The Albany Legislature in a Year of Crisis
Waldman, Louis
The Albany Legislature in a Year of Crisis Jobless Receive Little Consideration While Utilities Are Protected by Partisan Line-up By Louis Walilman tN THE midst of the greatest JL industrial...
...A Bl-Partisan Legislature The most Important single incident showing Republican hypocrisy is the action of the majority appropriating 1250,000 additional for the continuance of the HofstadterSeabury investigation committee, and at the same time uniting with the Tammany members of both Houses to defeat the Hofatadter measure which would have permitted prompt and effective reconsideration of the New York City charter...
...Four months later be was deposed...
...the other is backed by Mellon-National City-Standard Oil and is called "Republican...
...His second reign lasted seven days...
...Disasters loom ahead, but I do net set...
...Majorit...
...While the enactment of a law modifying the rigid fourth-offender rule under the Baumes Act is to be commended, the Legislature, at the same time, again defeated the measure calling for the repeal of capital punishment...
...The humane measure abolishing the seven-day week in New York prisons and hospitals was scarcely considered...
...Meanwhile the effect of the adoption of the tax principle of "soak the poor and save tbe rich" by the Bourbon Democrats of the House has given the Garner presidential candidacy a severe setback...
...The shorter-hour work-day met the same fate...
...Puppet...
...by Raskob-Du Pont-General Motors and is called "Democratic...
...One bunch is backed...
...THREE-FOURTHS of the Democrats and most of the Republicans present in the House when Acting Chairman .Crisp of the Ways and Means Committee finished his speech for the new Hoover-Garner revenue bill stood up and applauded loudly...
...People are grumbling, yet I do not know...
...For the time being, the Repubocrat dummies will speak the words of their ventriloquist owners, safe in the center of the political stage—which does not alter the truth of the words that our own "chlh-heng" might well repeat after P'u Yl: "I have reigned three years...
...Floyd Carlyle, President of the Niagara Hudson Power Company which exercises s substantial monopoly of the electric business upstate, to the presidency of the Consolidated Oaa Company, which has a complete monopoly of the lectric industry in Greater New York, the establishment of a statewide monopoly is complete...
...Even so mild a demand as the cutting of working hours from seven to six days a week for the subway "moles" was considered too advanced...
...I have reigned three years...
...Both hold power because workers have not built their own democratically managed and financed party to take over the government...
...Nor did it take the important step of reconsidering our entire system of criminal administration of justice and the enactment of a program looking towards the establishment of a code in keeping with modern knowledge and fit to meet the present-day crime conditions...
...Little attention was paid to it by the Democratic minority and the Governor...
...Puppet once more, P'u Yl, a trembling child of twelve, wai drag-fad...
...He asserted that th< bill had the unanimous endorse ment, by rollcall, of all of the 2! members of the Ways and Mean...
...Present indications point to defeat of the sales tax, and to a substantial increase in the supertax rates on big incomes, and in the rates on estates and gifts, when the Senate gets the bill...
...People are grumbling, yet I do not know...
...I have not employed men properly...
...Near the front, on the Democratic side, was Mrs...
...Leader Rainey, a very recent con vert, tried to look enthusiastic Huddleston of Alabama, formed...
...From the moment Garner's party loads this new burden upon the straining backs of the American people, it will have forsaken the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and enlisted under the banner of Alexander Hamilton...
...This remarkable statement wai the more extraordinary because the emperor was only six years old at the time...
...And yet, th...
...No one will seriously take Republican protestations against Tammany corruption with the Hofstadter charter proposal in the legislative dustbin...
...The entire problem of public utilities, the failure of regulation and the enactment of measures to meet that problem was totally Ignored by this Legislature...
...I have not employed men properly...
...The legislative investigation of two years ago and its voluminous reports might just as well never have been made for all the Legislature did about it...
...All In all, In view of the abnormal times and the great social need for drastic and courageous government action, the New York Legislature «f miw must be written down as the symbol of the moral and aodal bankruptcy of the ftomeeraMc and Republican The Democrats Protect the Rich "Democracy" Wages Stubborn Congress Battle for Sales Tax By Laurence Todd WASHINGTON...
...With the victims of the bank failures numbering hundreds of thousands, and bearing losses which they could hardly afford, the Legislature again barkened to the voices of the banks and defeated the measure providing for the segregation of thrift accounts In commercial banks...
...The ugly spectacle of lobbyists over-rannlng the chambers of both Houses while the members were in session and deliberating, thought to have been banished from Capitol Hill, again came to life...
...Unemployment Insurance, even in its mildest form, was defeated...
...Facing revolution, he confessed that he had not been a very good ruler...
...From the benches occupied by | Hoover Republicans came round I after round of hand-clapping, i There was left no doubt that Garner and Crisp had "made good" with the Hooverites, by reporting . a bill which throws the main burdI en of federal taxation on the poor, and by advocating that the federal 1 government set an example by cutting the pay of its workers...
...With the reluctance of our Public Service Commisions to prosecute vigorously rate reduction cases, the consumers will now be at the complete mercy of the Morgan controlled giant power monopoly...
...Much of the people's money has been taken, but nothing tc benefit the people has been achieved...
...Disasters loom ahead, but I do not see...
...Like Crisp also, ' he avoided a real discussion of tbe ' possibility of raising most of the r federal revenue for this purpose . from the bigger incomes, estates and gifts...
...Garner Makes Good Then Hawley of Oregon, forme chairman of the committee an< spokesman for the G. O. P., tool the floor...
...Poor puppet, figurehead of a decaying feudalism, whose terrified lords spoke for him...
...Much of the people's money has been taken, but nothing to benefit the people has been achieved...
...The Washing top Daily News (Scripps-Howard) in a leading editorial March 10, entitled "Strange Democrats...
...Compared to the Issues it ignored and the important bills it defeated, its scant affirmative accomplishments sink into insignificance...
...it was Jefferson who branded them as 'Infernal' and 'odious.' " If anything more humiliating to the spirit of Jeffersonian democracy than the surrender of principle made In the revenue bill reported by the Ways and Means Committee of the House under the inspiration of Speaker Garner, is to be found In the recent political history of the United States, political writers In the capital would like to know what It Is...
...Twenty years ago, Pu Yi wai Emperor of China...
...Hands Off the Utilities While millions of domestic consumers of New York State are groaning under the highest electric rates compared to the average for the country, the Legislature turned down a bill which would permit municipalities to engage in the business of producing, buying and distributing electricity to its citizens and inhabitants, and which would permit them to create power districts for the accomplishment of these purposes...
...The Albany Legislature in a Year of Crisis Jobless Receive Little Consideration While Utilities Are Protected by Partisan Line-up By Louis Walilman tN THE midst of the greatest JL industrial crista in our history, the shortest New York legislative session in the last thirty years ended last week leaving behind it a trail of inaction on the most vital public and social needs...
...Like Crisp, he argued that th< sales tax had become necessary since It was absolutely essentia that the budget be balanced am that borowlng by the federal gov P'u Yi—That Boy Emperor P'U YI has become chih-cheng of Manchoukuo, which, belna ^interpreted, means that "the boj emperor" is dictator of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia...
...With a million Jobles pathetically pounding the pavements, many of them In dire and extreme distress, the Legislature adjourned without enacting an adequate program of relief...
...It was Hamilton who first introduced indirect taxes...
...State should, by precept, be an example to private employers In the humane treatment-'of their employees...
...One minute previously, the Georgia Bourbon had declared for a cut in federal salaries "from the very highest to the very lowest," and had won applause for that demand...
...The general ovation was given him not merely for his attack on the wage level of postal employes, departmental clerks and stenographers and the rest of the hundreds of thousands of public servants, but because he had upheld the sales tax...
...Ruth Bryan Ow en, daughter of the Great Com moner, standing and applaudinj with the hardboiled boys from Mis souri and Tammany...
...Committee—proving that it repre sented the best thought of the tw< parties, and was a measure fo which the most conservative Re publican could safely vote...
...Through this, much of civic corruption and grave public abuses could be remedied by the people of the City who, in the final analysis, are the ones who must clean their own house In their' own city...
...Twice before 1 he has ruled a larger empire thai contained this territory, but now there is a fair chance that he may stay, because fifteen Japanese officials were present at the installation...
...Puppet still, the human symbol of the old Chinese feudalism becomes now the living mouthpiece of the new Japanese capitalism...
...starts off with the suggestion—"If Speaker Garner, in bis capacity of boss of the House, insists upon dragging his unwilling fellow-Democrats into supporting the 1600,000,000 sales tax, he will about complete the betrayal of his party begun when it supported the Republican billion-dollar tariff...
...rThe crying need for slum-clearing and home building, which would have given the unemployed work and at the same performed the great civic duty of wiping out slums, hardly received legislative consideration...
...The failure to enact this measure at this session is the more to be condemned because it Is now clear that with the election of Mr...
...from bis bed and restored to the throne of China by the war lord Chang Hsung...
...Well, two political groups in our own country have marionettes in office...
...This sales tax, reaching into the pockets of small consumers for nearly $600,000,000 Instead of taking money from estates and gifts and the bigger private Incomes, was facing a nationwide storm of protest...
...Powerful lobbies, representing special interests seemed to command full sway...
...the best pro-labor man anion) Southern Democrats, was delightei with the wage-slash proposal ant took part in the demonstration ii support of the sales tax...
...Many members appeared to have heard from home...
...ernment cease...
Vol. 13 • April 1932 • No. 12
