The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 9, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Housing Expediter Tighe Woods, testifying before the Senate Investigating subcommittee looking into the influence peddling scheme regarding Army contracts, stated that Maj. General Harry Vaughan had summoned him to the White House in January, 1948 regarding his unnamed "friends" being interested in making improvements to the Tanforan horse track in San Bruno, California, seeking therefore relaxation of restrictions on scarce building materials for the purpose. General Vaughan told him that he wanted to insure that there was no prejudice against the matter within Mr. Woods's office, of which Mr. Woods had been director for about two months at the time. He said that his feeling was that General Vaughan was personally interested in the matter, as opposed to the White House, itself. A memorandum read into the record said that General Vaughan was "damn sore" at the predecessor Housing Expediter, Frank Creedon, regarding the matter, as the Government had ordered the construction work on Tanforan halted in 1947. Construction, nevertheless, had gone ahead, resulting in a court order to stop it.

The foreign aid bill, totaling 5.8 billion dollars for the 1949-50 fiscal year, was approved by the Senate, 63 to 7, and was headed for a reconciliation committee.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg proposed a 50 percent cut in the proposed military aid package to Western European members of NATO. He proposed that 580 million dollars be provided in cash with the rest in contract authorizations to be met by subsequent appropriations, instead of 1.16 billion in immediate cash appropriations, as sought by the Administration. The proposal would not reduce the overall size of the program but would spread it over a longer period so that the present budget could be more closely balanced.

Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson insisted to the joint Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that the full amount of 1.45 billion was needed to safeguard national security.

Former Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert Lovett told the House Armed Services Committee that no outside influence had been exerted to initiate the B-36 bomber in 1941 as the eventual mainstay of the long-range strategic bombing force. The contract to build 100 of the super bombers was awarded to Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Co. in summer, 1943. He said that the normal period of gestation for a new plane from award of the contract was five years. General Hap Arnold, head of the Army Air Force during the war, had passed on the plane at the time.

Robert L. L. McCormick, not the isolationist publisher, research director of the Citizens Committee for the Reorganization of the Government, reports on the efforts being undertaken pursuant to the Hoover Commission report to make the Government more efficient and to cut waste by three billion dollars. The first major step forward was creation of the General Services Administration to control purchases and manage buildings and records, which could lead to a savings of 250 million dollars per year. The Military Unification Act was the other piece of major legislation thus far, giving new authority to the Secretary of Defense to end squabbles between the military branches, control the branch budgets and institute modern business practices, resulting in a savings of a billion dollars per year.

The White House stated that Government spending would be concentrated in areas where unemployment had reached 12 percent.

The House Ways & Means Committee approved increases of 1.8 to 2.7 billion dollars to the Social Security payroll tax for the following year and to about 3.6 billion for 1950-51. It also called for further increases in 1960, 1965, and 1970, with the rate reaching 3.25 percent.

We're never gonna make it that far. Why you want to plan on things like 'at when they all say the A-bomb's comin' sooner than later? What's the point? Who needs Social Security in 1970?

In Baltimore, a 60-year old female spiritualist was found bound hand and foot and strangled to death by an electrical cord. Her fellow mediums offered to assist police in determining the killer by communicating with the victim from the other side. Most of the woman's customers had arrived in expensive cars. Hundreds of bottles of "love potion" were discovered in a cupboard in the woman's apartment. The place had been ransacked but police discounted theft as a motive, as $68 had been left behind in plain view along with five valuable rings. A fellow medium said that she was a wonderful woman but a mediocre spiritualist who had a lot of trouble with men friends. Another medium said that the woman had received two threatening phone calls recently from an unknown man saying that he would "get" her.

In Raleigh, pursuant to orders of Governor Kerr Scott, the State Bureau of Investigation was initiating a probe into the award of a $150,000 per year State advertising contract. The chairman of the State Department of Conservation & Development had suggested the investigation after reports of irregularities in the earlier award of the contract. The Governor terminated the old contract, awarded to a Charlotte firm 18 months earlier during the term of Governor Gregg Cherry, and awarded it to a new firm formed by three persons in Raleigh.

In Hollywood, actor Jimmy Stewart was wed this date to Gloria Hatrick McLean. He had been given a bachelor party by Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, Jack Benny, David Niven, and his agents. The couple would remain married through her death in 1994.

On the editorial page, "One-Man Government" finds objectionable Governor Kerr Scott's appointment of his secretary to be director of the State News Bureau when the advertising committee of the Conservation & Development Board had agreed on another person for the position. The Governor had also announced that the State advertising account, with a Charlotte firm, would be canceled in 60 days and renegotiated. Traditionally, perhaps by law, both prerogatives belonged to the Board. The man selected by the Governor to head the News Bureau was probably well-qualified but he would begin his duties under a cloud of suspicion.

Both moves had strong political implications, characterizing much of the Governor's firing and hiring practices since taking office the prior January.

It suggests that the Board was in the best position to act in the interests of the people of the state, rather than in the interest of the Governor.

"The Objective Is the Thing" explains that the proposed ordinance to create a solicitations commission to regulate charitable campaigns had been designed to prevent an occasional rogue organization from collecting money for dubious purposes, encouraging bona fide fund-raising organizations to examine their own policies and eliminate non-essential expenditures before seeking a permit, curtailing, through encouragement of better timing, the tendency of campaigns to continue indefinitely, and curbing the tendency toward unrealistic goals.

Opponents believed the proposed ordinance gave the commission power to restrict fund-raising.

The newspaper favors creation of such a commission but is not wedded to the particular proposed version of the ordinance.

It suggests for instruction the experience of Winston-Salem in this area, as set forth in a separate piece on the page.

Not enough of the requirements for compliance with the proposed ordinance are provided to determine whether it would withstand a challenge as either an undue impingement on interstate commerce such that it was beyond the police powers of the state and locality or whether it infringed free speech under rulings of the Supreme Court, as we set forth on Saturday. Much would depend on how the permit process was regulated and whether fees were charged for the permit, not indicated in the piece.

"Forest Fire Brought Home" tells of a Montana forest fire taking the life of a Charlotte youth, Raymond Thompson, while he bravely helped to fight it as a volunteer smoke jumper. Ten others had died with him.

The origin of the fire had not been determined and it might have been natural. But the piece reminds against carelessly tossing out cigarette butts which might ignite a dry forest. It also urges stiff penalties for the arsonists who could cause the deaths of firefighters, if not members of the public.

A piece by Thomas D. Carter, chairman of the Committee on Public Solicitation in Winston-Salem, tells of that city's experience with regulation of charitable campaigns. He relates of the Committee having been organized three years earlier to prevent fraud, improve campaign timing, and to lend the imprimatur of the Committee to worthwhile causes.

They learned that eliminating fraud was easy but that dealing with local well-meaning citizens who were representing national charities was the hard part, as they often knew little about the charity they represented, how the funds were being spent at the national level and what the ratios were of collected funds which remained at the local level. Campaign goals were often set arbitrarily.

He says that more knowledge was needed of local health needs to gauge the necessity of campaigns for charities devoted to eradication of particular diseases. Agency budgets had to be reviewed more closely.

The Committee's efforts had not yet reduced the number of campaigns significantly, but the process of review was a first step toward an intelligent solution.

He cites as example of such a solution being the formation of an Arts Council locally to coordinate a community appeal for all the financial needs of the Little Theater, the Civic Symphony, the Operetta group, the Arts and Crafts Association, and the Piedmont Festival of Music and Art.

The costs of fund-raising for campaigns were found to be excessive and unity in the community broke down amid the competition among many appeals. With overlapping drives, a single drive had trouble competing for public attention. Preparation for a drive, in consequence, had to be lengthened and greater pressure exerted, all at higher cost.

A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "Piano, Piano!" finds the old piano tuner disappearing from the phone book, as "piano service", according to the piano tuners, more accurately described their work in current times.

But such changing nomenclature was attended by risk, as morticians or undertakers had become "funeral directors", making it that much harder to locate them in the phone book. So, it advises the piano tuners, piano, piano: proceed softly.

That advice, incidentally, would be well taken by the Republican nominee in 2016, whose outrageous comment yesterday in Wilmington, N.C., has provoked anew Republican calls for him to step aside as the nominee, a mere three weeks after his nomination. His surrogates and the campaign were quick, as usual, to try to explain away the comment by saying that he "meant to say" that the "Second Amendment people", being unified (as the unthinking, robotic nitwit nuts that they are), would unite to defeat any Supreme Court nominee former Secretary of State Clinton as President might nominate who would "take away" Second Amendment "rights". But he did not say that.

Once again, as in literally dozens of other such episodes during the campaign, his statements show that either the man is incapable of thinking on his feet, redundantly so, indicative of his inability to govern in a serious crisis, and thus unfit, as many Republicans, plus 50 former high-ranking national security officials of the Government, have recently said, to serve as commander in chief, or he intended exactly what he implied. Tellingly, he said, after suggesting that "Second Amendment people" might be able to do something about the appointment of an anti-Second Amendment justice-designate, "That would be a horrible day..." He then paused, a becomingly pregnant pause, not because he was interrupted by cheers or applause, and then continued, "...if, if Hillary gets to put her judges." (The incomplete sentence is his, as most of his sentences and paragraphs, when not constrained to the teleprompter, when reduced to transcript form, appear as the rambling babble of a frothing lunatic.)

The "horrible" reference parallels his use of the word in regard to the assassination of President Kennedy, when he ridiculously sought in April to suggest as true a National Enquirer story which had linked the father of Senator Ted Cruz to a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald handing out "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" leaflets in New Orleans in August, 1963, a claim which anyone with two good eyes in their head could readily refute by comparison of an equally well-promulgated picture of Mr. Cruz taken around the same time with the image of the unidentified individual in the New Orleans photograph purported to be Mr. Cruz. The point, though, is that the Republican nominee uses the word "horrible" in reference to such things as assassination and he used the word immediately after his "Second Amendment people" comment yesterday in Wilmington, haltingly, appending the additional conditional phrase, regarding the appointment of Supreme Court justices, a cover statement to assure plausible denial.

He calculated the comment to make the news. He also calculated the comment to place within the minds of the unstable among his ferociously loyal core of supporters a seed of a thought that violence is an acceptable resolution of matters when things do not go your way politically, especially after a "rigged" election, of which he has also spoken in the last week, also hearkening back to the absurd claims in the wake of the 1960 election that it was stolen for Senator Kennedy in Cook County, Illinois, never minding the fact that there was probable electoral fraud in Southern California, that state carried in the end by Vice-President Nixon, and that subtracting the electoral votes of Illinois from Senator Kennedy's total would not have changed the electoral outcome. (Cf. Breach of Faith by Theodore H. White)

Those of us who lived through 1963 and 1968 and were moved in an inarticulable way during those dark days understand readily that the converse is true, that violence is not an acceptable answer to any perceived wrong, politically or otherwise. But those who are at the core of this dark, hateful man's supporters, who share in his dark, hateful vision of the world as a suspect and threatening place of hostility, where everything therefore revolves around money and greed and living for the moment, protected by absolute insularity of borders, arming to the teeth, use of nuclear weapons to make a Big Splash, no more understand that concept than the average terrorist. And it is they to whom he sought to appeal with this outrageous comment yesterday.

That this event took place in Wilmington, a few miles down the road from Fayetteville, where the Republican nominee also spoke yesterday, is significant, as it was in Fayetteville in March when the supporter of the Republican nominee punched a protester in the side of the head and then afterward said of the protester, "Next time we see him, we might have to kill him." The Republican nominee, no doubt, was entirely cognizant of this fact yesterday, given the news that incident made at the time, having promised in advance to pay the legal bills for anyone who followed the course this supporter did, and thus chose his site pointedly for the comment in question, understanding that it was likely that there were violence-prone nuts in the crowd.

On the substantive point the Republican nominee sought to make, regarding the Second Amendment, we reiterate that the Second Amendment only creates "rights" in relation to a "well-regulated militia". Moreover, when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the most powerful arms which could be borne were single-shot, powder-loaded muskets and pistols, not automatic and semi-automatic handguns and rifles capable of firing multiple, high-powered rounds rapidly. Nor, save perhaps a few desert dwellers in the Far West, do we live on the wild frontier in this society any longer. Few, if any, live more than a short drive from a food market. No one has to hunt for their provender any longer to survive. The arguments for the Second Amendment are antiquated and silly. The notion that handguns or rifles would protect some silly, ignorant fool, including some silly, ignorant, jackanape Congressman or Congresswoman, from "the Gov'ment" is preposterous, except in comic books and action films, where the lone wolf emerges from the smoke, mayhem and wreckage as the conquering hero for all to praise—in reality, just another gun nut who gets shot by the police or winds up killing himself.

We do not want the nominee to step aside as we are quite confident, given the polls and given the character of the broad majority of the American people, that he will be defeated handily in November and that Secretary Clinton will make an excellent President. But we understand and appreciate the sentiment and agree that he is wholly unfit to serve as President, indeed, is an unfunny joke on the American people as a major party nominee, the worst in American history, an embarrassment not only to the people of the country but to himself. The scary part is that there are enough crazy or gullible people in the country who voted for this demagogue, despite, time and time again, having been shown to be nothing more than a cheap salesman, an artist of the bait-switch scheme, to make him the Republican nominee—the result, we posit, of years of indoctrination and conditioning to the entertainment vehicle of "reality television", of which his image has been a carefully cultivated part.

Incidentally, to those who look at the polls and see Secretary Clinton up at least eight points on average, but who nevertheless think all the polls are somehow "rigged" and are using for their counterweight the Los Angeles Times-USC daily tracking poll as their preferred version of reality, we advise you to read carefully this article, completely accurate on the nature of that poll, which is a survey of a set sample of 3,000 people, sampled at 400 per day over the course of a week, every week, not a changing random sample as with all of the other polls. It measures therefore only the changes within that sample of 3,000 people, which started out showing a 2.4 point lead for the Republican at its inception on July 10. That it varies radically from all of the other polls indicates that the subset is not a truly representative sample of the electorate, built on a flawed and inadequately tested model premised on the 2012 results, at least insofar as 52 percent of that sample, the remaining 48 percent based on apparent whimsy.

But, as we have said before, have it your way. We even saw one nut who thinks the Republican is leading 70 to 10, while some gun nuts out of Texas, from whom the Republican nominee claims he gets his news, in all probability the case, judging by his divorce from reality, insist that he is up between 10 and 17 points, based on the Republican campaign "internal polling"—perhaps limited to a sample of his campaign workers. Suit yourselves. Do not, however, suggest to us that "the Second Amendment people" will be around to "do" something about our point of view. You won't like the result.

Parenthetically, we have to wonder, while on the topic, as to the source of the money for the presumably Russian computer hackers, to finance their break-in to the Democratic National Committee servers, being as they are so friendly, exclusively, to the Republican's campaign, the campaign of a multi-billionaire. That might be a fun topic of investigation for the new Democratic Senate and House, come next year.

One other thing, the Republican nominee is no Ronald Reagan.

Drew Pearson tells of a troupe of black American actors getting ready to tour the Scandinavian countries the following month to offset Paul Robeson's tour, during which he had made pro-Russian remarks. The company would present Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, to demonstrate that all blacks in America were not downtrodden economically and culturally, as had been suggested by Mr. Robeson. The tour had been arranged by Howard University and the Norwegian Embassy without prompting from the State Department. It was being financed by an American philanthropist who had brought a production of Hamlet to Denmark.

Mr. Pearson remarks that the tour would do as much good as some phases of NATO.

Attorney General-designate J. Howard McGrath, who, as Senator, had written the D.C. sales tax law, corrected a waiter who had charged him only a two percent tax rather than the new three percent tax which had just gone into effect.

John Maragon had been involved, he says, in a deal in early 1948 to purchase all the surplus Army vehicles in Germany for sale to a Belgian scrap dealer, but Sam Boykin of the State Department's investigation division was keeping it quiet. The deal had fallen apart after a row.

The division between the Taft and Dewey forces within the RNC remained bitter in terms of selecting a new chairman. Congressman Charles Halleck, suggested as a compromise choice, had opposition from national committeeman Perry Howard, black, who said that there was strong black opposition to Mr. Halleck for his perceived anti-black views. Mr. Halleck, himself, had refused to be a candidate unless the favored Guy Gabrielson stepped aside.

Joseph Alsop finds the mainstays of the Truman foreign policy during his first term to be gone or eroding. The first was the bipartisan approach, which, he says, was undone immediately after the election, and the second was the close working relationship between the State and Defense Departments, now showing signs of cracking.

From the beginning of Secretary Louis Johnson's tenure at Defense in March, he had seen no need for the close relationship with State which his predecessor, the late James Forrestal, had sought. The Secretary placed limitations on cooperation with State at lower levels. Secretary Johnson, in his former role as money-raiser for the 1948 campaign, began to make intrusions on State Department appointments. Disputes arose over small prerogatives. And Defense criticized State practices.

Now, there were two major disagreements on policy, the first being anent the Far East, Mr. Johnson insisting on a definite policy statement. State responded by trying to formulate such a clear policy, still in progress. Mr. Johnson had opposed the release of the China white paper.

The second dispute involved Yugoslavia and whether to permit Marshal Tito to purchase a small American steel rolling mill. Earlier, the Security Council approved provision of some aid to Tito, but Secretary Johnson had now adopted a different view. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer believed Yugoslavia little different from a Soviet satellite and refused an export permit for the rolling mill. Mr. Alsop finds this view to be dangerous, as the enmity between Tito and Moscow was reaching new heights, subject to ready exploitation by the U.S.

The overarching question was whether the American initiative in world affairs would be canceled by internal squabbles of this type, a matter ultimately to be resolved by the President. It was likely that the President would continue to support State as when he personally ordered release of the white paper. But such arbitration of disputes was not enough; rather, the President had to act boldly to resolve the conflicts with Congress and within the Administration regarding foreign policy.

James D. White discusses the State Department white paper on China, that one of the most important things it had done was to admit the futility of attempting further to prevent a shift from support of the Chiang regime as in the past.

J. D. Ferguson of the Milwaukee Journal had raised the questions of how China becoming Communist would impact in three areas: the country's use of the veto as a Big Five member of the U.N. Security Council; the country's loss of influence among Western nations; and its commercial treaties with Western nations.

Mr. White seeks to answer those questions.

While the veto would only be redundant of Russia's power, it would enable a second veto to allow Russia to stand aside from time to time. But it would also provide added prestige for the Soviet bloc of nations, particularly with regard to Far Eastern countries with a history of colonialism behind them. It also might lead to the appearance of two sets of Chinese delegates at the U.N., causing a split in the organization.

More Western influence would be lost in China as a result of the Communist takeover than Chinese influence in the West. Russia could not afford to let the new Communist partner down and the West could not pass up any opportunity to lessen Russian influence over China.

The Chinese Communists had already condemned the trade treaties with the West as "imperialist", specifically the 1946 Sino-American treaty.

Chiang's blockade of the Chinese ports had made the Communists dependent on Russian trade, enabling the Communist Chinese faction favoring isolationism with Russia to win out over the faction favoring development of Western trade.

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