NOTES IN THE NEWS
NOTES in the NEWS The House Reneges If anyone still needed evidence that the Great Society is tottering toward its grave, the recent House action on rent subsidies and the Model Cities program...
...Morgan's contribution to public enlightenment may be even greater in the future than in the past...
...Capricious budget-cutting by Congress leaves mayors with plans, staff, and commitments, but no money...
...There is still hope that the Administration's minimal requests may be restored in the Senate, where both rent subsidies and the Model Cities program are likely to receive more sympathetic and more responsible treatment...
...But it was obvious from the floor debate, from the voting pattern, and from private comments of knowledgeable Congressmen, that fear that the subsidies would be used to relocate Negroes out of the ghetto into white neighborhoods overrode even the dislike of Government involvement in housing...
...Persistent discrimination and continued segregation in housing by Federal agencies best able to reduce both have been exposed by the American Friends Service Committee...
...Morgan has taken a two-year leave of absence from ABC to join the Public Broadcast Laboratory of National Educational Television...
...It adopted a resolution condemning the Johnson Administration for "reckless escalation" of the war which "brings steadily nearer the danger of Missouri Teamster Another Viet Casualty a huge conflict...
...Now there is evidence that some liberals are prepared to make the switch—if the Republican nominee for the White House holds out hope for a negotiated peace in Vietnam...
...NET announced that in addition to being a reporter on its new series, Morgan will be "involved in investigative reports, incisive commentary, interviews, and in the development of the innovative and experimental techniques of bringing relevant information to the public...
...The President cannot, realistically, hope to win enough "hawk" votes away from the Republican candidate to make up for the "dove" votes he is losing in greater numbers each day...
...Defections from Mr...
...The GOP may come to the rescue of Lyndon Baines Johnson by nominating Richard Milhous Nixon, that avid supporter of a greater military effort in Vietnam...
...Goldwater's speech-writer...
...Another switch from the President ¦—but not to the GOP nominee—may take place this fall...
...Only a few months ago the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing brought similar charges against the Administration for policies it claimed perpetuated segregated ghettos in the inner cities and condoned the exclusion of Negroes from the suburbs...
...He said that he would vote—but not campaign—for a Republican Presidential candidate who favored a bombing halt and negotiated peace in Vietnam...
...Expansion of the rent subsidy program was killed outright, and the Model Cities budget severely mutilated by a reanimated coalition of reactionary Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats...
...James Farmer, pacifist and long-time head of CORE, and Bruce K. Chapman, a founder of the Republican Ripon Society...
...only ten per cent favored pressing "on to military victory...
...Public housing has been demonstrated to preserve segregation, and is, therefore, more acceptable to the racial bigots, North and South...
...After almost knocking the program down to a paltry $12 million for planning only, the House voted $237 million, a grossly inadequate amount for the huge task of breathing new life into our decaying urban centers...
...Furthermore, the House has acted irresponsibly toward the cities—some 200 of them now—that have signed binding agreements on the basis of those promises—agreements that commit them for as long as a decade not only to housing but to new streets, schools, parks, hospitals, and all the other facilities essential to the long-range reconstruction of a city...
...We expect that Morgan will develop programs for NET that will be provocative, illuminating, and superior to most "public affairs" programs on commercial television...
...He should demand —and get—full compliance with the Presidential order prohibiting racial discrimination in every residence the Federal Government controls or influences...
...Meanwhile, it is regrettable that the AFL-GIO has no present plans to continue its radio news program with another commentator of comparable caliber...
...Merger War makes strange bedfellows, and the Vietnam war has turned up some special oddities...
...The poor—white and Negro alike—of the central cities are further deprived and driven deeper into degradation...
...Or holding a joint press conference...
...It seems apparent that in spite of White House professions that it is under great pressure to step up the war, those who favor deescalation must also be reckoned with politically...
...Therefore," the board declared, "the ADA expresses its intention to support in the 1968 election that candidate of either party who offers a genuine hope for restraint in the conduct of the war in Vietnam and for its peaceful resolution on honorable terms, if such a candidate is presented to the American people...
...At its convention several months ago the California Democratic Council, a body speaking for thousands of Democratic volunteers in that state, served notice that if President Johnson had not changed his course of escalation in Vietnam by September, it would consider backing some other Democrat for nomination at the party's national convention next summer...
...He will undertake a weekly series of two- or three-hour programs to be seen over 100 non-commercial stations...
...The President does not need action by Congress to crack down on these agencies, which control an enormous volume of housing...
...NOTES in the NEWS The House Reneges If anyone still needed evidence that the Great Society is tottering toward its grave, the recent House action on rent subsidies and the Model Cities program provided it conclusively...
...Such a merger of right and left couldn't happen, but it did...
...The House Appropriations Committee slashed the request to $10 million, and the House itself completely gutted its Committee's recommendation...
...Incidentally, two past supporters of continued bombing changed their position recently: The Washington Star has reversed its editorial position and now calls for a halt to the bombings...
...For twelve years, with the sponsorship of the AFL-CIO, Morgan has provided millions of Americans each weekday night with analyses of the news that will stand as models of perception, clarity, and courage...
...Karl Hess, who is Mr...
...Representative Roman Pucinski, powerful Chicago Democrat and long a hawk supporter of the Johnson Administration, has also changed his mind and now advocates a bombing halt...
...The prospect for a single issue peace party would be greatly enhanced...
...Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert C. Weaver denied the charge, but the AFSG's report contains persuasively detailed case histories that substantiate its accusations...
...The AFSC report accused the VA and the FHA of "inertia, obstruction, and lack of sympathy...
...The Administration had thought the rent subsidy program might appeal to conservatives because the payments are made directly to private housing owners, thus diminishing the Federal Government's direct involvement in housing...
...A smaller straw in the political winds blowing adversely for President Johnson is the recent poll taken among members of the regular Democratic organization of Evanston, Illinois, and in that affluent suburb's Democratic Club...
...The programs will be financed by a $10 million Ford Foundation grant...
...Bias in Federal Agencies The House is not the only Government body to display racial bigotry...
...The Council for a Volunteer Military, which seeks to abolish the draft and to promote the concept of a voluntary armed force, raised through substantial pay increases, improved housing, more fringe benefits, and broader educational opportunities...
...Even the Administration's original request for $662 million fell far short of the urgent need and mocked the glowing promises of last year...
...If this is the "choice" the major parties present on the war in Southeast Asia, it will be a dreary decision that will face millions of Americans in November, 1968...
...Senator Mark Hatfield, Oregon Republican, was mentioned by Senator Metcalf as a candidate he could support, but he added, "I doubt they're going to nominate him...
...The blanket...
...The presence of such a party, along with George Wallace's third-party venture, might well throw the election into the House of Representatives, with Nevada, Mississippi, and Arkansas commanding the same power —one vote each—as California, New York, and Illinois...
...The forces behind the drastic cutback in housing were racial bigotry, the skyrocketing cost of the war in Vietnam, and the failure of the President to request adequate funds and to fight for the smaller amounts he did request...
...Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana recently became the first prominent Democratic "dove" in office to say he might vote for the Republican nominee...
...In an impressively documented report, the Quakers charged the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration with failure to carry out a Presidential directive of 1962 requiring non-discrimination policies in agencies involved with housing...
...Who would ever expect right-wing University of Chicago Professor Milton Friedman, economic adviser to Barry Goldwater, and San-ford Gottlieb, a left-wing intellectual and political action director of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), to find themselves under the same blanket...
...Only such a salvage operation can renew hope in the cities that help in solving their overwhelming social problems is on the way...
...If the House action stands, the rent subsidy program will remain frozen at its current, pitifully-inadequate, $32 million level...
...Morgan Moves Up Not since Edward R. Murrow went off the air have the broadcasting industry and the listening public experienced so great a loss as they now do with the end of Edward P. Morgan's news commentary over the American Broadcasting Company network...
...There they were, and with—would you believe?—Norman Thomas...
...If his programs expand the audiences of noncommercial television stations, and increase public demand for more such stations, Mr...
...The national board of Americans for Democratic Action, which has backed the Democratic candidate for President in every election since the organization was founded in 1947, has warned it may do otherwise next year...
...Johnson Although many liberal politicians and organizations in the country have condemned the Administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam, they have, until recently, refrained from declarations that they might support President Johnson's Republican opponent in 1968...
...The poll disclosed that fifty-two per cent of these Democrats favored stopping the bombing and starting negotiations...
...The Administration had asked for a token $40 million increase in the rent subsidy appropriation, which would have provided improved housing for about 100,000 persons...
...The Model Cities program fared somewhat better because it is designed to revitalize only the inner city, thus posing no threat to the lily-white suburbs...
Vol. 31 • July 1967 • No. 7
