The Charlotte News

Sunday, August 4, 1940


THREE EDITORIALS

 

Site Ed. Note: "Crime Report" brings to mind an advertisement which was run recently by an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Congress. The ad displayed a mugshot of a Pakistani citizen recently arrested in Charlotte, in a different district from where the candidate ran, for alleged immigration violations, newsworthy only because the individual had videotape with him of certain tall buildings and other landmarks from North Carolina to Texas, videotape entirely consistent with that of being a simple tourist in this country. In fact, no evidence suggested that the individual had planned any terrorist activity or belongs to any group so advocating it. The arresting authority was only investigating such.

Yet, the ad to which we refer stated flatly, "He came here to kill you." It went on to indicate that the individual arrived in the country via the Mexican border and that as Congressman the candidate would close that border.

Huh, we didn't know that.

This particular candidate had put forth a whole host of noisome ads, one equating "family values" with "Leave It to Beaver", while declaring that he would not tolerate such "Twilight Zone" matters as "liberal judges" of the Supreme Court preventing school children from saying "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, (showing an image of school children with hands over their mouths), and permitting the burning of the flag.

The candidate, like hucksters before him such as Senator R. R. Reynolds, was ill-informed.

He should have been aware that the 1989 flag-burning case was authored by Antonin Scalia, reputed to be the most conservative member of a reputedly conservative Supreme Court, seven members of which were appointed by four Republican presidents, three of whom claimed to be conservative.

And he should have been aware that the issue of the Pledge has been mooted for now by a recent decision of the Supreme Court holding that the individual who brought the case, (and who up until a couple of years ago lived in the District wherein this candidate ran), had no legal standing to bring the suit in the first place.

He ought also to have been aware that individual House members have little if any impact on such weighty issues anyway. Members of the House have no official input into the nomination or confirmation process of federal judges. That is the job of the Senate.

He ought also to have been aware that the chances of passing a constitutional amendment on these issues is about as likely as the resurrection of Prohibition. But, you never know. The candidate may try for that one, too, when next he runs.

If he ever does, we hope next time he will at least have the good grace to leave the Cleavers out of the mix. June and Ward never, to our recollection anyway, albeit forty-four years since, once said anything about the Pledge or the flag or immigration. Neither did Wally or the Beav, or even Eddie Haskell for that matter--though we suspect strongly that Eddie was out after school at least charring a flag now and again and quietly dropping "God " usually from the Pledge each morning. And though the house they performed in does uncannily resemble one in one of the wealthier neighborhoods of the candidate's would-have-been District, the house exists only on a back lot at Universal Studios. (Ward later lost his job, incidentally, and had to move to another town, after his company down-sized and transferred his job title to Istanbul. Then Dr. Welby bought the house after he got tired of being "Father" in another "Leave It to Beaver" type household. Then he attempted suicide due to alcoholism and depression, eventually passed away, and the house has been vacant for nigh on 30 years, last we heard.) And, of course, none of it ever existed on planet earth in any family we ever observed, read about or heard of anyway--only in the "Twilight Zone". Is it any wonder that the candidate was a little confused?

We didn't even mention, until now, that the candidate labeled himself the "black Jesse Helms".

Everything changes, but all too often, much of it, sometimes too much of it, remains the same.

Ditto for "Six of One"... What was that deficit again in July, 1940 as we prepared to fight the war in Europe, a half billion dollars? Well, we are glad to see that has changed in a world largely at peace in the first half of 2004.

Half dozen of the other.

Six of One

First Month of Defense No Costlier Than New Deal

The Associated Press is a serious-minded outfit, whose main purpose is to inform rather than to amuse. Even so, the boys in Washington last week got a piece of irony by the desk:

The Treasury disclosed today that it has started off the biggest peacetime spending year in history with a deficit of nearly a half-billion dollars. In July the Treasury spent $830,598,844 and took in $331,220, 815--a deficit of $499,378,029.

Big money, you see, but necessary to save our skins. Got to have those tanks and Garland rifles and airplanes. Nobody objects to deficits, no matter how big, when they are for defense.

But wait a minute. At this point is where the AP's Washington office inserted its irony. The dispatch went on:

... In the same month last year the deficit was $499,479,186.

If defense expenditures keep up the pace no faster than they asked--as they won't--it would justify the AP's innuendo that, shucks, to support a war machine is no more expensive than to support the ordinary New Deal.

 

Line

Some Anti-War Men Plop For German Propaganda

In the mails there arrives on our desk a new mimeographed publication, called Uncensored. It is published weekly at 112 E. Nineteenth Street, in New York City. Its editor is Sidney Hertzberg, its Washington correspondent Frank C. Hanighen, its associate editor Cushman Reynolds. None of the gentlemen are notable enough to have got into "Who's Who in America."

But the sponsors of the sheet are. They include Harry Elmer Barnes, John Chamberlain, C. Hartley Grattan, Stuart Chase, John T. Flynn, and Oswald Garrison Villard.

In a letter accompanying the release, Mr. Hertzberg tells us candidly:

"Regardless of any denials we might make, I suppose this publication will be set down as a propaganda sheet. We won't argue about it. Uncensored is put out by a group of writers who have never made a secret of their opposition to American participation in foreign wars..."

In the mails also arrives a copy of the German White Book, published by Howell, Soskin & Co., of New York, at one dollar--apparently free gratis for us. It has a foreword written by Mr. C. Hartley Grattan, whose name we just listed. It does not say so flatly, but it contrives very ably to put over the idea that the document should probably be received as factual. It is the document which pictures Mr. Roosevelt as plotting through Ambassador Bullit to aid Britain in making an entirely unprovoked war on poor, innocent Germany.

The sponsors of Uncensored are all men of undoubted integrity. Mr. Grattan, like Professor Barnes, has written books designed, by selected evidence, to prove that the real villain in the last war was Britain, that Germany was an innocent victim, the United States a sucker. Both, therefore, have a vested interest in the maintenance of that position, in the promotion of the isolationist view in this country. But both are also undoubtedly honest in their conviction that a German victory over England need give us no concern. And it is their privilege to assert that belief.

And still, it seems to us a little thick to assert it as Mr. Grattan has asserted it, as Uncensored may reasonably be expected to assert it, by going straight down the line for Dr. Goebbels' official propaganda in this country.

 

Crime Report

Some Figures That Dispose Of a Claim by Robert

From an address from the Hon. Robert Rice Reynolds, delivered over the nation-wide network of the Mutual Broadcasting Company, and proudly reprinted in the current issue of his Vindicator, we cull the following:

"Crime in the United States costs more than $17,000,000 annually, according to the Department of Justice. With taxes mounting, why should we continue to bear the burden of maintaining foreigners! (Robert punctuated it that way.) Let's empty some of these penal institutions by returning these alien criminals to their native lands."

Plain inference is what Robert has often explicitly proclaimed--that the aliens are mainly responsible for crime in the United States. But if the statesman has actually consulted the figures of the Justice Department, he knows better.

It is common knowledge that the New England, East North Central, and Middle Atlantic states have the largest proportion of aliens in the country, and that the South Atlantic states, to which group North Carolina belongs, has the smallest proportion. With that in mind let's look at the figures for the number of crimes known to the police for each 100,000 inhabitants, as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, for 1939. (Key to the symbols: NE equals New England states; ENC equals East North Central states; MA equals Middle Atlantic states; SA equals South Atlantic states.)

 

New York

ENC

MA

SA

Murder.....

0.9

4.2

3.3

15.9

Robbery....

18.5

85.7

24.2

73.9

Assault.....

10.8

31.2

32.8

166.3

Burglary...

263.9

316.9

221.8

465.1

Theft.......

551.1

830.5

435.0

1,200.2

Auto Theft

164.9

136.0

131.4

244.2

The matter can be brought even more closely home. As everybody knows, New York State has overwhelmingly the largest proportionate alien population in the nation, and North Carolina, Statesman Reynolds' own state, has the smallest. But here is how they stood in crime, for 1939, according to FBI:

 

New York

North Carolina

Murder....

3.1

18.8

Robbery...

16.8

55.9

Assault....

32.7

395.1

Burglary...

180.1

526.6

Theft.......

483.1

1,209.5

Auto Theft

104.7

191.5

That is, in 1939 North Carolina, with the smallest proportion of aliens in the country, had over six times as many murders for each 100,000 people as New York, with the largest proportion of aliens in the country; over three times as many robberies; over twelve times as many cases of aggravated assault; nearly three times as many instances of burglary and breaking and entering; over two and one-half times as many larcenies and thefts, and nearly 50 percent more auto thefts.

Obviously, then, the great statesman is talking nonsense when he says aliens are responsible for most of our crime. If he doesn't know that, it is because he hasn't investigated. If he does know it, then he is deliberately out to mislead the people and take advantage of these times to stir up a campaign of hysterical and unjust hate.

 


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