The Charlotte News
Friday, January 16, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports from Havana that Fidel Castro said the previous day that
Cuba's revolutionary regime wanted good relations with the U.S., but
not at the price of halting executions of former Batista supporters
because of American criticism of the executions. Sr. Castro warned on
Thursday against any U.S. intervention to stop the executions, which
had been ordered by military courts for murder and torture during the
Batista regime. Appearing before the Havana Rotary Club, he said: "If
the United States comes here, we will make trenches in the streets."
(Earlier, he had made a speech before the Havana Lions Club. The Odd
Fellows Lodge of Havana likely would be next, then the Civitans,
Elks, Sertomans, Ruritans and Masons, with the Serutans bringing up
the rear
The U.S. agreed with the Soviet Union this date that new efforts had to be made to reduce the danger of surprise attack in the nuclear age, but rejected the Soviets' bid for immediate results in the Geneva conference of foreign ministers which had broken down the previous month. In a note released by the State Department, the U.S. called on the Soviets to join in trying to figure out a new approach to surprise attack negotiations which would avoid the stalemate which had wrecked the Geneva meeting. The deadlock had developed regarding the fact that the U.S. and its allies wanted to stick to a technical analysis of problems involved in preventing surprise attack, whereas the Soviets repeatedly had raised broad disarmament issues. The Western powers said that such matters had no place in a technical conference. Out of the disagreement, indicated by the note released this date, had come the notion "that future discussions of the surprise attack problem could not be productive until governments had resolved these differences." In a note of January 10, the Soviet Government had urged that the talks be resumed on January 15, the date when the U.S. reply had been delivered in Moscow.
The transcontinental tour by Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan had apparently been a great success from the Soviet perspective. Any assessment of the actual value of his visit in terms of easing tensions or solving cold war problems affecting the U.S. and the Soviet Union had to await the outcome of talks he had arranged this date with Secretary of State Dulles and on Saturday with the President. There was a noticeable lack of optimism, however, on those points. State Department officials had nevertheless credited Mr. Mikoyan with making a favorable impression in many areas with his appeals for peace and trade and his show of frankness on occasion in admitting that the Soviets had made mistakes in their relations with the U.S. in the past. There was only one point on which they thought that he had occasionally showed insensitivity, the Soviet suppression of the anti-Communist revolt in Hungary in 1956. He had sought to defend it by comparing it with U.S. intervention to protect the Government of Lebanon the previous year. Hungarian pickets everywhere he had gone in the country focused fresh attention, however, on the issue. He tried to convince those with whom he talked that it was possible for the country to make practical deals and engage in profitable trade with the Soviet Union. But in his public and private meetings, he had provided no real evidence of Soviet willingness to make concessions to solve the long Soviet-Western deadlock regarding Germany. He had created in some quarters, however, the impression that Premier Nikita Khrushchev did not want to press the dispute over Berlin to a dangerous point. The principal points which he had made were: that the six months limitation which the Soviets had imposed two months earlier for withdrawal of Western troops from Berlin had not been intended as an ultimatum and that the time limit was flexible, that if the U.S. did not like Premier Khrushchev's proposal to make West Berlin into a "free city", it ought offer counter-proposals; that the Soviet Government wanted a high-level East-West meeting regarding Germany and probably other issues, the sooner the better; that the Soviet Government would insist on having a veto voting system in any council which might be formed to operate an inspection system for a ban on nuclear weapons testing; that the Soviets wanted to trade with the U.S. but that U.S. Government regulations were preventing American businessmen from selling what the Soviets wanted to purchase; that the Soviets had to be treated as equals by the U.S., with some authorities considering that to be a type of appeal for direct negotiations between Moscow and Washington regarding many issues presently being negotiated with several Western powers at once.
Secretary of State Dulles had met with Mr. Mikoyan this date for talks on the East-West deadlock over German unification in the future of disputed Berlin. Their discussions might lead to an early, high-level East-West meeting regarding the whole range of German problems. This date's session, the second during Mr. Mikoyan's two-week visit to the U.S., had been described by diplomats as strictly a probing operation with each of the veteran antagonists of the cold war seeking to discover possible weaknesses or concessions in the policies of the other. The Deputy Premier had arrived at the State Department in a Soviet Embassy limousine. On a nearby corner, half a dozen Hungarian pickets had displayed their nation's flag with a black ribbon of mourning. The leader of the group had been Ferenc Nagy, Hungary's last non-Communist Prime Minister, who had been in exile since 1947.
In Washington, it was reported that the Atlas missile, which had been test fired from Cape Canaveral the previous night, had flown less than 200 miles, according to an Air Force announcement this date, which said that there had been trouble in the rocket engine system. The announcement said that after the successful launch, "an apparent malfunction in the propulsion system resulted in a flight of less than 200 miles." It was the 18th launch in the nation's ambitious ICBM development series, which had reached a high point on December 18 when a 4.5-ton Atlas "chatterbox" or talking satellite had been fired into orbit around the earth. The previous night's launch had been the fourth Atlas launch in seven weeks from the Cape. Convair Astronautics, developers of the missile, followed the ICBM and satellite launches with a successful 4,300-mile flight of the "C" series Atlas on December 23. The Thursday night Atlas was another in the "B" series. The "C", closer to the operational version, was modified slightly, lightening the tremendous load by about 100 pounds. As the missile had been launched into the night sky the prior night, a fleet of recovery ships had gathered off Ascension Island near the African coast, awaiting the nosecone's re-entry through the earth's atmosphere.
In New York, it was reported that the returned safe and sound infant who had been kidnaped by a woman 2 1/2 hours after the girl's birth on January 2, had been returned home with her happy parents this date, after having spent an interim period being checked at St. Peter's Hospital, from whose nursery she had been kidnaped and spirited away to the woman's Brooklyn apartment where, thanks to tips, she had been discovered, well cared for in the interim by the mother of eight children, some of whom were in foster care. Earlier in the day, the couple had been among ten witnesses appearing before a grand jury hearing testimony in the case of the woman accused of the kidnaping, who had been arrested the prior Sunday night in her Brooklyn apartment.
In San Diego, it was reported that authorities were wondering who would want to blow up a 33-year old woman with a bomb and why. The police chief of suburban El Cajon had stated, "Someone with a definite knowledge of explosives and with a strong reason to kill her," had done so. The brother of a man arrested in the case said that he believed the bomber thought that the woman knew who had killed a Nevada gambler. But the police chief said that there were only two possible motives, "money or love turned to hate, and she doesn't have any money." A 42-year old San Diego pharmacist, who had been arrested and booked on suspicion of attempted murder in the case, had been arraigned on a San Diego charge the previous day for illegal possession of narcotics, with bail set at $5,000 and his preliminary hearing set for February 2. The police chief said that the attempted murder booking was being dropped, pending investigation by the FBI and postal inspectors regarding the second bombing attempt. The woman who was the target of the bombing was separated from her husband and had been the target of bombs on two occasions, the second of which had been in a Christmas package, never delivered to her because she had moved, the first having been the prior November 4, when a bomb had exploded outside her apartment which she occupied with her two-year old daughter, injuring a neighbor boy. The brother of the pharmacist, who was also a pharmacist in Los Angeles, told a reporter at the arraignment of his belief in the Nevada gambler theory, indicating that the gambler, whose name he did not know, had been killed in Las Vegas sometime earlier, but would not say the connection, if any, to the woman targeted by the bombings. The woman had moved to the San Diego area the prior April after separating from her husband in Chicago and said she did not know why anyone would want to kill her. She said that prior to the November bombing, she had been on three dates with the man arrested. The police chief said that she had also dated a number of other men since the prior April and had been advised by police not to give the address of her present El Cajon apartment.
In New York, it was reported that two bandits had gotten their just "dessert" on Thursday as they grabbed a cardboard box, thinking it was a $3,000 payroll, but instead contained a custard pie. Two mechanics, one of Fort Lee, N.J., and the other of Manhattan, had been driving up to the Fifth Avenue Coach Co. garage with the payroll and en route from the bank had picked up the pie. They had been accosted by the two armed men and one thug had slugged one of them with a rubber hose and the other had grabbed the box. Police cruising the Henry Hudson Parkway spotted a car side-swiping several cars and gave chase, capturing the two brothers, ages 23 and 26, both of the Bronx. In the car, which police said was stolen, had been a revolver, a pistol, and the pie. The brothers were booked on charges of assault, robbery, and violation of the Sullivan law, which forbade possession of firearms without a permit.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that plummeting temperatures, which brought sleet and snow to Charlotte's rain-drenched streets this date, had ushered in a cold wave warning for a low of 12 degrees in Charlotte this night. There was no mention of more snow in the forecast, but Charlotte residents planning travel to the north and west of the city had been warned against it. Road conditions were hazardous in the mountains, according to the State Highway Patrol. The heaviest snowfall recorded in the mountains had been at Maple Springs Gap in Haywood County and at Walters Dam, where the snow accumulation was eight inches. Asheville had recorded two inches, with the snowfall beginning around midnight. Flurries had been reported in some outlying sections as late as mid-morning. Brief but heavy flurries had begun in Charlotte early in the morning, mixed with sleet, but the temperature had risen slightly before mid-morning and the sun shone briefly prior to noon. The forecast for plunging temperatures was the concern of weather observers, as even without additional snow, low temperatures could cause highways to freeze and make driving more hazardous. Drive carefully as the roads are slippery when wet, and even more so when turning to ice—like that obviously crazy fool woman, the one with the puffy lips and all the makeup and costume changes, who now seeks to pilot ICE with considerable lack of acumen and skill, every bit as fraught with difficulty and lack of conscience as the figure skater who had the club thrown at the legs of Nancy Kerrigan that time.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a little girl would be buried the following day, with her mother and her six brothers and sisters present at the funeral. Doctors had been trying to save the little girl's life, but her heart had given out on the operating table the previous day. Her family had a rough time from life, with her mother serving a term in Woman's Prison in Raleigh for neglect of her children. Nevertheless, thanks to a neighbor and some underpaid, overworked police officers, she would be permitted to attend the funeral. The neighbor had called the City Police Chief, E. C. Selvey, the previous night and indicated that she thought that the mother ought be allowed to attend the funeral, and the Chief had agreed, called the warden of the prison, who also agreed. But there was no money available to pay for her transport to Charlotte, and so a local police sergeant had put it up to the officers in the patrol division, who collected the money for a plane ticket. The mother had come without a guard as the warden said that she had been a model prisoner and that he could trust her. When the funeral was over, she would be returned to Raleigh on the bus, again without a guard. She would finish her imprisonment in June. The officers had checked into the background of the matter and found that some of the deceased little girl's brothers and sisters did not even have shoes, none of them having clothes fit to wear to their sister's funeral, and so during the morning, the Salvation Army had donated $15, after which a police lieutenant had sent two officers on a shopping expedition, obtaining shoes and other clothes for the children. A lot of police officers would also attend the little girl's funeral. Just before the operation which she did not survive the previous day, she had received a letter from her mother, saying: "I am praying for you and for the other children. Now I want you to pray for me." He does not disclose the age of the deceased child.
The next News special "Spotlite Series", to begin on Monday, would be titled "Heartbreaks of Show Business", written by Bill Smith, an editor of Show Business magazine, who also worked as a talent editor of Billboard and as a personal manager of a number of show business performers. He had gained his newspaper experience on the New York Daily Mirror and in the Journal of Commerce, lived in New York City, currently vying with Hollywood as the entertainment capital of the world. He had been witness to show business careers, some going on to stardom while others fell miserably, caught in webs of organizational complexities. He would explore the pitfalls of entering show business, what happened when young talents fell prey to ruthless agents and managers. The usual five-part series, Mr. Smith had indicated, was intended to save "one broken heart" and if so, it would have achieved its purpose.
On inside pages, as indicated the previous day in conjunction with an editorial welcoming Senator John F. Kennedy to Charlotte, it is reported by Emery Wister of The News that the latter had spoken to the Chamber of Commerce annual meeting installing new officers, speaking primarily of the need to pass legislation to undermine corrupting influences on organized labor, especially focusing on the Teamsters and their underworld corrupted president, Jimmy Hoffa. Ann Sawyer also reports of the visit of Mrs. Kennedy with her husband, taking a deliberate role in the background.
On the editorial page, "Charlotte Mustn't Let It Happen" indicates that when the law had formally ended its inquiry into the City Recorder's Court irregularities, it had left too many questions unanswered and too many riddles unsolved, that it was regrettable that the determination of some was not the determination of all. It finds that there were compelling reasons why every aspect of the mystery should have been cleared up, as the public demand had been insistent and the moral necessity inescapable.
It finds that the failure was not of law but of men, that it was impossible to have a system of functioning law without men as it took wise men and trained ones to operate the machinery which was called legal process, requiring dedicated and diligent persons to apply public principles to particular problems, skilled and selfless persons to exercise properly the power of decisive judgment. It finds not enough persons of that type in Charlotte currently.
But the book appeared closed and the public was apparently not to be enlightened about the remaining mysteries, as officially, at least, justice had been done. Great good had been accomplished in spite of the languor and disinterest of some officials. Some of the court's past operation, including indiscretions and irregularities, would not be easily repeated and improvements in the procedures had already been made, while others had been recommended and ought to be made.
It suggests that complete reform was essential if the local court system was to regain the public confidence it had lost when the scandal was unfolding in the daily headlines. The community realized that its past neglect of that court was the result of it not perceiving the true state of affairs, though it remained uncertain about some of the gamier aspects of the mystery, but now knew enough to want to make certain that nothing like the 1958 court scandal could happen in Charlotte again.
It finds that public attitude to be wholesome. As Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo had once said: "The law has its epochs of ebb and flow. One of the flood seasons is upon us. Men are insisting as never before that law should be made true to its ideals of justice. Let us gather up the driftwood, and leave the waters pure."
"Castro Is Open to 'Purification,' Too" indicates that as of Thursday, an estimated 195 "war criminals" had been executed in revolutionary Cuba. It suggests that perhaps many, or most, of the victims had been guilty as charged of atrocities under deposed El Presidente Fulgencio Batista. Yet the "bloodbath", as Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had called it, conveyed the horror of all wholesale slaughter, even slaughter in the name of justice, with the seasoning of mercy absent.
Sr. Castro himself explained the mass execution as being "necessary to purify the nation." His explanation, it posits, as with his background, suggested his likeness to the men of the French Revolution, primarily Robespierre. "The Incorruptible" Robespierre, as with Sr. Castro, a young and aggressive lawyer, had become the moral censor of the Revolution. He had held, with his idol Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that the state should be an agent not only of rule but of moral "purification". He hated murder until it had become clear that murder was the straw which held up his power.
At the current time, the same road lay open to Sr. Castro, the "new Cuban jacobin", who clung to the idea that government had not only to repair the political order but as prelude, also kill the evildoers of the old regime. (This, we note, appears as a central tenet of Trump, Vol. II, "The Missing Years of Bitter Interregnum".)
It indicates that Sr. Castro needed to be reminded of the historic result, that the purifying state soon turned on its own censors. Robespierre had been guillotined with the rest, and the chaos of the purifying state could only be controlled by a strong man, the Emperor Napoleon.
"Thunder and Lightning at City Hall" indicates that the political pugnacity on display at the week's City Council meeting had done little to bolster the public's confidence in the present membership, and if anything, had offered aid and comfort to various and sundry "reformers" who were limbering up the wings. It finds that on Wednesday, the hassle had all of the noisy tumult of a schoolyard hollering match without any of the compensatory picturesqueness. Personal pique could not be completely removed from human affairs, but it questions whether it had to be displayed so publicly. All members of the Council had not participated in the exchanges on Wednesday, but too often, individual members seemed to be pulling apart more than that they were pulling together.
It suggests that the future of the city's progress would require a great deal of pulling together. Meanwhile, it recommends to the notables one of the favorite yarns of President Lincoln, regarding a backwoods traveler and his horse lost in a terrific thunderstorm. When the old fellow's horse had given out and the thunder had come louder and the lightning seemed to hit the ground at his feet, he had gone down on his knees, and, though not a praying man, had beseeched: "O Lord, if it is all the same to you, give us a little more light and a little less noise."
"We'll Buy a Rocket Later on, Thanks" indicates that the Baltimore Sun had made the blackest editorial prognostication about the nation's defenses, but it was unavoidable not to turn away in dejection only then suddenly to spy the editorial page almanac, which had a Satellite Visibility chart, which said in its first cryptograph: "ATLAS (Tuesday) S.W. to S.E. due South at 6:06 A.M. Alt. 40 degrees 4th Mag. 820 mi", which told one when, where and how to look for the Atlas, "a plain old hunk of metal pivoting the earth."
It wonders whether it meant cosmic recognition for that johnny-come-lately piece of scrap from Cape Canaveral. "What right has it to sit there under the moon in the Sun's editorial almanac, rivaling what has entranced the lunatic, the lover, and the poet since Creation? Is it as important to know when our new moon passes as it is to know the loony old suspicion about when the fish may be biting in Chesapeake Bay, or when it's a good time to drop seed corn in the ground, or how cold the latest Arctic air blast is, or whether it's too humid to air a patchwork quilt on the line, or how much rain fell in the cranberry bogs yesterday?"
It finds rockets completely all right and in its almanac would list them when, like the tides, they could push a huge liner out to sea, or like the moon, make poetry, or like the rain, make a wild berry come up, indicating that it was content to wait.
Bob Fain of the Lexington Herald-Leader, in a piece titled "Hawg-Bladder Time", indicates that kids had once looked forward to the current time of year as each wanted to be the first to show up at school with a "blowed-up hawg bladder". They would take a length of pipestem cane, inflate the bladder and display it proudly. It could be used as a balloon on a routine day and as a football on dreary days, or on occasion as a war club.
The first boy to have a hog bladder balloon in his neighborhood each year was also the boy who was the last to put on shoes in the fall and the first to take them off in the spring. He wore socks only when he felt like it and the rest of the children despised him for his high living. When they really killed hogs, not just a frost shoat but several or eight "fattening" hogs, their mother would fill a bucket with various sections of hog anatomy, tell them which family was to get what and send them on their rounds of neighborhood houses. When the neighbors killed hogs, they returned the favor. One could tell one's standing with a family by the cut of meat one got. You could be a chitterling rank at one extreme or a sausage rank at the other, with varying ranks in between.
In addition to hog bladders, the kids also took pains to rescue the pigtails. At Christmas, they giftwrapped those and put them on the school or church Christmas tree for someone. For days they would talk about who got a pigtail at the Christmas tree and "didn't you think he would about die when he opened the package. Kids trying scrapes like that nowadays would wind up in Juvenile Court."
Drew Pearson indicates that Vice-President Nixon had done a strange right-about-face on the question of informing the American public about the U.S. lag behind Russia in missiles and satellites. A year earlier, he had urged the President to give the people the facts by delivering a Churchillian-type speech rousing the public to greater efforts in the cold war, urging what was called "Operation Candor", but now having gone all-out for "Operation Soothing Syrup".
Fearful that the satellite-missile issue might provide political grist for the Democrats in 1960, the Vice-President had joined the White House in playing down Russia's lead in outer space. Democratic charges that the U.S. was lagging in the space race, he feared, could become a damaging political issue in the upcoming presidential race. To his fellow policymakers, therefore, he was crying for a speedup. But to the press, he had been whispering that the U.S. was really ahead.
The facts were, as the Vice-President had read in the intelligence warnings and which he could not honestly deny, that the ICBM's had been tested by Russia 18 months ahead of the U.S. and that by the following Christmas, Russia would have an estimated 300 of them pointing at American cities from across the Arctic, while not until 1962 would the U.S. be able to launch a return salvo anywhere near that number, and even then, would have around 100 fewer ICBM's than would Russia by the end of 1959. As to IRBM's, Russia had actually tested 1,800-mile range missiles before the U.S. had even started to build the 1,500-mile range Thors and Jupiters. At present, Russia had an estimated 750 IRBM's ready to launch against U.S. overseas bases. The U.S. had shipped only two dozen Thors to England, and hoped to install some more in Italy, Turkey and Alaska. Regarding satellites and rockets, the Atlas, which the U.S. had finally launched into orbit recently, weighed less than the total two-stage Sputnik which the Russians had placed into orbit over a year earlier. The recent Soviet moon rocket, which went past the moon into orbit around the sun, weighed 3,245 pounds, over 300 times more than the American moon rocket which had petered out before traveling about 80,000 miles, a third of the distance to the moon.
He indicates that those were facts which the Vice-President definitely knew and which the American people were entitled to know, but which during the current week he had indicated to the American people were not true.
It had once been the case that candidates for high office from major Eastern cities had gone first to Dublin to help win the Irish vote, and then to Rome to win the Italian vote, then to Jerusalem to win the Jewish vote, as pilgrimages to those three cities influenced the votes back home. But things had changed and now one went to Moscow, as Adlai Stevenson had done, and interviewed Premier Nikita Khrushchev. After Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had interviewed the Premier, his name had gone into the headlines as a major presidential candidate. So now, Vice-President Nixon was going to Moscow, probably in the summer. The invitation had been given to him by Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan during the latter's visit in Washington the previous week.
Dick 'll sure enough find out what's cooking, alright, in the kitchen with Nikita, where the others, mere pikers, only allowed him to deliver the Commie line directly back to the Presi-dent by way of the debriefing, as if recorded on tape.
Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, in an abstract of one of his columns for that newspaper, posits that people of the Deep South had been victims of a cruel deception. He indicates that on two successive days in Deep South Georgia, two Federal judges, both natives of that state and each held high in the esteem of the state's population, had issued anti-segregation decisions, the first of which related to desegregation of trolley and bus transportation and the second desegregation in education. A unit of the State University System had been notified by the court that segregation of qualified students was unconstitutional, that being the case involving the Georgia State College of Business Administration in Atlanta.
Mr. McGill had received a call from a troubled lady, which he says had been typical, in which she indicated she had heard the news on the television and telephoned to ask for more complete information and for verification of it, was informed that the judge had, in fact, ruled that segregation of qualified students by reason of race or color was a violation of the Federal law. She responded by saying: "But the judge can't do that. Isn't it unconstitutional?"
He finds that in its innocence, the dilemma of several million people in the Deep South was revealed by the remark, resulting from their political leadership having from the start deceived them by saying that the Supreme Court had acted unconstitutionally in Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny. Those same persons had argued, primarily through their attorneys making not inconsequential fees from representing the states, that massive resistance would be sufficient as an answer to the "illegal" action of the High Court. Those attorneys had received pompous advertising as "leading constitutional authorities".
But now in the Deep South, it had occurred that local judges, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh", had begun to rule against them five years after Brown. Native jurists in the various states were handing down such decisions as had occurred in the recent cases out of Atlanta. They were judges familiar with Southern traditions and were aware of the massive resistance, very likely out of sympathy with the 1954 Brown decision. But acting under oath and charged with supporting the Constitution, they were notifying the states involved that the Government and its institutions were still in force and that the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, acted as a supreme mandate to both state courts and the Federal lower courts.
That had come as a shock to many thousands of persons who had been fed everything except the truth. Some of the political leaders had urged upon the people that they refuse "to surrender", as a matter of principle. That overlooked an historical precedent, that being "the noble Robert E. Lee, hero to both the South and the North, who, against the advice and wishes of most of his staff, determined to surrender at Appomattox. He himself was heartbroken. But, he said, he knew further resistance could result only in greater harm to the South." Because he had loved the South more than he did his own career, his own feelings, or his pride, he spent a night in prayer and then wrote out the offer of surrender. He did not abandon his principles and did not thereby say that he believed the opposition to be "right", but was first a man of integrity and thus surrendered to save the South from further loss. Thereafter, until his death, he devoted himself to education, calling it the greatest Southern need.
He indicates that General Lee had not been a politician trying to protect himself in office against those who might thereafter claim he was "soft" in opposition to Yankees. Nor was he a lawyer earning a fee. He had in mind his region, its people, and more particularly its children of generations to come. "But, then, he was General Lee. And, maybe it is true that we shall not look upon his like again."
Note to the dummies who watched too much television during the 1970's and 80's rather than studying their lessons from history: Mr. McGill was not referring to the car from "Dukes of Hazzard", an entirely fictional program, apparently devoted to a couple of idiotic hillbilly moonshiners, who, nevertheless, managed to ingratiate themselves to a bunch of dummies, whose pappies or grandpappies probably devoted much of their time to moonshining of one sort or another, not necessarily the making of illicit liquor. You can usually tell them today by whether they support the idiot in the White House currently in 2026, the man whom some of them think is the "new George Washington". Funny thing about old George, we never knew he was a fascist dictator. He was the one, after all, who eschewed a third term which would have been his for the asking, but believed it contrary to the new Government which they were seeking to establish as quite distinct from kingdoms and dictatorships, which they had fought against during a hard revolution, which he had helped to lead as its primary general, to establish a democratic republic devoted to certain principles ultimately embodied in the Bill of Rights, not the least of which, indeed the foremost of which, are the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition of the government for redress of grievances, and religious belief—which Thomas Jefferson regarded as one indivisible freedom.
Meanwhile, Trump regards only the Second Amendment and the Tenth Amendment, albeit the latter only when it is convenient for his political and power-mongering purposes, and, to the extent he is even aware of the others embodied not only in the Bill of Rights but also by its extension in the post-Civil War amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th, even if the Fifth Amendment was used repeatedly by him and his lawyers to avoid having his ass sent to jail where it richly belonged and still belongs to this date, manages to ignore and eschew them when inconvenient to his Her'tage Foundation and Fed'ralist Society preordinated twin agendas of the same father, conceived out of wedlock without contraception, by the very thought of it.
And yet, these dummies who continue to support him think that he is not a politician. He is not only the consummate politician, he is the ultimate Machiavellian Prince, far and away more so than his most kindred spirit ever to occupy the White House, Richard M. Nixon. But even the latter did not succumb to his darkest intrigues at performing a dictatorship, knowing too well the history of the nation and its laws to overcome his moral compass in that regard. For to have a conscience well-based in fact and law, one must have some knowledge at the outset of history and the law—which Trump obviously lacks, only being a consummate salesman, pumping his own product, which is basically himself and his name, cheap and gaudy though it is to anyone with any sensibility. But, those dummies who fell for "The Dukes of Hazzard" and similar forms of "entertainment" on tv, just love his dumb ass. They just love it. They can't get enough of it. He is their reality every single day, just like a running soap opera—for these dumb asses. The more fascist he becomes, the more they love him, because they are inherently authoritarians themselves. That is the way they have run their households for generations and that is the way they will damn well do so into the future, and anyone who tells them otherwise, can go to hell. And if you so much as try to instruct them or advise them, you are perceived as interfering as an interloper with their her'tage, and need to be put down as a mad dog, as a traitor to your "country", which to them is the Deep South, and all for which it stood in the antebellum days and continued to stand well into the 20th Century, even in some pockets to this day, though reforms have been made usually in the larger cities and urban areas of even that region through time—though Trump intends through his deployment of the STAPO to the Democratic-run cities to end the Commie reign which brought those changes through time since the 1930's.
Most of the people for decades and decades have not gone barefoot in the sand or eaten dirt, except for the fact that some figuratively have done so, never having gotten over their pappies and grandpappies and great-great-grandpappies, still living by that vaunted notion that they lived in palatial splendor until the Yankees done took it from 'em via Gen'ral Sherman and his like back in 18 and 64, despite the fact that such was part of the cruel delusion of which Mr. McGill wrote, having been put to them by the Deep South politicians, always eager to please their ears to delude and distract from what their eyes actually saw before them—very similar to the concerted effort of Trump and his minions and publicity agents at Fauxx "News".
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that a bill to provide communities Federal money to build airports promised to provide the first test of the President's veto power. At stake was perhaps 6 million dollars in Federal funding needed for airport improvements in North Carolina alone. The airport bill was off to a flying start in the new 86th Congress, with its sponsor in the Senate being Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, predicting Senate passage by March 1, while its sponsor in the House, Oren Harris of Arkansas, was chairman of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, which decided how fast the bill would proceed to the floor. Senator Monroney had predicted that there were enough Senate votes to override any Presidential veto of the bill, and Mr. Harris would only say, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
There appeared to be little doubt that the President would veto the bill in 1959, the same way he had done in 1958 when he had killed it with a pocket veto, accompanied by a message indicating that "the time has come for the federal government to begin an orderly withdrawal from the airport program."
That view had directly run counter
to the position taken by the aviation industry and most of Congress,
who argued that the rocketing growth of aviation as an everyday
method of transportation, plus the introduction of jet aircraft
The new airport bills would provide communities 100 million dollars per year for five years on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis. The communities could use the money for building new airports or to improve existing ones. Also, small airports could obtain money for maintaining runways. The President's budget statements indicated that he would try to veto the bill again.
The Senate bill differed from the
House bill in that it would provide a 75 million dollar per year
emergency fund to help large airports gear up for the jet age
The Aviation Operators Council, the American Association of Airport Executives, and the National Association of State Aviation Officials had conducted a survey to determine how much money communities needed during the ensuing four years for airport construction and improvement. They had also found out how much money the communities thought they could get on their own. The results showed that communities in all 48 contiguous states needed a billion dollars to carry out the airport improvements planned for fiscal 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1962. The communities estimated that they could raise 571 million dollars on their own, leaving them 454 million short. The industry wanted the Federal Government to fill that gap.
The survey showed that North Carolina planned eight airport projects during fiscal 1959 through 1962, costing 12.033 million dollars. Of that amount, North Carolina expected to be able to raise 4.825 million on its own, leaving an additional 7.206 million. If North Carolina were given its full share of the 100 million dollars to be authorized in the new legislation, it would receive 6.266 million for the four-year period. That meant that North Carolina would then be only somewhat less than a million dollars short of the total needed as estimated by the survey.
The actual need for funding was even
greater than the survey indicated because some airports had not
returned their questionnaires. The survey had been published in 1958. (It had consequently left out the new state of Alaska—which would need adequate airport facilities to accommodate Vice-Preisdent Nixon during his last campign run in 1960 in the run-up to election day, to fulfill his campaign pledge, improvidently made, to visit all 50 states, put considerably behind on his schedule as a result of the kid opening the car door against his knee one mid-August day in Greensboro, N.C., that kid having perhaps inadvertently saved, providentially, the nation from what ultimately would befall it following the 1972 election, though the latter had followed inevitably in the flow only from the bitterness derived from the former outcome in 1960, at least we assume. Or was the "New Nixon" of 1968, manifested in 1972, lurking in his five o'clock shadow all along?
A letter writer indicates that he was sure that all of the residents of Charlotte voted as Charlotteans and not as the voters of Philadelphia, and was sure that they all wanted men and women in their City Government who would do everything possible in favor of everyone and have their welfare at heart. He thinks every citizen of the city was glad to see any reliable and responsible person as a candidate for City Government who seriously had its welfare at heart and would stand for that which was right regardless of what or whom he had to face. He finds it not fair to the citizens for any group to write a bunch of names and throw them in a hat with the first to be drawn to be the candidates for office, regardless of whether they were serious-minded or not regarding the post for which they were campaigning. He posits that any person who came out as a candidate to try to interest someone else in running for any post in government had betrayed the citizens even before that person was nominated.
A letter writer indicates that now that the police union was past history, he recommends that the City Council give police officers shorter working hours, help them with the Police Club, and as soon as possible, make the scale of wages higher. He says that there were no finer police in the world than the members of the State Highway Patrol and the City and County Police Departments of Charlotte and Mecklenburg, and that they deserved a lot of credit as it was no easy job to be an officer of the law. He finds the average officer to be a law-abiding friend of the people.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for its articles on the fine arts program in Winston-Salem, and particularly compliments Harriet Doar who had authored those three articles appearing on three successive days between January 5 and 7. She questions what had happened to the Fine Arts Council for Charlotte, which had seemed to be a grand idea to place real effort behind those capable of raising the cultural level of the community. She indicates that the intention of an impressive group had been announced, but they had heard nothing further about it.
Don't worry. You will see it manifested through time in such cultural steps forward as the NASCAR Museum in downtown Charlotte. Soon, we hear, they're going to build a rather impressive Wrestling Museum next to it—with a five-story high statue out front of a solid-gold Trump wielding a cane and batting to the ground some elderly woman daring to protest his latest hold, the "double-aught piledriver deadman", as being illegal in professional wrestling. But maybe we heard wrong on some or all of that one. How about an Evel Knievel Museum? Dukes of Hazzard? Anyway, culture is always on the march in Charlotte, just as that time in 1964 when we suddenly espied Haystack Calhoun trundling down the sidewalk toward us one evening, forcing us to give passage to his girth lest we wind up mashed to mush.
Framed Edition
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