The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 18, 1953

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. 7th Division infantrymen engaged in hand-to-hand combat with 200 Chinese Communist troops this date and repulsed the second enemy attack within 24 hours on "Pork Chop Hill" on the western front in Korea. The battle had lasted through the night and into the morning, after which only small pockets of enemy troops remained. There was no immediate estimate of enemy casualties in the engagement.

In the air war, allied fighter-bombers swept over the front as the enemy regrouped, hitting enemy positions with bombs and napalm. During the prior week, U.N. Air Forces had flown 7,790 sorties against the enemy, an all-time high for the war. U.S. Sabre jets had shot down 18 MIG-15s in aerial battles during the week, the largest weekly toll since the previous October. Only one Sabre had been shot down in combat, but nine more allied planes had been lost to either ground fire or mechanical troubles.

U.N. and Communist staff officers this date agreed tentatively to a schedule for the exchange of disabled prisoners the following Monday, and completed arrangements for a meeting of liaison officers the following day to set a date for resumption of the suspended truce talks. All five members of the UN's principal truce team were present this date in Korea and could travel to Panmunjom within hours of the determination of a new date for peace talks to resume. The 5,800 U.N.-held disabled prisoners would be exchanged in groups of 25 during the morning and afternoon hours on Monday, at the rate of 500 per day, and the Communists had reported they would release the 600 allied disabled prisoners at the rate of 100 per day.

In Pusan, allied guards armed with shotguns killed four Communist prisoners and wounded 45 in putting down a bloody riot Friday afternoon, which had involved chanting and rock-throwing by prisoners maintained on Yoncho Island. No U.N. security personnel were seriously harmed. Prisoners had lined up in a stockade for a routine inspection and then refused to allow the compound commander to inspect the barracks, barricading themselves inside. Allied guards threw concussion grenades against the barricades and tossed in non-toxic irritants to try to force the prisoners outside. Upon an apparently prearranged signal, the prisoners in seven neighboring compounds poured forth to stage a shouting, chanting, rock-throwing demonstration, and after failing to quell the riots with non-toxic agents, the guards opened fire with shotguns to prevent the prisoners from grabbing weapons, eventually restoring order.

At the atomic proving ground in Nevada, 2,200 Marines crouched in trenches this date to see the most spectacular atomic blast of the spring series, the sixth in the series, the first to incorporate Marines maneuvering in helicopters. The predawn detonation was from atop a 300-foot tower, and afterward, Marines from Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune advanced on foot in a technical exercise toward a mock enemy, from their trenches, 4,000 yards from ground zero. The Marine helicopters flew simultaneously in advance of the troops. Twelve troops were stationed ahead of the main body, closer to ground zero. There were no casualties. The flash of the explosion had been observed in Los Angeles, 250 miles distant, and the white cloud which emanated from the explosion floated toward Las Vegas, 75 miles away, but the wind appeared likely to push it to the north. Rabbits and sheep were exposed to the blast to determine effects.

Are the rabbits okay?

Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Service Appropriations subcommittee, this date called for a six billion dollar cut in arms and atomic spending, amid signs that the Administration might support a slower buildup of Western defenses.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors, meeting in Washington, had determined that important gains had been made in the struggle against suppression of news, except in the area of atomic energy. The head of the organization's Freedom of Information Committee, James Pope, executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, said that the organization had been led to believe that an executive order issued in September, 1951 by former President Truman, which had authorized civilian agencies to issue tight security classifications of information, would be withdrawn or substantially modified. He also said that it was quite likely that Congress would enact a law guaranteeing the public and press access to Government records which did not involve national security. The three-day meeting of the Society, which had heard from the President in a nationally broadcast speech on Thursday, would close this date with an address by Secretary of State Dulles, also to be broadcast live on radio and television by ABC and rebroadcast by NBC an hour later. According to Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey, acting chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, before which Mr. Dulles had appeared the previous day, the Secretary had said that he would discuss in his speech the rate of NATO buildup. Senator Guy Gillette of Iowa, who had also been present for the testimony, said he believed the Secretary was considering a shift to "the long pull rather than a hurried, extraordinary buildup." Senator Stuart Symington had addressed the Society the previous day, saying that even if the defense budget were not reduced, the U.S. would continue to grow weaker every day in relative military strength against Russia.

Senator Taft, in a press conference, said that foes of the offshore oil lands bill, to provide title to the oil lands back to the states, were waging a filibuster, holding up the whole legislative program in the Senate. He rejected as "ridiculous" a proposal to put the bill aside temporarily. In an unusual Saturday session, the Senate began its 12th day of consideration of the measure. Senator Lister Hill of Alabama, leader of the opposition bloc, yielded the Senate floor the previous night after 16.5 hours of continuous debate during three days, covering only 28 of the 73 prepared pages of his text, while yielding freely to time-consuming questions, telling the press that he had not yet reached the issue of the "desperate condition of the schools", which was directly tied to the oil royalty revenues. Senator Taft had also said that he did not care whether rent controls, set to expire on April 30, expired without further action, as no controls set to expire on that date were sought by the Administration to be retained.

In Augusta, Ga., the President ordered the presidential yacht Williamsburg out of service and into the mothball fleet, because the White House believed it was "a symbol of needless luxury." Between the present and June 30, it would be used twice weekly for Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay cruises for wounded war veterans and would be taken out of presidential service on May 31. Press secretary James Hagerty indicated an estimated cost of operation of $600,000 per year, but said that most of that money represented the salaries of its crew and men, who would be assigned to other duties, thus not resulting in savings. The actual cost of maintenance of the vessel was estimated at $75,000 per year. President Eisenhower had used the yacht only once, on March 26, when he met with Premier René Mayer and other French Government officials. President Truman had acquired the yacht in 1946 for the Government, and had frequently used it. The President reportedly was feeling much better after his bout with food poisoning during the prior couple of days, and he sat on a bench at the first and tenth tees for awhile during the afternoon, watching fellow Augusta National Golf Club members tee off, hoping, according to Mr. Hagerty, to get out on the course during the day. He had wanted to shoot a few holes the previous day, but his physician had advised against it.

Dr. Allen Astin remained, for the time being, director of the National Bureau of Standards, despite his forced resignation by Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks following a dispute regarding the Bureau's findings that a company's rejuvenating additive did not work to prolong the life of motor vehicle batteries. Dr. Astin was set to remain in the position for several months while a special scientific committee evaluated the present functions and operations of the Bureau, and he would be offered a post at his present pay grade where his professional skills and abilities could be utilized. A storm of protest had ensued his firing, both in scientific circles and in Congress, with reports from inside the Bureau that several hundred employees were threatening to resign.

Sarah Prevatte Britt of The News reports of Renée LaFouge, assistant director of the French Department of Labor, visiting in Charlotte, having expressed her opinion this date on American fashion, the President, television, labor activities in the country and high heels. She had served in the Labor Department of France for 25 years and been awarded the distinguished medal of the Legion of Honor for her work. She was deeply impressed by the friendliness of the American people, having arrived in the U.S. on March 21 at the invitation of the U.S. Government. She had learned how the Department of Labor in the U.S. worked and now would visit several industrial areas of the country to see those principles applied. She found that working-class women in the country dressed much better than did those similarly situated in France, but that the high fashions of France were very lovely. She said that she had not, however, been to chic affairs in the country to see what women wore on those occasions. She praised the President and his work in European defense, saying that he was the best known American in France even prior to the election and was greatly admired by the French people as a former Army leader. She said that television was not as commonplace in French homes as in American homes, but believed that people were not reading as much as they ought, and that conversation was limited, while children watched too much television and did not study enough. She would remain in Charlotte through the weekend and would tour factories in the Piedmont on Monday and Tuesday, then depart for South Carolina on Wednesday, where she would continue her observations of industrial activities.

Spring storms beset the nation from the Rockies to the Atlantic, carrying snow, hail, sleet, rain and high winds. Snow fell from southern Missouri to New York, while heavy thundershowers hit Oklahoma and parts of Missouri and Arkansas, heavy winds accompanied by hail and sleet killing at least one person in northeastern Arkansas. St. Louis had its first measurable snow in April since 1938, registering an inch, as the temperature dropped to 28 degrees, lowest on record for the date.

The weather just keeps on coming, and no one ever does anything to stop it. It's disgraceful. Build the Dome.

In New York, all 44 major domestic and foreign airlines operating out of the city would, for the first time in history, switch their schedules to daylight savings time in 1953, set to begin on Sunday, April 26—at which point, be sure to set your clocks forward by an hour to ensure that you will not be late for your flight out of New York.

On the editorial page, "Cutting Appropriations Comes First" laments the fact that Congress paid less attention to spending than to revenue, regards it as an anomaly of the U.S. political system which it could not understand or explain. The piece goes on to present statistics on how much the Congress had appropriated in excess of revenues in 18 of the prior 21 years. It favors balancing of the budget before cutting taxes, to end the inflationary deficit financing and restore a sound, stable currency. It suggests that the new Administration was moving steadily toward those objectives—never, of course, to be realized, or anything even close to it, during the Eisenhower years, or during the Nixon years which followed between 1969 and 1974, a prospective fact which anyone but a gullible dope or dupe should have realized in 1953, in a world so fraught with cold war peril and geared to so much defense-mindedness.

So, we shall explain the ultimate problem to you, Mr. Editor. You cannot run the Government as a business. As President Truman well understood, and repeatedly enunciated, the chief responsibilities of the Government, all three branches, in order to form a "more perfect union", in addition to providing for the common defense and ensuring domestic tranquility, are to care for the "general welfare" of the people and secure "the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity", that determined by the Preamble of the Constitution. Nowhere does it mention a balanced budget or a thriving economy for corporate America.

We are presently living a prime exhibit of the result of trying to run the Government as a profit-loss venture, in the absurd and ridiculously incompetent handling by the current millionaire-billionaire run executive branch, of the coronavirus pandemic, during January and February, 2020, while it was breeding abroad and making itself known to those who were knowledgeable of such issues, providing internal warning to the Administration to undertake preparations to mitigate its impact when it inevitably came to the U.S., as the idiot in the White House sat on his fat ass, playing golf, tweeting mindlessly about an impeachment with a foregone conclusion in the Senate, and then, in February, issued repeated statements minimizing any risk in the U.S., that "everything will be all right", holding his finger up in the air the while to see what his stupid little dumbass supporters would do and say in response to appropriate and responsible adult reaction to a worldwide health crisis, rather than taking appropriate, though unpopular, steps early to limit its spread and to obtain authorization of the necessary spending to stockpile critical equipment and tests, and, foremost, to educate the public to the dangers, before the evidence of the virus's death-march had to become apparent in the country firsthand—for that would have made the dumbasses say that the current occupant of the White House was at last kowtowing to the "liberals" in the "deep state", whatever the hell that is—if, by that, meaning responsible civil servants who remain in government under the Civil Service system from Administration to Administration, then call it that rather than some empty-headed, dumbass, meaningless pejorative expression cooked up by those nuts on the radio out in Texas.

During the previous week, about 15,000 people in this country have died from the novel coronavirus first discovered in 2019 in China. As of April 24, there had been about 51,500 deaths in the U.S. As of today, May 2, there have been more than 66,500 deaths, all save about 200 of those since March 20, a space of six weeks, 56,500 of them since the 10,000-death mark was surpassed on April 5, in all, more than 8,000 more than in nine years of the Vietnam War. Yet, Republican governors and politicians are so eager to open up the economy again, to appeal to their mindless minions, as to place millions of Americans at grave risk of health crisis or death, some idiots even saying, not dissimilar to the Ford Motor Company assessment which surfaced in the late seventies out of lawsuits regarding the Pinto gas tank explosions in minor rear-end collisions, that a cost-benefit analysis requires American health and safety to take a backseat to dollars and cents, despite a couple of trillion dollars having been spent to enable payouts and supplemental unemployment benefits equating to $1,000 per week, including the self-employed.

"Oh, but we don't want no Gov'ment hand-outs. We want to go back to work"—even if it means killing ourselves, our families, our fellow workers, our friends, our neighbors, and leaving others with permanent lung damage, to do it. "'Cause it's our jobs and our freedoms that's at stake, and this here gun we're totin' and this here sign we got writin' is gonna make that clear to ye. Lock her up. Lock her up. Make Amurica great. Free us from gov'ment tirany and lock-up at home. Lock her up. Lock her up."

"Yeah, you can make fun all you want of us true Amuricans, but we're gonna show ye here with our guns who's who in Amurica, and who counts and who don't, all them lib'ral scum. Lock her up. Lock her up."

If the economy was so strong and booming before the coronavirus hit the U.S. in large numbers a month ago, as the current Administration loved to tout and take complete credit for having brought about, then why could it not recover after a shutdown of about three months, rather than a paltry four to six weeks, when plainly the coronavirus has no respect for dollars and cents, will kill regardless of one's pocketbook or social status in the society, will mow people down, in some instances, among the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions, in a matter of a few days.

If you tune into the freaks these days, the lying freaks, over at Fox News, and their morally and ethically impoverished equivalent on the airwaves, you will hear a consistent narrative that has wandered into practical Fascism, that human lives are not worth sacrificing the precious economy—or, of course, the political fortunes of Donald Trump, tied, in their minds at least, to the vicissitudes of the economy over the course of the next six months to election day. Never mind, of course, that all of the polls have been forecasting a Trump defeat for the past year.

And now, as would be anticipated in such a deliberately confused atmosphere, infused with the politics of division so characteristic of the Trumpies and their Fearless Leader, in Michigan, during the week, armed idiots, including the winner of the 2020 Travis Bickle post-Mohawk look-alike contest, have been encouraged by these lying freaks at Fox News and their ilk to go to the state capitol to protest shutting down their precious economy, because their Governor, who has shown wisdom, happens to be a Democrat.

Woe be to ye scribes and Pharisees. Your politicization of this health crisis is amounting to daily murder of Americans by your encouragement of irresponsible, childish behavior. Donald Trump fashioned himself a month ago as a general in a war against the coronavirus. What kind of a general urges the soldiers in the war to go running around in plain view of the enemy, free for the taking by potshots at any moment, while those soldiers proclaim their "freedom" of movement, despite orders to the contrary from their immediate superior officers to remain hunkered down in the trenches until the outnumbering enemy has gone or been vanquished through reinforcements? Is that good leadership? Are the soldiers who disobey the orders, exposing all of the other soldiers to danger in the process, patriots? Are the broadcasters who publicize with approbation the soldiers who are openly and disdainfully disobedient to the orders, serving their country?

You cannot run the Government as a business. Nor can you run a responsible news network or publication as merely a propaganda arm of a political regime and expect anything short of complete disdain for it.

"Maybe the Press 'Partitioned' Korea" indicates that the President had said in his speech two days earlier that the "first great step" toward ending East-West differences was to conclude an honorable armistice in Korea, which he defined as being immediate cessation of hostilities and discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea. It finds that the reference to a "united Korea" emphasized the Administration's statement a few days earlier that it had never reached any conclusion that a permanent division of Korea was "desirable or feasible", regarded as a refutation of the statement by Secretary of State Dulles to a few journalists that the Administration would accept a division of Korea along the narrow waist of the peninsula, 80 miles above the current battle line which had been previously agreed upon as the truce line.

It indicates that Anthony Leviero of the New York Times, Marquis Childs and Drew Pearson, had each come forth with a similar version of the Dulles statement, suggesting it as a new U.S. policy. John Hightower of the Associated Press had, however, qualified his version by saying that it was only "one idea receiving official consideration". The Alsops had determined that some "extremely excitable reporting" had distorted the issue, that careful notes taken by a reporter present at the Dulles conference showed that the Secretary had actually said that the proposed partition might "afford a viable line both from the military and economic standpoint", but that it was only one of "many alternatives" being considered as a long-range settlement. Walter Lippmann believed Mr. Dulles had been only "thinking out loud", and Roscoe Drummond of the Christian Science Monitor had said that most of the stories filed by the reporters who were present had made it clear that they were "reflecting uncrystallized policy", while adding that at least one of the dispatches had been written with such definiteness as to give the impression that decisions had been reached and that the new policy was being affirmed. The piece thinks Mr. Drummond had been referring to the Times correspondent, whose story was by far the most definite in its implications.

It believes that the Administration, if it hoped to resolve the East-West impasse through negotiation, had to consider the possibility of settling on a divided Korea. It was bad diplomacy to publicize acceptable terms of negotiation and therefore tip the hand to the other side as to what would be negotiable, and so if Secretary Dulles had been misquoted, it would be expected that he would clarify the statement. Although he had not done so, the piece believes it did not necessarily follow that he had correctly been quoted and then been overruled by the White House. It suggests that, like his predecessor, Secretary Acheson, Mr. Dulles may have already drawn into his shell and decided not to bother with trying to refute all of the erroneous information publicized about him. It concludes that it appeared that at least part of the press might have been in error, rather than the Secretary and the President having been in apparent disagreement.

"The Perils of the Presidency" indicates that the major problems of the Presidency, war, peace, taxes, the budget, relations with Congress and the Cabinet, were enough to break a normal person, but when added to the kind of busy schedule which the President had followed the prior Thursday, when he addressed in Washington the American Society of Newspaper Editors in a nationally broadcast speech on foreign policy, then threw out the first pitch of the Washington Senators baseball season at Griffith Stadium, followed by his attendance in Salisbury, N.C., of the bicentennial celebration of Rowan County, transport by car to Winston-Salem—along the winding, treacherous rural back roads of Old N.C. 150—from which he then returned by plane to Augusta, Ga., to resume his week-long golfing vacation, all in less than 12 hours, it considers it a wonder that Presidents lived for four years in office.

The President had also been battling a light case of food poisoning and had a slight temperature throughout the same day, while shaking hundreds of hands and forced into innumerable smiles while posing for countless photographs, including one showing him in a tri-cornered hat in the style of that worn during the American Revolution by the members of the Continental Armies.

It concludes that the pleasure of having him back in North Carolina, seeing him and listening to him again, following his visits to the state during the campaign the prior fall, had been made greater by the realization of the extent of his sacrifice.

All we recall of your characterization of the far more grueling schedule followed by President Truman, without any direct political benefit to himself, during the incessant whistle-stop campaigning he undertook from the prior late September through most of October, was how intrusive it was on the political landscape and that he appeared bitter and strident, as you routinely sought to characterize him throughout his term after his unexpected re-election in 1948 over Governor Dewey. In short, your toadying Republicanism is showing badly, evident ever since Mr. Robinson took over as publisher from the Dowd family in early 1947. We have the records herein to prove it. Some days, indeed, it gets so bad that we feel like quitting. For now, we plod forward, with all deliberate speed.

A piece from the New York Mirror, titled "This Is Tax Murder", indicates that Congress ought not be complicit in a murder, the 20 percent amusement tax established during the Korean War, killing an industry, wiping out jobs and closing theaters. It urges passage of a proposed bill to eliminate the tax, which would have hearings on April 20 before the House Ways & Means Committee—as further covered by a letter to the editor from a local theater manager. The piece finds the tax to be discriminatory, as television was not similarly taxed, regards it as "stupid" and "murder" of the theater industry.

It is you who are stupid and trying to commit murder of soldiers, all to accommodate people going to the movies to watch murder and mayhem and war, depicted by actors, acting out carefully written scripts, directed by directors of varying stripes of talent, so that the gullible viewers, who believe everything they see and hear, will leave the theater saying something like, "Wa'n't that good when they cut 'em in half with that machine gun, all them gooks left burnt to a crisp on that hill," all the while thinking they are patriots for being for the "good guys", while the theater owners gripe about the 20 percent tax levied exclusively to help support the defense effort. It does not get much more stupid than that. But when you are a little tabloid Hearst newspaper in New York, stupid is your lifeblood. Without the stupid and gullible, your existence would be days away from ending.

Ain't that right, Rupert? Did you, too, have a sled named Rosebud?

Drew Pearson tells of the President's brother-in-law, Lt. Col. Gordon Moore, retired from the Army, who had experienced repeated ups and downs during the previous 14 months. In February, 1952, he and his wife, sister of Mamie Eisenhower, were having problems making ends meet after buying an impressive home, when the head of the newly organized Independent Military Air Transport Association offered him a $6,500 per year job, which he accepted. He was assigned to handle the Association's relations with the Pentagon and public relations for the Association's 17 member airlines. At the time, General Eisenhower was supreme commander of NATO and it was unclear whether he could obtain the Republican nomination for the presidency. Then, on April 23, 1952, Colonel Moore was fired from his position with two weeks pay, along with other employees in the public relations office. As suddenly, two days later, he was rehired by the the same head of the Association who hired him, on the belief that General Eisenhower would be nominated and win the election. But as the weeks passed, and the strength of Senator Taft appeared to be growing, Colonel Moore was again fired, shortly before the Republican convention in Chicago. At that point, the Colonel was hired yet again by the same representative of the Association who originally hired him, Roy Chalk, but to become a representative of Mr. Chalk's airline, Trans-Caribbean. A few months earlier, Mr. Chalk, ensuring a bet on both horses, had also convinced the Association to purchase a $1,000 table at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner of the Democrats. When General Eisenhower garnered the nomination, Mr. Chalk paid the hotel bill of Colonel Moore, who continued in the former's employ, then was made vice-president of the airline, and was now doing quite well as a broker to the non-scheduled airlines, though no longer employed by Mr. Chalk. Pan Am had recently made an attractive offer to him.

President Eisenhower was not consulting the military as much as had President Truman. The White House warning that a Chinese Communist attack on Indo-China would force the U.S. to launch another offensive in Korea had been issued without consultation with the Joint Chiefs, not the first time the new President had ignored military advisers. Mr. Pearson ventures that it might have been because the President relied on his own military background, or was waiting until he replaced the Truman-appointed Joint Chiefs.

The first big job for the new RNC chairman, Leonard Hall, would be to patch up party differences in the South, where leaders had been fighting over patronage between the Eisenhower and Taft, or Old Guard, branches of the party, the former wanting to expand the party and form a two-party system in the South, while the latter wanted to maintain control in the hands of a small, exclusive club, to limit the dispensation of patronage to the few.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that Secretary of State Dulles, highly intelligent, had done everything he could to profit from the horrible example set by his predecessor, Secretary Acheson, but that so far his efforts had not met with much success. He had sought not to alienate Congress, contrary to Mr. Acheson's example, especially during the latter's initial stages of his time as Secretary, beginning in 1949. Yet, Secretary Dulles's present relations with the Republican Congress was represented a few days earlier by an announcement made by Senator Karl Mundt that he and most of his colleagues on the Appropriations Committee had agreed to begin a purge of the top echelons of the State Department, to rid it of former Acheson personnel, as Mr. Dulles had failed thus far to do, the Committee threatening to cut off Department appropriations if it were not done. But, the Alsops point out, were such a shakeup to occur too quickly, it would leave the Department in shambles, without the necessary experienced personnel in transition between the Administrations. For the 100 or 200 persons, to whom Senator Mundt had referred, comprised most of the senior foreign service officers, non-political professionals who were trained specialists in foreign relations.

That sort of undercutting of his authority was making the task of Mr. Dulles much harder, almost as hard as had been the job of Mr. Acheson, whose press relations were bad because he believed that American foreign policy was none of the people's business. The Dulles effort to improve that relationship had met with unhappy results, as demonstrated by his off-the-record chat with selected journalists the previous week, when he made the statement that the U.S. would accept a truce line in Korea along the narrow waist of the peninsula, 80 miles above the current battle line, and formation of a trusteeship over Formosa, both of which positions were then strongly denied by the White House after Republican members of Congress raised a howl in response to the unascribed statement, attributed to Mr. Dulles. In fact, Mr. Dulles said only that some consideration had been given to the idea of the trusteeship and that the suggested line across the peninsula would afford a viable position from a military and economic standpoint, but was only one of "many alternatives in a long-term settlement of the problem". His laudable attempt to work with the press had thus backfired. And if he were to seek henceforth to insulate himself from the press, he would suffer the same result as had Mr. Acheson.

Mr. Acheson had the loyal support of the State Department and a small band of devoted subordinates who treated him with something akin to hero worship, whereas Mr. Dulles was largely isolated from most of his subordinates and had no comparable moral support, consulted regularly with only a small number of recent appointees, Undersecretary Bedell Smith, counsel Herman Phleger, Assistant Secretary Carl McArdle, and a few others. To most in the Department, he remained a dim and distant figure, lacking the martyrdom associated with Mr. Acheson. The latter also could always count on the consistent support of President Truman, whereas the recent White House denial had implied a loss of face for Mr. Dulles. They find it to be a tactical mistake to have issued the statement from the White House instead of the Department, itself, and that if the President wanted to use his prestige on behalf of Mr. Dulles, he could be a great benefit vis-à-vis Congress and the public, indicating that he considered foreign policy the exclusive realm of the President and the Secretary of State, which, they venture, could shrink Mr. Dulles's troubles to a manageable size.

Marquis Childs tells of the House Tax Investigating Committee pushing ahead in its exploration of the "political sewers" of Washington, with its "malodorous findings" suggesting that more territory was yet to be covered. It had found that political meddling in the IRB had begun shortly before the inception of the Truman Administration, and had become a habit in the latter, with influence ultimately routinely being used to fix tax cases. Some of the influence peddlers were now being punished, but the suspicion remained that it had caught so far only the small players who had been exposed to the light of publicity, those who had received mink coats and deep freezers. But the committee had now taken up inquiry which appeared to be getting to the powers behind the influence-peddling.

Henry Grunewald, awaiting sentencing for a conviction for contempt of Congress, his sentence severity depending on his level of cooperation in the hearings, was now being interrogated by the committee. But Senator Styles Bridges was offering the same roadblock to the investigation which he had enabled in the previous attempt to get information from Mr. Grunewald. Senator Bridges had been involved in a seven million dollar tax case of a Baltimore liquor dealer. Mr. Grunewald had linked Senator Bridges with a lawyer for John L. Lewis, indicating that the Senator had recommended him to the lawyer as an investigator, and that Mr. Lewis had wanted investigated the Federal judge who had found Mr. Lewis and the UMW in contempt and imposed heavy fines for not obeying a back-to-work order of the court. Senator Bridges had worked closely with Mr. Lewis in 1948 and 1949, receiving payment of $35,000 per year as a trustee of the UMW health and welfare fund. The House committee had heard testimony from the Senator on the tax case matter, in which the Senator minimized his own role, and the members of the committee treated him with the deference ordinarily accorded a member of Congress.

Senator Bridges was now president pro tem of the body and chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, and in those roles, ventures Mr. Childs, should be asked by the House committee to testify again, at least to explain his relationship with Mr. Lewis and the latter's proposed investigation of the Federal judge.

Mr. Childs finds that Congressman Robert Kean, chairman of the House committee, had thus far shown tenacity and courage in getting at the facts, but that members of the committee had heard of pressure being brought to bear on the chairman to end the inquiry. He urges that it not be stopped or suspicion would continue that the little fish had been caught while the big fish got away.

Robert C. Ruark tells of his selfish happiness over the fact that Jomo Kenyatta, the leader of the Mau Mau in Kenya and their violent effort to push out all whites in the country with a campaign of murder and mayhem against both whites and blacks sympathetic with whites, had been convicted of operating an illegal society and given a ten-year prison sentence, finding it a shame that the authorities could not muster enough evidence to pin a murder conviction on him with a death sentence to follow.

A new law had been passed in Kenya, however, subjecting such a person to a capital sentence if the person administered the oath of membership to the illegal organization, based on incitement to mass murder.

He indicates that his bitterness toward Mr. Kenyatta derived from his observations during his safari in Kenya and the fact that he had lost some friends to the Kenyatta campaign of violence. In addition to the violence, itself, there was psychological terror resulting from it which had devastating effects on the population. He indicates that one could applaud an honest revolution but that the Mau Mau campaign was dishonest from its inception and had no reasonable basis, a fact which he feels compelled to include as an answer to "all the kind bleeding hearts who write long letters with no facts in their heads and who've never been any closer to Africa than Harlem". He finds that Mr. Kenyatta was especially reprehensible because of setting his own people against one another for purely personal and private gain. He finds him as phony as his name, which only meant "Joe Kenya", indicating he had spent 30 of his 50 years involved in political agitation, trained by the Russians in Moscow, had married a white woman and then deserted her when the Russians told him to go home and agitate. Mr. Ruark finds that he cared less for his own people, the Kikiyu, whom he had caused to be brutally murdered by the hundreds, than he did for whites. He indicates that his own people were the most enlightened of all the tribal groups, with schools, hospitals and a reasonably fair court system, having more and better land than when the Masai had been spearing whole communities at once while the Nandis were also at work killing competitive tribes.

Mr. Kenyatta had replaced the old devil devices and superstitions with the Mau Mau beliefs of violence to resolve conflict, on the premise that the terror would cause all whites to leave Africa, enabling then the Soviets to enter, making Mr. Kenyatta their puppet leader. The Kikiyu had joined with whites in seeking to eliminate the Mau Mau, as they were giving decent Africans a bad name.

Mr. Ruark suggests that if Mr. Kenyatta survived his ten-year sentence, he would then face a murder charge, but doubts that he would survive the sentence, as accidents always happened in jail and Mr. Kenyatta was quite unpopular. He concludes with a personal note to Mr. Kenyatta that he try to keep his head.

A letter writer, the manager of the Star Theatre in Cornelius, indicates that the House Ways & Means Committee was planning to hold a one-day hearing April 20 on the imposed 20 percent tax on theater tickets, and he hopes that they would vote to repeal the unfair and discriminatory tax. He tells of theaters having to pay the tax on gross sales each month to the Government on tickets sold the previous month, with failure to do so penalized in interest. He suggests that the Government ought instead look at the matter as enabling the theaters to have 20 percent greater gross income, which would then be taxed at the usual rates. He finds that many theaters had been forced to close for lack of profits and sometimes were not reopened because no one wanted to take the risk. He finds that the Government provided subsidies to many groups, both foreign and domestic, while placing a 20 percent tax on theaters, questions whether that was fair, wants some of the Marshall Plan aid for his theater or some other subsidy. He finds it would be as fair to pay him to take seats out of his theater as it was to pay for plowing up cotton and killing little pigs.

You do not seem to grasp the concept that selling more theater tickets is not the same as overproduction of foodstuffs, driving down the prices for farmers and leading back to the same situation which occurred during the depression years. Try to view the economy as a macro-model rather than from the limited vantage point of your micro-model theater. The two do not equate. Read a book and spend less time commiserating on your horrible, terrible fate via some sentimental, saccharin-soaked movie, full of pomp but largely without accompanying circumstance—the same way Fox News today seeks to have its audience view the world, through their own little micro-prisms, full of micro-woes and micro-foes, bogeys popularized by micro-minds through decades of generationally passed demagogic fury, all to serve their economic agenda, driven by the fatcat owners, British subject Rupert Murdoch and his son. Learn, in short, how stupid and gullible you are to be subject to that junk.

Candidly, when we listen to the likes of Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham or that other crazy woman who gets lost whenever her script is misplaced, or the rest of their ilk among the commentariat, we become literally nauseated after about 90 seconds and have to turn it off, for it being so soaked in mendacity and outrageous Fascist propaganda, pandering to treacle-soaked, right-wing positions of a relatively tiny audience whose characteristics are known and exploited by that network's demographic analysis of their viewers, while deliberately leaving facts, true facts, whether scientifically or historically based, outside the studio, relegated to the "liberal media", showing deference the while to propaganda techniques made famous by Herr Doktor Goebbels, the Big Lie, as to be thoroughly repugnant to anyone properly imbued with the principles of the United States and its Constitution, inhering ultimately in equal opportunity for all, not just for some few self-centered billionaires and their dependent minions who earn millions each year to spew propaganda to reach the semi-educated sheep, who line up for the trickle-down crumbs left over from the blind greed and resultant incompetence at the top of the food chain.

Moreover, that 20 percent luxury tax was helping to pay for the war which was designed to stanch Communist aggression dead in its tracks—as it served to do, though Republicans managed to convince you in 1952 that it was a useless war being fought without point in stalemate. You need to examine what might have been but for it, far worse, based on the lessons of World War II, which many in the public had already forgotten, a short historical attention span among the masses which the Republicans, starved of power for twenty years, were all too willing to exploit to regain their position forfeited by the fact of trickle-down, laissez-faire economic policies having led to economic depression on a worldwide scale, and, ultimately, world war to combat the enslavement of militaristic Fascism, engendered by appeals to nationalistic pride and patriotic zeal, which latched onto Germany and Italy, and the same complex overlaid to feudalistic Japan, substituting for the absence of shared wealth the promise of pie-in-the-sky after world conquest and creation of empire—the same strains of nationalism to which Trump and his allies seek daily to appeal, all for the sake of lining further their own pockets.

You cannot run a government as a business, anywhere, in any time. And the opposite of that attempt at a corporate state, the corporate syndicalism of Mussolini, is not socialism, as the right is so fond of trying to cast the debate, but rather American democracy, geared definitionally to promotion of the general welfare to ensure preservation of responsible exercise of freedom.

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