NOTES IN THE NEWS
democrats Divided The Democratic Advisory Council, a group of VIP's organized to exert liberal pressure within the party, met recently in New York City and drafted a 10,000-word blueprint for the...
...He issued a series of anti-Soviet saber-rattling statements, one possible purpose of which, we speculated in the December issue, was to set him apart more sharply from the currently conciliatory Nixon...
...It reduced the President's appropriation requests by a minimum of $1.8 billion and the President's request for back-door financing by about $700,000,000...
...The Democrats are plagued by another split—this one in the field of foreign policy...
...The Generals' General If any of our readers still think, as we once did, that the military generals run the nation's defenses, they may be disillusioned, as we have been, by a pamphlet entitled Labor and the Cold War, written by Stewart Meacham, and published recently by the American Friends Service Committee...
...As the St...
...Meacham, in citing a recent Fortune article with the revealing title, "General Dynamics vs...
...In a recent session on CBS-TV's "Face the Nation" program, Rockefeller steadfastly refused to disassociate himself from or to criticize either Nixon or the President or the policies of the Eisenhower Administration...
...Nine-tenths of the remaining 29 million taxpayers reported incomes between $4,000 and $10,000...
...The Journal reports that the squeeze on farmers resulting from their mounting costs in the face of falling prices for farm products "will be the harshest ever" in 1960, "surpassing even the depression year of 1932...
...For all its valid denunciation of the Eisenhower Administration's lack of "bold and creative leadership," the statement might just as correctly have been addressed to the Democratic leadership in Congress...
...This valuable pamphlet, Labor and the Cold War, may be purchased from the American Friends Service Committee, 20 South 12th Street, Philadelphia, for 35 cents...
...None of these is possible of attainment without affirmative action by Congress— and the Democratic majorities in both houses have refused to enact such a program, and show no sign of doing so when Congress reconvenes shortly...
...Speaking of Convair's B-58 supersonic bomber, Naish said: "First we had to dream it up, then sell it, then operate a poor man's State Department to get the cooperation of other contractors...
...and that 1960 is expected to produce the lowest farm income since 1942...
...Now, another month later, Rockefeller has us thoroughly confused...
...Two months earlier, in a summary of the achievements of the recent session of Congress, Senator Johnson had said: "Recognizing the need for careful management of public funds, the Congress carried out its announced intent to cut spending...
...The pressures of today's highly technological arms race," writes Meacham, "have taken the initiative and the power to make the crucial decisions out of the hands of responsible government officials and placed it in the hands of technicians, planners, and scientists employed by vast industrial empires and charged with responsibility for their employers' interests...
...The people are interested in establishing the conditions of peace...
...Speaking in Philadelphia in late November, Senator Johnson accused the Eisenhower Administration of cutting the "people's dreams out of the budget...
...It educates Pentagon representa tives so that they may understand what their future needs will be...
...It is worth a good deal more...
...This is not just the opinion of an anti-militarist, but the considered judgment of Fortune, "the magazine of business...
...As a result, the Democratic Advisory Council emerged with a weasel-worded compromise on foreign policy, f Typical of the two-headed approach was this paragraph: "New departures in foreign policy are accompanied by perils as well as by opportunities . . . To permit the Communist world to achieve superiority in military power could be disastrous to the cause of peace...
...The Democrats will cut themselves off from the people unless they grasp the fact that die President, in both the journey to Asia and the journey to the summit, is giving expression to a profound popular sentiment...
...f It contracts with the Pentagon to produce these weapons...
...Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and former President Harry Truman speak for a wing of the party which clings to the inflexible dogmas of the late John Foster Dulles...
...If the farmer were actually being subsidized so heavily as is so frequently claimed, it is unlikely the Journal could report, as it did last month, that this year farmers "will be deeper in debt than at any other time in history...
...The document is, in most respects, an able indictment of the Eisenhower Administration's failures and a thoughtful statement of some of the things that urgently need doing —especially on the home front...
...He refused to say that Nixon might not be the best possible Republican candidate...
...The new approach involves three main steps: f General Dynamics decides what weapons the government needs...
...In five years General Dynamics' stock has multiplied in value more than five times, taking into account splits and dividends...
...And so they are—and unless the Democrats break free from the Ache-son-Truman yoke on foreign policy, they will continue to retreat in public favor...
...The Post asked: "Come on, Lyndon, whose knife did they use...
...He denied that he was raising an issue of integrity and ability between Nixon and himself...
...New Year's on the Farm On the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, the American farmer is pictured as a highly favored nephew of Uncle Sam, unfairly petted and pampered with fat subsidies and price supports...
...The average was $6,400 after taxes, close to the figure the government estimates necessary to maintain the American standard of living...
...Furthermore, it seems unlikely that many of this huge segment of our population—more than half of all American taxpayers —would relate the title to the society in which they live...
...Eisenhower on...
...Johnson & Johnson The New York Post recently published, side by side, with deadly effect, two statements by Senator Lyndon Johnson, Democratic leader of the Senate majority...
...Has he decided that the way to reach the White House is to ride the Eisenhower-Nixon coattails...
...On the other hand, there are 23,000 families whose incomes topped the $100,000 mark in 1957, the Internal Revenue Bureau has just reported...
...If so, the Republican Party would be left with no real choice of candidates after all, and Rockefeller would have no chance of appealing to the great mass of independents without whose support he would clearly have no chance...
...democrats Divided The Democratic Advisory Council, a group of VIP's organized to exert liberal pressure within the party, met recently in New York City and drafted a 10,000-word blueprint for the 1960 Democratic national platform...
...More than 85 per cent of its business is military, including such items as the Atlas and other missiles, anti-missile missiles, and jet bombers and interceptor planes...
...The ink was scarcely dry when Rockefeller forced us to alter our estimate of him as Presidential timber...
...General Dynamics' John Naish, in charge of Convair, its largest division, is quoted by Fortune to illustrate the process...
...In the old days, the government determined its military needs, then called in industry and placed orders with them...
...Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out, instead of caviling over a summit conference and throwing cold water on other creative aspects of foreign policy, the Democrats "ought to be egging Mr...
...He ranges over "The Cold War and the Domestic Economy,'* "The Cold War and National Security,'' and "The Cold War and World Economic Development," in a carefully reasoned, well documented presentation that demands agreement with his blunt conclusion: "The Cold War is a burden on the back of labor...
...The statement, for example, boldly calls for federal aid to education, a stronger civil rights program, a 30 per cent increase in social security benefits, increasing the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 per hour, and federal programs to stimulate electrical energy output and water conservation and development...
...They have deep implications for all of us...
...He refused to criticize the President for inviting Nikita Khrushchev to the United States, although it is well known he opposed the visit...
...that last year's income dropped 14 per cent from that of 1958...
...It was only two months ago that The Progressive could run a profile of New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller which suggested he might possibly become "a Republican F.D.R.," a man who would have great appeal, in contrast to Richard Nixon, to liberal Republican and independent voters...
...The people are not interested in perpetuating a Cold War in which some Democrats seem to think they have a vested interest...
...The Journal, its heart on its sleeve, concludes, "It's unhappy news for merchants that sell to rural markets...
...The danger is not that he will go too far, but that he will not go far enough...
...Undoubtedly, one of the things that perpetuates the myth that farmers are rolling in money is the huge agriculture budget—it may run $9 billion this year...
...He gave a vague blanket endorsement of the Eisenhower Administration's foreign and domestic policies...
...Nelson Nixon...
...At the same time, as peace is our greatest goal, the achieving of disarmament with inspection and control should have top priority in our policy...
...Far from presenting the picture of a fresh, dynamic, liberal potential candidate who would be a vivid contrast to Richard Nixon, Rockefeller blurred the lines so thoroughly it struck us that he was anxious to rub some of the Nixon magic off on himself...
...Now, says Meacham (and Fortune), the science of weaponry is so technical the military has only a foggy notion of its needs...
...But even the Journal editors must find this view rather paradoxical when they read on Page One of their own newspaper that farm income in 1960 "probably will decline for the second straight year...
...Here is something for everybody— instead of the spirited call for fresh initiative in an all-out drive for negotiated settlements which might have given the Democrats at least part of the posture of peace which is doing so much to enhance Republican prospects in this fateful election year...
...He parried and evaded question after question...
...But not all of this by any means goes into the farmer's pocket, and much that does represents government crop purchases at prices below the amount the farmer needs to receive a fair return on his work and investment...
...This is only a small sample of the wealth of material Stewart Meacham has provided on the effects of the cold war...
...the U.S.S.R.," defines the relationship between this powerful industrial empire and the military wing of the government...
...The (Not So) Affluent Society If there are 30 million families in the United States who haven't purchased a copy of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, there is at least one good reason: with an average annual income of a miserable $2,040 (before taxes), they could hardly afford it...
...But Meacham's arguments are by no means limited to labor...
...At just the moment that negotiation with the Soviets carries the greatest promise of bearing fruit, however modest a harvest, they are busy attempting to equate negotiation with appeasement, busy demanding the preservation of the Cold War status quo...
...But no one who reads the text of the document can escape the conclusion that, more than anything else, it graphically accentuates the tragic split in the Democratic Party...
...General Dynamics' "poor man's State Department" includes its president, Frank Pace, former Secretary of the Army, and 54 retired military officers, including 17 former admirals and seven former generals...
Vol. 24 • January 1960 • No. 1
