for 40 years he had read the teachings of Jesus and had tried to understand what he had taught, reaching the conclusion that he had been a reformer trying to get the Pharisees away from tradition. "Here in the South the people hold tradition sacred and woe to law or even justice if it lays its profane hands on it."
Assuming by the latter quote that he is knocking the courts for holding that the 14th Amendment protects all persons against discrimination by providing for equal protection of the law, and thus forbids segregation in public facilties or enforcement of private discrimination through state action, we have trouble recalling any such notion within the teachings of Jesus, unless, of course, one resorts to those old and ridiculous arguments being put forward during and before the Civil War to justify slavery on the basis of the Bible teachings regarding the Egyptians and old Pharaoh, perverted by the illiterate and vastly gullible as they were.
It is the same sort of nonsense, incidentally, which daily seems to instruct Magaville, USA, in its perverted view of American life and law, not seeming to realize that we all live under a Constitution as a social compact and must abide by it and all of its contents should the society continue as a strong and vibrant democracy, not directed at the whimsy of one crazy dictator, self-proclaimed, whom the residents of Magaville would be perfectly content to see as dictator permanently for as long as he might live, as he feeds them daily a diet of exactly what they want to hear, exactly the things they themselves believe, to feel safe and comfy in their beds at night, not in danger from marauders coming over the border at will to plunder, loot, rape and murder them, while the horrible opposition party people take away their rights to be free, tell them that their perfectly patriotic beliefs are fanciful bugaboos of the night while exploiting them as slaves to do their will for their economic aggrandisement, thus must be eliminated by all expedient means from the face of the earth. Magaville, we have been forced to conclude from the facts, is plainly an attempt to revivify the Nazi Party and all of the evil which it represents in history. When you analyze it objectively, there is really no other conclusion to be reached.
These people are clearly not simply after better economy, as they got that under President Biden and President Obama. They are clearly not after a strong foreign policy, as they got that under both of those Presidents. These people are reactionaries to any form of what is considered Constitutional authority, the law of the land. They hate it because it restricts them in their attempts to live as they damn well want, thinking that is the essence of freedom, their freedom, and to hell with their neighbor's. That is the way they think. It was the way the Nazis thought. Study closely your history books starting around 1923 and moving forward through 1945, and you also will be able to come to no other conclusion which is rational about these residents of Magaville.
As a good starting point, they are fond of saying, as is Trump, that we must give "priority" in the United States to "citizens", when the Fifth Amendment due process clause and the 14th Amendment due process and equal protection clauses apply to "any person" within the United States, not just citizens. Another example is their routine insistence that there is no such thing in the Constitution as separation of church and state, when plainly the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment could be logically interpreted in no other way, forbidding any law relating to the establishment of a religion, in turn carried over, via the 14th Amendment, to state and local governments. Yet again, the routine insistence of these knights of the nuts and nitwits that Trump could serve yet another term in the White House, despite the limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, preventing any person from serving more than two elected terms in the office. There are no exceptions and there are no ways to saw that language in half to make of it an extension longer than eight years, even by the magical whimsy of the artless Magavillians. It simply does not work, unless, in your mind, you are completely insane, as most of the ardent supporters of the nut in the White House are, every bit as much so as were the Nazis vis-à-vis Adolf Hitler.
Fox Prop and its ilk, where Magaville exclusively receives its "news"—or as expressed by one Magavillian recently in a video, the places where they get their news and then check the other networks to see what lies they are telling, definitionally thus being brainwashed—, are the latter-day equivalent of Herr Doktor Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl combined. They exist to tell idiots what they wish to hear, with no other purpose conceivable. They are certainly not "news" organs. Anyone who relies on them for their information is a steadily misinformed ogre, with misshapen views not at all consonant with any form of reality, forming about 30 percent, apparently, of the electorate. We have no doubt that they believe what they hear, because it is what they want to hear, what they have waited all of their lives to hear, to be confirmed in their misshapen, anti-democratic beliefs, that reliance on the Constitution is an abomination, placing man's law above that of God, thus in violation of the first commandment, that the only salvageable part of the Constitution is the Second Amendment which confers on them by royal edict the unfettered rights to bear arms, regardless of that bit about a "well-regulated militia", thus providing them the right to kill their neighbor whenever their neighbor intrudes on their rights or votes for or promotes someone other than their chosen leader. "Tear down them signs and shoot 'em dead to preserve America's free speech rights, not the Commies'es."
In deference to the letter writer, incidentally, who appears to write under a pseudonym, he or she often writes short letters full of quotes from the Bible, Karl Marx or other sources, gleaning from them, in juxtaposition to current events, some stated aphoristic bit of attempted wisdom. Whether the writer is knocking the courts or knocking Jesus, or neither, trying to be ironic, based on some of his or her prior commentary, we cannot say for sure. The writer, to be fair, has never previously offered any opinion of the kind we attribute to the last quoted sentence this date, instead generally content to criticize the Eisenhower Administration for its foreign and economic policies, never touching on the issue of segregation, on which so many letter writers were not the least loath to engage. But, whatever the case, our attribution does serve as a point of departure to set Trumpville in proper perspective, as the heart of the Deal in their town is discrimination against any Other than I, to the exclusion of Thou
We think it is high time to dust off and reinvigorate the Heberling-Etzioni draft legislation from 1975 and put a few of these Trump crackers in jail. What dost thou think?
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