The Charlotte News

Monday, November 14, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before the U.N. political committee, the U.S. and Britain set forth a 12-point Western plan for permanent peace, the heart of which addressed and condemned the Soviet threats to Yugoslavia and Soviet aid to China, and affirmatively called for recognition of religious and political freedom, and urged cooperation on atomic control. The plan was in response to a Soviet resolution which condemned the Western powers for undertaking preparations for war and urged an immediate ban on atomic weapons by a pact of the Big Five. American chief delegate Warren Austin said that the Soviet plan was full of slander and deceit and deserved no serious consideration, that if the Russians were serious about peace, they should have no problem with the Western plan.

In West Berlin, anti-Communists, through Mayor Ernst Reuter, promised Secretary of State Acheson, during his visit to the city, that they would resist Soviet encroachment.

Marquis Childs, again on the front page, presents a second editorial regarding his visit with Marshal Tito in Belgrade, finding him to project quiet confidence, stating several times that Russia would not go to war to destroy Yugoslavia simply for its independence to the will of the Politburo. Such action would place Russia in the role of an aggressor before the world. He believed, however, that border incidents would continue, even become worse, but asserted that such actions were of no concern to Yugoslavs. He denied any increase in the number of Yugoslav troops in service.

The Soviet blockade, he said, had delayed some of the reforms of his five-year plan, particularly the hydro-electric program, but the problem had been overcome by shifting emphasis to smaller projects. Machines, he stressed, purchased from America would accelerate industrialization.

He said that he was too busy to visit America anytime soon. He also said that he considered resolution of the Trieste dispute with Italy to be of little importance and that America and Britain did not need to maintain troops to protect Trieste from Yugoslavia, that the country intended no aggression.

Mr. Childs finds Tito to have none of the arrogance or bluster of dictators of the recent past, but that one also got the idea that it was unwise to get in the way of a man who was so resolute about the path he was following.

(The remaining paragraphs of this piece, continued on an inside page of The News, may be read here.)

The Supreme Court refused to review the convictions of the Garsson brothers and former Representative Andrew May of Kentucky for bribery in procurement of war contracts with the Government. The trials resulted in sentences of eight to 24 months in jail. The Court had, on October 10, refused review and the current refusal was on a motion to reconsider.

The Court ruled unanimously, in Oakley v. Louisville & Nashville Railway Co., 338 U.S. 278, with Justice William O. Douglas not participating, that a veteran's job security rights at his prewar job extended under law beyond the first year after service. Justice Harold Burton delivered the opinion.

The Court also refused to hear early, ahead of a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, the appeal of one of the eleven convicted top American Communists in his separate deportation case.

In Washington, the trial of Representative J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, former HUAC chairman, on charges of defrauding the Government through a salary kickback scheme from bogus staff, was postponed again for a week.

In New York, the second trial of Judy Coplon, convicted earlier in Washington of taking secret documents through her job in the Justice Department and sentenced from 40 months to 10 years in jail, was beginning on the charge of attempting to deliver the documents to a Russian spy, on trial with her, refusing counsel in the trial. She claimed that the Russian was her lover and that there was no spying involved.

A White House conference took place between Government mediator Cyrus Ching and Presidential aide John Steelman regarding the coal dispute, temporarily in hiatus until November 30, but nothing was decided and Mr. Ching indicated that the Government would wait to see what would take place regarding the latest offer of John L. Lewis to discuss the matter with the coal operators.

All of the major steel producers were resuming production after the steel strike over welfare and pension funds had been resolved. The smaller producers were also following the lead in resolving the dispute in accord with the terms of the Bethlehem Steel settlement. It was believed that steel supply would remain short through the following April because of the strike, ongoing since October 17.

In Columbus, O., the college student who admitted shooting to death his fraternity brother while drunk the prior Saturday, was charged with first degree murder. He entered a plea of not guilty. Police believed that an argument with the defendant's girlfriend, after he made improper advances toward her, had ultimately prompted the shooting, as a fraternity brother had earlier reprimanded him for refusing initially to take her home from the fraternity homecoming party. He had then left her room in anger and said that she would read plenty about him in the newspapers, returned to the fraternity house with intent to cause problems, grabbed a .45 automatic pistol and began waving it around and firing it wildly, fired on the victim when he tried to take it away. It was the first time since 1930 that a homicide had occurred on the campus.

In Half Moon Bay, California, a middle-aged couple from Belmont, California, had waded hand in hand, fully clothed, to their deaths at sunset, as horrified witnesses observed but could do nothing.

In Walhalla, S.C., a fourteen-year old boy told of spending the night watching over the dead body of a 69-year old black farmer with whom he lived, shot to death by two unidentified white men after they had robbed the man of $400-$500. An arrest, according to the Sheriff, was expected shortly.

In London, Prince Charles celebrated his first birthday by having a tea party for a few of his young friends, replete with a 40-pound rum-flavored birthday cake provided by Manchester College students, something of which, for its alcoholic content, he was not permitted to partake. He had to settle for a small cake with one candle. The sun was shining brightly and no rain was in sight.

Princess Elizabeth was going to slice up the big cake and eat most of it later in the day.

During the morning, about 100 Britons gathered in front of the gates of Clarence House, hoping to see the Prince depart for his usual outing in Green Park, but he made no appearance until after 11:00 a.m., after the crowd had gone home.

On the editorial page, "The Graham Peace Formula" tells of Senator Frank Graham, speaking recently in Shelby, urging that the the veto of the Big Five on the U.N. Security Council be abolished, that atomic energy control could then be assured. He also favored strengthening the World Court, expanding the responsibilities of the General Assembly, and organizing an international police force. He said that these things should be done even at the risk of starting a third world war.

Implicitly, he suggested his belief that a third world war would occur without these changes.

Benjamin Cohen, assistant Secretary-General of the U.N., had told the annual convention of radio news directors recently that the political crises addressed by the U.N. had been met successfully, not as reported, a series of failures.

The piece suggests Senator Graham's assessment as the more realistic, consistent with the Culbertson ABC Plan, endorsed by many members of Congress.

The mere preparation for war, it posits, was not necessarily a deterrent to war, and Senator Graham, who now realized the threat of Communism, whereas once as UNC president had tolerated it, understood this basic premise.

He was not so tolerant of Communism per se as simply of free speech and thought, academic freedom and discussion and debate of ideas in the college setting.

"The Change in a Man" finds that Joseph C. Harsch, chief of the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, was too good a newspaperman to be dazzled by the capital city, so had looked back at President Truman's record in 1945 to find him eager to release Government controls after the war and in the process of ridding the New Dealers from the Government, now, however, was pushing his Fair Deal program, a more liberal agenda than anything FDR had ever urged on the country.

The piece suggests that the agenda was running up the five and a half billion dollar deficit—a disingenuous claim as the deficit was primarily from defense and foreign aid spending—but that the President had found that the best way to attract votes was to engage in a give-away program. It suggests, again disingenuously for the same reason, that the "welfare state" was for the welfare of politicians.

Can't have it both ways: strong on defense and cheap on the taxpayers' pocketbook.

"Inequity in Health Costs" finds that consolidation of health services in the City and County, as proposed by the Institute of Government report, would eliminate the inequity of the city residents paying for four-fifths of the county residents' health service. County residents would pay more because they presently paid only for one-fifth of the County service, whereas under consolidation, they would pay one-fifth of both City and County services.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "Tax-Free 'Charity'", posits that, with the deficit in need of revenue to balance the budget, taxation of charitable gifts should be considered when the gift was designed to compete in the business world. The same was true of educational and scientific endeavors, not subject to taxation under current law, when the endeavors involved making profits.

Drew Pearson, in Los Angeles, finds old-line Republicans in California dreaming of unseating Governor Earl Warren, up for re-election to a third term in 1950. He had won previously with the help of Democratic and independent voters. As James Roosevelt, his likely opponent in the fall, had a popular following, no one could win for the Republicans other than Governor Warren.

With the Republican defeats the previous week, especially that of Senator John Foster Dulles, the Republicans were beginning to believe that to win in 1952, they would have to pick either Governor Warren or General Eisenhower as their nominee. They knew that they could not control Governor Warren once he reached the White House, but they also realized that he had consistently won Democratic and labor votes.

He notes that Governor Alfred Driscoll of New Jersey, one of the few Republicans elected the previous week, was progressive and often at odds with the reactionaries of the party.

He also notes that General Eisenhower might be politically tarnished by 1952 because of the increasing defense spending in peacetime and his own advice that a military man should not be President.

Many believed that statues of neither Brigham Young nor Henry Wallace belonged in the Capitol. But since Utah had nominated Mr. Young for the honor, he would not be slighted despite the rumor that he had 21 wives; and because all Vice-Presidents were accorded a position of right, Mr. Wallace, too, would have his likeness in stone dedicated.

Congressman Victor Wickersham of Oklahoma, despite a 1945 vow not to take any further junkets abroad, had just returned from one to Alaska and was slated for another to South America. Mr. Wickersham nearly had to pay the bill for taking a military plane to Moscow in 1945.

According to a researcher, Vice-President Barkley would increase his chances of becoming President should he marry the widow from St. Louis whom he had been courting of late. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Millard Fillmore, Benjamin Harrison, Woodrow Wilson, and Warren Harding all had married widows.

The Congressional Quarterly provides a look at the Senate, finding that the Democrats had a better record of unity during the first session of the 81st Congress, with 94.1 percent of their members voting in unison more than half the time, than the Republicans, with 92.9 percent. Among Democrats, Senator Claude Pepper of Florida had the highest party-unity percentage at 99 percent and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia had the lowest, at 34 percent. Among Republicans, Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska had the highest, at 94.9 percent, and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, the lowest, at 19 percent.

Of the 144 party-line votes, the Democrats lost 36 because of straying Democratic votes, and the Republicans lost 60 for that reason. The remaining 48 votes were recorded as decisive Democratic victories. A majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats voted the same way on 83 of the total 227 votes.

Record of attendance was unusually high, with Senators Spessard Holland of Florida and Henry Dworshak of Idaho at 100 percent, and five others at 99 percent. Senator Clyde Reed of Kansas had the lowest attendance at 56 percent, while Senators James Eastland of Mississippi and Pat McCarran of Nevada tied at 67 percent.

A "boxscore" compares party unity and bipartisan support as exhibited by North Carolina's pair of Senators, Frank Graham and Clyde Hoey, with Senate leaders, Democratic Senators Scott Lucas and Francis Myers and Republican Senators Robert Taft and Kenneth Wherry. Not surprisingly, Senator Graham demonstrated substantially higher party unity at 92 percent, compared to Senator Hoey, at 69 percent.

Vern Haugland discusses the new Secretary-designate of the Interior, presently Undersecretary Oscar Chapman, replacing Julius Krug, Secretary since early 1946, who had suddenly resigned during the prior week as a result of increasing tensions with the President and a desire for some time to return to private life.

Mr. Chapman had become Assistant Secretary in 1933 under Secretary Harold Ickes, and Undersecretary when Mr. Krug became Secretary. He had said at a press conference that departmental policy and personnel would remain unchanged, favoring Western reclamation development and resource conservation, continuing to fight for tidal oil lands, irrigation and power development in the West.

He collected paper weights and enjoyed thriller movies. He was originally from Virginia but had made Denver his home before entering Government service.

A letter writer takes issue with an editorial of November 10 discussing the victory of former Governor Herbert Lehman over Senator John Foster Dulles in New York's special Senate election, finding inapposite the editorial's suggestion that the Fair Deal took root more readily in New York than in other parts of the country such that the election result was not necessarily indicative of a nationwide endorsement of the program. The writer argues that the New Deal and Fair Deal were essentially agrarian reform programs and did not benefit New York as much as the South. He suggests that the Democrats won because they were more numerous in New York.

The editors respond that there were more Democrats and American Labor Party members than Republicans in New York and that the Fair Deal was only, in small part, an agrarian reform program, as revealed in the ten points recently addressed by the President, of which help for the farmers was only one, with the other nine, which it lists, having appeal to urban residents.

A letter writer says that since there were 25 million Americans born since the beginning of the New Deal in 1933, the country would never again understand what freedom had been like before the socialistic state it had produced.

He also responds to the letter writer who thought the suggestion by columnist Erich Brandeis that there should be a woman President was wanting of common sense, that the woman's place was in the home. This writer wants a woman President, female Cabinet officers, and women comprising the entire Supreme Court, Senate, and as all 48 governors. He had lived in Wyoming when Nellie Taylor Ross had been Governor and knew her personally, says she ran the state as any woman would run her household. He hopes to live to see the day when every public office, from constable to President, would be filled by a woman.

Well, it looked, last week this time, that you might have that chance to see a woman President—even if you might not have approved of her politics, being more akin to that of FDR and Harry Truman than, say, Westbrook Pegler, though you might have liked her better in 1964 at age 16-17—assuming you were young enough in 1949 to be living still in 2016. But, thanks to our dear old friend from the Founding, the three-cornered hats of the electoral college, that may not happen now for a long, long time into the future—assuming, after we get through with this current Idiot's term, there will be any future left to have, a genuinely doubtful proposition as at no time in our history as a country.

We suggest to all who have an understanding of our country's governing processes and how the three branches of the Government work, therefore did not vote for the Idiot, realized that he was a demagogic slob making all kinds of ridiculous promises which he could not fulfill even if he wanted to do so, that you reach out to anyone you might know who did vote for him and seek to find out the route to the root of their problem. Perhaps you can educate them or even disabuse them of the notion that there will be some grand change for the better to our system under the Idiot, that anything will happen beyond massive tax cuts for the rich, leading down the primrose path to a worse economic debacle than those which culminated in 1992 and 2008. Perhaps, these fools are uneducable, too attuned to "reality television" and talk radio and Fox and the rest, to be anything but a lost cause to systematic, Fascist brainwashing. Maybe they are too dangerous to try to educate, might, when challenged for rationale even slightly, erupt in violence of the type observed routinely at the Idiot's rallies.

If you start to hear the mindlessly parroted babble, "Wall", "end to political correctness", "deportation of Tourists", and the rest of it, try flashcards: "No Wall, no mass deportations, not going to happen, comprende?"; "Political correctness has to do with academic freedom and ordinary, daily exercise of free speech, has been around in various forms for decades and decades, (see Lenny Bruce and the Scopes trial), has nothing at all to do with the sitting President or anyone else in the Federal Government. But banning respected press affiliates from coverage of the campaign, tossing out even silent protesters with quiet, non-offensive signs, suggests intolerance to dissent, a dictatorial, Fascist mentality regarding a free press and free speech—in brief, an attempt to return to the short-lived Alien and Sedition laws of the late eighteenth century."

In any event, we have the solace that Secretary Clinton did win the election and by more than a few popular votes. The current popular vote count stands at 61,047,207 for Secretary Clinton to 60,375,961 for the Republican, a 671,000-vote majority and still counting, the final deadline for receipt of absentee ballots in California only expiring on Monday, November 14. If percentages hold, Secretary Clinton will wind up winning the popular vote by about 1.8 million or 1.5 percent, exceeded, among the four candidates through U.S. history who won the popular vote while not achieving a majority of the electoral college, only by the 10.5 percent popular vote margin of General Andrew Jackson in 1824 and the three percent win of Governor Samuel J. Tilden in 1876. It would be three times the percentage of Vice-President Gore's win in 2000 and twice that of President Grover Cleveland in 1888.

Thus, we urge, you need pay no attention to the Idiot for the next four years. He is, in any true democratic sense, in any modern democracy, not the President.

Good luck, Moron.

And as to his generous gesture of declining his salary as President, agreeing to accept only a dollar a year, maybe he is too stupid, too devoid of understanding of U.S. history or the ability to extrapolate beyond his self-centered "Look at me, how altruistic I am" form of charity, to understand that doing so suggests that he will be engaged only in self-interest, looking after his own profits during his term in office, not the business of the people. The country had its experience with such individuals during the Roosevelt Administration, until the Senate's Truman Investigating Committee found that the "dollar a year men" from private business, hired as Government consultants, did just that, looked after only their own business interests, feathered their own nests. So don't do us any "favors", Stupid, in the guise of munificence. You are in enough trouble before you even get into the office. If you don't want the taxpayers to pay your salary, then resign the office and turn it over to an experienced, qualified person, a person of true magnanimity and courage in the face of adversity, the person who has the backing of the majority of Americans, the person who actually won the election.

A letter writer believes that the country needed urgently to respond to the Hoover Commission Report on elimination of waste and inefficiency in the Government, to curb the growing national debt of 260 billion dollars.

A letter from George V. Allen, Assistant Secretary of State, thanks the newspaper for its positive editorial regarding his appointment as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.

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