NOTES IN THE NEWS
Then and Now The Progressive supported John F. Kennedy for President last year after our first choice had been shot down in campaign and convention combat. We felt then, and said editorially in our...
...Kennedy said he was so proud, into legislation...
...And there is probably no group more skilled—or more practiced—in the wholesale use of all three kinds than the American Medical Association...
...It would do nothing of the kind, of course, as Senator Anderson pointed out...
...The President and his brother, the Attorney General, have done a far better job of mobilizing executive authority in dealing with race conflict than did the Eisenhower Administration, but this conduct does not release the Administration from its solemn commitment to support the omnibus Clark-Celler program whose intent is to convert the campaign pledge, of which Mr...
...It must'be pleasant for him, we suppose, to observe that the Gallup Poll shows he commands the support of eighty-four per cent of the people, but some of his supporters would be content to dwell in a somewhat less numerous company if they could begin to love him for the enemies he would make by exercising a greater degree of moral leadership...
...The Anderson-King measure is a "pale version" of the Forand bill, which went down to defeat a year ago, but it represents a long step forward given the tragic plight in which millions of our older citizens find themselves today...
...It would," said AMA, "establish a compulsory health-care program for everyone covered by Social Security regardless of need...
...Then the AMA picked up the same familiar bludgeon it has been using on progressive legislation for many years...
...Help under Kerr-Mills is almost exclusively limited to the elderly who are on public assistance rolls...
...Medical aid is authorized for any person over sixty-five who needs help...
...Kennedy to begin exercising precisely that type of leadership...
...Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, whom Mr...
...But the practice of writing off as tax-free "business expenses" such juicy items as $2,000 for football tickets, a $1,500 Las Vegas vacation, and a $13,750 liquor bill is something everyone can grasp...
...51 Club dues and fees would not be chargeable as a business expense...
...But was the oil depletion allowance included...
...After falsely representing the Kerr-Mills legislation as a wholly satisfactory solution to the medical problems of the aged, rather than the extremely limited and inadequate measure it has been demonstrated to be, the AMA turned on the Anderson-King bill proposing to finance some aspects of medical care under the time-proved Social Security program...
...But there are hopeful signs that the once invincible power of the AMA has developed some weaknesses...
...This year the AMA is once more lobbying in Washington with renewed vigor and even more brazen lies in its efforts to defeat the Social Security-financed old-age health bill backed by the Kennedy Administration...
...Payment for the plan is compulsory—one of the few true AMA statements...
...Increasingly, medical spokesmen at local levels dare to dispute the AMA...
...51 Another mortician tried—but failed—to charge off his grocery expenses at a supermarket, on the grounds that, in shopping, his wife was finding favor with prospective customers...
...The wholesale abuse of the business expense account has become such a national scandal that there is almost universal popular support for the portion of President Kennedy's new tax plan that would drastically reduce the almost limitless amounts business now writes off tax-free...
...Much of the AMA approach lay in extolling the virtues of the Kerr-Mills bill, which provides Federal funds to states on a matching basis...
...51 A Cadillac...
...Lies & Damned Lies There are three kinds of lies, observed the sage from Missouri, Mark Twain: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
...In sum, there is scarcely a word of truth in the AMA's frenzied attack on a Frankenstein monster that exists only in the medical association's own fevered imagination...
...51 Doughboy Industries, Inc., wrote off $10,000 for redecorating the home of its principal officer, plus $6,600 for an adjacent swimming pool...
...I am particularly proud of the civil rights plank in our Democratic platform...
...5| Deductions for gifts would be limited to $10 a year for each recipient...
...At the time the AMA claimed forty-six states were participating in the plan, only seven had put the new law into operation, and prospects for increasing this number were dim...
...But a series of AMA advertisements wrenched the truth so ruthlessly that Senator Clinton Anderson, a sponsor of the Anderson-King bill, rose on the floor of the Senate to deliver one of the most slashing counterattacks ever launched in Congress against the AMA and its false propaganda...
...The survey was soon exposed as a fraud, and its conclusions denounced by most of the sociologists involved in gathering the data...
...Dividends, foreign earnings, and expense accounts are hit hard and directly...
...The irritant in the present system is, of course, that it costs the taxpayer fifty-two cents every time some corporation executive spends a dollar of deductible money...
...The Administration has just made a series of far-reaching recommendations that have as their express purpose greater tax equity...
...Kennedy himself appointed last September to draft legislation designed to redeem the Democratic Party pledge, recently came up with a package program of six civil rights bills aimed directly at translating the party platform into action...
...We are convinced the bill would become law if the needs and effects were examined objectively...
...5! A dairy owner took his wife on an African safari, with stops in London, Paris, Rome, Cairo, and Alexandria, and was allowed a $16,816 business expense deduction...
...In a stinging speech on the floor of the Senate, Illinois' Senator Paul H. Douglas recently cited some outrageous examples of expense account items which have been allowed under the present law: 5[ A beverage manufacturer was allowed $10,903 for entertaining customers and their wives at the Kentucky Derby...
...Senator Anderson painstakingly refuted each of these assertions: Benefits vary widely from state to state, but at best are far from "unlimited...
...51 The loan of a yacht—"Listen to this," said Senator Douglas...
...The Socialist Party itself," cried the AMA, "calls this socialized medicine"—a charge indignantly denied by the Socialist Party ("If only it were," sighed Irwin Suall, the Socialists' national secretary...
...The AMA claims the Social Security trust fund "has been running in the red since 1957, and further obligations could bankrupt it...
...51 A mortuary establishment was allowed $26,495 for yacht expenses, $2,875 for a cottage and entertainment, and an additional $22,630 for personal residence and entertainment...
...We felt then, and said editorially in our November, 1960, issue, that Mr...
...The question was: "What is the most expensive gift—which you, personally, know about—that any company has given to gain a benefit...
...Senator William Proxmire, the Wisconsin Democrat who as a freshman upstart carried on a running battle against the then Senator Lyndon Johnson and the Texas oil forces, did lodge a protest...
...5[ A shoe manufacturer was permitted to deduct $16,943 for a yacht which he claimed was necessary to demonstrate to customers a non-skid sole on a sneaker his company made...
...effective legislation was killed in favor of a cumbersome, inadequate state-aid bill which includes a pauper's oath...
...Kennedy "does not consider it necessary at this time to enact new civil rights legislation...
...f The new plan has been adopted by forty-six states...
...Over the years The Progressive has reported a multiplicity of campaigns by the AMA based on distortion, omission, twisted statistics, and flagrantly false assertions...
...No mention is made of the mineral depletion allowances, of which the 27.5 per cent oil allowance is the most inequitable...
...But the damage had been done...
...In fact, oil depletion is the one ripe and obvious tax loophole to escape the President's recommendation...
...Less than a year ago, The Progressive reported an AMA-backed "independent" survey, released at the height of debate on old-age medical assistance in Congress, which purported to show that "nine out of every ten older persons report no unfilled medical needs," and that the vast majority of those over sixty-five preferred to finance their own medical care "without government intervention...
...The bill does not provide for a "health-care" program, but rather is limited to the payment of certain hospital and nursing services—not for "everyone" under Social Security but only for those sixty-five or over...
...Simple morality, more than economics, is involved...
...Again," we reported then, "it was the big lie that won the day...
...And Congress, certainly, is no longer the silent, obedient servant of the AMA it has been for so many years...
...Assets now are $20 billion, and are expected to reach $85 billion by 1975...
...The loan of a yacht, liquored, fueled, and girled.' . . . This is quite a comment on the morals of the times...
...At the time, we quoted with warm approval this clear-cut declaration by the Democratic candidate: "There is one domestic issue which is really a worldwide issue—the problem of securing once and for all full equality for all our people...
...51 Travel combining business and pleasure would be pro-rated...
...President Kennedy is fond of quoting Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to the effect that the Presidency is primarily a place of moral leadership...
...The truth is that fewer than two million (about ten per cent) of those over sixty-five would not qualify immediately under the proposed or some other existing health program, and this percentage would gradually decline in the years ahead...
...Senator Anderson's home state, for example, launched a new plan but the legislature adjourned without appropriating the necessary funds...
...The proposed plan was "socialism...
...51 A trip to Europe...
...We believe it is time for Mr...
...But oil continues its political charmed life and escapes once again...
...In Kentucky, for example, hospital care is limited to a maximum of three days...
...51 Food and beverage expense would be allowed only for genuine business conferences, and limited to something like $7 a person for each meal...
...Before anyone can draw benefits, he must submit to a public agency's audit of his private finances—and often those of his immediate relatives and children...
...Liquored & Girled' In 1958, Senator Douglas reported, the Ohio State University school of journalism polled the presidents of 650 of the nation's largest corporations...
...Nor have the liberals generally raised their \oices against the Administration's glaring omission...
...The tight little cadre of doctors that presumes to speak for the entire American medical profession is facing more opposition within its ranks than it cares to admit...
...If Congress again bypasses this urgent health need, it will be in large measure because of the lies, damned lies, and false statistics of the AMA...
...Curious Silence Equally disturbing in the President's response to the challenge in the field of- civil rights was his curious silence, in his second State of the Union message to Congress, on the official lawlessness that characterized state and local reaction to the heroic Freedom Rides in the South...
...The White House response was a chilling statement that Mr...
...Item by item, statement by statement, Anderson exposed the AMA's lies and distorted statistics...
...The answers included: 51 A trip to Jamaica...
...President Kennedy has now turned his back on that campaign commitment...
...Only the business portion would be tax deductible...
...Anything Goes The economic intricacies of the Kennedy Administration's new tax program are liable to leave most of us in a cloud of confusion...
...It seems inconceivable that the President of the United States could have expounded on the State of the Union for some 5,500 words without sparing one word for the historic conflict then raging in Alabama and Mississippi...
...In one state, benefits are denied anyone with a gross annual income of $1,000 dr more...
...The Administration has proposed to close such gaping holes in the tax net by these changes in the law: 51 Expenses for entertainment and entertainment facilities would be disallowed...
...In a Senate speech, Proxmire said: "This is another reminder to those naive enough to need one that the one big private interest that can throw its weight around in this Administration is oil...
...These are only a few of the claims made by the AMA for the Kerr-Mills program: f Its benefits are unlimited...
...But taxes to support the Kerr-Mills program are compulsory, too, a fact ignored by the AMA...
...But while the AMA's vicious tactics are regularly exposed, they are nevertheless effective...
...He doled out a single sentence for the conventional expression of hope that all our citizens might enjoy civil rights, but beyond that he seemed oblivious, in outlining the state of the union, of the bitter struggle in Alabama and Mississippi that was capturing front-page headlines around the world...
...Kennedy's unequivocal acceptance of the forthright Democratic Party plank on civil rights entitled him to the support of progressives even if there were no other basic differences between the candidates...
...As for the overall effect on the economy, Lucius Beebe, who is as experienced as anyone in spending money lavishly, wrote recently in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Probably corporate expense accounts are the greatest single inflationary agency in the entire national economy, in addition to which well-upholstered jerks preempting the best of everything in restaurants, theaters, night clubs, and airplanes are a damned poor advertisement for big business . . . An abatement of the expense account society could win the government wild plaudits . . ." We would be happy to add a lusty cheer if Congress gives us the opportunity...
...Douglas pointed out that it was not the Internal Revenue Department that was being ultra-lenient, but rather it was the courts' interpretation of the present law that made such outlandish "business expenses" deductible...
...In only three of twenty-four years has outgo exceeded income, and the fund's trustees estimate that, in the decade ahead, only in 1962 will the fund run "in the red...
...The AMA charged that the Federal government would invade the privacy of the doctor's office (any interference by the government is specifically forbidden by the bill) and that the patient would be deprived of freedom of choice of doctor (a freedom carefully protected by the bill...
...f A supplier claimed—and was allowed—$112,000 in expenses for a yacht, plus $362,000 for a ranch, hunting lodge, night club and other expenses...
...Sin of Omission The most glaring weakness in the Administration's tax program is not what is included, but is pointedly omitted, in violation of the Democrats' campaign promises...
...51 A manufacturer wrote off $375,000 for resort facilities on a subtropical island, an airplane, fishing cruisers, and entertainment...
...Then the AMA, in a complete backward flip, criticized the Anderson-King proposal not because it covered "everyone," but because it would exclude "millions of the poor and destitute who can never qualify for Social Security...
Vol. 25 • July 1961 • No. 7
