NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News Government for Sale The Democratic Party has done serious injury to democratic government through a shady, if not downright corrupt, device to raise a million dollars for the...
...But the Pentagon chief apparently was more interested in stirring up fear of China among the NATO nations than in informing their ministers of the decline in Chinese influence around the world...
...More than anything else, this explains why the Republican Coordinating Committee evaded the issue with its feeble resolution advising Republicans to reject membership "in any radical or extremist organization...
...The United States had succeeded earlier in getting the Assembly to agree that the issue would require approval by a two-thirds majority rather than a simple majority vote...
...its influence in Africa is waning, according to most reports, and is hardly worth mentioning in terms of Latin America, not even in Cuba...
...This latest chapter in the annals of political shenanigans was opened by the Democratic National Committee...
...As a result, huge corporate interests that already have too large a claim upon the major parties —and through them upon the government itself—will have their claims enhanced to the detriment of the public interest...
...In Vietnam the process is being reversed, with the dollar following the flag...
...The Department of Agriculture recently released its summary of data for 1965...
...The Administration should not have approved this flagrant evasion of Federal law, and ought to find the courage to stop the practice now...
...The Pressure Cooker The trouble with China is that she is a thoroughly tough egg—everybody knows that—filled with implacable hostility, suspicions, and aggressions...
...General Tire & Rubber, Armstrong Rubber, and Gates Rubber were reported by Lawrence's magazine to be interested in supplying technology and advisers for a new tire plant to be built in South Vietnam...
...Every time we put China back in the pressure cooker, she emerges more hardboiled than before...
...It is a hopeful development for which President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and some American medical men and public health scientists deserve commendation...
...bombs dropped last fall north of Hanoi near the Chinese border did not "tenderize" her in the slightest...
...Far from repudiating the Society, as many Republican leaders outside the South have done, GOP leaders in some Southern states actively encourage its support...
...Even less could it bring itself to perform surgery on the parts of its Dixie arm that are so badly infected with Birchites...
...None of these "fat cats" emitted so much as a protesting "meow" for the public record...
...The real profits are being made right here at home through defense contracts swollen by our Vietnam war effort...
...The Corrupt Practices Act forbids corporations to contribute to Federal political campaigns either directly in the form of funds or through purchases of advertising or tickets to fund-raising events...
...Dean Rusk said in November that health and medical problems were international and "not problems which ought to be governed by political process but ought to be governed by the elementary interest of man in his health...
...House Republicans plan a similar "educational" book about Congress...
...Otherwise Toward An Age of Greatness may turn out to be "Toward An Age of Corruption" in which the equity of millions of citizens in their government is sold out to an oligarchy of the top officers of giant corporations...
...history our flag has followed the American dollar to protect private investments, notably in Latin America...
...The GOP's Birch Infection So much of what Robert Welch says is in the realm of fantasy that when he makes a valid claim it is likely to be discounted...
...banks and industrial firms are now interested in "a piece of the action" (as the gamblers say), and in future profits from the reconstruction and economic development programs that the United States may finance—if the country is not taken over by a regime dominated by China...
...Included are these significant facts: % Production of the twenty-seven principal fresh vegetable crops was four per cent higher than in 1964...
...General Assembly, with twenty nations abstaining, split forty-seven to forty-seven on a resolution to admit mainland China and expel Nationalist China...
...Some Congressmen have expressed privately their concern over the legality and morality of the Democratic program book...
...News estimated that "more than fifty million dollars has been put into industry in the Saigon area since 1961," and added this festive note: "More and more U.S...
...News & World Report, which Lawrence himself publishes, and by other news sources...
...Rather than oppose China's admission to the United Nations, we ought to support it...
...It is clear that the ending of the bracero program has been of all-around benefit to the economy...
...Last spring Wirtz estimated that if wage rates rose as much as fifty per cent, the increase in produce prices at the retail level would be measured in only fractions of a cent...
...In a newspaper article which Welch reprinted in full in his monthly Bulletin, Jack Nelson of The Los Angeles Times reported from Atlanta this illuminating analysis: "The John Birch Society, which equates the civil rights movement with Communism, is an important factor in Republican strength in at least six of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy...
...The Democratic Party has denounced the Birch Society many times and although there are Birch Democrats, particularly in Dixie, they are not part of the party's structure...
...Although limited to medical and scientific personnel, this U.S...
...Under the Johnson Administration, U.S...
...Administration and Republican rigidity on China only increases her hostility to the United States, which in turn breeds stronger anti-China feeling in this country...
...As a Democratic National Committee spokesman said, the affiliates "obviously . . . are going to try and register and vote people who support the President's program...
...Representative Charles Weltner, Atlanta Democrat, said he would not distribute it at a fund-raising movie premiere held on behalf of his re-election...
...At the close of 1965 the U.N...
...newsmen have been accredited by the State Department to visit Communist China, but China has refused to grant them entry visas...
...Begin now—the Administration was urged by a House Republican task force on the United Nations—to persuade other nations to oppose admission of China to the international body...
...That third is twice as much as Japan ships in, and nearly three times as much as France provides...
...He proposed that they view Chinese missile development in relation to such questions as whether Red China will seek to extend its political control in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and what problems such extension, coupled with possession of long-range nuclear missiles, might pose for NATO's defense of Europe...
...The million-dollar program book device circumvents this prohibition by channeling the proceeds not to the Democratic Party but to its thinly camouflaged instruments— the various state affiliates of the Voter Education Committee...
...However, wages paid in both crops were the lowest in the state, and were therefore not truly competitive...
...For example, a month before the Republican Coordinating Committee refused to repudiate the John Birch Society by name or to support any attempt to rid the Party of Birch infiltrators, Welch commented in his Bulletin on the GOP hassles over the organization he heads...
...5[ In California, the heaviest user of braceros when the program was in force, only two crops—strawberries and asparagus—suffered some losses because of labor shortages...
...financial and industrial enterprises are showing increasing interest in profit possibilities in South Vietnam...
...President Johnson expressed the view last fall that the United States desires an increase in the free flow of scientific ideas...
...U.S...
...But Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, who was given administrative power to make exceptions to the ban on foreign labor, stood his ground, save for a few minor cases, against the great pressures of the multibillion-dollar agribusiness lobby, and forced the growers to "compete in the marketplace with other elements of the nation's economy for their workers...
...investors may realize...
...As President Kennedy once reminded us, a journey of even a thousand miles begins with a first step...
...The puzzle is whether he was whitewashing American virtue or making a gloomy forecast...
...The Republican Party, which might have won votes by denouncing the scheme and shunning it, plans to emulate it instead...
...many thousands of our own unemployed were put to work, and agriculture is thriving...
...Second, that when the circumstances are such that our membership is fairly unanimous in support of any candidate or political cause, the political weight per member is literally equal to that of ten average non-members...
...The Administration should make it abundantly clear to other members that the admission of Red China would do much to disrupt and perhaps even destroy the United Nations...
...This is not to say that the hidden purpose behind our Vietnam policy is, or has been, to make money for Wall Street and industry through investments in that unhappy country...
...The book includes articles by Cabinet members and other Federal officials about the Great Society programs enacted by the Eighty-ninth Congress...
...Some U.S...
...government has changed its passport policy sufficiently to relax its rigid restrictions upon travel to five Communist countries—mainland China, North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and Albania...
...China has no "political control" anywhere outside its area of Asia...
...Some eighty U.S...
...If we are to veer from our present course, with its danger of an all-out war with China, we must give serious thought to the adoption of new attitudes and initiatives...
...McNamara urged the NATO allies to plan to meet the nuclear missile threat...
...the field is dominated by French and British banking interests...
...The official answer seems to be to prescribe more of the same treatment, as witness the recent utterances of a House Republican group and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara...
...Such projects as the Democratic and Republican advertising solicitations should be challenged in the courts, publicly protested by Congressmen, and made the subject of Congressional inquiry...
...What attracts so much attention to ^the Society on the part of the politicians," observed Welch, "is first that our members are such hard workers, and frequently heavy contributors, in any political campaign that does seem to them worthwhile...
...This claim of pristine virtue would appear to be disputed by reports in U.S...
...What do we do about it...
...To say that "not a dollar's worth of material advantage" is involved in South Vietnam, as David Lawrence claimed, is a most puzzling statement...
...Whether the five Communist countries will permit entry to American doctors and public health specialists remains to be seen...
...By 1976, he said, there may be several dozen missile complexes in Communist China...
...Fifteen years of American attempts to isolate China have not made her softer, and U.S...
...Acting through a front called the Voter Education Committee (VEC), the National Committee had a slick, 176-page program book (Toward An Age of Greatness) produced for distribution at motion picture benefits conducted by local party affiliates to raise campaign funds...
...A good many of us physicians," he wrote, "have in the past decade or more, found, as in the instance of our association with our medical friends in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, that this [international] approach has been of the greatest value in aiding the establishment and development of peaceful cooperative programs...
...What pays the freight for the 250,000 copies of this tribute to the Administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress is advertising sold at the rate of $15,000 a page to such major defense contractors as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, General Tire, Xerox Corporation, Lockheed, and Hughes Aircraft, and such Federally-regulated enterprises as railroads, airlines, and pipeline companies...
...liberalization of regulations on travel to the Communist countries is clearly a move in the right direction, particularly if it leads to the slightest lessening of the perilous hostility between Peking and Washington...
...They have profited hugely through government contracts and can expect more of the same...
...We ought to stop trying to put her in the pressure cooker and see if she is willing to enter the family of nations...
...Saigon is feeling the flush of the wartime boom financed by American tax dollars...
...But Birch Republicans are part of the GOP structure in the South, the Southwest, and in California...
...Under new State Department regulations, doctors and scientists in the fields of medicine and public health will be granted passports for travel to the five countries "for purposes directly related to their professional responsibilities...
...First National City Bank and American Express Company "are also studying the possibility of opening offices in South Vietnam...
...Said a Republican Congressional Committee spokesman: "I'm sure a large number of companies will want to do the same for us as they did for them [the Democrats...
...Moreover, any corporation that wondered whether buying such advertising was legal under the Federal Corrupt Practices Act was assured by counsel for the book's sponsors that it was not only legal, but tax deductible as a "business expense...
...The Society is strongest in Alabama, wrote Nelson, "where J. W. (Red) Gandy of Birmingham, an influential Republican and a volunteer coordinator for the Society asserts, 'The Birch Society is the strongest conservative organization in the state—stronger than both political parties.'" Ninety-five Birmingham area Birch chapters sponsored a full page advertisement in the Birmingham News declaring that the civil rights movement "has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists...
...Furthermore, growers of both crops, despite their losses, still grossed substantially more than in 1964...
...Now the returns are in from the first growing season without braceros, and it is clear that Wirtz's confidence that agriculture could "compete in the marketplace" for its labor and still thrive seems amply justified...
...Last year the American public consumed more fresh produce than ever, paying prices determined by appreciably higher wages...
...Without Braceros Last year, when Congress ended the farm migrant labor program that brought in cheap Mexican labor— braceros—the large commercial fruit and vegetable growers loudly forecast the end of the fresh produce industry...
...Advertising rate: also $15,000 per page...
...The Department said it was taking this step at the urging of the medical community to promote greater international cooperation in combating diseases that are "no respecters of frontiers...
...Avoidance of a major war is worth every peaceful experiment we can think of to try to thaw out China—no matter how long it takes...
...But the dollar is being lured to Vietnam—risky as the investment seems to be—and this fact belies such statements as the recent one by columnist David Lawrence that the United States wants "not a dollar's worth of material advantage" in Vietnam...
...In their report, the GOP Congressmen said that continued exclusion of China would strengthen the United Nations...
...Ten of the fifteen banks in Saigon are owned by non-Vietnamese...
...We should be willing to trade with China, rather than isolate her from all suppliers and markets...
...Notes in the News Government for Sale The Democratic Party has done serious injury to democratic government through a shady, if not downright corrupt, device to raise a million dollars for the next Congressional election...
...businessmen are combining business with Far East vacations by booking stopovers in Saigon...
...A Hopeful First Step For the first time in years the U.S...
...The Department also has validated passports to Cuba for some journalists, businessmen, lawyers, and clergymen with a "demonstrated interest" in going there...
...The issue of admission of China to the United Nations is expected to come before the General Assembly again this year...
...The GOP could not bring itself to name the Birch Society as extremist...
...Why should they...
...Yet a citizen who gives $10 or $100 to the party of his choice cannot claim a penny of it as a tax deduction...
...Dr...
...Experience has borne out Wirtz's judgment...
...For such corporate purchasers of a full page as General Motors, which is in the top Federal tax bracket—forty-eight per cent—this tax deductibility cuts the net cost of a $15,000 page to about $7,800, with the taxpayer making up the difference...
...Following the Flag At various times in U.S...
...f The money value of these crops was five per cent higher than in the preceding year...
...Paul Dudley White, the noted Boston heart specialist who treated President Eisenhower during his two heart attacks, urged the change in policy in a letter to Dean Rusk...
...The decided edge that we already have over foreign competition in sales to Saigon does not extend to banking...
...Rubber is the country's principal export, and an almanac further informs us that the United States is the leading supplier of goods, providing South Vietnam with a third of its imports...
...By 1968, said McNamara, the Chinese probably will have a small stockpile of efficient nuclear weapons and a medium-range nuclear missile...
...All of this is more of a gamble than U.S...
...regulatory agencies have in large part treated the industries they regulate with excessive tenderness, and that, too, merits an advertisement in the Democratic program book...
...The New York Times has reported that the Bank of America and Chase Manhattan Bank—Ameri-ica's two largest commercial banks— are planning to open branches in South Vietnam...
...As campaign costs keep soaring, government of, by, and for the people will suffer further erosion if wealthy corporations and individuals bankroll an ever higher percentage of political party expenses...
...Craig Knowles, finance director of the Alabama GOP, estimated there were "several hundred" Birch chapters in the Birmingham area and told Nelson, "You get a Birch member who's loyal to the party and he'll donate money like you've never seen before and work for the party day and night...
...Possibly as part of the Administration campaign to keep a majority of member nations lined up against admission, Secretary McNamara told the Paris meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization ministers that within ten years Red China may have nuclear missiles that could reach any city in Europe and the United States...
Vol. 30 • February 1966 • No. 2
