The Charlotte News

Friday, January 6, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President delivered his annual economic report to Congress, saying that the country could offer 61 million jobs in 1950, 64 million by 1955, eventuating in complete elimination of poverty. Every family, he said, should be earning a $1,000 more in annual income by 1954, resulting in average incomes above $5,000. He sought from Congress standby powers to control credit and more liberal loan terms for small businesses. He continued not to be specific regarding the taxes to be raised to provide a "moderate" increase in revenue, but only stressed again that inequities should be removed from the tax system.

Britain gave full diplomatic recognition, as anticipated, to the Chinese Communist Government of Mao Tse-Tung and severed diplomatic relations with the Chiang Nationalist regime, had notified Communist China's Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai of the fact. The Nationalist Government on Formosa promptly severed diplomatic relations with Britain. The ambassador to Britain of the Nationalist Government said that the action was analogous to burying the Government while it was still alive, that it had received a knock-out blow, not from a foe, but a former ally. It was anticipated that Norway, Denmark, and Sweden would follow Britain's lead. Thus far, India, Pakistan, Burma, Yugoslavia, Russia and the Soviet satellites had recognized the Mao Government.

John L. Lewis was sued by five Ohio coal mining companies for eight million dollars in damages for lost profits during the three-day work week period and the prior strike periods of 1949. They also sought an injunction to end the shortened schedule. They sought the relief under an Ohio statute prohibiting restraints of trade. Six other suits were expected to be filed as well in Ohio, seeking an additional ten million dollars and an injunction.

In Detroit, a night watchman who had found the 39 sticks of dynamite planted on a little-used stairway outside UAW headquarters the previous month, was abducted and then left alive, trussed, and suffering from exposure, beside the River Rouge. He was in serious condition.

John Maragon, the alleged "five percenter" indicted for perjury before Congress for denying that he received payment for his activities in greasing the skids for government contracts for his clients, pleaded not guilty and trial was set for February 20 in Washington.

Once again, however, he, as all other defendants in American criminal cases, did not plead "innocent", as there is no such plea where we have a presumption of innocence and the burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt resting on the prosecution. If you do not understand that, report and write headers on cat stories and not court stories. It is misleading to an already grossly misled public anent American criminal jurisprudence.

In Baltimore, Dr. Isaiah Bowman, president emeritus of Johns Hopkins University and one of the world's foremost experts on geography, died at age 71. He had retired as president at the beginning of 1949. He had been a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson when the latter had enunciated the plan for the League of Nations in 1919. He also advised FDR during World War II and helped lay the groundwork for the the U.N.

In Missoula, Mont., five children were killed in a flash fire at their home. Two other children and an adult were seriously burned and four other children escaped injury.

Vice-President Alben Barkley and his new bride would be in Raleigh on January 28 for the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

Tom Fesperman of The News reports that in Charlotte, at least two dozen children had suffered serious eye injuries since Christmas from BB guns fired by playmates. Two of the children had completely lost sight in an eye as a result. One boy had accidentally shot himself by aiming too well at a percussion cap. The Charlotte police had taken about a dozen BB guns away from children who had been caught shooting them at other children.

Right to bear arms. Hey, we got rats.

In Los Angeles, the Bank of America was guardian of a dog and four cats after a court order naming it so, pending a fight over a will.

Get over there and feed them and clean up their mess, you money-grubbing bastards.

The temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero in Hell, Norway.

Sleet and freezing rain created new hazards and slowed relief to hundreds of homeless and heatless families in the areas of the Midwest beset by flooding. Memphis struggled after a severe ice storm on Thursday. The Southwest and Southern California suffered heavy crop damage from the cold weather. Freezing rain impacted Southern Illinois and Indiana.

See there? Wall and roof will make the difference in Trumplanderkind. We can have summer year-round in a controlled environment with a thermostat for the whole nation. We can call it the "Asstrodome".

In Atlanta, a patient with an injured right leg was being towed to the hospital by a tractor-trailer truck, probably the way things will be in the country generally when and if the Trumplanderkind Republicans of 2017 get their way. And you know what happens at the circus when the elephants march around the ring. We can only hope for a few good individuals in Congress, including some of the Republicans, who still believe in the notion that "the buck stops here"—as it won't be stopping anytime soon at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anymore.

On the editorial page, "Ten-Year Platform—III" again discusses the ten-point plan for Charlotte's progress over the ensuing decade, as set forth by News reporter Tom Fesperman the previous Monday, this time stressing the need for local revenue for most of the programs, to be obtained primarily from property taxes, consequently resulting in the need for revaluation. The effort would be to raise assessments closer to the true value of the real property and to eliminate inequities. It was the primary way for localities to raise money for many of their needed projects which received neither State nor Federal help.

"The Formosa Decision" supports the President's enunciation of policy toward Nationalist China, that the U.S. would not militarily intervene to protect Formosa from the Communists in the event of attack but would continue to supply the Chiang regime with financial and advisory aid. The position recognized the danger of conducting military operations on Formosa as a futile situation absent complete war against the Communist Government on the mainland, and the fact that Formosa was not a strategic position in Asia and the Pacific.

"Oleomargarine Showdown" finds it unjust that a few dairy states were holding up the abolition of the discriminatory tax on margarine in the Senate at the expense of the consuming public, who, in consequence, had to pay substantially more for yellow-colored margarine.

"Future of City Streets" praises Governor Kerr Scott for announcing that the State Highway system would eventually have to take over the municipal street system, despite his own program to encourage rural highway development and improvement. It fit the general view in the state that the urban and rural areas were mutually dependent on one another economically. The Governor's new attitude was partly traceable to a study being conducted by the Municipal Roads Commission regarding the relationship between rural roads and city streets. It would likely show that past State policy had been unduly favorable to rural roads at the expense of city streets and that a balance needed to be struck to relieve the cities and towns of the burden of paving their own streets on limited resources.

Drew Pearson discusses the undermining of U.S. foreign policy by Britain with its recognition of the Communist Chinese Government, despite the U.S. refusal to do so.

He explains how the British had undercut American foreign policy leading up to World War II, both as to Germany and Japan, as to the latter, as he had explained earlier in the week, not objecting with the U.S. to Japan's entry to Manchuria in 1931 for fear of upsetting the financial interests of the British in Hong Kong. Moreover, the French had not resisted Hitler when he took over the Ruhr and Rhineland in March, 1936, which changed the balance of economic power in Europe and gave the financial basis for further building of Hitler's Wehrmacht. The groundwork had been paved by British support of Germany and its historical balancing of France against Germany to limit any threat from France or Germany.

That latter point was one reason for the British being the chief opponent of creation of a United States of Europe, as favored by ERP administrator Paul Hoffman. Such an organization would remove Britain as the keystone of Europe. It explained why Britain was shipping goods to Russia, including secret jet engines.

The British had also undercut U.S. policy toward Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to World War II, allowing the Sudetenland to go to Hitler in September, 1938 at Munich, having told the Sudeten and Slovak leaders in advance of the fact while the U.S. was supporting President Edouard Benes of Czechoslovakia.

At the Casablanca Conference in December, 1943, Winston Churchill and FDR had agreed that Britain would be solely responsible for Greece when the Nazis were finally ousted. When the latter event occurred in 1944, Mr. Churchill favored the Greek right-wing Royalists over the liberals and moderate left-wingers, making a coalition government impossible. The result was strife and civil war. The British then withdrew and left the U.S. holding the bag, with the result that millions of American dollars had to go to rectify the situation.

The U.S. had favored a compromise arrangement between Britain and India whereby India would have a certain amount of independence. But the British would not accept the plan during the war. The British policy in India, Burma and China had helped to undermine the American policy of encouraging democracy and then left the U.S. holding the bag in the Far East. The Communists had taken advantage of the shortsightedness of the British to achieve power in China and now Britain was recognizing that Government.

Marquis Childs discusses the one area of the economy which he believes ought be bothering Democrats as they looked toward the 1950 elections, and, moreover, the 1952 elections, that being the rise in farm prices. Farmers were upset about it and were writing letters to Congress asking why high support prices had been passed for corn, the feed for hogs, poultry and cattle, but not on the latter commodities, with the result that the small farmer had to pay high prices for his feed but got low prices on his hogs, poultry and cattle.

Among the states affected most were the Midwestern states of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had communicated forcefully to Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan his opinion about what had to be done forthwith to rectify the situation. He said that farmers had written hundreds of letters to him asking where their supports were on eggs, that they could not earn a living at current egg prices.

In the Midwest, farm prices were down generally by 52 percent while prices of farm supplies had increased by 26 percent, meaning that the large operators, especially in wheat and corn, were doing well with subsidies while the small family farms, raising specialty crops, were struggling.

Farmers did not understand the new support law passed by Congress, which gave the Agriculture Secretary some discretion to raise support prices on some crops, while the same Congress had failed to provide funding for those price supports.

With Senators up for election in Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas and the Dakotas, the farm vote would be vital in those states. It might not mean the difference for Democratic majorities in Congress in 1950 but could be the determiner of the balance in 1952—when both houses would, indeed, return to GOP control.

Frederick C. Othman tells of the Democrats having determined that Senators Scott Lucas and Kenneth Wherry, the latter a Republican, would carry to the White House a message of unknown content.

He concludes that the Senators no more believed in the telephone than any other modern appliance, remained sitting among the accouterments of the Nineteenth Century, as the jars full of Arabian sand used to blot signatures and the snuff boxes full of a special blend only obtainable in Philadelphia but of which none of the Senators partook. He says that he pinched a little of the snuff whenever he visited the Senate to cover it and thus concludes, "Achoo."

A letter writer supports the New Hampshire doctor who was accused of murder for the euthanasia of a terminally ill cancer patient, says that mercy ought equally be extended to him as that he had shown his patient.

A letter writer praises the black community for its advancements over the previous 50 years of the century and urges, especially through self-reliance, further advancement in the coming 50 years.

A letter from Henry Dockery thanks the newspaper for its honor of him as Charlotte's Man of the Year for his work as director of the Community Chest drive, but defers to others who had worked under him as the more deserving recipients, thus accepts the award on their behalf.

A letter writer from Winston-Salem says that the previous summer he had seen a flying saucer fly over Fourth Street in the downtown area of the city and disappear over the horizon just at sunset. The newspapers had provided front page coverage of the story, as the ship cruised away to the southwest in the sunset.

It was, in fact, he says, merely an airplane which, in the fading rays of the sun, appeared flat and saucer-shaped, just "a big silvery plane with all its anatomy, playing peek-a-boo with Old Sol as he retires for the night."

Harrumph, that's what he thinks. We've seen the Martians on Fourth Street since we were but little tykes. They are here in great numbers and have been arriving steadily since July, 1947. They often hang out in front of or near the YMCA, with one leg propped against the side wall of a department store, smoking a cigarette and looking about with shifty eyes, trying to remain nonchalant, but then raising their middle fingers to anyone who might be caught staring at them for fear that their true identities might then become known generally.

We hope that you had a nice Epiphany. Our own, as at the dawn of 1969, is that we wonder why a significant minority of the nation, the Loud Minority, continues, after a time of at least grudging acceptance, to be reactionary toward liberal policies, the foundation of our country, rejecting in the process reality and reason for hucksterism and salesmanship, lies told to impart what they wish to hear in utterances of simple nostrums intended, with the precision of a mad surgeon conducting a lobotomy, to appeal to simpletons, never apparently stopping to examine where their actual interests lie, both individually and as a cohesive society, instead falling for the promoted merits of various isms of one sort or another, emotionally reacting to stressed differences between Thou and the Other, rather than finding the commonality in humanity and understanding that a society must row together or sink. The more we advance as a society, the more some cheap pols and rich idiots feel the need then to rip away as much of the advancement as they can, as their little power fiefdoms are thus threatened, make appeals to those looking for simple answers to omnipresent problems in always complex times so that they might continue in power and riches, the old bait-switch scheme.

As in 1969, those unfortunates fell for the lies once again. And it is that with which we shall have to live for the next little while until enough of the voters get wise again to the same old tricks of the Trickster. In the meantime, we can educate and fight against ignorance—especially in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Those who voted for the Trick will soon see the error of their ways, as surely as did those who did so in 1968.

The Trumpsters will, indeed, attempt to build a Wall. But it may not be the type or in the location which you had in Mind.

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