THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Intellectual Insult Dear Sirs: In April the Nixon Administration praised itself fulsomely for producing a record increase in the gross national product in the first quarter,...
...In your May editorial, "The Gray Society," I have at last found the answer: ". . . the President is attempting [to strike] an impartial balance between good and evil This is the Nixon concept of integrity, and it is the definitive flaw in his character...
...The White House described the April unemployment as being "basically static" and noted that the President had recently said that "unemployment is the last figure in a downturn to be reflected in going up," an observation that calls for thought...
...Take my parents as an example...
...Leon Arnold Muller Chicago, Illinois Nixon's Flaw Dear Sirs: As an old Nixon watcher since the beginning of his political career twenty-two years ago, I have tried in vain to put my finger on just exactly what is wrong with this man that makes it so hard to trust him...
...One only has to look at the death list of our men in Vietnam who gave their lives and in their last moments of "our finest hour" time now has become an eternity for them...
...On balance, it's a good program, and the unearned benefits for older workers and retirees will phase out over the next few decades...
...If peace ever comes that will be "our finest hour...
...Alida de Jager Tannay Switzerland...
...Both the Secretary and the White House predicted improvement...
...Thanks to amtrak, ours has become the first of the civilized countries to isolate itself from its neighbors by severing all international railroad passenger service...
...Although the U.S.S.R...
...John Wilbur Annapolis, Maryland 'Our Finest Hour' Dear Sirs: President Nixon has referred to the bloody conflict in Vietnam as "our finest hour...
...Today you canriot travel by train between New York and Montreal, nor between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg...
...Maryland never left the Union in the Civil War...
...The Administration, he then added, was winning the battle against inflation...
...When young Vietnam war veterans who rose to the challenge of the nation returned to Washington to tell their story and commit themselves to "one last mission to search and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war," it was the most powerful and at times the most moving of any concerted U.S...
...No other people, as far as we know, has tolerated the truth, as you write it, being published while the war is on...
...John Kenneth Galbraith Department of Economics Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Federalize Welfare Dear Sirs: Representative Morris Udall in his article, "A Scandal Called Welfare," in the May issue, is right to call for a radical change in the welfare structure...
...There is no longer a through train between New York and Toronto, nor is there rail passenger service between St...
...But please don't take me literally...
...Every March 24, an official state holiday called "Maryland Day," most radio stations mark the occasion by playing the state song...
...Since then, he and my mother have drawn over $15,000 in benefits...
...No, these reactionary hypocrites can't afford to antagonize the majority who are not poor...
...The question I would like to ask is this: Whom does the Administration imagine that it is fooling...
...We hope that this truth will lead to an ever greater resistance of the American people against the war criminals...
...Felice Miller Los Alamitos, California 'Ever Greater Resistance* Dear Sirs: For more than a decade, I have received The Progressive as a gift from friends in New York, and I enjoy reading it from beginning to end every issue...
...If I said, "I feel lousy," would he think I had a case of pediculosis...
...He referred to three sentences "which might delicately be called exaggeration...
...Out of a limited budget I bought a quantity of his book for use as gifts to literate friends...
...One verse of this "Marseillaise of the Confederacy" urges Marylanders to "spurn the Northern scum" who are supporting the Federal Government...
...Like Alabama, the "Free State" of Maryland is proud of its slave heritage...
...But might we not ask that it cease to add intellectual insult to the rest of the injury...
...Instead, we should Federalize all welfare, and raise payments to a living income...
...My father retired about fifteen years ago with most of his work outside Social Security until three years before retirement...
...Those decrying the expense of welfare never consider the other welfare payments we now make, with no humiliating means test, to millions of middle class and wealthy people...
...Secretary of the Treasury Connally was quoted in an exceptionally masterful statement: "I hated to see the wholesale price index go up...
...He paid a total of about $140 in Social Security taxes...
...What is this huge giveaway...
...Sixteen hundred dollars or $2,400 for a family of four, though, would be pathetically inadequate...
...Former Governor Agnew was sworn into office in January, 1967, to the seditious music of Maryland, My Maryland...
...Louis and Mexico City...
...Figures released in the first week of May then showed that April unemployment was, apart from one month in 1970, the highest in nine years, that unemployment of black workers was the highest since 1964, that the wholesale price index, adjusted, had risen at an annual rate of six per cent, a figure that did not reflect a big increase in steel prices that had just been posted...
...Is it significant that we inaugurate "National Transportation Week" with a railroad strike, or that Secretary of Transportation Volpe goes for a bicycle ride around Washington...
...Udall follows the traditional line that welfare costs have "skyrocketed to $14 billion," and that it is an all-consuming "monster...
...General Forrest, first national president of the Ku Klux Klan, executed all his captive black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow...
...Reverend Shelby J. Light Pasadena, California No Trains Across Borders Dear Sirs: The United States, which thoughtlessly squanders money all over the world in an often fruitless attempt to buy friendship and respect, has just achieved another "First...
...His book ought to be read...
...Like the bullies they are, they pick on the poor, who can't protect themselves...
...They have stunned the armchair warriors who are all for fighting other people anywhere and everywhere, but always with someone else's life...
...We spend millions of dollars inviting foreign friends to visit the good old U.S.A.— but now they cannot cross our borders by train...
...It makes me, and my family, and people around us remain friends of the American people in spite of the misdeeds of their rulers in Vietnam, and nearer home...
...Martin Anderson Baltimore, Maryland Patriotic Gore Dear Sirs: While former Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew continues his fight for "law and order," Marylanders continue to celebrate their patriotic observances by singing an official state song which advocates the overthrow of the Federal Government...
...Mrs...
...The nation chose The St at-Spangled Banner of Maryland's Francis Scott Key as its national anthem in 1931, but Marylanders in 1939 chose the seditious Maryland, My Maryland, for their state song...
...I don't think we should pay much attention to it...
...There was a new crisis from the excess of dollars abroad— these being the consequence of continuing inflation here in the United States...
...If my father lives another fifteen years and has a lingering illness, total benefits on his account may exceed $100,000 (including Medicare...
...One is reluctant to believe that Americans at large are congenital economic idiots...
...The Council of Economic Advisers said that the price increase, though bad, did not signify "a break in the pattern of improving prices...
...Another verse urges Marylanders to "avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore...
...A little later the President told the Chamber of Commerce that "the worst of inflation is behind us...
...None other than Social Security...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Intellectual Insult Dear Sirs: In April the Nixon Administration praised itself fulsomely for producing a record increase in the gross national product in the first quarter, most of which was the result not of recovery but of General Motors being no longer on strike...
...Many more Marylanders fought on the side of the Union than for the Confederacy...
...If he read in the paper that "Indians Scalp Yanks, 5-0," would he solemnly declare that Indians no longer brutally treat Americans who are white in such fashion...
...As a bachelor combat infantry veteran concerned with the art of loving one another in world community, I am delighted by the new self-concept and social consciousness of young war veterans who regard war as one of the most disgusting evils of mankind and one that should now be eliminated...
...Are Reagan, Nixon, Agnew, and their ilk condemning this huge welfare program...
...This is not atypical—many people with far more money are getting even more unearned gravy...
...Perhaps liberal Senators and Representatives should hold out for some such figure...
...The Secretary of Labor said the "increase" in the basically static unemployment was "disappointing" but then described the employment situation as essentially unchanged...
...Does this mean Social Security should be cut back...
...In fact, welfare costs have increased recently for two reasons: (1) those in poverty are becoming aware that they are eligible, and (2) the present recession has had a murderous effect upon the poor...
...nor between Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia...
...And he has a comfortable retirement income without Social Security...
...But I am increasingly irritated with those who decry the cost of welfare...
...Nell Herrin San Antonio, Texas Cirino's Hyperbole Dear Sirs: Professor William L. Rivers is unduly severe with Robert Cirino's book, Don't Blame the People, in his review in the May issue...
...But Rivers should have learned in a high school English class about figurative language...
...The Administration's economic policy is certainly defective...
...Translated, this gory verse is urging Marylanders to kill Federal troops because Union troops shot about a dozen Confederate rioters in a minor civil disturbance in Baltimore on April 19, 1861...
...After all, even conservatives may get desperate enough to raise the payment and get the country out of its present mess...
...I thought Cirino's book was excellent...
...has a wider gauge track than is used by the other continental and British railways, through sleeping cars operate daily between France, Germany, and Moscow...
...Other nations, particularly those on the Continent, consider their first-class international trains to be their status and prestige symbols—they are not considered on the basis of how profitable they may be...
...Cirino is the George Seldes for today...
...Since Rivers did not recognize a clear case of hyperbole—a justifiable use of exaggeration to make a point—he ought to shed barrels and barrels of tears in repentance...
...But through the years the "100 per cent patriotic" Marylanders have increased their admiration for the state ancestors who tried to capture Washington, D.C., and have forgotten those who died to defend it...
...anti-war action to date...
...Our folk history avers a certain shrewdness in such matters...
...We have paid a high price for "our finest hour" in Vietnam...
...Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech in 1918, said, "To stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile but it is morally treasonable to the American people...
...The good, clean, young veterans without legs and confined to wheelchairs are involved in developing the legacy of a new morality...
...James R. Randall, the Confederate poet who wrote Maryland, My Maryland, also wrote a poem, "At Fort Pillow," in honor of Confederate General Nathan Forrest's gory victory over a Union fort in Tennessee...
...Thomas T. Taber Madison, New Jersey The New Veterans Dear Sirs: The new voice of the new war veteran is a challenge to everyone's thinking...
...It now appears that Nixon has made "our finest hour" his moment in history...
...Of course not...
...Businessmen, bankers, trade union leaders, economists, others with an immediate interest, are certainly not susceptible to such patter...
...Out of total cash and health benefits of $40 billion this year, about $35 billion will be the unearned "welfare" component of Social Security...
...There has been much, very much, of the same before...
...Rather $4,500 a year would be feasible and practical...
Vol. 35 • July 1971 • No. 7
