KANSAS FARMERS SLAP DOWN NTEA
McMillin, Miles
Kansas Farmers Slap Down NTEA By MILES McMILLIN THE National Tax Equality Association has suffered a stinging defeat in the first legislative test of its program to tax cooperatives out of...
...About 800 embattled farmers representing 100 farm organizations poured into the capitol to seek out representatives who, it was said, were prepared to pass the bill...
...Usually we try to refer these requests to a cooperative organization nearest the home of the sender...
...How To Start A Co-op The Progressive frequently gets queries from its readers on how to go about starting a cooperative and for general information on the cooperative movement...
...The bill had already passed the senate and was pending in the house of representatives when the farmers swarmed into the capital and demanded a showdown...
...However, the Central States Cooperatives, Inc., 1535 S. Peoria St., Chicago 8, 111., has prepared a list of reading materials which it recommends to those considering starting a cooperative...
...The organization puts out a pamphlet entitled "The Important Fact About A Cooperative" which contains an excellent thumbnail sketch of co-ops and how they are started...
...It also contains the bibliography mentioned above...
...He charged that the real estate lobby is fighting cooperative housing and recalled that co-op housing provisions were stricken from the legislation passed about a decade ago...
...Speakers suddenly and mysteriously appearing before businessmen groups throughout the state were able to line up considerable support for the anti-cooperative legislation...
...The cooperative movement has been growing steadily there, especially among the farmers...
...Kansas farmers administered the licking after the NTEA crowd brought a bill into the Kansas legislature to tax cooperative savings...
...The proposed authority would be modeled after the Rural Electrification Administration to provide homes for low-income groups just as REA provides power for the nation's farms...
...If such legislation as the Wagner-Dingell bill, which would broaden the social security program to include health insurance, is passed, the letter points out, it can be rendered useless if the medical profession refuses to cooperate...
...A Housing REA The Cooperative League of the U. S. A. has asked Congress to establish a national housing authority to grant long-term loans to cooperatives for financing housing projects...
...Medical Bludgeon An organization known as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has been established to bludgeon Federal medical insurance into ineffectiveness should it be adopted...
...According to letters being sent out by this organization, doctors are being asked to deny medical care to the sick, and to boycott other doctors and hospitals cooperating in group hospital plans...
...John Carson, Washington representative of the Co-op League, told the Senate subcommittee on housing that the program would answer the nation's housing problem without making the people dependent on the Gov* ernment...
...The farmers' demonstration at Topeka serves to emphasize to the nation's producers that the big business program is to keep the farmer and laborer divided in order to pick them off one at a time...
...Why the NTEA crowd chose Kansas for its first test isn't too clear...
...Kansas Farmers Slap Down NTEA By MILES McMILLIN THE National Tax Equality Association has suffered a stinging defeat in the first legislative test of its program to tax cooperatives out of existence...
...The NTEA crowd, it is known, has been working hard in Kansas during the past months...
...So impressive was this rural deluge, the house interrupted its regular business to adopt a resolution calling for an investigation of cooperative taxation...
...This maneuver, it is thought, will postpone any definite action for the next 2 years...
...Thus, the Government could not honor its pledge of complete medical care for every citizen...
...Moreover, the seeds of the old Populist rebellion have never completely left Kansas soil and the NTEA program is bound to be an effective germinator...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
