The Charlotte News
Friday, January 7, 1949
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Israeli Army announced that their operation in the Negev Desert and the Gaza Strip had concluded, with the expulsion of Egyptian forces from Israeli territory and withdrawal of Israeli patrols from penetration as deep as 48 miles into Egypt. The Israeli general staff ordered a ceasefire, in advance of armistice talks aimed at ending the war with the Egyptians in southern Palestine. The action was in accord with the order of the U.N. on December 29 to halt all hostilities in the area by January 6. Israel said it was prepared to cooperate fully with the conciliation committee established by the U.N. December 11. Egypt had already indicated its willingness to cooperate provided Israel did so.
All hostilities in the Negev had ceased, but it was officially reported that Iraqi forces had directed heavy fire at Israeli positions in the central sector and that Israeli troops had returned fire.
Secretary of State George Marshall, 68, resigned his post for reasons of health, effective January 20, as was anticipated, and the President named Dean Acheson, 55, as the new Secretary. Secretary Marshall, who had recently undergone surgery for removal of a kidney, had been in the position for two years. His primary legacy as Secretary was the Marshall Plan, which he had first proposed in a Harvard commencement address in June, 1947. Secretary Marshall was recovering at his home in Pinehurst, N.C.
Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, as also expected, likewise resigned and was replaced by James E. Webb, Director of the Budget. Frank Pace was to become Budget Director. Undersecretary Lovett had played a major role in developing the Truman Doctrine of military aid to Greece and Turkey, and generally providing military aid to nations seeking to resist Soviet Communism. He had also helped draft the Marshall Plan.
The President, expressing deep disappointment at Secretary Marshall's resignation, denied press reports that he was engaged in a fight with his Cabinet to soften U.S. policy toward Russia, specifically referring to an article by Jay Franklin in Life, which he said was without foundation. He stated that he never had any private conversation with Mr. Franklin, who had helped write some of the President's campaign speeches, and that Mr. Franklin never saw any top secret document, that he had sought a job in the White House but nothing else. He added that there was no change in the country's foreign policy and that none should be read into the fact of the resignations and new appointments at the head of the State Department.
In his annual economic report to Congress, the President expressed confidence that the country could attain its goal of continuous "maximum employment, production, and purchasing power." He said that the slowing of inflation signaled an approaching stable prosperity, though machinery in the form of reserve controls was still necessary to fight inflation. He said that his "Fair Deal" laid forth in the State of the Union message to Congress two days earlier was intended as a two-edged weapon of Government, "anti-depression and anti-inflation". He wanted another million persons employed by the end of the year and a rise in production of three to four percent. The President also favored flexible farm price supports, rejecting a Congressional proposal to continue the present 90 percent parity for farm price floors. He found that rigid price supports would effectively cut farm income and force rigid production controls. He also asked Congress to extend rent controls for at least two additional years and bolster their enforcement. He likewise pressed for action to ease the housing shortage.
At his press conference, he refused to state precisely how much of a raise in corporate taxes should be included to achieve the four billion dollar revenue boost which he sought, leaving the matter to Congress to determine. He agreed that he was not seeking the excess profits tax he had sought the previous year. He also clarified that his request for authorization of Government construction of steel plants was premised on first taking progressive steps toward encouraging voluntary expansion of steel production and that the Government would step in only if private industry failed to meet the country's steel needs.
The stock market rose fast this date, with key issues rising between a dollar and three dollars per share.
The North Carolina House adopted a compromise version of its gag rule, whereby a bill could be recalled from committee on ten days' notice rather than the thirty days as recommended by the Rules Committee. The Committee recommended that a simple majority could adopt a minority report rather than the two-thirds majority required under present rules, and that 25 percent of a committee had to sign a minority report rather than only three members.
Former Governor Gregg Cherry and his wife arrived at their new rented home in Gastonia after departing the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, found it without light bulbs, telephone, with six inches of water in the basement, and in need of a thorough cleaning. He said he would inform Governor Kerr Scott if he did not soon have a phone, as the Governor had threatened that if phone service were not extended into rural areas by the phone companies, he would see to it that the State would mandate it. He had been given a new car by well-wishers on his departure from office.
What kind?
On the editorial page, "A Challenge to North Carolina" tells of new Governor Kerr Scott having struck a balance between aggressiveness and caution in his inaugural address the previous day. If he could keep State Government on that plane, it opines, then the state could look forward possibly to its greatest period of progress. He was true to his campaign promises in the program he laid forth for the ensuing four years and it was hard to find fault with any aspect of it. He mainly favored better roads, especially in rural areas, better education with higher teacher salaries, improved physical and mental health care, and increased efficiency of State bureaus and agencies.
Engaging in dry wit for which he was known, he had said in his inaugural address that he came to the office without skeletons in his closet, and that he intended to allow none to creep into the State's closet—which must have been why he was closeted with outgoing Governor Gregg Cherry and the Highway Commissioner a few days earlier. He concluded the address with the challenge: "Let's go forward."
The piece finds it a challenge which the General Assembly and the people could well afford to accept.
That is much better, incidentally, than what we see that the present Texas Governor in 2016 advocates, for all intents and purposes: Let's all move backwards 227 years and make wholesale amendments to the U.S. Constitution via state constitutional conventions to provide "the original balance" between state and Federal governments as "intended by the Founders".
Oh? And why did they not therefore
make the amendments which you wish to add or revise? Such quaint devices as enabling two-thirds of the states to override any act of Congress or any decision of the Supreme Court, thus abrogating the Supremacy Clause, so that, theoretically, the 34 least populous states could override the will of the 16 most populous states, meaning, effectively, that the majority of about 101 million people, or about 51 million people, could trump the majority will of about 221 million people. Brilliant! Just what a democracy needs to thrive
Revision, however, would be a real good idea for one amendment and only one: Abrogate the Second Amendment and stick it where the moon don't shine, then have Congress make it a felony with an automatic ten-year prison sentence to own an operable firearm, any kind of firearm. Mass shootings du jour in the country would remarkably begin to disappear within a year. And they would not be replaced by bombings or mass knifings. Trust us.
Try it a couple of years and let's see what happens. What are you afraid of, pansy with the gun, not any longer appearing as the he-man of the household because you don't have your little friend any longer by your side to act as your surrogate for want of adequate manhood otherwise?
Or, you could continue to be morons, continue to do nothing about guns, and shed your crocodile tears every time someone decides to play out in reality some ridiculous role from a movie they once saw when they were seven or eight years old, continue then to utter the old, trite line about people, not guns, killing people, along with other asinine bits of sophistry.
And, while we are about amending the Constitution, let us also be rid of the other anachronistic provision, that providing for the electoral college.
It should be noted, incidentally, that at the Founding, the number of free white males 16 or older within the most populous four states in 1790, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, totaled 400,000, while the remaining such population of the nine other states was 342,000. It took originally, as with all subsequent amendments, three quarters of the states to ratify the Constitution, thus nine at the Founding in 1789. While there are no figures available from 1790 for the state-by-state voting age population, per se—i.e., free white males 21 and over and, in ten states, also owning property—, a reasonable deduction can be made that the proportionate voting age population was about the same in each state as those free white males 16 and over. Thus, originally, it would not have been theoretically possible for the minority of the population to override the will of the majority through ratification. As that is no longer true, given changes in population and in the diaspora of the nation, it might also be wise to consider amendment of the Constitution to provide that no amendment may be ratified, regardless of three-quarters of the states doing so, except also by a total majority will of the voters casting ballots in every state. That way, smarty-pantses who seek to lord over the rest of us with their little schemes to change the Constitution through minority will, indeed, even by the sole will of 38 State legislatures or state constitutional conventions, could never sneak one past. They will try, obviously, because these idiots never give up. They have not since the Founding, when they were called Royalist "Tories", not to mention other things unmentionable.
A piece from the Charleston News & Courier, titled "Opposition to Charity", plumps for up to a 15 percent tax credit equal to charitable contributions, finds the forced charity of the New Deal through heavy taxation to be "the enemy of charity".
There you go again...
Drew Pearson tells of the President now making his own decisions and, while listening to Cabinet advisers such as conservative Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder, no longer deferred to their view on matters. In pre-election days, Mr. Snyder had usually gotten the last word in on changes of major speeches. That was no longer the case.
Four Cabinet members, Secretary of Defense Forrestal, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, Acting Secretary of State Robert Lovett, and Mr. Snyder all jointly sought to shape the State of the Union message, especially trying to tone down the segment on raising corporate taxes. But the President had stuck by his guns.
The President was also working more closely with leaders on Capitol Hill than during the previous winter and spring. The President had traveled the country, visiting almost every Congressional district during the campaign, knew that the people would be keeping a close watch on the new Congress, and so, while he intended to compromise within reason, he also was confident that the Congress, itself, understood the score with the electorate.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco was constructing in Spain large new buildings the size of the Pentagon in an effort to woo the U.S. Army there to build bases, talk of which had been circulating through the Pentagon. He notes that uncensored reports told of new Spanish guerrilla warfare against the Franco Government.
The Russians were trying to lure Norway from the North Atlantic Alliance by attracting Norwegian labor to the Communist camp.
In reference to the false Army intelligence report the previous spring regarding a supposed imminent Russian attack on Scandinavia or even the U.S., he quotes General Omar Bradley, Army chief of staff, as having said that if he had believed all of his intelligence reports during the war, he would still be freezing on the Normandy beachhead.
The movement of new Senators into their Capitol offices had caused mice and cockroaches to be flushed out into the open. The members ate in their offices, dropped crumbs. Senate housekeepers wanted more potent cockroach poison.
You know what they're talkin' about
Edwin D. Canham discusses Puerto Rico's evolutionary process toward democracy, having just inaugurated its first elected Governor, Luis Muñoz Marin, standing as example to other colonial peoples of the world. Puerto Rico, though a U.S. territory, was exempt from Federal income tax while receiving millions of dollars annually in Federal money. It gave Puerto Rico an opportunity to achieve economic strength. Puerto Rico enjoyed virtual self-government while receiving the American dollars.
He posits that if the people of Indonesia or Indo-China were able to observe what was taking place in Puerto Rico or, more to the point, if the Dutch and French Governments, respectively, could work out a similar arrangement, the peoples of those colonial lands would not be so susceptible to the influence of Communism.
The new Governor warned the people, however, that they should not become dependent indefinitely on the American money. He was acutely aware that some American Congressmen, jealous of the flow of jobs to tax-exempt Puerto Rico with its cheap labor, might decide to cut off the faucet.
The island had been neglected during its early years of territoriality from the turn of the century through the coming of FDR and the New Deal. Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell initiated New Deal experiments with subsidies, which had subsequently been cut back to make way for more free enterprise.
Governor Muñoz Marin had been an advocate for independence, but now viewed the island's unique status with greater favor.
Mr. Canham views the status of Puerto Rico as a way out of colonialism superior to that of independent sovereignty as in the case of the Philippines. For Puerto Rico had risen above nationalism and thus hearkened a new era.
James Marlow finds the President's State of the Union message taking the country back a decade to the original New Deal, which had essentially ended in 1938 as the country began to prepare for war. The President appeared to consider it unfinished business. He had attempted in his first year in office, after the war, to initiate some of the programs now put forward, but had not gotten anywhere with it. Now, he was moving ahead with determination.
Mr. Marlow finds that the bulk of the proposals were derived from or expansions of New Deal programs or proposals. As for pre-paid medical insurance, President Hoover's Medical Committee had recommended it in 1932. Senator Robert Wagner of New York had begun introducing bills to establish it in 1938.
The President wanted to expand Social Security, founded in 1935.
He wanted low-rent public housing, which had been initiated in the early years of the New Deal and thereafter only aided without direct construction by the Government.
The proposed anti-poll tax and anti-lynching legislation had been before Congress for over a decade without getting anywhere, and the Fair Employment Practices Commission had been established by executive order by FDR pursuant to his war powers, expired therefore shortly after the end of the war.
FDR had also proposed the St. Lawrence Seaway as early as 1934.
The proposed Health, Education and Welfare Department was also not new, as FDR had proposed a Social Welfare Department in 1937.
Mr. Marlow continues on down the list of Truman proposals, finding each one having its seeds in the early New Deal years.
The President's request to authorize the Government to build steel mills if private industry did not voluntarily provide sufficient production to support the country's needs was a new concept. So was his request for a four billion dollar tax increase. But those were the only new wrinkles.
He had requested universal military training, as he had before without success. And he wanted repeal of Taft-Hartley, having vetoed it in mid-1947. Mr. Marlow offers that FDR probably would have wanted the same thing had the law been in existence before his death in April, 1945.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, finds that Britain's objections regarding Israeli incursions into Egyptian territory to be "one of the phoniest displays of moral indignation in history." The world laughed at the prospect of Britain having to come to the aid of Egypt under its mutual defense treaty, a pretext for war as thin as that used by Hitler.
The picture of Britain's enmity toward Israel appeared complete: that the Arabs were to be allowed to attack Palestine with impunity, and, sometimes, with British financial and administrative aid; that every time the Arabs were winning, the British and, usually, the U.N. were silent; that when the Arabs were losing, the British would demand a truce and withdrawal of Israeli forces; and that when Israel drove Arab invaders back over the Israeli borders, the British threatened armed reprisal. Effectively, the British were tolerating the war in Palestine and rigging it so that the Arabs could not lose and the Israelis could not win. The Arabs could invade Israeli territory, suffer defeat, retreat into their own territory, regroup and try again. But Israel had to stay within its own territory and continue to endure the assaults.
The British could join the fight only with the consent of the U.S., and if the U.S. did not prevent it, it would forsake its moral position in favoring the North Atlantic Alliance. For then, the idea that the Alliance was being formed in furtherance of liberty and human rights would go by the boards. It would have the "fiber and grandeur of a piece of suet, and sensitive elders will change the subject when their young ask them to tell again about how we are keeping the best hope of humankind alive."
A letter from A. W. Black assumes that no one noticed that Dr. Hamilton Holt, in his recent article for the newspaper in which he had advocated world government, was a member of the United World Federalists.
As usual, Mr. Black finds the group infiltrated by Communists and so unworthy of any credit—as with anyone with whom he disagreed. He believes that a world government as that proposed, surrendering to the U.N. all weapons of mass destruction and all weapons capable of offensive warfare, would leave the Red Army "supreme and unopposed."
A letter writer, 48, says that he had encountered difficulties in getting a job because of a criminal conviction when he was twenty years old, had some clerical experience but no skilled trade, seeks work. He says that he had a high school education and worked in a tobacco warehouse the previous August and September.
The editors note that they had verified the facts of his letter and because of the unusual circumstances, had published it, would provide his references to an employer who wrote to the newspaper willing to hire the man, whose name had been withheld.
If you think you have a position for him, be sure and write to The News. He may still be looking.
If not, you can communicate with the fellows in Lagos, Nigeria, who regularly seek pen pals.
A couplet from the Greenville (Tenn.) Sun appears:
But blessed are the meek,
As they are slow to say what they
seek.
Another one appears, from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal:
And somewhere hidden beneath fall
foliage village leaves,
There creeps a hidden danger,
"Stop"—if you please, m' liege.
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl,
but she doesn't have a lot to say
Framed Edition
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