NOTES IN THE NEWS
Notes in the News State of the Union "Great social change," President Johnson said in 1964, "tends to come rapidly in periods of intense activity and progress before the impulse slows. I believe...
...It is part of the tragedy of Lyndon B. Johnson that he seems destined to realize the most dire predictions of his most pessimistic critics...
...We are convinced that only consideration for the office he has now relinquished kept him from mentioning the Administration along with the Congress and the public...
...On an overwhelming number of issues, he found, the voters are ready, even eager, to adopt progressive social measures long before their Representatives and Senators are willing, often grudgingly, to approve them...
...Even those who have warned for years that the Great Society would be engulfed in the Great Quagmire of the war in Vietnam must be dismayed at the devastating accuracy of their forecast...
...This is the kind of government that uses its arms not to resist aggression but to suppress its own people...
...Hundreds more are expected to be purged...
...For the Republican ballot, six candidates were chosen: former Vice President Richard M. Nixon...
...Michigan's Governor George Romney...
...It is not hard to understand why...
...More than two-thirds of the chairmen replied...
...and Senator Charles Percy of Illinois...
...Instead, the President invested his fervor in an appeal for more FBI agents and police to wage a "war on crime"—and for the first and only time in the address, Congress cheered...
...The people realize that more butter and fewer guns will more readily solve the nation's urban problems...
...Johnson assured Congress...
...Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York...
...Hospital workers traditionally have been paid miserable wages, but in recent years they have organized and won long-delayed wage increases...
...As a result, the nation" suffers from a worsening shortage of doctors...
...modify the right to jury by trial...
...they are pretty much built in...
...The first essential is more jobs," Mr...
...But Gardner came closer than any of his predecessors to impressing on the Department a sense of mission—a mission he defined as striving "toward the elimination of all the conditions that stunt individual growth or impair human dignity . . . the subtle but powerful tyrannies of ignorance, disease, want, discrimination, physical handicap, or mental illness...
...It is not the rise in regular budget outlays which requires a tax increase," he pointed out with apparent pride, "but the cost of Vietnam...
...But that figure is deceptive...
...Nurses, too, have revolted against their low pay, and while still at the bottom of the professional scale, they are nevertheless considerably better paid than they were only a few years ago...
...Members of Congress would be wise to determine what their constituents think and run to catch up if they want to be their "leaders...
...This movement has now transferred its strength to McCarthy...
...A similar fate awaits the Teacher Corps...
...The light at the end of the tunnel seems distant and dim...
...Secretary Gardner, whose successor had not been named at this writing, never achieved the mastery he had sought over the Department of Health, Education and Welfare...
...so pronounced that a complete poll would likely show him preferred over Nixon by a slight margin...
...Yet in spite of the bleak prospects there is a new mood of hope among Negroes, mixed with a rising anger that is characteristic of all revolutions...
...He also seems extraordinarily unsuited to the challenge of reassessing a military adventure that has turned into catastrophe...
...Not only has the United States given full diplomatic recognition to this totalitarian regime, but the Government is now floating trial balloons suggesting the time may be right to resume shipments of heavy arms—shipments which were cut off at the time of the coup last April...
...The AMA has always fought such plans as "un-American" and "socialistic," but the relentless pressure of shockingly higher costs must hasten the day when the nation will have no choice but to accept the proposal by that un-American socialist name of Rockefeller for some version of a national health plan that will provide adequate medical service for everyone...
...If Tomlinson is correct, the coming summer looks long, hot, and explosive...
...Little has been done to correct the root causes of Negro unrest, much of which centers on jobs and housing...
...The explanation of my departure is not to be found in any issue or in any incident but is simply a judgment as to where I can be most useful in the immediate future," he said...
...Basically a rural and small-town state, it is also urban enough to have experienced race riots...
...There was no reference to the Great Society in the State of the Union speech this year, no mention of the War on Poverty...
...Much larger numbers of doctors today are engaged in research rather than patient care, and the dramatic growth of specialization and developing medical technology has greatly increased the average number of visits each patient makes to his doctor...
...Though he scorned "ornithological classifications" when his appointment as McNamara's successor was announced, Secretary Clifford has a long and uncompromising record as a hawk on Vietnam...
...Everybody assumed that having spy ships is perfectly all right, because the Russians have them too...
...But the impulse has slowed, the intense activity has ceased, and the unattained goal of great social change has been consigned to the ugly scrap heap of discarded Presidential rhetoric...
...But aside from the practicalities, has our Government completely abandoned principle...
...Yet research by Dr...
...Under these rules, the panel chose President Johnson and Senator Eugene McCarthy as the Democratic candidates...
...On the positive side, it is doubtful that John F. Kennedy would have won the Democratic nomination in 1960 if he had failed to defeat Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary...
...At the United Nations, Ambassador Arthur Goldberg accused the North Koreans of piracy on the high seas and offered incontrovertible evidence that the Pueblo had been outside the twelve-mile limit...
...Hardly anyone bothered to ask why in the era of missile silos and Polaris submarines it was necessary for Air Force planes to lug their deadly cargo through the skies on twenty-four-hour "airborne alert," or even what the unlucky B-52 was doing there, since Denmark strictly bars nuclear overflights...
...The State Department announced that the latest unproductive "exploration" of peace moves had proved unproductive, and the President announced that the Vietcong had failed...
...Virtually every increase in domestic spending would be financed by a cutback in other domestic programs, Mr...
...Only one out of five Negroes said he wanted to move out of his neighborhood...
...The New York Times reported early in February that in the preceding month alone the junta removed fifty-six university professors, four leading bankers, four ambassadors, and an additional seventy-nine army officers...
...Significantly, Congress scored lowest of all on its refusal to pass gun-control legislation...
...To give support and arms to an iron dictatorship in the name of the "free world" is sheer hypocrisy...
...But the President may have had other misfortunes in mind as well...
...Only twenty-eight per cent voiced approval of this rejection of a modest attempt to reduce nation-wide violence...
...hospitals was about $15...
...Many white Americans, including a number of members of Congress, blame the violence on "agitators...
...This drive to see more patients for more money," Standard said, "is a dangerous thing both for the doctor and the patient...
...Perhaps we were...
...This is the consensus of the many social scientists, economists, and government commissions studying the causes of last summer's racial violence with the objective of proposing programs to avert such tragic outbreaks in the future...
...Johnson's uninspired and uninspiring 1968 State of the Union address, his proposed Federal budget for fiscal 1969, and the steady stream of lackluster "special messages" emanating from the White House in recent weeks provide dismal documentation of promises unfulfilled and forgotten...
...Government support for college construction would be drastically trimmed in fiscal 1969...
...No third party candidacies are possible...
...It also has its beer, and its Green Bay Packers, but industry and manufacturing predominate...
...Black Hope and Anger The summer of 1968 shows promise of being long and hot in the nation's urban ghettos...
...One member of the Pueblo crew was dead and eighty-two were prisoners in North Korea...
...But the President had a comforting explanation: "When a great ship cuts through the sea, the waters are always stirred and troubled...
...Washington's excuse is that the junta is preparing a new constitution for approval at the Greek polls, which will make everything democratic...
...To be sure, he noted, in a masterful piece of understatement, "a certain restlessness—a questioning...
...Thomas M. Tomlinson, a research psychologist in the Office of Economic Opportunity, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the only possible measures that might prevent further riots would be the infusion of huge amounts of money—$20 billion or more—into the ghettos, an unlikely prospect at present...
...During his tenure in office McNamara steadfastly resisted the power plays of the Pentagon's military chiefs and their eager allies in Congress...
...Wyngaard wrote to all the Republican county and district chairmen asking whom they wanted and whom they thought would be the Republican candidate...
...Congress Condemned It should come as no surprise that the nation has judged the performance of the 1967 session of the current Congress the poorest in many years...
...This trend will continue, at least for the immediate future, because hospital charges reflect principally labor costs...
...The fifth Republican missed the meeting because of a snowstorm...
...A few days later, back in Washington, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said well, yes, maybe the Pueblo strayed inside North Korean waters at some time, perhaps, but we can't be sure...
...I believe we are in the midst of such a period of change...
...The candidates for the Presidential primary are chosen by a panel of five high-ranking Democrats and five counterpart Republicans, with a nonpartisan chairman who votes only in case of a tie...
...Samuel Standard of New York University predicted that abuse of the Medicare and Medicaid programs by doctors will hasten the end of the "fee for service" system...
...remove the rights to bail and prompt trial for political prisoners...
...The spending requests of the armed services, he noted, had been trimmed from more than $100 billion to just under $80 billion, but "we may have to put some of it back...
...A recent report in Medical Economics pointed out that the soaring costs of medical care were traceable chiefly to rising hospital charges and doctors' fees...
...Clifford has come a long way since his days as a member of a liberal clique in President Truman's White House staff...
...Garth L. Mangum, George Washington University economist, told the President's Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: "We ought to be thinking about how to stop the riots of 1972, because I doubt if there is much of anything that anybody can do about the riots of 1968...
...Gardner's warning that neither the Congress nor the public "is fully aware of the alarming character of our domestic crisis...
...This year's primary may be more meaningful than ever because the ground rules have been completely revised...
...The importance of Rockefeller's absence is revealed by a private poll conducted by John Wyngaard, a seasoned political columnist whose observations on Wisconsin politics appear in a number of newspapers in the state...
...The panel is directed by the revised law to select any and all "bona fide candidates" of the two major parties...
...A few days later, the Communist offensive in Vietnam had made it certain that the $26 billion officially allocated to the war would have to be increased...
...Wisconsin is on many counts a good representative testing ground...
...Johnson's proposed $186.1 billion budget was obsolete even before it reached Capitol Hill...
...There were signs, during his last months in the Cabinet, that Secretary McNamara had come to share some of our regrets...
...Continuing to provide medical Herblock in The Washington Post "We have resumed normal diplomatic contacts" care under the present system is fiscally impossible," said Dr...
...January was the month in which a B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed on the ice off the Thule base in northwest Greenland...
...Brain Drain The peculiarities and paradoxes of American politics are aptly illustrated by last month's departures from President Johnson's Cabinet...
...Wendell Willkie's hopes were buried in Wisconsin in 1944 when he lost the primary to Harold Stassen...
...General Douglas Mac-Arthur was written off in 1948 when California's Governor Earl Warren defeated him...
...Instead, Tomlinson said, cities will rely on increased police repression, which will not deter riots...
...The cost of Vietnam and the surly mood of Congress make early expansion of Negro opportunities unlikely...
...As rising medical costs present an increasingly insurmountable barrier to adequate health care, more radical solutions are being considered...
...It was partly to avoid embarrassing Robert Kennedy with the necessity of signing a disclaimer that the Democrats on the panel rejected him—and for exactly the opposite reason the Republicans wanted to include him...
...As we thank God for the passing of another month, we long for a time when there won't be bombs in the skies and spies in the seas and bodies —theirs and ours—in the grisly mud of Vietnam...
...He supported steps to eliminate the racial barriers in the armed forces, and warned against the costly and perilous folly of an international anti-ballistic missile race...
...Like other intimates of President Johnson, he lives by the cardinal rule of the Senate Establishment: to get along, you go along...
...The Progressive has had much to say in criticism of McNamara during his long tenure as Secretary of Defense...
...The critical question of civil rights was dismissed in a perfunctory paragraph...
...Although Americans pay more than the people of any other nation for their medical care, they do not receive the superior health care the high cost implies or the American Medical Association claims...
...This midwestern state is best known for its agricultural output—it produces a full thirty per cent of the nation's milk supply and more Swiss cheese than Switzerland...
...Rockefeller and Percy stated they would sign such a statement...
...Federal anti-poverty programs aimed at relieving the wretched and overcrowded housing in the urban ghettos have been slow to develop, and are only token in size...
...The combined rate of joblessness in all fifteen areas is 3.5 per cent for whites, but 7.7 per cent for Negroes...
...It's not a motto to inspire our confidence in a new Secretary of Defense...
...It is now approaching $50, and in some New York hospitals it is nearing $100...
...His last "posture statement," delivered to Congress shortly before he left office, contained a reasonably realistic report on the inadequacies of our South Vietnamese "allies...
...In a remarkably introspective appearance on "Meet the Press" last month, he volunteered that the 1961 fiasco at the Bay of Pigs "is very much on my conscience," and acknowledged with respect to Vietnam that "there is no question I see better today than I did three years ago or five years ago what might have been done there...
...Before McCarthy entered the contest, the unique "no" provision had sparked a lively movement within the Democratic Party to protest President Johnson's Vietnam policies by voting "no...
...Another essential is to rebuild our cities," the President told Congress, and in what has become the typical pattern he unfolded an ambitious long-range plan involving minimal short-range spending...
...We believe he bears much of the blame for the nation's tragically deep involvement in the Vietnam war, for the falsely optimistic assessments that fostered such involvement, for the tattered credibility of the Governmerit's reports to the people on the war...
...embassy compound in Saigon for six hours...
...The country seems to feel, he added, "that it is cheaper to kill Negroes for burning and looting than it is to spend the money which might create a life situation which obviates these responses...
...A study by William Gorham, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, revealed that the rise in doctors' fees was simply a case of supply and demand—a conclusion that rightly raised eyebrows and brought questions on why medical care should operate on the same principle as the potato market...
...Malcolm Peterson of Washington University in St...
...Furthermore, the rate of Negro unemployment is two to four times that of white...
...A baby born in Taiwan, Iceland, or the Fiji Islands, to cite a few surprising examples, is more likely to survive its first year than is an American infant...
...Because the AMA insisted on keeping such a tight rein on medical education, the whole nation is now suffering from a shockingly inadequate supply of doctors, and will for a long time...
...Wisconsin's population of more than four million is a remarkably diverse cross-section of the nation's religious and ethnic groups...
...The Times described it as "a constitution for locking people up and shutting protest down...
...Wisconsin has a longtime tradition of initiating progressive legislation—its sixty-three-year-old Presidential primary law was the first in the nation...
...The follow-through program for Project Head Start, which the President described as "essential" only a year ago, would be severely cut back from its previous projections...
...Senator Robert F. Kennedy was rejected along straight party lines, the five Democrats voting no, and four Republicans voting yes...
...It was the month in which the Pueblo, a spy ship, was seized by North Korea...
...As the most successful practitioner among that special breed of Washington lawyers who never set foot in a courtroom, he has acquired such notable clients as Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, General Electric, duPont, and Hughes Tool—a blue-ribbon sampling of the military-industrial complex...
...But The Times of London had a look at that proposed constitution: It would allow detention without charge...
...Hospital costs have gone up a whopping thirty-one per cent in the last two years alone...
...Over the noise of the shooting, they failed to hear him...
...It was to correct this and other imbalances in health care that Representative Benjamin Rosenthal, New York Democrat, backed by six well-known doctors, recently proposed some drastic changes in Federal policies, changes designed to improve medical care, to make it less costly, and to speed up and expand the training of new doctors...
...A survey by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics of the nation's fifteen largest metropolitan areas revealed that Negro unemployment is running more than five per cent in all but one, and as high as thirteen per cent in others...
...Curiously, in this traditionally multi-party state—the LaFol-lette Progressive Party was dominant for many years, and the Socialist Party ruled its largest city, Milwaukee, for three decades—the primary makes provision for only the Democratic and Republican parties...
...Daniel P. Moynihan pointed out last summer how backward the United States is in curing its urban ills—not to speak of its racial problems: "Mass poverty and squalor of the kind that may be encountered in almost any large American city, simply cannot be found in comparable cities in Europe, or Canada, or Japan...
...Such admissions come rarely from Cabinet members—or Presidents...
...The Harris Poll scored Congress low on cutting back the anti-poverty program, on the failure to pass an open-housing law, and on reducing aid to the cities...
...His reservations about the United States bombing raids on North Vietnam were frankly, if belatedly, stated...
...their findings reveal serious inadequacies—serious enough to claim the attention of no fewer than two White House commissions and four Senate committees, all charged with investigating in the coming months various aspects of the cost and quality of American medical care...
...The responses," reported Wyngaard, "showed a surprisingly heavy preference for the selection of Governor Nelson Rockefeller...
...Mr...
...The Crisis in Medicine The astronomical rise in the cost of medical care has occasioned a number of inquiries into the state of American medicine...
...President Johnson was quoted as saying on the last day of that ill-starred month...
...The Gorham panel found a forty-one per cent increase in the demand for physicians' services since 1950, but only a thirty-three per cent increase in the number of doctors—fewer still in private practice...
...Over a longer period, in 1950 the average daily room charge in U.S...
...To use two medical yardsticks as measures: The United States lags behind twenty other countries in life expectancy, and trails seventeen in infant mortality...
...Peterson...
...Our nation is accomplishing more for its people than has ever been accomplished before," he boasted to Congress, and he pointed out that Americans own more than seventy million television sets...
...Significantly, Congress scored lowest in those areas of legislation aimed at coping with the racial turmoil and economic sickness in our urban centers...
...Write-ins are permitted...
...The new law retains the "open" character of the election—a voter may cast his ballot in either party primary without revealing his choice...
...This is the Greek government that forced its way into power last year to prevent democratic elections, has since ruthlessly destroyed freedom of the press, and has purged the government, the universities, the banks, and the army itself of even the mildest critics...
...but February didn't seem much better...
...Leighton Cluff of the University of Florida Medical School says it takes at least fifteen years for a new medical school to develop to the point that it can begin to graduate physicians...
...Rosenthal was critical of the lack of balance between medical research, on which the Government spends about a billion dollars a year, and medical care...
...One doctor out of seven now clears, after all expenses, more than $50,000 a year...
...It was the month when the Vietcong mounted a massive offensive in South Vietnam, striking at every major city and seizing the U.S...
...Johnson said, but he ignored the recommendation of his own advisers to make the Federal Government the "employer of last resort" for hard-core unemployed...
...Both Robert S. McNamara and John W. Gardner are nominal Republicans who loyally served a Democratic President until they found themselves increasingly and intolerably isolated on the liberal end of his Administration's political spectrum...
...Johnson, who once voiced the hope that history would record him as "the education President," proposed to expand some Federal school aid programs by curtailing others...
...And our ship is moving...
...Eyes on Wisconsin The Wisconsin Presidential preference primary is not the first in the nation—it follows New Hampshire's by four weeks—but it is the earliest election that historically has had significant influence on the final selection of candidates...
...Since Nixon's greatest strength is reputedly among these organization men and women in the Republican Party, the results of this poll could have a significant bearing on future developments...
...it is moving toward new and better shores...
...Prominent Greek exiles emphasize that the drastic purges by the ruling junta have so bewildered and demoralized the armed forces that they are a distinct liability rather than an asset to the Atlantic Alliance...
...Alabama's former governor George Wallace was rejected as a Democratic candidate—by a vote that divided both Democrats and Republicans—on the grounds that he was running on a third party ballot...
...In recent years it has achieved a close political balance, with both Democrats and Republicans winning statewide office...
...The self-righteous indignation and punitive attitude expressed by Congress—especially the House—over the violence in the cities was rejected by a solid majority of the citizens in favor of constructive measures to cure the basic ills that lead to despair and rioting...
...Louis as wholly inadequate to present day needs...
...Johnson, who has the backing of most of the organization Democrats, is expected to win, perhaps comfortably, although there were indications that McCarthy might mobilize significant grass-roots support if he is able to conduct an intensive state-wide campaign...
...The United States should have no part of it...
...Standard said some New York physicians are submitting bills to the state for as much as $10,000 a month for seeing forty to fifty Medicaid patients a day...
...Governor Ronald Reagan of California...
...A recent Louis Harris Poll revealed that across the country the present Congress scored only a forty-one per cent positive rating against a fifty-nine per cent negative evaluation...
...But there is no doubt that the Administration's order of priorities, as dictated by its commitment to Vietnam, was the principal cause of the Secretary's departure...
...The extent to which the impulse for great social change has slowed is demonstrated by the fact that such bizarre distortions of priority no longer seem to trouble the President...
...He had specific reference to two accidents that befell his young grandson—unfriendly encounters with a bowl of hot chili and a cocktail table...
...What they aspire to achieve are more education and better jobs, better police protection and neighborhood improvements...
...The last two will not appear on the ballot, however, as the revised law provides that a candidate chosen by the panel may withdraw his name by signing a disclaimer that he is not now, nor does he intend to become, a candidate...
...Physicians' fees have climbed fourteen per cent since 1965...
...By all accounts, Clark M. Clifford is extraordinarily intelligent, extraordinarily charming, and extraordinarily rich...
...At Panmunjom Americans and North Koreans met to trade insults and negotiate a settlement—an effort that seemed to infuriate our friends and allies in South Korea...
...Instead, he proposed a gimmicky "partnership between Government and private industry"—a program which, in its initial experiments, has shown little promise of meeting the problem...
...The ratio of doctors to patients is one to 720, about the same as it was thirty years ago...
...On other questions, the negative appraisals combined with the "not sure" votes constituted a clear majority...
...Just a month ago we quoted in these pages Mr...
...The House reached the nadir of its performance in its incredibly irresponsible and brutal "debate" on the rat control bill, a miserable display so venomous and cruel the entire country was swept with a wave of shame and revulsion...
...We have reached the end of the road," said Rosenthal, "where the Federal Government can finance indefinitely medical research and neglect medical care...
...It is moving through troubled and new waters...
...forces produced staggering and incredibly precise counts of the enemy dead, as well as a profusion of incredibly comforting "captured documents...
...On only two items in the poll—increasing Social Security benefits and refusing to pass a tax increase—did Congress rate the definite approval of more than half the citizens questioned...
...In the long arctic nights the Air Force searched the ice for its fragmented bombs, assuring one and all that the devices were "unarmed" and therefore harmless, except of course for the radiation that might be leaking out...
...Thank God, January's gone...
...The excuse is that Greece is a vital Mediterranean anchor of NATO and her armed strength must be maintained...
...A new provision allows a "no" vote if the voter does not support any of the candidates listed...
...Arms for Greece One of the more recent moves as part of our Government's global campaign to "strengthen the free world" was the resumption of "normal" diplomatic relations with the military dictatorship that has strangled freedom in Greece...
...Harold Stassen, former governor of Minnesota...
...It is regrettable—but not surprising—that he has left just when it seemed possible that he might make his most useful contribution in the Administration's inner councils...
...A Month to Forget "Thank God, January's gone...
...A reliable report has been presented to the Council of Europe by Amnesty International that the Greek military regime subjects its hundreds of political prisoners to the most brutal mental and physical torture...
...Secretary Gardner explicitly denied that disagreement with the President over Vietnam policy was a factor in his sudden resignation...
...A Fortune magazine survey revealed that three out of four urban Negroes feel there has been improvement in job opportunities, housing, and their condition generally...
...In the Department's fifteen-year history, its sprawling bureaucracy has managed to defeat every one of the six Secretaries...
...A large share of the reason for the growing shortage of doctors is the stubborn resistance of the AMA to the very programs Rosenthal has proposed—Federal grants to support and expand medical schools and provide scholarships to aid individual students...
...The recent Louis Harris Poll confirms this judgment...
...Medical Economics reports the median net income of all American physicians rose from $16,017 in 1955 to $32,170 in 1966...
...OEO official Thomas Tomlinson emphasized that unless the opportunities to achieve these goals were made available, and soon, "then riots will run their course and there is nothing that can be done to prevent them...
...We have to increase the number of physicians while restructuring the system...
...Also challenged by Rosenthal's panel of doctors was the "fee for service" system, described by Dr...
...The President who assured Congress in 1966 that "we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam" is now acknowledging—in deed if not in words—that it just can't be done...
...In Vietnam the killing went on and the U.S...
...We look for no such contribution from his successor...
...Among the Republicans, Nixon, who carried Wisconsin against John F. Kennedy in 1960, is the clear favorite, particularly since Rockefeller's name will not be on the ballot...
...O Captain...
...cripple the rights of assembly and dissent...
...By the time the budget document was off the press, the Korean crisis had cast doubt on the military projections...
...Years ago, George Gallup, the celebrated pollster who has questioned the American people probably more often and on more subjects than anyone in the business, concluded emphatically that the American people are far out in front of their elected "leaders...
...John Spiegel, director of the Lemberg Study of Violence at Brandeis University, disclosed that of 218 racial outbreaks only five appeared to have been touched off by agitators...
...The "bona fide" candidate provision also rules out "favorite son" devices which usually obscure the political issues...
...Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, whose state has faced overwhelming medical costs, said recently, "I think it would be better from the national point of view if the whole country went on compulsory health insurance...
Vol. 32 • March 1968 • No. 3
