Notes in the News
Let Them Starve The most shocking example of cruelty to the poor displayed in Congress in many a year was not the widely publicized rejection of the rat control bill by the House of...
...Why were they performing on behalf of Arab refugees...
...A Jew Aids the Arabs The occasion was a benefit concert held in London by British organizations to raise funds to aid Arab refugees...
...Present consumer groups have had some modest successes...
...In the meantime, back at the HUAC ranch, Archie Moore, the Negro boxing champion who has not been known to put up his dukes on civil rights issues, told the Committee, to its chagrin: "There's been so much bypassing of the Negro he has to cry out...
...The conference was well attended by Washington correspondents and filmed by a television crew...
...But also I think that never was a war fought with less hatred...
...Youth has no heroes among the older generations...
...A People's Lobby Multi-million dollar advertising campaigns are devoted, year after year, to convincing the American consumer that he is a prince of the blood royal whose every demand and desire are obediently served by all the resources of industry...
...Senator Clark, along with two other members of his Committee, Senators Jacob Javits and Robert Kennedy of New York, held a joint press conference to protest the House Committee's action and the Administration's complicity in the death of the anti-hunger bill...
...A revival of McCarthyism will provide no solutions...
...The Dirksen measure also attempts an end run around the Supreme Court's invalidation of the Internal Security Act's provision for self-registration of Communist organizations and members...
...The copy for the advertisement, scheduled to run October 10, was in the newspaper's hands on October 5. On October 6 the newspaper called General Omar Bradley about a quotation attributed to him, included in the copy, warning against the dangers of a land war in Asia...
...President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk received particularly harsh, even cruel, criticism...
...Warnings are issued that white families will flee the city...
...Material gathered was presented in hearings held by his Subcommittee in July...
...If youth finds no heroes among society's leadership, it might be more productive to probe the leaders than to discredit the younger generation...
...The significance of his appearance, he said, "lies not in the amount of money we raise but in the gesture...
...But Ralph Nader's proposed organization seems to offer more hope than any that has come to our attention in recent years...
...There was time enough to call this mistake to the attention of the Voices of Vietnam group headed by Rudy Simons of Detroit, and have the Bradley quote deleted...
...The higher price for water to drink or bathe in will be paid by that oft-plucked chicken, the consumer...
...He's not a publicity seeker...
...They need to be heard...
...Welch said he was calling a "temporary" halt to his anti-Warren campaign because "We have not gathered enough signatures on our impeachment petition up to this date to bring about impeachment action...
...Now, after three years, the educational effects have been carefully evaluated, and the results reveal that everyone is benefiting from integration...
...No hate at all, I would say...
...There is no place for unconstitutional exposure for exposure's sake...
...And the school boards of other communities should be encouraged to take bolder action to integrate their schools now that the evidence is available that the overall educational results are beneficial to all...
...Educators—and the U.S...
...Good ideas sometimes make progress because they have exactly the right enemies...
...Some people can stand a lot of pain and suffering without a cry, and some can't...
...They have used billboards, newspaper advertising, automobile signs, radio broadcasting, and virtually every other form of communication to clamor for his impeachment...
...This will be an especially difficult project for Nader's firm because all too many Congressmen display inordinate fondness for the corporations subject to regulation...
...You've got to have money to function...
...Newsmen, Senators, Representatives, and Government officials with whom Nader has had dealings rate him as highly effective because he is a careful researcher and a pragmatic strategist who is skillful at getting news headlines for his causes...
...So many of the country's lakes and streams have been polluted for corporate and individual profit that in the not-distant future costly processes will be needed to provide enough water fit for personal use...
...Simons has made clear to The Progressive, he was not given this opportunity...
...Commenting on his dedication, a commissioner of one of the Federal regulatory agencies told The Wall Street Journal: "Ralph is absolutely sincere...
...Senators and Representatives...
...Foul Weather Chart The magnitude and intensity of the nation's domestic troubles can often be charted with a fair degree of accuracy by the extent to which committees of Congress go hunting for Communists and other left-wingers in an effort to pin the blame on their favorite scapegoats...
...Clark cited an outpouring of aid that has been sent by individuals, churches, civic leagues, and other groups to the poor of the Mississippi Delta since the hearings held by his Senate subcommittee last summer first spotlighted the extent of starvation and disease there...
...By its witch-hunting and headline-seeking tactics Congress is engaged in the self-serving operation of diverting attention from its own failure to dig at the real roots of our grave social problems...
...Sly and Dishonest' If that excellent quarterly, the Columbia Journalism Review, which frequently describes the shortcomings as well as the virtues of the press, would like to explore an example of disreputable journalism they might check into a recent controversy involving The Detroit News and the Voices of Vietnam Committee...
...But an even greater factor in the shoddy record of the House in the session now ending is the complete breakdown of Democratic leadership...
...The oil import quotas which contribute to high prices for oil also will be challenged by Nader...
...A bachelor, he lives frugally, and in the past year has devoted his energies and funds to pressing various consumer crusades with some success, including a new one for state meat-inspection programs and another to strengthen safety requirements to prevent explosions of natural gas pipelines...
...Operating as a "people's lobby" the Nader firm's first campaigns will seek to achieve these results: Reduction of the scandalous 27.5 per cent oil depletion allowance which permits oil companies and wealthy oilmen to pay little or no Federal income taxes, while average consumer-taxpayers pick up much of the tax tab for the oil industry...
...The Progressive has the same feeling of confidence in Mr...
...Significantly, the name mentioned most often by the minority who named anyone at all was Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the public figure who is himself most closely identified with the nation's youth...
...It also demonstrates that mixing Negroes and whites does not detract from the educational achievement of the white pupiL...
...A few days later the full Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare unanimously approved the measure after increasing the figure to $75 million for a two-year program...
...If Federal legislation to alleviate air and water pollution...
...What has always been morally compelling has now been demonstrated to be educationally sound...
...But its impact represented as cruel a blow at the nation's destitute families as any struck in Congress in a long time...
...its sponsors planned to run it only in The Detroit News...
...The new firm, according to a detailed report on Nader and his plans by Fred L. Zimmerman of The Wall Street Journal, will "advocate the consumer viewpoint before Congress, the courts, and Government agencies...
...One reason for the reactionary direction the House took this session was the Republican gain of forty-seven seats, largely by conservatives, in the last election...
...It's poisoning all our lives," said one...
...But the struggle over the ideas and ideologies of the New Politics group should be fought out in the political and educational arena...
...But in spite of promised support from the House Democratic and Republican leaders, the House Agriculture Committee did not even schedule a hearing until September 29—two months after the Senate had passed the emergency bill...
...The House itself, which, with the honorable exception of a few members, raised no outcry against the smothering of the anti-hunger bill, has demonstrated an almost equal degree of inhumanity on the issue in recent months...
...It also stated falsely that the advertisement asked readers "to bring pressure on their Congressmen to end the war NOW and UNCONDITIONALLY...
...In the 1930s and '40s, Benjamin Marsh headed the People's Lobby...
...Spokesmen for these departments representing the Administration appeared at the House Agriculture Committee's secret hearing in early October, Senator Clark said, "without having prepared any formal statements and, I am informed, were less than prepared to discuss the Stennis bill in detail...
...Both of these Negro groups are doing better than did Negro children who had been in segregated schools from kindergarten through sixth grade...
...But mostly about jobs...
...Registration power is now vested in the Board, thus preserving the goal of achieving public exposure while seeking to avoid the problem of self-incrimination...
...I do it as a Jew...
...As a result of the Subcommittee's revelations, conservative Senator John Stennis, Mississippi Democrat, proposed a bill to provide $10 million for food and medical services on an emergency basis to persons faced with hunger and starvation...
...that's just something they preach about in the journalism schools...
...The history of the bill to meet the crisis of starvation here in affluent America begins with months of investigations conducted in poverty areas by the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty headed by Senator Joseph Clark, Pennsylvania Democrat...
...This was in executive session...
...We believe that thoughtful citizens, including our readers, will want to support his efforts...
...Supreme Court long ago ruled that their functions violated the Constitution...
...ADA holds no brief for the New Left in general or for the NCNP in particular," said Rauh...
...Representative Richard Boiling, Missouri Democrat, recently took the bold step of suggesting that McCormack resign from the position of Speaker...
...On October 10, The Detroit News ran its story of the Bradley denial across the top of page one, carried the advertisement, and published an editorial headed "Sly and Dishonest" which attacked the group for using the Bradley quote...
...If the nations and their leaders, not only in the Middle East but elsewhere, followed such examples with acts of faith toward their "enemies," there might be the beginning of hope for an end to wars, large and small...
...Yet, ludicrously, the bill extending their tenure requires them to hear, within a year, at least two cases involving alleged internal Communism or lose their hunting license...
...As the nation neared the close of a year which saw the worst and most widespread racial violence in its history and growing disorder on the campuses of the country, a new epidemic of witch-hunts was breaking out on a scale ominously reminiscent of the evil era dominated by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy...
...They were Representatives Thomas Abernethy and G. V. Montgomery, both of Mississippi...
...The newspaper was too busy setting its trap for the sponsors to bother with journalistic decency...
...Nader...
...This act of dashing the hope for early Federal relief for children and adults suffering hunger in its most acute forms was hidden from public view in a two-inch item under "Committee Meetings" in the Daily Digest of the Congressional Record of October 5. Because of pressure by Representative Joseph Resnick, an upstate New York Democrat who denounced the Committee's action in a press statement, a censored version of secret hearings held on the bill will be available...
...Thus: Tf The long obsolete Subversive Activities Control Board was given a new lease on life and more money by Congress, with the blessing of the Johnson Administration...
...No Heroes One of the more striking measures of the generational gap was revealed recently in a survey of youth by Parade, the Sunday newspaper supplement...
...The following week, the Committee held another closed session at which Administration spokesmen displayed incredible coolness toward the anti-hunger bill...
...If Nader can raise $250,000 through public contributors, he estimates it will suffice to run his proposed people's lobby for a year...
...Wherever this is proposed, white parents protest the bussing of children, neighborhoods join in denouncing what they see as the threatened "destruction" of a "quality" school system, and whole communities of predominately white citizens predict educational disaster...
...And what shall be said of the vast majority of the mass media which shrugged the whole thing off as if it never happened...
...Leaderless House Not for many years has the House of Representatives compiled a more miserable record than that of the session that was drawing to a close as this was written in mid-November...
...We reject their destructive tactics for unspecified goals...
...The Federal Communications Commission, to cite an example, is charged with regulation of television and radio use of a public domain—the air waves—but the FCC frequently has been pressured by Congressmen who enjoy financial and other connections with the industry to permit the broadcasting companies to do pretty much as they please...
...The instilling of new life and purpose in Federal regulatory agencies so that they will show more concern for the public they were created to protect, and less solicitude for the profits of "regulated" enterprises...
...Speaker John W. McCormack of Massachusetts never was a strong leader, and now that he is seventy-five years old the job is simply beyond his capacities...
...The phrase has an amiable, almost beneficent sound...
...While the bureaucracy and the House Agriculture Committee drag their feet, private organizations all over the country are sending food and medical supplies to the urban and rural ghettos of America...
...It is up to the Jews to take the initiative...
...There is no place in that arena for repressive Congressional investigations...
...now he is recognized by many students of the Supreme Court as the greatest to hold the office since John Marshall occupied it a century and a half ago...
...McCormack reacted with a sharp negative combined with a thinly-veiled attack on Boiling's own ambitions...
...Civil rights leaders believe White Plains is the only community in the nation to have thoroughly integrated its school system and then made a comprehensive study of the results...
...The concert artists were violinist Yehudi Menuhin, an ardent supporter of Israel, and his sister and piano accompanist, Hephzibah...
...The sponsors had been mistaken about only one out of thirty-one quotes, a far higher batting average for accuracy and honesty than could be found in the News editorial...
...Adults ask themselves, "What is wrong with the young people today...
...it will only worsen matters by sweeping the causes of conflict under the rug...
...McCor-mack's thirty-nine years of service in the House would be better crowned by his voluntary resignation than by the almost inevitable necessity of his being forced out of the Speakership by his own Democratic Party...
...and the President, traditionally a highly regarded father figure 'Make Yourself at Home While I Find Something for You To Do" among young Americans, was mentioned by only seventy-four of the 2,000 youths questioned as a person they esteemed...
...Many of the Subcommittee's findings were first published in the October issue of The Progressive in the article, "Starvation in the Affluent Society," by Senator Clark...
...Nader, the young Washington attorney whose automobile safety crusade was a major factor in passage of the Federal highway safety act last year, now seeks to establish a "public-interest law firm" with a staff of lawyers, economists, and engineers...
...Parade's poll of 2,000 young men and women disclosed that fewer than half hold any living public figure in high regard...
...The House Un-American Activities Committee launched another of its notorious inquiries, this one into the alleged role of Communists in last summer's rioting...
...Now someone has come along who "Nonsense—I have a firm grip on the reins" has the know-how, the courage, and the dedication to win some justice for consumers and taxpayers in a number of important areas where their interests have generally been ignored or sabotaged by a majority of Congress, the Administration, and a number of Federal agencies...
...Housing, social welfare, education, Model Cities, antipollution measures—all these and more were hacked to bits...
...He deeply believes in the Tightness of what he is doing...
...The news editorial was careful not to mention that among those quoted were Senators J. W. Fulbright and Charles Percy, U.N...
...Eastland's operation, which is a declaration of open season on practically every political group left of his own Dixiecrat clique, does great discredit to the Senate...
...The Administration's legislative proposals for domestic programs were inadequate to begin with, but the House slashed them mercilessly to mere remnants...
...Not one word, written or oral," said Senator Clark, "has been received by the Subcommittee in response to that request...
...How many had lent their names to this puerile enterprise was not disclosed...
...On August 2 the Senate approved the bill without a dissenting vote...
...Meanwhile months have gone by during which the bellies of children have become more bloated with starvation, their limbs thinner, their eyes more sunken, their life span threatened—in a land whose affluence is the greatest known to any country in the history of the world...
...I do it also as a member of the human race...
...But Boiling was right...
...And all the while the Chief Justice, now in his fifteenth year in office, has soared in stature...
...Furthermore, there has been no flight from the city by whites because of school integration, and—still another dividend—integration in the schools so eased racial tensions in the community that White Plains escaped the racial disturbances that have plagued so many racially mixed cities...
...The anti-hunger bill has been introduced as an amendment to the House version of the anti-poverty bill...
...Perhaps the answer to what is wrong with youth is to be found in what is wrong witfy their fathers...
...Senator Clark's statement to the newsmen was a blockbuster...
...But the evidence supporting that judgment is impressive...
...And they say so in brutally blunt terms...
...Government do less...
...The Detroit News did not apologize to the sponsors for its sly and dishonest editorial or for the journalistic shysterism it displayed by not giving the Voices of Vietnam Committee an opportunity to correct its error...
...Without offering any proof whatever that any of the other thirty quotes were not genuine, the editorial cast doubt on them by saying the advertisement "purports to give quotations from thirty-one persons...
...So far no foundation has offered financial backing for his proposed public interest firm...
...The advertisement used the word "unconditionally" only in requesting that negotiations be begun "unconditionally...
...the news blackout was almost total...
...The bulk of the copy consisted of statements from thirty-one well-known persons quoting their deep concern and doubts about our war in Vietnam...
...Jf Senator James O. Eastland and his Internal Security Subcommittee announced an investigation of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP), a loose amalgam of several hundred leftist, socialist, and Black Power groups, including Eastland's favorite whipping-boys, the Communist Party and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP...
...it never managed to become really effective...
...Secretary-General U Thant, Richard Cardinal Cushing, Walter Lippmannr and General David M. Shoup, former Marine commandant...
...As a result, few cities have broken from the traditional neighborhood school system to achieve racial integration...
...Youth's lack of respect for their elders is a damning indictment of the older generations...
...Significantly, many young people reached back in time to speak "glowingly" of two of their heroes who are no longer alive—John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson...
...It is high time the Federal Government faced up to the fact that thousands of Americans are slowly starving to death/' he said angrily...
...Much of this money will go to pay the $26,000-a-year salaries of the five members of the Board, who have nothing to do...
...A dunce not so much because he is easily victimized by manufacturers and sellers but because even when he has the sense to protest individually, he will not organize to protect himself and other consumers...
...The General said it was a 1951 quotation referring to the Korean war, that he was "being quoted out of context," and that he is not opposed to "our action in Vietnam...
...It also made up out of whole cloth the claim that the advertisement was being run in other major newspapers...
...The younger generation, Parade reported, holds their elders in contempt for what youth sees as their hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, and obstinacy in refusing to admit error—such as our involvement in Vietnam...
...It was the secret action taken this fall by a majority of the House Agriculture Committee to block a bill providing $75 million urgently needed to feed starving families in the scattered poverty pockets of Mississippi, Alaska, Texas, Maine, California, Missouri, and other states, and to conduct the first nationwide study of malnutrition in the country's history...
...If Ralph Nader achieves even partial success with his new plans, the public will have found its most effective champion in decades...
...Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., vice-chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, denounced the proposed investigation in a statement that went straight to the heart of the matter...
...He's not on the make...
...But as Mr...
...Joseph Resnick, John Dow, and Frank Brasco, all of New York...
...It is certain that other, more carefully selected witnesses, will satisfy HUAC, the Eastland Subcommittee, and the SACB that it is the Communists—and not poverty, racial discrimination, lack of equal opportunity, and the Vietnam war—that are the causes of our social disorder...
...Supreme Court-ordered reapportionment of Congressional districts, which gave more representation to urban areas...
...Joseph Vigorito, Pennsylvania, and Thomas Foley, Washington...
...In a typically devious Eastland performance, the resolution authorizing the inquiry was secretly approved by ''Now stay tuned for our riotous show" the Subcommittee on October 11, and kept concealed for two weeks...
...By such acts of faith in our common humanity, the Menuhins, the Quakers who provide medical supplies to both North and South Vietnam, and other compassionate men and women do what they can to prepare the way for peace among the nations...
...The findings should go far to allay the fears of white parents that integration will depreciate their children's education...
...The testimony given [by them] indicated little thought had been given to implementing S. 2138 on the grounds 'it is not an Administration bill.' " In this whole cruel business, the burden of blame must be shared by House Committee members who voted to block the bill, and an Administration whose passion for pouring billions into a savage war in Vietnam blinds it to proof of starvation in rural America and serious malnutrition on its doorstep in Washington, D.C...
...The young people's comments made it clear that they are disillusioned with, and bitterly disappointed in, the nation's leadership, and they are especially angry and frustrated over the Vietnam war...
...This, obviously, was not what HUAC wanted or expected to hear...
...The evaluation compared classroom achievement of white and Negro children in the three years prior to integration with that in the three years after...
...But while Eastland may be the worst offender, he is not the only Senator to attempt to divert attention from the nation's basic problems by the diversionary device of hunting Communists...
...It turned out that most urban gains went to the conservative suburbs, rather than to the liberal central cities...
...Under the integration plan, no school has less than ten per cent Negro pupils, nor more than thirty per cent...
...His present income consists mainly of dwindling royalty payments from Unsafe at Any Speed, his best-selling book about the automobile industry's contribution to the carnage on the highways...
...The Committee, a Detroit organization, raised funds at a local meeting to run a large display advertisement in the News...
...Birchers' New Target For the last six or seven years Robert Welch has urged his John Birch Society cohorts to vent a major part of their abundant spleen upon Chief Justice Earl Warren...
...They are crying out about jobs and opportunities, about equal opportunity to get housing, about education...
...The more significant findings are: Negro pupils who have attended integrated schools since first grade are doing substantially better in their studies than are the Negro pupils who had been in a segregated school for three years before integration...
...Let Them Starve The most shocking example of cruelty to the poor displayed in Congress in many a year was not the widely publicized rejection of the rat control bill by the House of Representatives last summer, despicable as that was...
...The U.S...
...The new Birch target, Welch announced, is "aid and trade to Communist countries...
...One of those that made the break is White Plains, New York, a city of some 50,000 population that integrated all its schools in 1964...
...He said that petitions opposing such programs have been signed by 500,000 persons and presented to nineteen U.S...
...Senator J. W. Ful-bright ran second...
...All the Israelis want is to live in peace and provide their neighbors with some of the benefits they enjoy...
...Nothing was said about the fact that the papers disappeared five weeks before the investigation was authorized, that Eastland read some of them into the Congressional Record September 22, three weeks prior to the secret authorization of the inquiry, and that no legal procedures were known to have been followed by the Subcommittee in gaining possession of the documents...
...But the newspapers gave it no discernible space and the event was not telecast...
...U More effective action by the Department of Justice against business mergers which reduce competition, raise prices, and restrict the consumer's range of choices...
...School Integration Succeeds Perhaps the most emotionally charged issue of the civil rights struggle is that of the racial integration of public schools by means that supersede the traditional neighborhood school concept...
...The young have no confidence in, nor respect for, adults who do not have the competence to keep us out of a land war in Asia, provide remedies for race riots in our cities, or prevent the poisoning of our physical environment...
...The sponsors apologized for this error in a letter which the News published...
...The Senate probe, which was forecast in an editorial in these pages a month ago, came to light as a result of a half-million-dollar damage suit filed in Federal court against Eastland and company by NCNP and MFDP for the alleged theft of letters, records, and files from the Mississippians' headquarters at the Palmer House in Chicago during the Labor Day weekend New Politics convention...
...But the House Agriculture Committee, meeting behind locked doors as if they were guarding military secrets from the Vietcong, has voted—"without prejudice" as the motion read—to prevent emergency aid from reaching these hungry children and parents...
...Supreme Court—have long contended that the Negro especially, but also the white pupil, receive an inferior education in segregated schools...
...1J White youngsters in integrated schools are doing at least as well as, and sometimes better than, comparable groups of white children had done in all-white schools prior to 1964...
...Ironically, Republican victories were partly attributable to the Democratically supported and U.S...
...The renowned violinist explained his action in simple and moving terms: "Never was a war fought that was so essential for the Israelis to win as the war in June...
...The unhappy truth is that far from being a prince, the average consumer is a dunce...
...If private Americans . . . can do all this for fellow citizens who are ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-clad," he asked, "can the U.S...
...I realized that no Arab could make such a gesture toward the Jews after suffering defeat...
...While Congress was gutting the constructive—if woefully inadequate— Administration programs designed to relieve poverty and the other basic causes of urban uprisings, the Senate extended the life of the Subversive Activities Control Board until at least July, 1969, at a cost of some $600,000...
...When the Birchites began their attacks he was a distinguished Chief Justice...
...If the Birchers' new major campaign backfires as badly as did their Seven Years War against Earl Warren, aid and trade with Communist countries may now begin to prosper...
...seven of these quotations came from material published in The Progressive...
...The Pennsylvanian sharply rebuked Administration spokesmen from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the Department of Agriculture for ignoring a request, made three months earlier, for information on any new legislative authority needed for programs to feed the hungry and for estimates of the costs that would be involved...
...They are crying to be heard...
...He acquired the Speakership because of his long service in the House and some degree of personal charm, rather than through a measured process of evaluation of his abilities to carry out the considerable intellectual and physical demands of his high office...
...The White Plains experience provides clear evidence to confirm this judgment...
...For example, if Nader and company decided to help build up enough pressure on the Administration to activate the Department's long-delayed plan for a court suit to compel General Motors to divest itself of forty of the one hundred companies it has gobbled up, the massive and relentless drive toward monopoly conditions in this country, with all its dangerously anti-social and undemocratic consequences, could be slowed down significantly...
...Congress and the country heard about the investigation only because the Senate Subcommittee's lawyers felt it had to be revealed to the court in an effort to gain immunity for Eastland and his staff from the lawsuit on the claim that the missing documents were, in the words of The New York Times, "duly authorized to be in the custody of a Congressional investigating committee...
...Only seven members, all Democrats, voted for the bill...
Vol. 31 • December 1967 • No. 12
