The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 15, 1956
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate leadership this date ordered another 12-hour session regarding the controversy over the farm bill, with tempers of some of the members already above boiling point, the decision being on the method of determining parity, the level at which a price would be fixed by law providing a fair return to farmers in relation to their costs. A new formula for computing parity had become effective during the year, raising the level for some crops and lowering it for others, among them corn and wheat. But the Senate Agriculture Committee had written a "dual parity" provision into the bill which would allow farmers to use either the old or the new parity system, whichever was higher, in determining the level of price supports. The difference could amount to more than a dime per bushel on the wheat crop of nearly a million bushels and somewhat less per bushel on the corn crop, which sometimes was above three billion bushels. Senator George Aiken of Vermont, the chief spokesman for the Administration's farm proposals, had teamed with Senators Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, Spessard Holland of Florida and John Williams of Delaware in an effort to retain only the new parity formula, eliminating the option, but Senator Aiken said that he did not believe there was much chance that it would pass or that the opposition was being smart in seeking to obtain a Presidential veto, which they appeared to be doing. Senator Milton Young of North Dakota, who had been bucking the Administration's flexible price supports, said in a separate interview that the Administration did not have the votes to eliminate the dual parity program and was seeking a compromise, which might take the form of a proposal by Senator Andrew Schoeppel of Kansas, which would provide a wheat support price in the current year of about $1.91 per bushel instead of the already announced $1.81 from the Agriculture Department, which Senator Young believed would be attractive in an election year. Senators Aiken and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had engaged the previous day in one of the sharpest exchanges of the long debate on the bill, during which the Senate approved or rejected a variety of amendments but still had more than 60 which could be offered.
The House Appropriations Committee this date recommended a new allotment of 27.8 million dollars to finance anti-polio programs administered by the states. It would be subject to action by the full House the following week. The omnibus 795.7 million dollar supplemental appropriation bill, to finance miscellaneous activities during the remainder of the current fiscal year, included another 185 million dollars for veterans' readjustment benefits, 25 million for payments to school districts where population had been increased by Federal activities and 9.9 million for construction of schools in those districts. Those were among the major recommendations of the omnibus bill. The total was 40.2 million less than the requested amount by the President, with the largest cut being 15.3 million from the 129 million requested for the Department of Health, Education & Welfare. The 34.9 million recommended for payments to school districts was the entire amount requested, as was the 27.8 million for the grants to the states for polio vaccinations and the 185 million for veterans' training benefits.
In London, former Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov arrived in England for the first time in his life this date, saying that he had come to seek knowledge. He headed a group of Soviet electrical experts slated to have a three-week tour of Britain. He told reporters through an interpreter that he did not speak English but that he might be able to do so by the time he left. Scotland Yard provided strict security around his arrival, together with the 14-man delegation accompanying him, with only a small number of newsmen allowed near the group. Mr. Malenkov appeared friendly and was smiling during the press interview.
In Atlanta, a Georgia educational leader was under fire from the state's two principal school boards for his pro-integration views, and was facing possible loss of his State pension and an honorary college title. The Board of Regents, without commenting on its action, the previous day voted unanimously to take back the title it had given to Dr. Guy Wells two years earlier as president emeritus of Georgia State College for Women. He had headed the Milledgeville school for 20 years. The State Board of Education asked the Teacher Retirement Board whether Dr. Wells could have his pension removed. He was currently the executive secretary of the Georgia Committee on Interracial Cooperation, affiliated with the Southern Regional Council. Governor Marvin Griffin said that he was sure the boards had done what they felt was right and that Dr. Wells, drawing a $518 per month pension, had been acting "a little ugly." He was referring to a report in the Augusta Courier, a pro-segregation weekly newspaper, that Dr. Wells had ridiculed the Governor and legislators in a speech at Paine College, a black school in Augusta. He had charged that the Courier account of the speech was "completely inaccurate and distorted." The Courier was published by Roy Harris, a member of the Board of Regents. Dr. Wells said that he regretted that his former employers and friends had taken the action against him without giving him an opportunity to be heard, indicating that he had nothing to retract or for which to apologize and that he was confident that the good people of Georgia would sustain his position. He said that he had advocated that white and black leaders in local communities come together in good will to resolve their differences and work for agreement. The Teacher Retirement Board would study the move to revoke his pension.
In Los Angeles, it was reported that Western Air Lines, strikebound for 67 days, planned to resume operations on March 22 on a limited basis, and would be operating at full strength by April 1. The strike of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks had been settled the prior Monday.
In Fulton, Mo., a fire destroyed most of the 105-year old administration building at the State mental hospital this date, causing millions of dollars worth of damage, with 720 patients having been evacuated. There were no serious injuries.
In Savage, Md., three young males,
ranging in ages between 16 and 22, who were seeking to court the fire
chief's 14-year old daughter, this date were charged with arson for
setting a fire which State police said was set to keep the chief busy
so that he would not send them home early. A detective sergeant said
that the three youths had set the fire to an expensive horse training
barn at nearby Laurel a week earlier, with loss estimated at
$250,000, including the loss of two thoroughbreds, a riding horse, a
trotter and a pony
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that Tom Sawyer, a local radio salesman, had filed to become the third resident of Charlotte in the gubernatorial race, two days after C. E. Earle, Jr., had filed, though his papers had been returned for technical reasons. Harry P. Stokely, a political unknown, was also expected to file in the race. He said that he did not believe in kingmakers calling the shots and believed there ought to be two or three candidates in the race.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports of having dropped in at a rooming house to see Mr. Earle, an amateur food broker. He had asked Mr. Kuralt what he believed his chances were of beating Governor Luther Hodges and Mr. Kuralt had responded frankly that the Governor looked pretty strong to him. Mr. Earle then suggested that Mr. Kuralt run against him and that he would withdraw, pay his filing fee and contribute $1,000 to his campaign. Mr. Kuralt says that for a minute, he was riding up to the mansion in the long Cadillac with the big, black "1" on the license plate, then snapped back to reality, saying, "Thanks, but no thanks." Mr. Earle then said he guessed he would have to run as he did not believe Governor Hodges should get the Democratic nomination by default. Mr. Kuralt had later telephoned Mr. Earle to tell him that Mr. Sawyer of Belmont had announced as a third candidate, with a platform much like that of Mr. Earle, opposition to racial integration being his main plank. He had asked Mr. Earle whether therefore he might withdraw, and the latter asked Mr. Kuralt what he thought he should do. Mr. Kuralt said that he had never kissed a baby in his life and he would have to make that decision for himself. Mr. Earle decided that he would talk to Mr. Sawyer and possibly throw his support behind him if he was certain he would do as good a job as he would do. He then paused in indecision and said that he had decided that he would just leave it up to Mr. Kuralt, which was where it stood. Mr. Kuralt indicates that the whole political future of Mr. Earle therefore lay in his "grubby political palm", a new and terrifying experience for him and, he says, he did not know what to tell him. "Anyway—. Have a cigar." (A photograph of Mr. Kuralt with a cigar in his hand accompanies the piece.)
In Providence, R.I., a small man admitted that he had drunk 50 glasses of beer and a quart of whiskey in five hours, prior to an auto accident, pleading guilty to a charge of reckless driving and was fined $125.
In Moultrie, Ga., a six-year old girl had a 140-pound pet pig named Wee Wah, which stayed away from the other pigs because she did not know she was a pig, having been raised by a cat in a litter of kittens. Everything had been fine on the farm where the pig had been born five months earlier, but the family had since moved into town the previous week and there was a city ordinance against having such pets. The girl, all but heartbroken, agreed to give up the pig and tearfully told it goodbye, but insisted that it would have to go to a good home with an understanding master. But none yet had been found, as no one appeared to want a pig for a pet, especially not one which ate as much as Wee Wah. The mother hog could nurse only ten piglets, and Wee Wah was number eleven, and so the little girl took care of the pig, raising it in the corn shed with the help of the cat. It had played in the yard with the kittens and eventually ate out of the same pan with them, also becoming friendly with the family dog and chasing cars and bicycles with him. When the little girl called the pig, it came running just like a dog.
On the editorial page, "Annexation and a Lack of Certainty" indicates that the City Council majority believed that annexation of the Charlotte suburbs could not be achieved without legislative action at the state level. Five members of the Council believed that a series of town hall meetings could substantially abate opposition to annexation, but a majority believed the approach would be inadequate.
It finds that such might be true if there had been a solid force of opposition in the suburbs to annexation, but that the good effects to be achieved from the meetings should not be dismissed so easily. The assumption that the weight of city voters would crush the opposition to annexation appeared sound, but there was no certainty that the legislative delegation could be rallied to the unity which would be required to authorize such an election in the first place, and the next regular session of the Legislature was still nine months away.
Town hall meetings offered the opportunity for a positive accomplishment in the meantime, without any risks. Even if the projected election was the only way to achieve annexation, as the majority of the Council assumed, the town hall discussions would be a good method of breaking ground for a favorable vote and if the election could not be authorized in the Legislature, at least some good will and informed opinion would develop toward attempts at a different solution.
It concludes that there was no guarantee that the majority's solution at the legislative level would work.
"City Hall: A Voice for the Dream?" indicates that when Charlotte wanted a new industry, it sent out civic salesmen armed with the belief in the city's future and the facts to support it, often returning with some new industry commitment. When the city wanted to suggest itself as the cultural and entertainment center of the Carolinas, it appealed to the imagination of the people, as in the case of the new Coliseum and Auditorium complex, attracting citizens from all around the state.
When it wanted to bring its suburban neighbors into the city, the civic salesmen, however, were idle, the imagination untested and the dream of a great, unified metropolitan community unspoken. It suggests that maybe the people living in the suburbs would not believe that their future was inextricably tied to that of Charlotte and that they would not accept that they were needed to assure a better future for all, but that no one knew for certain because no one was asking them.
It wonders whether there was at least one person at City Hall who had the "eloquence to display the dream of the future in terms that will spur action and maybe even annexation."
"What the Red Probe Accomplished" finds that little new information had been adduced for the public by the three days of HUAC subcommittee hearings held in Charlotte Monday through Wednesday morning. The only real news from the testimony had been a short list of people named as Communists by a former FBI undercover agent, Odis Reavis, the last witness to testify the previous morning.
It finds, however, that the hearings had been beneficial nevertheless, not for their revelations, but for their underscoring of old facts regarding subversion, which ought be remembered, that "Communists come in more than one size and shape." Some of them were white, some black, some suave, some bungling, some having graduate degrees, some never finishing high school, some young, some old. Nor was there only one way in which Communists did their work, with the testimony of undercover agents Charles Childs and Mr. Reavis having made it clear that the Communist aim in North Carolina was precisely the same as it was everywhere, "to infiltrate, to proselyte, and to turn to its own purposes any possible organizations and individuals", through any means possible.
It finds that the committee had rendered another service to the community by emphasizing that Communism was not something which existed in Moscow, New York or other far away places, that it existed wherever it could obtain a foothold, including familiar places, such as Winston-Salem, Durham, Thomasville, Greensboro, High Point, Chapel Hill, and other localities in the state. It finds that from all appearances, Communists were still among them, albeit not very numerous and not cause for any alarm or hysteria. It concludes that the hearings showed that their presence ought be cause instead for a "calmer, better informed reliance on the strengths of democracy that communism seeks to subvert."
"Here We Go Again" indicates that Senator Estes Kefauver's victory in the New Hampshire primary, the first of the election year, had placed him back where he had started on the quest for the Democratic nomination in 1952, and the significance of the prize was open to debate, with Senator Kefauver realizing all too well that it was rare at the time in U.S. politics that the primaries determined the ultimate convention nominee. Governor Al Smith of New York had won in the primary states and carried the Democratic convention in 1928, and FDR had won most of the primaries in 1932 and became the nominee, but in virtually every other instance, the nomination either had been a foregone conclusion or the conventions simply ignored the primary results.
It was not until 1976 that the nationwide primary system replaced fully the old "smoke-filled room" concept of selecting nominees for both parties, though the primaries had achieved somewhat greater importance in both 1968 and 1972 than they had previously, even if the selection process had remained in those years primarily a function of party leaders in both Congress and at the state level, with convention floor maneuvering often holding the key to the selection of the nominee.
"Beginning Tremors in Sharp Focus" finds that the South's self-portraits in the current era of social crisis had been notoriously bad, with only emotion having emerged clearly defined, that it had remained for the New York Times to gather the fractured images of the desegregation story and put them into something resembling a perspective, which it had done in an eight-page special section, "Report on the South: The Integration Issue", which it finds a distinguished exercise in group journalism, with the newspaper having assigned ten veteran staff correspondents on the scene in 17 states and the District of Columbia.
The project had collected and evaluated numerous facts and opinions of all types, assisted in the effort by the Southern Education Reporting Service, a nonpartisan fact-finding agency presently directed by Don Shoemaker, former editor of the Asheville Citizen, and previously directed for a year by former News editor Pete McKnight, who had recently become editor of the Charlotte Observer.
It suggests that some of the conclusions were open to question, for instance the idea, as Clarence Dean had observed, that "there are many signs of willingness to make a start" toward integration in North Carolina, but that on the whole, the project had presented a "vivid journalistic picture of the beginning tremors of a social revolution", and had provided a sympathetic portrait of the South.
A piece from the Reporter, titled "Thimk", tells of H. L. Mencken, recently deceased, having once said during an interview that even the label on a can of tomatoes was somebody's brainchild, which it finds a tender thought which it had treasured, but now learning that the words on the drug bottle might not be anyone's brainchild at all, only the work of a machine.
The IBM 702 had been built by a pharmaceutical company to write useful names for all of the new drugs they were creating, feeding it instructions to write easily pronounced "medical-sounding" words, and out would come such names as byulamycin, cliohacyn, and starycide. The computer had even written a book, a dictionary of such words, from "abechamycin" to "ywuvite", which it finds enough to drive a "jittery, old-style, human writer to drink platuphyl".
It finds some small consolation, as the story in the Wall Street Journal had said, in the idea that "The 'brain' can't distinguish between acceptable words and those not ordinarily used in refined conversation." It suggests that the computer might be able to write clearer and faster than humans, but frankly, it did not have taste.
Drew Pearson indicates that the inside fact regarding the selection of Senator John McClellan of Arkansas to be chairman of the select committee to investigate the gas and oil lobby was that it had always been so intended by Senator Lyndon Johnson and the Republicans. Senator McClellan had even confided to the press in advance that the Republicans had offered him the committee chairmanship. The Senator had voted Republican on crucial issues almost as often as he had with his own party and thus would likely steer clear of any investigation which led to the big Republican oil-gas campaign contributions or which might embarrass pro-gas Democrats.
The Senator's background forecast that sympathy, as he had been a member of a law firm representing Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Seaboard Oil Co. of Delaware, Tidewater Associated Oil and Carter Oil Co., in addition to several railroads, paper and lumber companies. His firm, according to Martindale-Hubbell, the legal community directory, handled the "general practice of oil and gas titles". (It might be noted that the directory contains the detailed listings of law firms which pay to have their listings placed, essentially an advertisement which the firm compiles, much as the Yellow Pages in the phone book.) In addition, Senator McClellan was on friendly terms with H. L. Hunt, one of the three or four wealthiest oilmen in the world, who had received his start in El Dorado, Ark., and had generously backed Senator McClellan and the oil interests during his re-election campaign in 1954. Mr. Pearson indicates that it was not likely therefore that he would go into the manner in which the gas-oil money had been spent in any Senatorial election because others might then suggest that his own contributors ought also be probed.
Senator McClellan was also heavily obligated to Senate Majority Leader Johnson, as during his 1954 primary race against popular former Governor Sid McMath, Senator Johnson had prepared a petition, signed by more than 40 other Senators, telling people in Arkansas how important Senator McClellan was to the Senate, a violation of the accepted rule that Democratic Senators did not become involved in the Democratic primaries against other Democrats.
Senator McClellan had so much money to spend in the campaign, thanks to the backing of the gas and oil interests, that he used $35,000 for a newspaper ad reprinting the letter inspired by Senator Johnson and had also spent $50,000 reprinting that letter in pamphlet form for circulation all over the state.
The RNC was trying to coax the President into filming a one-minute television commercial plugging Republican candidates, telling the President that he would only need to make a short statement on how important it was to have a Republican Congress, and then would announce, "Here is the candidate from your district and my friend—", with the local candidate then filling in his own name after the introduction.
Doris Fleeson regards the so-called "Southern manifesto", signed by 19 Senators and 77 Representatives from 11 Southern states, read before the Senate and House separately the prior Monday, protesting the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and vowing to undertake all lawful means to reverse or avoid its impact on the public schools. It included as its signatories all Senators of the 11 traditionally Southern states, except Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas and Senators Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore of Tennessee. She says that Democrats were assuring each other that it was strictly for home state consumption and that Senator Johnson, suddenly touted for the presidency by the same group, did not want to be a sectional and thus losing candidate. She finds that the evidence was persuasive that such was true, but suggests that forces of that kind set in motion in presidential politics were rarely contained as originally intended.
Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia had been described as the powerhouse behind the manifesto. Under his guidance, Virginia was leading the fight to challenge Brown through "interposition" and by holding a state convention, after an overwhelming majority vote in a referendum to authorize it the previous January, to amend the State Constitution to allow public funds to be provided to private schools in an effort to circumvent the ruling.
There were said to be many lukewarm and reluctant signatories of the manifesto, who had managed to get it watered down from its original draft circulated the previous week among the Southern members of Congress. For instance, it did not mention "interposition", "nullification" or the states' rights doctrine generally.
But Senator Byrd was a shrewd and persistent operator and temperatures were rapidly rising in the South. Democratic liberals were losing their tempers also regarding recent developments in Congress, promising to leave them without the ammunition on some of the best issues, such as farm legislation and a school construction aid bill. If that tension could be relaxed so that the Southern membership need go no further than the language of the manifesto, party leaders would be very happy.
There were two opinions about the sudden effort to promote Senator Johnson as a presidential candidate, one being cynical, indicating that a man once bitten by the presidential bug never recovered from it and that the President implicitly, by running again, had given his fellow heart attack victim a green light, and that the South would rally around the Senator and he would rally around the South. If the South were to go to the Democratic convention solidly behind Senator Johnson, Adlai Stevenson could not achieve the nomination on the first ballot, nor could anyone else. Beyond that point was the possibility of a third-party movement, throwing the election potentially into the House. She indicates that nothing of the sort was in the mind of Senator Johnson prior to his July heart attack, which had signaled the end of his original presidential ambitions. His original strategy had been to urge postponement of party decisions on candidates and the platform until the convention would meet the following August. Having preached moderation, he then planned to make himself available if a moderate candidate appeared to be a necessary compromise. It had been generally believed that he was prepared to accept an articulate liberal, such as Senator Hubert Humphrey, as his running mate to counter his label as a Southerner. (Of course, in 1964 when he ran as the incumbent President, following the November, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, President Johnson would tap as his running mate Senator Humphrey, that ticket overwhelmingly beating Republican nominee Senator Barry Goldwater and his running mate, Congressman William Miller.) Senator Johnson's massive heart attack had abruptly ended those plans, but as with the President, he had recovered and resumed his normal duties on a reduced schedule. She suggests that the public reception given to the President's decision to run again probably had its effect on Senator Johnson.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas had called for Senator Johnson to go to the convention as the favorite son of Texas, a tactical maneuver, enabling Senator Johnson automatically to become the chairman of the Texas delegation, pushing aside Governor Allan Shivers, who had supported General Eisenhower in the 1952 campaign rather than Adlai Stevenson. Speaker Rayburn detested Governor Shivers, who had not commented on the maneuver but his associates were denouncing the Speaker's move as "a slick anti-Shivers trick."
She indicates that it was significant that the Southern membership had let Senator Johnson off the hook on signing the manifesto, not even approaching him with it. (Of course, had he really desired to sign it, he would have done so at least after the fact, as had, for instance, Republican Representative Charles Jonas of the Charlotte area.) Party leaders were keeping hands off him, expressing the opinion that Senator Johnson eventually would choose to be a national figure, with cynics adding that they hoped it would be so.
And, of course, as President, he
would be a national figure, championing and pushing through the
Senate, avoiding an attempted crippling filibuster in the end, the 1964 Civil Rights Act
and, the following year, the Voting Rights Act, the two most
influential pieces of legislation passed since the aftermath of the
Civil War by the Congress regarding civil rights for minorities and
women, both of which had been promulgated to Congress by the Kennedy
Administration prior to the President's death. Whether either would
have passed and avoided filibuster in the Senate without the
intervening sympathy factor
Walter Lippmann indicates that in North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, the three Western nations, the U.S., Britain and France, were under attack in all of their key positions of power and influence, beset by guerrilla warfare, as the French were in Algeria, by rebellion, as the British were in Cyprus, by a threat of war, as in Palestine, and by infiltration and subversion, as in Jordan, Syria and the Persian Gulf protectorates.
Amid the mounting disorder and confusion, there was being posed a crucial question of whether those local but connected conflicts were still negotiable by concession and compromise, by the use of statesmanship and diplomacy. There was a growing doubt as to whether it was still possible to achieve any agreed settlement, or whether there would be an historic revolutionary tide which would allow no peace until the power of France, Britain and the U.S. had been broken in those areas.
The question was whether the Arab rulers and politicians, their officers and intellectuals, would settle for anything short of the expulsion of France from North Africa, Britain from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, the extinction of Israel as an independent state, and the reduction of the U.S. to the position of a hired servant of the Saudi Arabian oil kingdom. The Governments of the U.S., France and Britain were still trying not to despair of settlements by negotiation, but were being forced to ask themselves whether any settlement would be anything more than the initiation point for new demands and whether any appeasement would in fact appease.
The Western governments were seeking negotiation in each local struggle separately. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis were held to be French problems, while Cyprus, Jordan and the Persian Gulf protectorates were British problems, and Palestine and Saudi Arabia, mainly U.S. problems. Yet, the movement in those areas was generalized against the West collectively. The center of that movement was in Egypt and derived its critical power from the backing of the Soviets, with Russia not only arming Egypt but also interposing its own power to frustrate resistance and opposition to Egypt. But Western diplomacy was dealing almost entirely only with local leaders.
Mr. Lippmann suggests that the prospect of achieving pacification by a series of local settlements was very dim, as the basic issues were not really local or even regional, but worldwide, involving all of the great powers. Even when local leaders were occasionally disposed to enter into a bargain, they were prevented from settling by the pressure of the general anti-Western movement. Local settlements also were difficult to achieve because in most of the old protectorates, local vested interests were uncompromising, most prominent in French North Africa but also present in other places, damaging the Western cause, with the West in consequence not conceding enough to win the good opinion of the uncommitted nations.
He suggests that the question which had to come to everyone's mind was whether an attempt might and ought be made to negotiate collectively at a higher level with the real leaders of the Arab movement and with the Kremlin. As a series of local conflicts, the situation was deteriorating and could readily become a massive revolutionary violent movement by which not only the West but also the local Arab rulers might wind up overwhelmed.
The Western policy had been to deal with the Middle East as if the Soviets were not present in the region and already established as a major power, enabling the Soviets to operate without being called to account. Meanwhile, things had gone steadily against the West, from bad to worse.
A letter writer from Pittsboro suggests that the President had made a mistake in deciding to seek a second term, that neither he nor the people should take a gamble that he could live through another four years. He says that since 1933, he had been voting as an independent on the national ticket, that in 1936 and 1940, had not voted in the presidential election, as he did not want to vote for a Republican and believed that President Roosevelt had little, if any, respect for constitutional government. He believes that the present Government was one of "regimentation and control just short of a totalitarian" government, with which President Eisenhower had far too much sympathy to suit him. But he did not know where to go to find anything better. He says that the people would turn toward the President and support him enthusiastically unless the Democrats ceased to discuss a part-time President for a full-time job, while all remembered far too well that FDR had been sold to the American people in 1944 as being able to carry on in the critical period of World War II, when they knew that he was nearly dead. "Political audacity is one thing, but political gall is something else and quite different. The latter the people will not stand for."
Incidentally, speaking of Fox News as "regimentation and control just short of a totalitarian" government, it is tragically humorous to hear its commentariat speaking now in one voice against the indictment of their political hero, claiming quite falsely that the indictment lacks substance and does not specify the "other crimes" in furtherance of which falsification of business records "with intent to defraud" under New York's law becomes a felony. While we do not think it appropriate generally to comment on ongoing criminal prosecutions in a way which impacts negatively the rights of the accused, it is fair to point out, in the face of a completely false claim by a major news network and others, that in this case, the commentariat in question have completely ignored the "Statement of Facts" issued by the Manhattan District Attorney, along with the actual indictment, that Statement acting as a bill of particulars in the case. It states clearly at paragraphs 35, and 41-44, what those "other crimes" are, as we have taken the liberty to highlight. The violated Federal election laws to which it refers arise primarily under 52 USC 30109(d)(1)(A)(i), "knowingly and willfully" violating the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 "which involves the making, receiving or reporting of any contribution, donation or expenditure" exceeding in the aggregate $25,000 in a given year, as "Lawyer A", as quoted in the Statement of Facts at paragraphs 43-44, admitted doing "in coordination with and at the direction of" the defendant, that is falsely characterizing a campaign contribution or expenditure, claiming it as payment for a lawyer retainer fee which did not in fact exist.
We have heard some of the uninformed suggest that it was quite alright because it was the defendant's own money involved in the "hush money", but they are missing the point. The "hush money" was paid by "Lawyer A" or through arrangements with him, alleged in the Statement of Facts, quoting Lawyer A's previous plea of guilty to the campaign finance law violation, to have been in coordination with and at the direction of the defendant. The defendant is alleged to have reimbursed Lawyer A for that "hush money" but falsely characterizing and maintaining it on the defendant's business records as payment for a nonexistent legal retainer fee, thus hiding and failing to report a substantial campaign contribution or expenditure.
The complete misrepresentation of the indictment stands as another in a long series of indicators through the years that Fox "News" is not truly a news network at all but rather merely an extreme right-wing propaganda horn for the Aussie billionaire who owns it, seeking to undermine American democracy and fair play, appealing to the very least informed people among us to stimulate anarchy in the streets if possible. As the Fox commentators' own emails from January 6, 2021 betray, they are a bunch of dissembling con artists who do not even believe their own script, not journalists honestly and objectively reporting or commenting upon news stories of the day, and are patently unworthy of anyone's belief.
Unfortunately, there are obviously many people in this country, always have been, who only wish to hear that which massages their already formed opinions based on gab and garbled back-fence talk among their friends and neighbors, uninformed by any fact or genuine scholarship and research into a given topic, merely that which sounds good to them of the moment, no matter how ludicrous it might be when posed against known facts which are relatively easily ascertainable these days online from inherently reliable primary sources of information, not dependent on a filter or someone else saying what the story actually is, a circumstance true now for some 25 years. One no longer even has to venture to the library, as in the past, to obtain a fuller picture of a given story, one based on fact and not some propagandist's fiction and half-truths or, in the case of Fox, no truth at all, just pitch and more pitch, pig slop for pigs
And by the way, comparison to the 2011 indictment against former Senator John Edwards in North Carolina, who was acquitted on one count and had a hung jury on the rest in 2012, ignores the key distinction in the two cases, that the prosecutors in the Edwards case could not prove that the candidate had knowledge of the "hush money" arrangement, orchestrated and carried out by others, "knowingly and willfully" violating the law being a requirement for criminal violation of the campaign finance laws, on which Senator Edwards was directly indicted in Federal court. In the present case, based on state law in New York, utilizing the Federal campaign finance laws as only ancillary to the state law violation, enhancing the state law misdemeanor to a felony, there is a tape recording between Lawyer A and the defendant, proving the defendant's knowledge of the scheme, as further established by the false business records entries regarding the cover-up by characterizing the reimbursement of the Lawyer A "hush money" payments as payment for a lawyer retainer fee. And the attorney-client privilege, ordinarily protecting, as a rule of evidence, against revelation of such communications, does not extend to commission of future criminal conduct.
Again, we did not eat at the Pine Room
Framed Edition
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