Thus far, reductions were about 4.5 billion dollars, some of which was padding. Congressman Albert Gore of Tennessee had stated that the actual cuts amounted to no more than two billion. The Congressional Quarterly stated that it was about 2.8 billion in the House proposals. The Senate would likely restore about a billion of the House cuts. Early redemption of terminal leave bonds for veterans would cost an additional 1.8 billion and the new foreign aid package had so far run to 750 million.

It thus appeared that the Government would spend more during the year than the President's budget had sought, that despite Republican economy measures threatening to wreck essential activities.

About 85 percent of the budget went to pay for the late war, leaving little room for paring.

A balanced budget, concludes the piece, was not in sight.

As the American public was finding out, the Republican advertising of the 1946 campaign was full of a lot of hot air, with nowhere for it to escape except through the less politically stout, attacking "communists" in Hollywood and elsewhere on the one hand while refusing to enact desperately needed housing legislation and removing controls from the economy, passing twice a tax-cut for the rich. Their main goal, of course, was to embarrass the President as much as possible, to be as cantankerous as possible, in the hope that the tactic would gain them the White House in 1948 for the first time since 1928. Times, however, and the public mood had radically changed in the intervening twenty years.

A machine was developed by Bell Laboratories to permit grading of the dark mica, but the mica lobby went to work degrading that mica, keeping it off the market. The machine was not initially used therefore by the Government.

But the editor of The Tri-County News, S. T. Henry, had believed in the machine's performance and sought to promote it in the weekly newspaper, published in Spruce Pine. He was dismissed as a crackpot, however, when he tried initially to get Congress to listen, until he was able to attract the attention of Senator Truman and the War Investigating Committee, charged with maintaining efficiency in conducting the war. Soon, the mica-grading machine went into production and more than two-thirds of the capacitors used in various communications equipment had been manufactured with the dark domestic mica, with no major loss in performance.

The Justice Department had also initiated anti-trust action against the mica monopoly and, the previous month, most of the defendants had pleaded guilty and agreed to consent decrees breaking up the monopolies.

It concludes that any newspaper would be proud of such an accomplishment. That it had been done by a small weekly was quite remarkable.

The piece opines that any such ban should apply to both management and labor, not just labor. But such a ban would clearly violate the Constitution, and so should be prohibited. The piece thinks it likely that the Supreme Court would rule the provision violative of free speech.

Historically, it should be noted, the Supreme Court has made a distinction between commercial free speech and ordinary individual and political free speech, finding, for the fact of the influence of money in commercial propaganda, there to be less freedom in the realm of purely commercial free speech, that it is subject to some regulation via the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, giving Congress the power to make laws to regulate activity substantially impacting interstate commerce. Principally, such limits apply in the realm of advertising. A distinction, however, has been made when the corporate or union speech is political.

The President told Secretary Marshall that the U.S. did have a policy, favoring a Jewish homeland, that his policy was the nation's foreign policy. The Secretary agreed, but when he offered to make a special statement on Palestine, the President expressed the opinion that it was too late. The two men, however, remained friends.

He next informs of the vice-chairman and acting chairman of the DNC, Gael Sullivan, having been charged with drunk driving after he went off the road while driving home in Woonsocket, R.I. Mr. Sullivan was a teetotaler and contended that he simply fell asleep at the wheel. The court fined him $100, a compromise, presumably finding him guilty of reckless driving.

By contrast, a brigadier general, with powerful friends in D.C., had managed to have his D.C. case of drunk driving postponed and, meantime, had been transferred to Germany. The District was awaiting his return to proceed with the trial, refusing to drop the charges, despite being cajoled to do so by powerful forces.

Secretary of War Robert Patterson, he notes, had protected a colonel, under indictment as a member of the Long gang in Louisiana, involving the oil scandal for which Governor Richard Leche of that state was jailed. The Secretary had prevented the matter from proceeding to trial.

Secretary of War Patterson, it should be noted, resigned this date because of the merger of the two branches of the military, to become effective in September.

He next relates of the case of the Greek Ambassador to the U.S., Cimon Diamontopoulos, who had died of a heart attack in New York in December. Greek Premier Constantin Tsaldaris and the Ambassador had been meeting with Secretary of State James Byrnes in New York, trying to obtain more territory for Greece at the expense of Bulgaria. When Secretary Byrnes refused the request, Premier Tsaldaris cried, prompting Mr. Byrnes to suggest that Premier Tsaldaris prepare a request to the Big Four nations and utilize the services of the experienced Ambassador to do so. They left the meeting, the Ambassador appearing in good health and the Premier appearing poorly. A few hours later, the Ambassador was dead and the Premier still continued to act as Greece's foreign minister.

In his "Merry-Go-Round", Mr. Pearson informs of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's friend scouting presidential prospects in 1948, while the Justice remained aloof from the process. Justice Douglas had been a favorite among some Democrats in 1944 for the vice-presidential nomination.

He relates that former Texas Governor Jimmy Allred was going to run against incumbent Senator Pappy Lee P. the B. O'Daniel the following year. Congressman Lyndon Johnson, who had narrowly lost to Pappy Lee in the special election of June, 1941, through graveyard voting, would narrowly win the 1948 election, also, some said, through graveyard voting, returning the favor.

DNC treasurer George Killion returned to his homestead in Colorado after being absent for 32 years, found his mother's wedding ring, lost 35 years earlier, as well as the black saddle he had used to ride to school everyday.

Senator J. William Fulbright had introduced a bill to amend the Constitution so to provide.

He comments that the President's veto of the reiterated tax bill would likely again be sustained. But the division in government of which it was emblematic was wasting precious time from reaching more important matters for the country. Thus, the parliamentary plan was offered as a solution.

We suggest that such a plan would not serve, based on the British model, to generate any less confusion in the political framework of the country. It would likely result in more. There always must be checks and balances on power as the Founders wisely provided, with the object lesson of Britain before them. Democracy is never pretty and American democracy is not designed to be pretty or necessarily cohesive in policy and approach. The more we try to make it so, the more we disserve American democracy and tend toward Fascism.

Senator Robert Taft, Mr. Childs points out, had criticized the President for exercise of the veto, indicating that President Jefferson had never used it when faced with a hostile Congress. Mr. Childs suggests that the President was no more at fault in using the power than Congress was in proposing legislation which it knew was likely to result in a veto. The division had drawn the battle lines for 1948 in terms of party philosophy in governing the country.

The Democrats, overwhelmingly, would win the argument.

"The wall worshipers, the Maginot-minded, the buffer-state boys, are at it again."

They were, he offers, venturing that the Marshall Plan could be used to make Germany once again an industrial power for the purpose, were thus "smothering the Marshall Plan with repulsive kisses."

Russia's withdrawal from the Plan, he finds, was a diplomatic miscue which hurt Russia. Meanwhile, by favoring a return by Germany to industrial prowess, American conservatives gave the Politburo the propaganda it needed to convince others that America had imperialistic motives in mind. Such defensive-mindedness was the only way in which the Marshall Plan would fail.

What was needed was to restore England, France, and Italy, to save the West. He finds it shocking that American conservatives were being led hypnotically, as if by the ghost of Rasputin, to the failed politics of the past, which had led directly to World War II.