NOTES IN THE NEWS
NOTES in the NEWS U Thant's Farewell If the United Nations is not to go the way of the League of Nations— whose demise was followed by World War II—the U.N. members must heed the somber...
...Even the Administration, which championed Medicare, ran scared...
...Those who would deny our military forces unstinting support are, in effect, aiding the Communist enemy of our country—at the very moment when it is bearing the heaviest burdens in defense of world peace and freedom...
...The New York Times reported that "Physicians have raised their fees for patients sixty-five and over by as much as 300 per cent since Medicare began July 1." Some reports hold that physicians who had a sliding scale of fees have now raised those for formerly indigent elderly patients to the higher brackets...
...the National Repertory and two other theaters...
...Brooklyn Supreme (trial) Court Justice Nathan R. Sobel stated last November, months before the U.S...
...Many protesters, bolstered by outraged editorial writers, gave the public the preposterous impression that the Supreme Court had outlawed confessions altogether...
...U Thant has long urged—to no avail—that his Three Points be put into action to create conditions leading to a Vietnam settlement...
...Keep an Eye on Detroit President Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers has performed a major public service by calling attention to the probability that the Big Three of Detroit—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—will charge excessively high prices for new safety features added to motor vehicles as a result of the 1966 Federal Traffic Safety Act...
...By declining a second term and forcefully stating the reasons for his decision, he has tried to bring the great powers —and particularly the United States —to their senses before it is too late to prevent the outbreak of World War III...
...The United Auto Workers president, who had left the Council meeting before the resolution was adopted to meet another commitment, said that if he had been present he would have voted against the statement...
...What happened was a modest three per cent increase in hospital admissions that might be attributed to Medicare...
...China is not a U.N...
...Most, but not all, grants must be matched by private funds before the money is made available, a requirement designed both to stimulate private investment in the arts and humanities and to prevent a concentration of financial support in the Federal agency...
...For example, General Motors, with last year's $2.1 billion profits after taxes, "could have absorbed $100 in safety costs on every one of the nearly five million cars it produced in 1965 and still would have had a 24.6 per cent return on investment...
...All "coincidence," said the Democratic spokesmen...
...Apparently the Secretary of State presumes differently...
...The cruelty of this war," he said, "and the suffering it has caused the people of Vietnam are a constant reproach to the conscience of humanity...
...Senator George McGovern, South Dakota Democrat, called the resolution an "amazing document" which claimed that the right of dissent is sacred but then "quickly denounced anyone who would put such a dangerous principle into practice...
...Furthermore, the AMA failed to publicize the fact that almost any patient's admission to almost any hospital is possible only on the order of a medical doctor, who is presumably a member of the AMA...
...The Big Three, led by GM, more than ever constitute a living denial of the old theory that bigness, with its mass production methods, automatically yields savings for the customer...
...principles...
...Both France and the Soviet Union have, in the past, helped weaken the United Nations by refusing to pay for their share of the cost of U.N...
...Art and Government One of the more creative accomplishments of the Johnson Administration has been the establishment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, signed into law just a year ago...
...The Republicans have charged that this is so, and they may yet prove that there is more than coincidence in the fact that some donors have done very well indeed in their subsequent dealings with the Federal establishment...
...A number of doctors said that this rise represented simply a small wave of elderly patients whose conditions could medically withstand postponement of a few weeks or months and who, therefore, elected to wait for the effective Medicare date...
...Thus, U Thant was calling upon those nations who claim to support the principles of the U.N...
...But not all...
...Moreover, more than half the suspects confessed even after having been advised by the police of their rights under the recent U.S...
...In any case, one of his presumptions must be that U Thant does not read the newspapers, and that it was therefore perfectly safe to assure the Secretary-General that Washington wants to scale down the Vietnam war, and—on the same day—tell the VFW that our objective is complete victory...
...That one per cent will cause the average person with a median income in this country of $4,600 to work a whole year free of charge to pay that one per cent interest on the house...
...Federal involvement in the arts has long been a highly controversial subject, and except for a brief period in the 1930's, the Federal government has tended to steer away from direct support...
...The AFL-CIO imagery of dissenters on Vietnam as polluters and poisoners of the national blood stream smacked of the language of Hitler whose cry it was that German blood must be cleansed of the pollution of "traitors" and Jews...
...Reuther called the resolution "intemperate, hysterical, jingoistic, and unworthy of a policy statement of a free labor movement...
...The President's Club repudiates that principle, shakes the faith of the citizen in his government, demeans the office of the Presidency, and reflects adversely upon the occupant of that office...
...The fact that so many individual Senators and Senate committees, whether hawk or dove or in between—and, incidentally, all Democrats—are beginning to speak up with searching questions, brooding doubts, and forthright challenges—all this holds out a modest measure of hope that a consensus-minded President may yet halt, if not reverse, the further militarization of American foreign policy...
...Neither will the other dissenters "shut up" who express the opposition of millions of Americans to the Administration's course in Vietnam...
...The voice of a labor movement that once was itself the voice of dissent, may have intimidated some of those on union payrolls but it will not frighten all of the rank and file of union men and women, nor many outside the unions...
...While a minority has the right to dissent from the majority, disruption by even a well-meaning minority can only pollute and poison the blood stream of our democracy," the Council resolved...
...The United States, then, the Secretary-General seemed to be saying, has a special obligation to prove its belief in the United Nations by seeking peace in Vietnam according to U.N...
...The Quixotes of Medicare By July 1 of this year the foes of Medicare, who had lost their battle in Congress, had made so many excursions and sounded so many alarums that even the friends of Medicare were apprehensive that the hospitals of the nation, already understaffed, would be engulfed by such a flood of "hypochondriac" and "malingering" elder citizens that chaos in hospital care must result...
...In practice, there is reason to believe that some Club members have profited through contracts and favors from the government...
...McCarthyism in the AFL-C1Q Supposedly Eugene Debs remains a patron saint of the American labor movement, but we don't doubt for a moment that if he were alive today and entered a session of the AFL-CIO Executive Council to plead for reversal of its saber-rattling policies, he would be viewed as some kind of dangerous nut and probably be thrown out or handed over to the FBI...
...Designed to provide financial aid to the visual and performing arts and to the humanities, the Foundation has already demonstrated breadth of vision and imagination, the ability to act promptly in rescuing projects in danger, and a willingness to experiment and take some risks...
...The private feelings of U Thant, as the Johnson Administration urged him to accept a second term as Secretary-General, may well be imagined...
...REPRESENTATIVE WRIGHT PATMAN Chairman, House Committee on Banking and Currency that in 1965, with only 6.5 per cent more workers than it employed in 1947, it turned out 132 per cent more cars and trucks—a total of 11,114,000 vehicles —"and they were bigger and better cars and trucks...
...He has called for a Senate investigation to deter "price gouging" on automobile safety items...
...member, nor is North Vietnam, but we are...
...They never came...
...It seems ironic that the most immedi ate beneficiaries of Medicare are those doctors who, through the AMA, spent millions of dollars tilting Quixote-like against a windmill that never existed...
...A $1,350,000 anti-poverty contract was later awarded to the company...
...the Detroit Institute of Art (for a program to send exhibitions to smaller communities in Michigan) ; and others in music and education...
...the San Francisco and New York Operas (to take opera performances to students, labor groups, and communities distant from urban centers...
...But if France and the Soviet Union have wounded the United Nations in its pocketbook, Washington has struck at the very heart of the world body by flouting its central mission— the keeping of the peace...
...Although the Johnson Administration's reaction was to speak and behave as if U Thant had some other country in mind, it was obvious that Eisenhower warned so urgently less than a decade ago seems too much in command of American foreign policy under the Johnson Administration...
...Under the act, Federal employes and agencies are prohibited from directing or supervising the policy or administration of any non-Federal organization...
...Now, ironically, he may have rendered his greatest service...
...The decision raised a great storm of protest and criticism among law enforcement officials, most of whom bitterly denounced the Court for robbing them of the right to extract a confession from a suspect immediately after arrest...
...But what else has happened—and the AMA has been silent on this development—is deeply disturbing...
...Charter, to live by them...
...Our response has been to step up the bombings, pour in more troops, and disregard the concept of including the Vietcong in negotiations...
...Rather, the record of the National Foundation in its first year indicates that even modest Federal financial support can free the arts and artists for greater creative accomplishments, and bring them to a much wider audience...
...If U Thant's words of warning go unheeded, the United Nations, the last best hope of peace on earth, may go the tragic way of the League of Nations a generation ago...
...Law enforcement was strangled, cried the law enforcers...
...During the same week that U.N...
...Under the direction of its president, George Meany, the AFL-CIO had by its oppressive manifesto taken a giant step toward the revival of McCarthyism...
...The ideals of the great socialist pioneer—the courageous dissenter whose words and deeds helped prepare the soil in which the American labor movement took root and grew—have been totally repudiated by the aging and increasingly intolerant top brass of the AFL-CIO Council which last month adopted a Vietnam war resolution worthy of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the late Senator Joseph McCarthy...
...If Rusk's purpose had been to make certain that U Thant would not change his mind about refusing another term as SecretaryGeneral, he could scarcely have done a better job than he accomplished by his double-speak performance that day...
...On the other hand, the United States has long been the major contributor whose funds have tided the United Nations over periods of financial crisis...
...The Senator, obviously, was not "shutting up" to please the AFL-CIO Executive Council or anyone else...
...So one can take a choice of U.S...
...In spite of previous rebuffs, U Thant, in his valedictory, reaffirmed his conviction "that peace in Southeast Asia can be obtained only through respect for the principles agreed upon at Geneva in 1954, and indeed for those contained in the Charter of the United Nations...
...Then in the same issue of the Times, a report of Rusk's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars quoted him as saying: "Any withdrawal before complete victory over Communist aggression would be as fatal as were attempts to appease the Axis powers in the 1930s...
...cessation of bombing of North Vietnam...
...The Department of Justice dismissed an antitrust suit against the firm a month after the contribution was made...
...A more elite group has been established within the Club consisting of those who contribute $10,000 or more...
...Lieutenant Joseph G. Calhoun, who has been a New York City detective for twenty-nine years and is currently in command of the Times Square area, a highcrime-rate territory, stated: "You've got to understand that in most cases we don't need a confession . . ." The Supreme Court's ruling seems to have inspired a self-examination by law enforcement officials which has revealed—apparently to their own surprise—that they are more effective than they realized, and have no need for devious or dubious methods...
...We have gone to war in Vietnam and intervened with military force in Santo Domingo as if the United Nations did not exist...
...Is it in payment for past favors or the hope of future considerations, or the rendering of tribute to the party in power...
...That one per cent interest will cause that poor fellow to pay $4,800 more for the house...
...individual grants to eight novelists, five poets, and a journalist...
...The tragic error is being repeated of relying on force and military means in a deceptive pursuit of peace...
...and, third, Washington's agreement to negotiate with the Vietcong as well as with Hanoi...
...If the new safety features bring new price increases, the Senate should promptly call the leaders of the industry to Washington for a public accounting that would throw the national spotlight on the enormous profits of the automobile manufacturers...
...Supreme Court ruling, thus refuting the claim of the law enforcement officials that they had been deprived of their most valuable tool...
...In a study of 4,000 felonies, Younger found that for successful prosecution confessions were needed in fewer than ten per cent of the cases...
...Ambassador Arthur Goldberg was conveying Washington's insistence to U Thant that he accept another term, and declaring that we would "exercise every restraint" and "pursue every effort to prevent a major war" in Vietnam, Administration spokesmen were winning applause at the American Legion convention with pledges to pursue the war to a victorious conclusion at all costs...
...All this provides persuasive proof that the most jealous protection of the civil liberties of the individual under the Constitution is in no way inconsistent with maintaining the secur ity of society...
...in his absence it was approved unanimously...
...He told the Senate that "we are on a highly dangerous and questionable course in Southeast Asia," that "men of good will and strong intellect can and do disagree on our present policy," and that the "best hope for America's future lies in our courage to express clearly and honestly our respective views on issues vital to the nation and to our position in the •world...
...Supreme Court decision, that fewer than ten per cent of a sampling of a thousand indictments involved confessions...
...Senator J . W. Fulbright called the attention of the Senate to Secretary Rusk's glorious triumph over consistency as disclosed by these news reports...
...The opening paragraph in a news story reporting the Council's action made clear what the repressive effect was intended to be...
...Still others are billing patients for the full fee, as is permitted by the law, leaving to the elderly ill the responsibility of reclaiming their fair share from the Federal government...
...Three firms headed by donors to the club, according to a charge made on the House floor by Representative Charles Goodell, New York Republican, received a $700,000 non-competitive architectural fee on a $20 million veterans hospital in San Diego, California...
...In a letter to Senator Abraham Ribicoff, the Connecticut Democrat who was a prime mover in passage of the safety bill, Reuther said that if the manufacturers' "past performance is any indication of the future, the addition of these [safety] items will most certainly be used by the industry as an excuse to impose on car buyers price increases unwarranted by the additional costs...
...The AFL-CIO," said The Washington Post, "in effect today advised critics of American policy in Vietnam to shut up...
...It was clear, said U Thant, "that the pressure of events is remorselessly leading toward a major war, while efforts to reverse that trend are lagging disastrously behind...
...Launched by President Kennedy, and expanded under President Johnson, the "Club" is and has been open to anyone who pays $1,000 for membership...
...Other grants, which demonstrate the variety and scope of the Foundation's field of action, included those to New York's Shakespeare Festival...
...For example: ft A high official of Consolidated American Services, Inc., of California was reported to have made three $1,000 contributions to the Democratic Party, two of them through the President's Club...
...All these and other safeguards seem adequate to dispel any fear of Federal control of creativity...
...This handsome yield is not likely to be sacrificed to the growing demand for abolition of the Club, although abolition is precisely what the public good demands...
...Whether U Thant can ultimately be persuaded to change his mind and accept another term of office will depend upon how much new hope he can see for the United Nations...
...President Johnson dismissed the charges as GOP campaign year tactics...
...what degree of White House intimacy this larger donation establishes for the giver is not made clear...
...GM, which passed on these costs to its customers, actually earned twenty-eight per cent on its investment...
...Reuther pointed out that automation and other new technology had so revolutionized the automobile industry Hard Money Victims A person buying a $20,000 home on a thirty year loan is confronted with interest rates that have gone up one per cent recently...
...The more this monopolistic industry produces, the more it charges for its product...
...for Chrysler the figures were $233 million and 20.8 per cent...
...Abolish the 'Club' Of the $5 million which the Democratic National Committee hopes to raise this year, as much as $3 million may be produced by the dubious device Jmown as the "President's Club...
...Detroit's chief of detectives, Vincent W. Piersante, later produced evidence that the need for confessions was greatly overestimated...
...flOfficals of the St...
...second, the de-escalation of military activities by both sides in South Vietnam, leading to a cease-fire by both sides...
...Although Senator Warren Magnuson, Washington Democrat, whose subcommittee on consumer affairs would have jurisdiction, did not approve such an inquiry, he did have words of warning for Detroit: "We are disturbed by . . . reports of a probable price increase for the 1967 models, which is being blamed in part on the so-called 1967 safety package .. . It would be tragic, indeed, to permit this significant legislation—which is designed solely to protect the lives and safety of each of the millions of Americans who drive a car—to serve as a license for the auto makers to increase prices...
...Supreme Court expanded its interpretation of the Fifth Amendment to require police to advise suspects, before questioning them, of their rights to remain silent and to have legal counsel present when interrogated...
...The 1965 earnings performance of Ford showed $703 million profits after taxes and a 17.5 per cent return on investment...
...Pick Your Rusk Anyone who happened to read The New York Times of August 22 had his choice of two Dean Rusks— one a dove and the other a hawk...
...Months earlier, delegates to the AFL-CIO national convention had voted all-out support of President Johnson's conduct of the war no matter how much he might decide to escalate the conflict...
...The American Medical Association cried loudest that Medicare would strike a crippling blow to the nation's health...
...In a democratic society all persons, rich or poor, ought not only to be equal before the law but equal before their government...
...President Johnson should abolish the Club forthwith...
...This disgraceful performance by the AFL-CIO leadership was bitterly denounced by Walter Reuther...
...In his letter to Congress proposing the foundation, President Johnson stated clearly the spirit behind it: "No government can call artistic excellence into being, [but it can] create conditions under which the arts can flourish...
...Louis brewery firm, Anheuser-Busch, Inc., were reported to have given the club $10,000...
...Neither was Walter Reuther...
...he was talking, principally, about the United States and our relentless escalation of the war in Vietnam...
...In view of their huge profits, the UAW president contended, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler could readily absorb the cost of the safety items and need not raise prices at all...
...Other reports are that some physicians are charging Medicare, limited to eighty per cent responsibility for the bill, enough so as not to be concerned with collecting the other twenty per cent from the patient...
...In recent years, however, the climate has changed, and last year the Administration was able to persuade Congress to establish a foundation whose purpose would be "to promote a broadly conceived national policy of support for the humanities and the arts in the United States...
...This supposedly entitles the donor to have cocktails and dinner with the President and shake his hand...
...The telling point has now been made by Evelle J . Younger, district attorney of Los Angeles County, which has the largest criminal case load in the United States...
...Confessions Last June the U.S...
...The GOP invited newsmen to dig around for awards of large government contracts to any of these donors...
...The intolerance in these words obliterated the ritualistic comment in the resolution that "the right to dissent is sacred" and that such right is a basic principle that "must be neither abrogated nor abused...
...policy—de-escalation or complete victory," said the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "except that I had always presumed that these were mutually exclusive...
...In the past two years alone the Club has brought in about $4 million to Democratic coffers...
...This dedicated statesman from Burma has labored mightily for the peace of the world during his five-years as U.N...
...aid in achieving a settlement, he continued to order new escalations of the war...
...NOTES in the NEWS U Thant's Farewell If the United Nations is not to go the way of the League of Nations— whose demise was followed by World War II—the U.N...
...They are, first, a U.S...
...Secretary-General...
...members must heed the somber warnings of U Thant...
...peacekeeping operations in the Suez and the Congo...
...He said the UAW has long urged Detroit to cut prices...
...There is no evidence so far that anyone over the age of sixty-five looks at a hospital through the same binoculars as he looks at a vacation resort...
...No grant may be made to any group or project if a private stockholder or individual would benefit from it...
...it posted a "crisis center" to receive the anticipated flood of complaints and requests for relief...
...Meanwhile, the Republicans were inserting in the Congressional Record the names and addresses of all donors to the Club during the past three years—a list that may number 2,000 contributors...
...But when some prominent Republican businessmen—and some members of the John Birch Society—turn up among the donors, the obvious question to ask is why they contribute to a party whose Great Society programs they oppose so bitterly...
...No doubt some of the membership fees paid to the President's Club represented a desire to support the Democratic Party without expectation of favors from the White House and other government circles...
...Nothing would be more likely to induce him to continue his urgently needed leadership in the world organi zation than a sincere and vigorous new initiative by the Johnson Administration to bring about peace in Vietnam...
...The most recent grants total $1.8 million, including $875,000 for educational television, which, when matched by private funds, will greatly strengthen that ailing public endeavor...
...The proceeds go to the Democratic Party...
...In theory, the President's Club is made up of persons who support the Democratic Party and the Administration's program and give evidence of it by contributing $1,000...
...In reporting on a visit that the Secretary of State made to U Thant, the Times said Rusk told the U.N...
...An Administration which had barely concealed its scorn for some of his attempts to open the door to peace in Vietnam, was asking him to stay on...
...if GM had reduced prices of every unit by $100 (equal to $140 at retail) in 1965, the corporation still could have had a remaining profit "of $1.9 billion after taxes, equal to twenty-five per cen t return on investment...
...In its recent meeting the labor organization's Executive Council went on to heap fulsome praise on the Administration's Southeast Asia policy and, more importantly, it directed its wrath against those who dare criticize that policy...
...Secretary-General that the "United States wanted to de-escalate the Viet nam war...
...While President Johnson periodically professed a desire for U.N...
...The act encourages the development of state arts councils...
Vol. 30 • October 1966 • No. 10
