NOTES IN THE NEWS

...The laws are full of special provisions," said Chairman Mills, "through which a shrewd or lucky taxpayer can often escape paying anywhere near his full share...

...But until the powerful leaders of the business community are sufficiently aroused by the desperate poverty in urban ghettos, and until they turn away from the shoddy preachments of a vicious racist such as Wallace, progress in solving our racial and urban ills will be seriously hampered...

...But the United States, preparing, presumably, to retaliate against a barbarous and unprincipled enemy's first strike, has been engaged since World War II in extensive though secret testing, production, and stockpiling of chemical and bacteriological weapons...

...Regrettably, the Congressional Record does not indicate whether Mrs...

...It was Georgie Anne Geyer, the able roving foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News who warned in The Progressive in August, 1967, that the United States was destined to be entrapped in Vietnam after Vietnam after Vietnam in Latin America if this nation continued to pursue its current policies in that tortured continent...

...In fact, we can only surmise that CON exists...

...The House, like the Senate, conferred its official blessing on that boon of lobbyists and political rainmakers, the Congressional testimonial dinner...

...The CON men have an uneven performance record...

...CON appears on no Defense Department table of organization, and its work is never publicized...

...The next day, sheep grazing in nearby Skull Valley began to ail...

...Furthermore, the "one China" position is held by both Taiwan and Peking, which does nothing to further the cause of the "two Chinas" concept...

...In that editorial, we were again more prophetic than we could realize when we wrote: "It is possible that even if McCarthy loses, the country could win as the result of his candidacy...

...Pentagonese Somewhere in the Pentagon, we suppose, a special Committee on Nomenclature (CON) convenes from time to time...

...He said: "I won't be a party to putting a fraud on the public by making them think we are purifying ourselves when we are actually making it worse...

...Guatemala," said Father Bonpane, "smells like South Vietnam did a few years ago...

...Yet it is the policy of the United States to continue to stand stubbornly behind the ruling forces in that unhappy nation and thus, however unwittingly, to stand against the rising clamor of the peasant population for freedom and land reform...

...He was given "a comparatively perfunctory reception," the Chicago Sun-Times reported...

...For two decades, the United States has maintained an ostrich-like policy which officially ignores the existence of the half-billion people who constitute the mainland nation of China, while giving full recognition to the discredited refugee military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan...

...So great is the inequity of the present system," said Reuss, "that in the face of the need for greater revenues, the Administration's surtax request should be accompanied by a firm commitment to take early and decisive action on sweeping tax reform...

...But occasionally striking evidence of its activity comes to light...

...In Poland, students in Warsaw broke into open rebellion against the Communist regime of Wladyslaw Gomulka...

...This is a position advanced by The Progressive ever since the Peking government, demonstrated its hegemony following the revolution of the 1940's, and we are delighted to welcome Mansfield aboard...

...No Tax Reform Federal tax reform is like the weather...

...In the event of an armed uprising, the United States could easily find itself deeply involved militarily in helping the Guatemalan government crush the revolt—all in the name of suppressing "Communism...

...We say this because his appeal to conscience is bound to reach countless concerned Americans and, as a result, is certain to have considerable impact on the win-minded politicians of both parties who have their ears glued to the ground and their fingers wet to the wind...

...Within a week some 7,000 sheep were dead...

...Instead, the President has pushed hard to get the ten per cent surtax, which places an even greater burden on the poor and worsens the "economic distortions" of which the President warned...

...The United States voted for the resolution...

...In a warmly self-congratulatory atmosphere, the assembled legislators of both chambers applauded their own boldness, vision, and fearless integrity...

...Not since the Walrus and the Carpenter wept copiously for the oysters they had just devoured has there been such an egregious display of pious hypocrisy...

...And after years of delay and dissimulation, they enacted "codes" that not only failed, in most respects, to provide remedies for glaring abuses, but even managed to legitimize some of the more obnoxious practices that have come to flourish on Capitol Hill...

...it grieves for the man, but not for his cause...

...Indeed, we came out for him before he announced his candidacy...

...arsenal...

...Percy's open criticism of Wallace's demagogic "cheap and easy solutions" to racial and urban problems was greeted with "dead silence...

...They were prohibited as long ago as 1899, when a Gas Declaration was signed at The Hague, and as recently as 1966, when a United Nations resolution called for "strict observance" of the Geneva Protocol banning the use of poison gases and bacteriological agents...

...Guatemala's social sores run so deep and are so pervasive that only a revolutionary reform of its economy holds any hope of salvation...

...He worked tirelessly, creatively, and productively in the peace crusade for McCarthy for two months—and we are happy to welcome him back on the staff now that his "politicking" is completed...

...Disclosure to the public is vital to the effectiveness of the disclosure principle...

...The China impasse Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's call for a fresh look at the United States' China policy strikes a hopeful note in a time of great decision...

...It was only a short time after McCarthy's triumph in New Hampshire that Senator Robert F. Kennedy lifted his ear from the ground and announced his candidacy, and it was less than two days before the Wisconsin primary that President Johnson studied the finger he had held wet to the winds from Wisconsin and announced that he was not a candidate...

...Armed with unabridged dictionaries and thesauri, the members carefully review the terminology of war, discard the worn or tarnished components, and replace them with shiny new euphemisms...

...Their government does not represent them, but only the wealthy two per cent—and that government is backed by the military might of the United States...

...Recent events have confirmed what we have so often suggested in these columns—that Communism is not the monolith it was once assumed to be, but rather that each of the countries in which it prevails has given Communism a distinctly national flavor...

...Italics added as part of our prophet's robes...

...To call confidential submission of a sealed report disclosure is a misnomer," said Senator Clifford P. Case, New Jersey Republican, who has fought valiantly and almost alone for a meaningful ethics code...

...And it is conceivable that if the voters' response to the Senator's cause and candidacy is as great as we believe it will be, President Johnson, once so consensus-minded, might yield to the pressure of public opinion by moving toward a more affirmative position on Vietnam...

...Czech Communist leaders have fallen like ten-pins, and their successors are building a liberalized regime with much looser ties to Moscow...

...Other proposals would tighten up on gift and estate taxes, and eliminate special benefits in certain business and real estate dealings...

...In the lead editorial of our December issue, which went to press more than a week before McCarthy entered the race, we strongly urged McCarthy to make the fight...

...This was thirty-five more votes than last year's forty-three, which was then a record high opposing HUAC...

...Among the reforms Reuss proposes are: • Taxing capital gains on assets which escape taxation at the death of the owner...

...I therefore plan to submit proposals to the Congress to improve the equity of our tax system and reduce economic distortions...

...Reducing the notorious mineral depletion allowance of 27.5 per cent on oil and twenty-three per cent on other minerals to fifteen per cent...

...The Senate cheerfully gave its approval to personal "slush funds" of the kind Richard M. Nixon made famous in 1952...

...All other Senate "disclosures" will be made in sealed envelopes filed with the Comptroller General and openable only by majority vote of the Ethics Committee...

...Our emphasis.] Political action, poverty programs, and massive Federal aid are urgently needed for the alleviation of the plight of the black people of our nation...

...military advisers by the hundreds, the same corrupt power structure, the same fear of Communism to the point of paranoia, the same peasants, weak in themselves, but firmly determined that no foreigner is going to overcome them on their land...

...We are not dealing with a group of criminals, anyway, when we are dealing with 100 Senators," said Ethics Committee Chairman John Stennis, the Mississippi Democrat...

...relationship...

...Some observers question whether the premier can weather the storm that is rising there, and of which the student defiance is only the most visible feature...

...But there is little prospect that Mills will do more than talk about tax reform this year...

...Potential enemy food supplies often are destroyed on such operations...

...With determination it rarely displays in behalf of nobler causes, the Senate stripped from its feeble code virtually every vestige of meaningful enforcement...

...Thirty taxpayers with incomes exceeding $500,000 each escaped the income tax . . . another twenty-eight paid less than ten per cent...

...The editorial, entitled "The Hope of McCarthy's Candidacy," said, among other things: "By entering the campaign he would provide millions of Americans with the only referendum they may have on the issue of deepest concern to the nation...

...Supreme Court gradually and painfully dismantled it almost entirely...

...A more successful effort was "strategic hamlets," which won wide acceptance as the pleasant name for barbed-wire enclosures into which villagers are herded against their will...

...Former Governor George C. Wallace was the guest speaker at a regular luncheon held by the Executives Club, a prestigious businessmen's organization that represents an important segment of the "power structure" of Chicago...

...Witnesses have been harassed and are denied the right to cross-examine those who make accusations against them...

...Civilized nations have long recoiled in horror from such weapons...

...Pacification" probably holds the endurance record for felicitous CON coinages...

...Today, in Czechoslovakia, an internal shift of power in the direction of national freedom of even greater dimensions is greeted largely with silence or mild admonitions from Moscow, and with varying degrees of open, independent reaction from the other East European nations within the Soviet orbit...

...He assured his colleagues that they could "comfortably accommodate" themselves to the new rules, and he was, oh, so right...

...Early on, when the Wisconsin McCarthy forces were worrying about enough money to keep the campaign alive, The Progressive made its subscription list available for an appeal for funds...

...Rumania has established full diplomatic relations with West Germany, and Prague will almost certainly follow suit...

...The only significant legislation to come out of HUAC's twenty-three years of disruptive circus-style investigations was the Internal Security Act of 1950, a law that so violated constitutional rights the U.S...

...Unhappily, the demand for more freedom in Poland is heavily shadowed with a renewal of the Poles' age-old anti-Semitism, now only faintly disguised as anti-Zionism...

...In voting as it did to provide HUAC with a handsome bounty of $375,000, the House has renewed the witch-hunting license of a committee which for more than two decades has ridden roughshod over constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association, and the American spirit of fair play...

...The most recent is a Catholic priest, the Reverend Father Blase Bonpane, who declared from personal experience there that "the Central American republic of Guatemala may well be the Vietnam of tomorrow...

...Businessmen and Blacks "The nation is appalled by the murder of Martin Luther King," wrote James Reston in the wake of the tragedy, "but it is not appalled by the conditions of his people...

...It might have been, if a sufficient outcry had been raised...

...In the end, Senator Case voted for the gutted code and vowed to renew the fight next year...

...But when the United States was embarrassed early this year by the second accidental dropping of such bombs on foreign soil, the Air Force found that the "military necessity" had vanished, and it discontinued the nuclear weapon flights...

...Eliminating the unlimited charitable deduction, special treatment for stock options, and the $100 dividend exclusion...

...But sheep are notoriously complacent and so, for that matter, are people...

...Another Vietnam...

...But no proposals have yet been made-—and none is in sight...

...As they stand now," said President Johnson in January, 1967, "our tax laws impose undue burdens on some and grant unfair benefits to others...

...East Winds of Change The winds of change which in recent years have swept away the old colonial empires of the West in Africa and Asia are blowing now in the newer fiefdoms of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe...

...In the absence of Administration leadership in tax reform, Representative Henry Reuss, Wisconsin Democrat, has authored a House bill which he and his six co-sponsors claim would "raise at least $4 billion additional annually" merely by plugging some existing loopholes...

...Only East Germany—where the Soviets maintain an enormous army—is still solidly in the Soviet camp...

...Honorariums for speeches and articles will be confined to "the customary value for such services," whatever that may mean...

...We grieve not so much for the sheep of Skull Valley—their days were numbered in any event, though one might wish for them a more productive end —as for the other sheep, in Congress, in the press, and in the general citizenry, who accept with equanimity the "military necessity" of the Army's massive experiments in chemical and biological warfare...

...Mansfield has called on the United States to face the fact that "there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it...

...Since then many observers of the Latin American scene have expressed agreement with Miss Geyer's warning...

...We doubt that all this will command a footnote in Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1968...

...Arkansas' Democratic Representative Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who long blocked the President's surtax, has indicated at least a willingness to consider tax reform...

...The result was a flood of contributions from every state in the nation that added up to a desperately needed $45,000 to $50,000...

...There is some glimmer of hope, however, that HUAC may yet be done in...

...Interdiction," for instance, enjoyed only a brief life as a happy word for bombing...

...In any event, only the sources of such outside income would have to be disclosed 'to responsible public inquiry,' which appears to have been made as difficult as possible...

...There are the same U.S...

...A fair and equitable tax system is not only desirable for itself, but well may be an element in our national survival...

...Unlike the small band of six of us that voted against HUAC back in 1961," Kastenmeier pointed out, "this time there were seventy-eight members voting to recommit the resolution authorizing funds...

...The actual sums obtained by a moonlighting Congressman or by one whose company or law firm was engaged in business with the Government, would remain sealed in the custody of the Committee, unless opened by majority vote in the course of an investigation...

...He would have been hard-pressed to prove it from what happened on the floor...

...Nerve gases, a scientific achievement of Nazi Germany, are the mainstay of the U.S...

...It is doubtful that the peasants, some forty per cent of whom speak only Mayan languages, and more than seventy per cent of whom are illiterate, know anything about Communism, which is so feared by the oligarchy of two per cent of the people who control more than eighty per cent of the land...

...It is this last item—the countrywide response of our readers—we cherish most...

...But The Progressive's contribution to McCarthy's Wisconsin success was more practical than our service as part-time prophet: • Early on, when the McCarthy forces in Wisconsin were loosely led and poorly organized, we loaned them Associate Editor Arnold Serwer, who proceeded to do a superb job as campaign organization director...

...In contrast, the Sun-Times pointed out, "Many such questions, most of them sympathetic to the Wallace view, were asked of the former Alabama governor when he appeared before the club...

...There was depressing affirmation of Reston's evaluation in a pair of events in Chicago only a few weeks earlier...

...Representative Edna Kelly of Brooklyn, a Democratic member of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, called her chamber's new code "a giant step toward the strengthening of our form of government and adding character, prestige, and dignity" to the House...

...Recent passage by the Senate of the ten per cent Federal income tax surcharge highlights once again the fact that Congress and the Administration will do anything to tamper with the tax system except plug the gaping loopholes which grant special tax favors to those with the largest incomes...

...Sheep Early in March, the Army conducted aerial spray and artillery tests of deadly nerve gases at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah...

...But however difficult, the effort must be made, because as Senator Mansfield has warned, there will be no lasting peace in Asia until the impasse between the United States and China is resolved...

...The Ethics 'Fraud' The "codes of ethics" adopted in recent weeks by both houses of Congress stand, in a way, as major accomplishments...

...These are all aspects of income taxes that benefit the wealthy, often reducing their fair tax share by half, and sometimes wiping out taxes entirely...

...The contributions from our subscribers constituted an extraordinary rallying to the kind of challenge they understand and act on...

...Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it...

...Kelly had the good grace to blush...

...The death of 7,000 sheep is not, apparently, an equivalent embarrassment...

...The Montanan called for the opening of trade with China on a basis similar to our trade agreements with the European Communist countries, and for formal or informal talks with Chinese representatives "to consider differences between China and the United States over Vietnam or any other question of common concern...

...Early on, when the McCarthy forces lacked campaign literature, it was tens of thousands of reprints of The Progressive's March editorial that armed Wisconsin campaign volunteers as they built their organization...

...For them, too, it is a matter of "military necessity...

...There will be no durable peace in Korea, Vietnam, or anywhere else in Asia," said the Senator, "unless there is a candid confrontation with the problems of the Sino-U.S...

...For similar reasons, the Air Force until recently kept nuclear bombs airborne around the clock...

...We wish him success, but our highest respect is reserved for Senator George D. Aiken, the gnarled Vermont Republican who had the courage to cast the lone dissenting vote in the Senate and to speak the full truth about the code...

...If the United States continues to give its misguided support to the forces of reaction in Guatemala, it is nurturing another Vietnam—and one whose consequences could be equally as disastrous...

...The House, at least, specified that the proceeds of such affairs must be used for campaign purposes...

...To begin with, The Progressive, to the best of our knowledge, was the first publication in the land—daily, weekly, or monthly—to endorse the Minnesotan for President...

...The only items Senators and their top aides will have to report publicly will be contributions and honorariums of $300 or more—a provision that is likely to make the $299 lecture fee as common as the $11.95 dress...

...Senator Mansfield did not outline a solution to the problem of determining and recognizing one China, but he made clear the larger implications of our failure to search out the answer...

...It is no longer 'search and destroy' but 'reconnaissance in force.' "The name change was ordered recently and may represent Washington's sensitivity to the criticism of General William C. Westmoreland's tactic of destroying sections of the South Vietnamese countryside in the search for the Vietcong...

...But we dare to hope that The Progressive's staff and subscribers will have made a modest contribution to making Gene McCarthy President of the United States...

...Reuss revealed that tax loopholes permitted three Americans with incomes of "more than $5 million to avoid paying a penny in Federal income taxes...

...military bases, the road back to the establishment of rational relations will be infinitely more difficult than if the United States had realistically recognized the successful revolutionary government in Peking in the beginning...

...If the past is any guide to the future, the only sweeping action will be to put tax reform back under the rug...

...At that, the House code is more stringent than its Senate counterpart...

...After issuing ingenious but unconvincing alibis, military spokesmen finally conceded that the tests at Dugway might have been responsible...

...HUAC Rides Again Once again the nation has witnessed the sorry spectacle of the House of Representatives extending the life of the House Un-American Activities Committee for still another year...

...After two decades of political non-recognition and the military ringing of China with U.S...

...If the trend continues, the day will eventually arrive when the House will give HUAC the burial it so richly deserves...

...But the peasants do know they are leading hopeless lives, and one day they will rise in revolution...

...With the growing realization that the Peking government—in spite of the turmoil of recent years—is in fact the government of China, coupled with the long-faded hope of Chiang to retake the mainland by force, the United States has been pushed in the direction of exploring unofficially a "two Chinas" solution to the problem...

...Members who have an interest worth more than $5,000 or derive annual income of more than $1,000 from companies doing business with the Government will be required to disclose the names of the companies—but not the extent of their interest...

...Unverified charges and hearsay statements against individuals," said Kastenmeier, "can and are made in public...

...Any Congressman profiting from such connections," The Washington Post pointed out, "could easily escape reporting to the watchdog committee by merely diversifying his interests...

...Yet today the curtain is being melted down by the people long imprisoned behind it...

...The story did not indicate who ordered the name change, but it has all the earmarks of a CON job...

...Only twelve years ago a bid for a modicum of nationalist freedom in Hungary could be smashed with impunity by a Soviet show of force with tanks and Soviet soldiers in Budapest...

...But beneath the traditional Polish anti-Semitism, which always seems to surface at times of political tension, is broad pressure for liberal reforms internally, and increased autonomy in foreign affairs...

...In our March issue, just before the New Hampshire primary, our lead editorial, "McCarthy for President: A Challenge to Conscience," formally endorsed the Senator's candidacy...

...Members of the House will be prohibited from receiving gifts or compensation which might affect a legislative decision...

...The performances at the Executives Club are a shocking reminder of how far removed from reality are many of the leading figures in the power structure...

...Take, for example, this recent dispatch filed from Mytho, South Vietnam, by a correspondent of The Washington Post: "American military commanders in the Delta have just gotten the word...

...Representative Robert Kastenmeier, Wisconsin Democrat, who has voted consistently to abolish HUAC and transfer its jurisdiction to the Judiciary Committee, severely criticized HUAC's treatment of witnesses...

...As Eastern Europe's ties to the Soviet Union weaken, its relations with the West are becoming more normal...

...The Sun-Times observed that following the Percy talk—which included praise of the report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by Illinois' Democratic Governor Otto Kerner—"there seemed a pointed omission during the question period of any questions relating to civil rights, fair housing, and rioting in the streets...

...Three weeks later, Illinois' own Republican Senator Charles H. Percy spoke before the same group...

...Many of us in the House were shocked to learn that HUAC paid certain witnesses that had appeared and testified at its hearings...

...Only a dozen years ago Western observers were convinced the Iron Curtain could be penetrated only by military invasion...

...The Committee's chairman, Representative Melvin Price, Illinois Democrat, was a shade more candid...

...The Chinese, the Russians, the truculent nations of the Middle East—all these and others have their own stockpiles of gas—and they, too, are merely taking precautions against barbarous and unprincipled enemies...

...To their shame, the 1,400 business executives present gave Wallace a standing ovation, and his thinly-veiled racist talk was interrupted frequently by enthusiastic applause...

...Furthermore, while HUAC received more money than it did last year, it was voted $50,000 less than it asked for...