The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 5, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that amid speculation that Soviet chief delegate Andrei
Gromyko might demand the floor to attack the NATO agreement signed
the previous day
The President was expected before the end of the week to send the NATO agreement to the Senate for approval.
The House Armed Services Committee unanimously adopted a resolution ordering the Army, Navy, and Air Force to cease their public bickering, that it was endangering national security. The resolution threatened investigation if it did not cease. Committee chairman Carl Vinson of Georgia said that the action was prompted by the leak from the Pentagon that the Defense Establishment had selected 70 bombing targets in cities within the Soviet Union and by another report questioning the effectiveness of the Air Force's B-36 bomber.
The House Appropriations Committee approved an omnibus bill providing for 747 million dollars, which included 2.9 million in additional funding for the Voice of America and 8.8 million more for the FBI over that appropriated for the current fiscal year. Both increases were aimed at fighting Communism at home and abroad.
Ambassador to Britain Lewis Douglas was hooked in the eye by a fishing lure while fishing with friends on the River Test in Hampshire in England.
In Michigan, voters elected a majority of Republicans to Democratic Governor G. Mennen Williams's Cabinet, elective offices in the state, after he had won the previous November election.
Incidentally, we suggest to Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, unprecedentedly refusing to hold hearings on President Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court of unquestionably well qualified D. C. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, that if he wants unilaterally to amend the Constitution to provide for popular election of Federal judges or just Supreme Court justices, or the latter subset only in an election year, then he ought to go through the ordinary process of amendment of the Constitution to provide for same, so that the country can at least have a debate first on whether that proposed amended system is desirable and appropriate after 227 years of having all Federal judges nominated by the President, and in every case on record, no matter at what stage a Supreme Court vacancy and nomination might have occurred during the term of the President, confirmation hearings held to establish a record of open, public debate and fair hearing of the nominee, that the people might respond to their elected Senators who might then weigh those opinions in conjunction with their own judgment and experience, then render an affirmative or negative vote, after due debate on the Senate floor, regarding that nomination.
That is the system which is Constitutionally mandated and which has been construed for 227 years by the Senate to inform the term "advice and consent". It is not one or two or 52 Senators of one party deciding in the dead of night, in a private, partisan caucus, that they wish effectively to amend, by partisan fiat, the Constitution, not engage in advice and consent, hold open, public hearings and allow an open, public debate, contrary to all precedent. Since the advent of television coverage of Senate hearings and floor debate on judicial nominations, that process is even more important to an informed public, striving, insofar as those who bother to take the time as citizens to be informed, always toward "a more perfect union". Remove it, Senator Grassley, accede to the mercurial and ignorant wishes of some small segment of uninformed Republicans back in Iowa who obviously have not the slightest understanding of our Government or how it works—perhaps, judging by your recent demagogic rhetoric, because you have deliberately misled them for so long as to what it is supposed to be under the Constitution—and you breed nothing but contempt for yourself, 51 of your Republican colleagues, the Senate as a whole, and the very Government, i.e., the people, of which that deliberative body is supposed to be representative.
Hold hearings or be damned. You are not the dictator of this country. Nor are the economic interests obviously pulling your strings. Nor are a small subset of constituents back in Iowa who obviously have no earthly idea how the country is governed, believe cynically that it is on the basis of the whimsical decision du jour and manipulation thereafter of popular will to affirm that whimsy, but to whom, for some strange reason, you kowtow rather than educating them as a leader to the proper procedures, of which you certainly ought be aware after 35 years on the Judiciary Committee, even if you are not, as you are so fond of saying, a lawyer. You appear to be conducting yourself at present out of political avarice, to remain in office under tenuous circumstances back home, arrogance developed from being in office obviously too long, and, if you believe a tenth of your recent public utterances, complete ignorance of the system which you claim to represent. Perhaps, in that event, it is time for you to step aside from the Judiciary Committee entirely and let one of your other Republican colleagues, someone with a more judicious temperament and understanding of the Government and the Constitution, perhaps Senator Susan Collins of Maine, take your place.
And, whatever you do, stop citing as your rationale the completely inapposite suggestion, not "rule", of then Senator Joe Biden stated in late June, 1992, two weeks prior to the Democratic National Convention, that there should be no nomination sent to the Senate in the event of a hypothetical vacancy on the Supreme Court at that time, during which, normally, the Senate would, prospectively, be in formal recess for the conventions, opening the door potentially to a recess appointment to the Court. Besides the plain differences in timing, and the hypothetical nature of that statement, with no vacancy then existing, he also said in the same statement that there would be due consideration given after hearings to a qualified nominee. He never suggested that the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he was then chairman, would not hold hearings. Moreover, the Democratically controlled Senate had, the previous October, confirmed Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, despite a swirl of controversy regarding the nomination.
No, the mentor for your current stance is not Vice-President Biden. Rather, it is your old colleague and former chair of the Judiciary Committee, the late Strom Thurmond, from whose spirit you are taking your cues, based on his leading the Southern filibuster in the Senate in 1968 against the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas as Chief Justice to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren, even that, however, having occurred after Judiciary Committee hearings. But that is your inspiration—a despicable, even then, anachronistic, racist-segregationist maneuver to try to stall progress and, ultimately, thereby take the country back to Never-Never Land. So at least admit, rather than trying to lay it off sophistically on a former colleague across the aisle, the true source of your inspiration. Tell the nation, candidly, that you are following in the footsteps, even if going a large reactionary step further by not even holding hearings, of one of the worst obscurantists and atavistic segregationists of our time.
In Effingham, Ill., at least 47 persons died in a fire at St. Anthony's Hospital. It was estimated that the death toll might reach 60 persons. Sixty-one survivors had been identified. The dead included twelve newborn infants. One pregnant woman jumped two stories to safety and then two hours later gave birth. Both mother and baby were doing fine.
In Daytona Beach, Fla., a man was arrested by FBI agents the previous night on charges of embezzling $885,000 from the National City Bank of New York, of which he was assistant manager. He had disappeared on March 27. The man admitted to the agents that he had taken the money, of which $55,000 was recovered.
Governor Kerr Scott of North Carolina said that he would leave rent control for the most part to localities and would not prohibit them from opting out of Federal rent control, allowed by the new legislation passed by Congress, provided the governor of a state approved of the exemption.
The Governor also said that lobbyists, a list of whom he provided to the press, were killing his "Go Forward" program in the ongoing General Assembly session. The lobbyists in question represented the motion picture industry, the beer industry, the bottlers association, pharmacists, and the petroleum industry.
On the editorial page, "Cost of Going Forward" tells of a State Representative having recently made a speech before the State House urging that the Assembly was quickly using up all of its sources of revenue surplus without bothering to find new sources of revenue. State corporate and individual income taxes were already high and the sales tax was almost impossible to raise for political consequences. Nevertheless, the House then approved the school building bond issue which dipped into the surplus for 30 of its 50 million dollars.
The piece concludes that the failure to find the necessary revenue from taxes merely would delay the matter until the 1951 General Assembly session and would cause the state's fiscal position to go from its best in state history to the worst.
"Klan Strikes Again" finds that to rid the South of the Klan, the region had to overcome racial and religious hatreds and prejudices as well as put an end to flagrant violations of the law, the first a long-term proposition but the latter capable of immediate remedy.
The latest incident involving Klan violence had occurred the previous Sunday night in Dade County, Georgia, just across the line from Chattanooga, Tenn. Seven black persons who had been arrested were taken from the sheriff and three deputies by a mob of 50 to 100 Klansmen and then flogged. The sheriff and his deputies meekly complied with the demand to hand over the prisoners.
The piece finds the officers remiss in their responsibilities to protect those in their custody, that they could have sought reinforcements and then arrested the offenders.
In Gaston County, N.C., an organizational meeting for the Klan was held by a man from Georgia. The Gastonia Gazette had printed an editorial protesting the presence of the organization.
While the Klan could not be outlawed any more than could the Communist Party, it ought be, exhorts the piece, negatively sanctioned and given stern penalties when its members broke the law.
"Picketing the Pickets" lists the many things which pickets had been used to prevent,
including listening to Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, Charlie
Chaplin, and Ernest Bevin as well as attending the movie "Oliver
Twist"
"A Profitable Venture" commends a report to the attention of Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, self-appointed watchdog of Government waste in publishing, telling of Dr. Vannevar Bush having farmed out to a commercial firm the printing of a scientific report on radar. The printing, instead of costing $324,000 for 400 copies when done by the Government Printing Office, only cost $65,000. Furthermore, the publication had returned $34,000 in royalties and would likely provide to the Government a positive return on the venture. In addition, the external printing meant that the report would enjoy wider circulation.
Drew Pearson tells of the details of the fraud of the late George Berry on the Pressman's Union, which he had headed before his death, which followed a plea of guilty to income tax evasion, preventing a trial which might have exposed the fraud on the union. His will had left part of his estate to his wife and another part to a mysterious woman who had been supported by Mr. Berry and with whom he spent part of the time in his latter years. The International Playing Card Co., which he headed, was supposedly a property belonging to the union, but Mr. Berry had left it to the two women and a few other persons. Furthermore, Mr. Berry had taken $50,000 from the playing card company to buy cattle for his farm, the latter also willed to the two women. Mr. Berry had claimed that he advanced money to the playing card company which made it his own, but could show only that he advanced $100,000. He also dubiously claimed that the company owed him $223,000 in back salary and expenses, which he then distributed in his will to the two women and a few others. But he had submitted two sets of receipts, one to the union and one to the company, such that he collected salaries and expenses twice.
Mr. Pearson suggests that it was curious that the union had done nothing previously regarding these problems and would be interesting to see whether its executive council would proceed presently to rectify accounts.
The President met with the truck driver of the year and gave to his eleven-year old son a fountain pen which he could use to gain entrance to the White House if he wanted to see the President.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop seek to paraphrase the somewhat enigmatic passages of Winston Churchill's Boston Garden speech of the previous Thursday, finding that he was suggesting that sole possession by the U.S. of the atomic bomb enabled the West for the present to be safe from Soviet aggression, but that time was limited on that contingency. A settlement with Russia might be achieved prior to Russia developing its own atomic bomb, that settlement requiring possibly a preventive war or other crisis. But such should be delayed, counseled Mr. Churchill, as the death of Stalin might cause internal convulsions within the Soviet Union and withdrawal of Russia to within its borders.
The speech represented, they find, the first public suggestion that preventive action might be necessary to stop Russian aggression before it got its atomic bomb. Had it not been uttered by Mr. Churchill, it might have been ignored. But his warnings regarding the menace of Hitler having been ignored prior to the fall of 1939 militated against ignoring him this time. They find that the speech thus might later appear as a turning point, as much so as the prophetic "iron curtain" speech at Fulton, Mo., in March, 1946.
Russia would achieve the atomic bomb in August, 1949. No war resulted, even if the cold war took a dramatic turn, making diplomacy with the Soviets more necessary and, at once, more difficult for the ensuing four decades. The Boston Garden speech, in consequence, has receded into history as not very important.
DeWitt MacKenzie seeks to explain why Russia could not be invited to join NATO, would likely not accept in any event. NATO was designed to resist Communism and since Moscow was the seat of Communism, it naturally would not fit into NATO.
Mr. Churchill, in the Boston Garden speech, had suggested that the Russians feared the friendship of the West more than its hostility, as the former might convince the Russian people that there was no hostility intended, contrary to Communist propaganda.
British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin was inclined to believe that in the wake of the formation of NATO, Russia might decide that the era of Soviet expansion was at an end and seek a truce. Mr. MacKenzie thinks the notion not far-fetched, that while a truce would not be a peace treaty but only a pause in the ideological revolution, such a pause would be welcome relief from the cold war tension. Mr. Bevin urged that a permanent peace had to be settled during the following year.
The pact might also bring Soviet counter-action as Russia might consider it an abrogation of the twenty-year mutual aid treaties with Britain and France.
He concludes, however, that adroit handling of the resultant situation could lead to easing tensions in the cold war.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds that he is perplexed by the differing views on the economy. Senator Walter George of Georgia claimed that raising taxes would risk a depression, while the President urged the raising of taxes and claimed a deficit would create a greater risk of economic downturn. The experts differed on the prospects for business in the ensuing year. It appeared to cause lack of predictability for business and consumer alike.
He proposes a new social principle whereby an individual not wealthy enough to take advantage of an economic upswing should not have to suffer the ill effects of an economic downswing. He advocates establishment of a minimum living standard, below which no one would be allowed to fall, regardless of the business cycle. The mass of the public could then be unconcerned about the business cycle and stand on the sidelines and observe, restraining its adverse effects on the ordinary consumer.
An anonymous article appears, written by a Gaston County resident after an interview with a Gaston County bootlegger. The piece is written in the first-person from the perspective of the bootlegger. He says that the failure to stop the bootlegger was not the result of bribing law enforcement but rather the fact that the state laws and the bootlegger's own preparations worked to shield him from effective prosecution. Some police officers arrested only drunks as it was the only thing they knew how to do efficiently, letting more serious crimes go without detection and arrest.
A Quote of the Day: "A new excuse: 'But, mama, President Truman said it.'" —Memphis (Tenn.) Press-Scimitar
All Servants of Brotherhood must bear it in mind when confronted with s.o.b.'s—some of whom inhabit the Senate Office Buildings' offices.
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