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About Eugene register-guard. (Eugene, Or.) 1930-1983 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1963)
BMJCttC icotstct LAMB MUMfV! MMa wtWSMHft At Easter Time By ROSCOE DRLMMOND Of Ihi Associated Frest AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER . ALTON F. BAKER, Publisher, 1927 1961 ( ALTON F. BAKER JR. Editor and Publisher EDWIN M. BAKER General Manager RICHARD A. BAKER Managing Editor ROBERT B. FRAZIER Associate Editor A. H. CURREY Associate Editor The Register-Guard's policy is the complete and impartial publication in its news pages of all news and statements on newt. On this page, the editors of the Register-Guard offer their opinion on events of the dag and matters of importance to the community, endeavoring to be candid but fair and helpful in the development of construc tive community policy. A newspaper is a CITIZEN OF ITS COMMUNITY. , Published every evening and Sunday morning by the Guard Publishing Co. 6A EUGENE, OREGON, SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1963 This Protection is not a License Adam Clayton Powell, the wander ing congressman, has just lost a big libel suit. For saying that a New York woman was a "bag woman" (graft col lector) for the police, he must pay $211, 500. At least that's what the New York court held. Now the case undoubtedly will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the congressman proposes to test a vital constitutional question. The high court's ruling could have far-reaching effect on the future activities of legis lators, state and national. In question is the idea of congres sional privilege. The U.S. Constitution says that "for any speech or debate in either house, they (the senators and rep resentatives) shall not be questioned in any other place." This means that you can't sue a congressman for something he says about you in Congress. The Ore gon Constitution uses almost exactly the same language in extending this im munity to Oregon legislators. This is an important and necessary protection of' the legislator. Mr. Powell's contention, however, is that as a congressman he possesses a broader privilege than this. His attor neys argued (Mr. Powell didn't show up at the trial) that the privilege extends to remarks made by a congressman off the floor of the House, too. The remarks for which he was sued were made in a television broadcast. They contended that a congressman has a duty to keep his constituents informed of his con gressional activities. If this includes re- , fr ft ft ScKool Names Salem is seeking a name for its new high school, on the north fringe of town. North Salem seems logical, except that Salem already has a school of that name. The present North Salem is nearer the middle of town. Could that be renamed Central? Or would that be confusing? Then how about a name like Capital for one of the two north schools? Eugene went through a similar dis cussion when a new high school was lo cated on the north side of town. We didn't have quite that much of a prob lem, however, because North Eugene High is even farther north than the new school, which wo called Sheldon. But suppose we eventually build one out by -Spencer Butte, far south of the present .South? ! We now have three high schools, North, South and Sheldon. Will Salem have three, North, South and Capital? That's like a family's naming its children Ecnic, Mccnie, Mincy and George, or Tom, Dick and Melvin. The point is that these geographic designations serve a growing community for only so long. After a while, the towns outgrow such names. But, please, no ;more names of presidents. What's wrong with naming some after governors of .Oregon? Big Investigation : Jack Anderson is a Washington re porter who wrote a magazine article a month ago charging that a number of congressmen pad payrolls, misuse pub lic funds and peddle influence. Ho said ho got his information from a certain .congressman, whom he preferred not to name. ; The Administration Committee of the House of Representatives was most up set, and sought to quiz Mr. Anderson about this anonymous congressman. The 'committee wanted his name. Mr. Ander son said he'd be glad to talk to the com mitteeif ho could list the names of a dozen or so congressmen who cheat. ft ft ft The committee didn't like that Idea so well. It was obviously less interested in exposing the dozen cheaters than in More Money exjuiug uie one squcaicr. nir. Anderson and the committee sparred around a while. The committee didn't get the one name it wanted, and Mr. Anderson didn't get to mention the dozen names he had In mind. And so the meeting adjourned, with i fishy air hanging over the Capitol dome that afternoon. Worth Cultivating One of the surest signs of spring in this state is the budding of renewed en thusiasm for promoting tourist trade. This year, with no world's fair in Seattle to lure extra tourists through Oregon, this trade may be expected to fall off a bit. But, the gross profits from tourism the state's third largest indus trycould hold up close to 1962's rec ord level if each touring individual or family is induced to stay one extra day In Oregon. Tourists out-of-state vacationists, if you prefer spent a total of $217 mil lion while they were in Oregon last year. If each of these 9,255,000 visitors had spent one more day with us, their gross expenditures would have been $55 mil lion dollars greater. And, if train, bus and plane travelers had been induced to stop over an extra day on their way through Oregon, another $15 million would have been added to the total. Courtesy good old-fashioned west ern hospitality is being stressed this year by the Travel Information Division of the State Highway Dept., the agency charged with official drum-beating for Oregon's tourist industry. And, the di vision's expanded promotion program for '63 will provide for the conspicuous placement of more color posters, res taurant table cards and booklets all de signed to entice out-of-state visitors to see more of the natural wonders of this state. News media, chambers of commerce and other associations are already being stirred Into action, a full two months in advance of "Oregon Welcome Week," a period in which the '63 tourist season will be launched with special promotions all around the slate. Nothing, it seems, proves the arrival of spring more conclusively than this sowing of seeds intended to produce a bumper crop of folding long green. Nor, might we add, does Oregon have a crop which can be more profitably tended so easily. Members of the British House of Commons won't get a pay raise this year. They will continue to make British law for $4,900 a year, although some perhaps will come to America, take out citizenship papers, and run for the Ore gon Legislature. 4 Reasons Congress Not Responsive to JFK pcating otherwise libelous remarks off the floor, that's just tough. This was very important in the Mc Carthy era. Senator Joe McCarthy said some pretty rough things about a lot of people on the Senate floor. A political ditty sung by a guitar player of the age had the lines, "He's smeared this and smeared that, and libeled dozens more, but he'll never, ever, ever say it off the Senate floor." Mr. Powell's attorneys were right in saying that a legislator should keep his constituents informed of his activities. This he can do in many ways. A news paper report or a television broadcast of something said in Congress carries with it the congressman's congressional privilege. So does the material in the Congressional Record. Many are the op portunities for a congressman to keep his constituents informed. He doesn't need to walk around repeating his state ments off the floor as Joe McCarthy well knew. To extend the Idea of privilege as far as Mr. Powell wants the Supreme Court to extend it would be to create a new class of citizens. These people (legis lators) could say anything they wanted at any time about anybody, just so long as they could hook it some way to their work. Such an interpretation would be an invitation to irresponsibility. It would be unthinkable for the court to fail to draw a firm line between necessary free dom of debate and the kind of license Mr. Powell seeks. Drummond WASHINGTON As Congress lakes off for its Easter re cess, it is evident that President Kennedy's legislative pro gram is thus far moving ahead on no front. Some of his agenda probably, including a tax cut, will be come law, but the outlook is that the White House will get a rather low percentage of what it is asking. This 88th Congress, with more Democrats than its predecessor, seems even less responsive to the President. Why? Why does Mr. Kennedy find himself up against something near to a legislative stunt wall manned overwhelmingly by members of his own party? Why does a President, so obvi ously popular with the country, find his do mestic program so unpopular with the Congress? The reasons, I think, are tnese: i Most of the Democratic members of Con gress least sympathetic to the President's views are in the posts of greatest power because of the seniority method of selecting committee chairmen. The congressional machinery for transacting the public business is fantastically out-of-date and disorganized. Congress would have a very hard time passing a legislative program of its own proposing, let alone the President's. When the government feels it must spend $60 billion a year on defense and space, this priority puts a serious damper on new domestic programs. Kennedy's personal popularity does not mean that his do mestic legislative program has corresponding popularity. In changing and resisting much that the White House is seeking, Congress may well be reflecting voter opinion more faithfully, than the President. While approximately the same voters elect both the Presi dent and the Congress, the majority may well have preferred Kennedy over Nixon not because Kennedy was somewhat to the left of center but despite that fact. The voters could prefer Ken nedy as President but simultaneously wish to choose a Congress as they now have twice done more conservative than Ken nedy. I raise this point to call into question the frequently made assumption that Congress is not being responsive to public opinion when it goes against the White House. There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that the present Congress is a rather faithful mirror of the country. It needs to be borne in mind that when the country narrow ly chose Kennedy over Nixon in 1960, it elected a Congress more Republican and more conservative than it did two years earlier. Most elected presidents carry into office with them a dividend of 30 to 40 additional members of their own party. Kennedy failed to do so. The Democrats lost 22 seats in the House that year. It is true that the Democrats resplcndcntly held their own in congressional scats in the off-year voting last fall. But this achievement obscured the fact that the Democratic Party's share of the popular vote for Congress fell off 3V4 per cent from the previous off-year vote. It simply did not happen to be reflected in a corresponding loss of congressional seats. Thus the 1962 election produced no special mandate for tne President's legislative program and, if anything, tended to show that the go-slow mood of Congress was also the mood of the nation. Congress loiters and lopes along for about two-thirds of the session and then frantically rushes to get down to business. The President will begin to fare somewhat better a little later. Congress is going to be discriminating and, at times, recalci trant. But there is no reason to assume that in dissenting from the President Congress is going against the wishes of the country. The critical issue is the stale of the economy and the need to increase the pace of economic growth by removing tho brake of excessively high tax rates. On this issue it seems to me Ken nedy is profoundly right and there is a better than even chance lhat Congress will agree. C, 1963, New York Herald Tribune lnc.- Bill Vaughan Life's Little Things Count Too Dad-Blamed Much Vaughan The trouble is that a man gets known for one particular thing and ever after why that's what people expect from him. They would yell, "Hey Napoleon, put your hat on sideways," and Winston Churchill has to make the V sign with his fingers whether he wants to or not. The late Ge lett Burgess, who wrote "The Purple Cow" also wrote how weary he became of being asked to recite it. Ray mond Masscy had to turn him self into Doctor Gillespie to get away from the hordes who ex pected him to do Lincoln wher ever he went and peppered him with such remarks in doubtful taste as "If you go to the theater tonight, don't sit in a box." Harry Truman is generally acknowledged to have become fed up with "The Missouri Waltz," which was always clam ored for when he sat down to the piano. And so it goes. A man can ac complish many things in his life time but some little facet of his career sticks in the public mind and he's typed forever. Kven more cruelly, it doesn't even have to be something a man docs well that follows him all his lite. It may be some small error, like running the wrong way in football or failing to touch third base or taking the day's receipts home with him from the store. That's all anybody wanls to talk about when they meet this man. Chances arc he would about a hundred times rather change the subject. Or like once in his life a man mistakes the dog food in the icebox for the leftover hash. For the next 30 years his friends arc going "bow wow" at him or if he encounters strang ers his wife says, "Sam, tell the Hendersons about, you know, the time with the dog food" Wives don't say, "Sam, tell the Hendersons about tho time you rescued the little boy from drowning, or would have if the lifeguard hadn't got there first." No it's always the dog food, and the Hendersons arc there fore entitled to be in the vast circle of acquaintances who go, "bow wow." Another angle on this, there may be something that you are kind of proud of and that while you may not be the best at it you are among the Top Ten. Let's say you can crack your knuckles to the tune of "Yan kee Doodle." Well, that's fine until you get to an age where you've got some distinguished grey at the temples and the whole image is pretty sedate and dignified. Then just as you're telling some lovely lady about the in side story on Viet Nam as you see it, a cry goes up for you to crack your knuckles to the tune of Yankee Doodle. You know, you're secretly pleased that people remember and that they want to hear you crack your knuckles to the tune of Yankee Doodle. But you've done it so many times that you don't really pay attention and as a result you make a little mistake and people say, "Well, he's washed up. I got a 9-year-old nephew can out-knuckle-crack him." And this from the same people who were urging you on and getting other people to come in from the porch and going, "Everybody hold the noise down and listen to this; it's fabulous." Put this down as an indelible fact the guy who is always pushing you to play the zither is the first one to spread it around that you are getting to be a pain in the neck the way you always drag out that tired old zither. All the foregoing comes to mind with the annual call for me to pick the Kansas City Ath letics to win the American League pennant. I had intended to pass it up this year; after all a creative artist must grow. He is not like the sports writer who can go on repeating the same thing year after year. 1 have been persuaded, how ever, that for me to eschew this annual rite would be like Judy Garland leaving "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" out of her repertoire. So, all right, the A's will lake it all this year. It is my ninth straight prediction to this effect. And. as I said above, watch the very people who crowded me into making it be the first to snigger and say what a bore Ihe old gent has become. A Rell-McClure Syndicate Feature t. fwmiimm MF.MHKR Or THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Associated Press Is entlllrd exclusively to tho us for republt cation of all lh local niwl printed In thts newspaper. MEMBER Or 1HF. At'PtT BUREAU Or CIRCULATIONS Services United Press International WILLIAM WASMANN nONN U BONHAM N1 Editor City Edlor Lagging Congress Focuses on Tax Bill From Congressional Quarterly Like John Glenn in his oft delayed 1962 countdown, the 88th Congress seems to be hav ing trouble getting off the launching pad. Whether it will ever orbit re mains to be seen. Early in March, House Demo cratic Whip Hale Boggs (La.) complained that a national magazine had asked him some "loaded" questions that would "give the impression that the President of the United States is completely devoid of leader ship and the impression this Congress has accomplished nothing." Boggs and his col leagues March 6 read off a list of current actions to "set the record straight." If the message traveled across the Capitol, it was quick ly lost. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., mov ing to head off an Easter re cess, reminded his colleagues at the end of March that "the Sen ate has really done nothing in the way of lawmaking this year." The following week the Sen ate passed the President's mass transit bill, but even so 1962 marked the slowest-starting ses sion in recent memory. No one seemed quite sure why. There was a feeling the Republican economy drive had struck fire with the constitu ents, and this was one factor delaying key bills. House mem bers would have a clearer view of voter sentiments after tak ing soundings over Easter. The sheer lateness of the 1962 session could be another factor in the slowness in getting the current one organized (after three months, several commit tees' subcommittees have yet to be named). , President Sees 'Rhythm' President Kennedy is taking a philosophical- view of the situation. At his April 3 press conference he spoke of the "rhythm" of March, when the "story starts to be written about Congress not doing anything." And then in May, the President Sylvia Porter added wryly, "we begin to get some bills to the floor and some are defeated and then there are those stories about presidential leadership." There is some indication the While House itself has played a part in setting the "rhythm" for the new Congress. The pace of early session messages has seemed to fall short of the ur gent tempo of 1961 and 1962. In fact, "nothing ventured, nothing lost" might describe the legislative strategy being employed for some of the Presi dent's more controversial pro posals. He has yet to submit mes sages or draft legislation for creation of an Urban Affairs Department, broadening of the minimum wage law and an over haul of the unemployment com pensation program. The latter would provide stricter federal standards and, in some states, higher taxes on employers. All of these were mentioned in Kennedy's general messages at the opening of the session but have not been heard from since. All are opposed by a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats, and one theory ex tant is that the White House la not anxious to load down its boxscore of 1963 requests and accomplishments with detailed proposals it has little hope of seeing enacted. Tax Bill Emphasized Perhaps more to the point is the President's apparent desire to preserve tranquility on con gressional seas while his tax program is being navigated through. Once that is passed, Capitol Hill and the White House can go back to more traditional bat tles, with plenty of lively issues held in reserve as the 1964 elec tions draw closer. To date, the 88th Congress has delivered five public laws to the President's desk. Several other bills have seen action in one chamber or the other, but a number have not yet reached the hearings stage. A congressional clampdown on members' "junketing" and a Senate investigation of the Pen tagon's award of the TFX fight er plane contract to General Dynamics Corp. have caused more stir than much of the leg islative activity so far. Easter Boxscore on 88th. Congress (As of April 8) Enacted: Draft law extension; Winston Churchill citizen ship, and a minor supplemental farm appropriation bill. Passed by Senate only: Mass transit; Wilderness, Youth Employment bills scheduled. . Passed by House only: Defense procurement authorization; Interior Department appropriation; supplemental appropriation scheduled, including accelerated public works funds. Committee action: Foreign aid; military pay increases; tax reduction and reform; debt ceiling; area redevelopment ex pansion; Mexican farm labor regulation; cotton, feed grains, dairy programs; medical schools; aid to education; equal pay for women; packaging and labeling regulation; drug regulation; mental health aid; land conservation fund; air pollution re search. No action: Civil defense; stock market regulation; unem ployment compensation overhaul; minimum wage revisions; migrant labor aids; Social Security medical care; civil rights legislation; transportation policy changes; aid to airports; billboard control; congressional, executive salary increases; Urban Affairs Department; wiretap laws; District of Columbia home rule. Copyright. 1963, Congressional Quarterly Inc. . Advertising Fires Back at Its Critics Porter ROSS CI JOHNSON Advertising Director JARt, FLT.LK Circulation Wanaccr ROHER1 K. HFR1SIH Promotion W R. JOHNSTON JR. Auditor ARM STROMMER Production In its first recommendations since its creation in 1962, the President's Consumer Advisory Council last month urged fed eral legislation to stiffen con trols over pack aging, labeling and the disclo sure of interest charges on in stallment loans. Before Congress right now arc "truth in lend ing" and "truth i n packaging" bills. Califor nia's Governor Brown has just handed the state legislature 25 separate, tough "consumer protection" bills and dozens of states have formal or informal consumer protection programs. And with mounting fervor tljo various federal reg ulatory agencies are handing down "pro-consumer" rulings guaranteed to raise howls of protest from businessmen. The target of much of this activity is the $12 billion a-ycar U.S. advertising industry which has come in for some severe criticism in recent years. How does the advertising indus try itself react to the blasts about its ethics and quality? Here, from Charles H. Brower, president of Madison Avenue's giant Batten, Barton, Durstinc & Osborn, Inc., are some "re verse twist" views on what's go ing on which arc at the very least refreshing. PORTER: What's your reac tion to the stepped-up drives to protect the consumer? BROWER: What we really need in Washington is a cabinet level department to protect the manufacturer from the con sumer! The consumer is not nearly as defenseless as com mittees may dream. She may be a sweetheart to her husband and a loving mother to her chil dren, but she's a tough shopper in the market place. PORTER: You're not con cerned about more government regulation? BROWER: I don't have any great worry about it and a cer tain amount of government reg ulation is necessary'. However, 1 do wish the government would decide whether it wants to put its foot on the accelerator or the brake where business is concerned. PORTER: What's your view of the quality of advertising to day' BROWER: I'm as proud of the bulk of it as lawyers arc of the bulk of law practice or physicians are of medicine. There arc quarks, of course, there always will be, but on the whole advertising is doing a great job. Unfortunately, if you were to ask the average person what he thought the advertising man thought of him he probably would say, "He thinks I'm stupid." Actually, I don't think advertisers are shooting at a 12-year-old level, but there is too much repetition of TV com mercials in an effort to justify the original cost. People leave a movie when they say "this is where we came in," but with TV commercials, they have to say it 35 times. I don't know the answer to this. It all comes down to an economic question: you have to spend the money to get a good commercial in the first place, and then to amortize the cost you have to keep using the commercial over and over. My fear is not that people will be mad at advertising or march to Washington but that they'll fall asleep not like it or look at it. That would be the worst thing that could happen. PORTER: Can advertising continue to grow at today's pace? Ralph McGill BROWER: It will have to grow faster. We're now pouring two million more people every year into the labor force on top of those currently unemployed. To employ these people, we'll have to stimulate consumption. Our gross national product may reach $1 trillion by 1970. We must have the consumption to match the production and in order to achieve that we must sell. Increasingly, advertising is the only contact a manufacturer has with a consumer who buys his cigarettes in a machine, his groceries at a supermarket. How can any manufacturer talk1 to them except through his ad vertising? I think we're just on th threshold of great new growth, This April's Lilacs Have Bitter Smell in Greenwood McGill in an ecstasy of urge of the WASHINGTON NOTES: Poets have interpreted spring in many moods. Don Marquis, in his eel clcbratcd poem "Methuselah," had the Old Testament codger lift his voice in a paean to a spring in which the big bull oys ter rode the flood of the tide and bellowed for his mate. "Fill me with juniper juice, nurse, and then turn me loose." exulted the Bib lical ancient spring. This goatish month of renewal usually pro duces panty raids on college campuses, and other exuberant evidences that the elfin music of Pan is heard in the ears and felt in the blood. But in this April, though the redbud, dogwood, tulips and flowering trees are as wondrous ly beautiful as ever, the mood of it seems to me more in keep ing with T. S. Eliot's opening lines in "The Waste Land": "April is the crudest monlh, breeding Lilacs out o the dead land, mixing Memory and desirt. stirring Dull roots tilth rain." It is quite true that the dull roots of old wrongs, inequities and injustices are being stirred by the rains of change. The pale-purple lilacs, symbolizing life rising out of the darkness of death, are being bred out of the land. The April mood was of Mis sissippi and perhaps half a dozen other Southern communi ties struggling with memory and desire. They were performing once again the ' preposterous charade in which the actors wear mask-like faces like those In old Japanese dances repre senting hate, passion, vacuity, cruelty, and greed. There was the same old choreography. In it the police strike, pull, shove or throw colored people into pa trol wagons or buses because they have committed the of fense of seeking to vote, eat at a lunch counter or attend a movie without going up an al ley and climbing backstairs to a balcony. The spoken lines are always tho same . . . and have been for more than a century. In many places the crudest month bred the funeral lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire. And on the stage in Greenwood the mummers went through their maneuvers of ar rest and jail. Those with spoken lines said, their faces strained with pent-up fury, that if only the outside agitators would go away things would be all right. ... if only persons like the night club performer, Dick Gregory ("just look at him in that Italian suit, he thinks he's something"), would get out of town and quit stirring up our good colored people who know their place and are happy in it, all would be well. "If only if only" ... the words have a long echo. They come out of the skeletal flutes of men who died at the hands of the abolitionist mobs; out of those dead on the bitter battlefields of the Civil War. . . "if only . . if only . . if only. . ." It is not only lilacs that are bred out of the dead land. Excesses breed excesses. Dick Gregory would not be in Greenwood, Mississippi the outsider-ministers would not b there if the registrars of Greenwood and other Southern areas had not coldly and cal lously denied registration nf qualified voters for i span of almost t century.
