A RECKLESS INDICTMENT
A Reckless Indictment THE RECENT adjournment of Congress provided our totalitarian liberals with another opportunity to smear the legislative branch of the federal government to the greater glory...
...Louis Post-Dispatch,) THE 4100 customers of Kirkwood's municipally-owned electric plant are eagerly looking forward to receipt of their December bills...
...It lacks all constructive vision, and, more, the promulgation and reiteration of such criticisms so unqualified in nature, shake public confidence in constitutional government—one thing certainly worth fighting for in this age of self-imposed slavery and tyranny by conquest...
...For the people it will be merely another proof that a municipality, if it wishes, can operate its own utility services successfully...
...In their headlong rush to blame Congress for anything and everything that goes wrong, the newspaper columnists and radio commentators have lately been hammering at the lawmakers for failure to stand by the President in "holding the line" against inflation...
...A Reckless Indictment THE RECENT adjournment of Congress provided our totalitarian liberals with another opportunity to smear the legislative branch of the federal government to the greater glory of the executive department...
...These recurring attacks on Congress are, of course, perfectly consistent with the credo of the totalitarian liberals who are prepared to embrace fascism at home in the name of destroying it throughout the rest of the world...
...Strangely, these little reminders will bring smiles instead of frowns...
...Credit should be used and controlled by the public and for the public...
...Labor repeats that since the beginning of the war emergency, no honest attempt has been made to enforce the laws Congress has enacted to restrain the profiteers...
...This will raise the national income and provide adequate opportunity...
...He has failed to lay down clear rules...
...The city has found that under wartime restrictions it has been able to save money...
...The New York Times was alarmed at the way the President "has violated every sound administrative principle" in the railway wage dispute...
...We are for government owned and operated central banks and the use of public credit for public investment in self liquidating projects...
...The Administration is also to blame, and in many respects, even to a greater extent than Congress...
...In my judgment, it is not true to the facts of history...
...It is because the statements will be marked paid in full...
...The present banking system, the resolution said, "does not operate in the best interests of the people, inasmuch as it leaves their economic and social life to a large extent at the mercy of a small clique of financial interests...
...The utility corporations, fighting so strenuously against any constitutional revision which would make public ownership easier, no doubt will find something sinister in Kirkwood's gesture...
...In that case, what have we to look forward to except oneman tyranny of some variety...
...In analyzing the indiscriminate denunciations of Congress a year ago, Dr...
...It is one-sided, un-discriminating, and reckless...
...Typical of the progressive outlook of Canadian labor was its resolution demanding that the government of Canada "take over the entire banking system and operate it in the interests of the people...
...Public Control Of Money THE UPSURGE of progressivism in Canada, as reflected in the phenomenal but healthy growth of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, has been about the most heartening political development of the war thus far...
...He has failed to delegate power clearly, and to one top agency alone...
...Charles A. Beard, dean of American historians, reached a conclusion which we would like to borrow for our own today: "If such statements [that Congress has betrayed the faith of the people] are true, then representative government is dead in the United States and merely awaits the kind of funeral that Hitler provided for the German Reichstag, and, more ominous still, the people of the United States, who elected these Senators and Representatives, are incapable of self-government...
...Reading the reports of the Canadian Congress of Labor convention, we were struck by the courage and the clarity with which these labor delegates grappled with the basic, underlying issues on the home front...
...But criticism becomes destructive of the very aims of democracy when it takes the form of a constant smearing and sneering at Congress as an instrument of a free government...
...Its administrative practices have been incredibly stupid and confusing and have created chaos when clarity was needed, vacillation when decisiveness was urgent, and frozen formulas when flexibility would have saved the day...
...Wisconsin Progressives recognize the kinship between the Canadian resolution and the plank which has long appeared in their Progressive Party platform...
...Fortunately, the wholesale indictment of Congress is unjustified...
...just a timely Christmas gift from the people to themselves...
...The weakness of the Roosevelt Administration's position was summed up recently in two editorials—one in the arch conservative New York Times, which wants to keep wages frozen, and one in the progressive weekly, Labor, Railroad brotherhood publication, which has been fighting for higher wages...
...The simple truth is, however, that for all its brave phrases and good intentions, the Roosevelt Administration has mostly itself to blame for the botched job...
...Money and credit," the Progressive Party has pointed out in its platform, "are the life-blood of production and commerce...
...He has failed to support the administrators and agencies to whom he has delegated power...
...The electric plant has surplus funds which it does not need, so it merely cancels the obligations of its customers for current used this month, a total of some $21,000...
...The decision of the Canadian Congress of Labor, at its recent convention, to make the CCF its instrument for political action has enhanced the hopes and prospects of both...
...The indictment betrays a profound misconception of the work actually done by Congress...
...Every observant American knows that Congress has acted unwisely on a number of occasions recently and that in a democracy like ours those errors must be held up to the pitiless light of publicity...
...A Public Ownership Dividend (From the St...
...Labor offered a sharper indictment of the Roosevelt Administration's failure in these words: "Congress is not solely responsible for the failure to control prices or to place the burden of taxation on the shoulders best able to bear it...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 1
