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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (July 16, 1963)
PAGE HERALD AND NEWS, Klamath Falls, Oregon Tuesday, July 16, 1963 EPSON IN WASHINGTON . . . Asks Strict Auditing Of Spending By House Who'd You Ever Lick?" dit&iiaL (paqjL Businessmen And Politics Looking for some businessmen to fill cabinet posts, William Scranton, Pennsyl vania's new Republican governor, ran into a disturbing situation. Most of those he contacted were either on the verge of retiring and wanted to take life easy or were in their early forties a prime competitive period of business life and had no desire to enter government. When he finally got about 22 businessmen who seemed possible cabinet members, Scranton was shocked to discover that 11 had not voted in the primary, eight had not voted in the general election and six had not voted for president in 1960. Said Scranton recently: "It seems to me that the American business community in considering the future of the free enterprise system might profitably investigate the polit ical and governmental awareness of its own members. Dormant Threat (St. Louis Globe Democrat) Lying in a pigeonhole in the House Ways and Means Committee is a political time bomb set for election year 1964. It is John Kennedy's pitch to the millions known as "senior citizens." . , . The Kennedy program is built on a foun dation of a reconstructed King-Anderson bill, which was defeated last year. The new ver sion would cost $5,000,000,000 in the first five years and be financed under Social Se curity. :' Americans, generous by nature, might go along with using tax money to help des titutes unable to care for themselves. But a good look at the measure will show that "med icare" Is not that, but a socialistic hoax. First, the bill ignores the four out of five cases that could be treated at home, since it makes no provision for doctors' visits. Here is a blanket invitation for every aging man or woman to go right down and check into the hospital as soon as the leg or back starts acting up. It tempts the young American to put his responsibility for his elders on the state. : This would mean hospitals inundated with patients and freeloaders, as well as over worked hospital staffs. More funds, more hospitals would be needed. And there would be the costly mountains of paperwork, normal outgrowth of the massive Federal bureaucra cy required to administer any such Federal plan. The answer offered by the President is far too drastic. It is like using a flamethrower to rid the house of termites. True, there are people over 65 without hospital insurance who cannot take care of themselves. But they are a minority. In 1952, some 26 per cent of those 65 and over had hospital insurance; now it is 52 per cent and the figure is growing. In 1952, some 61 per cent of those under 65 years of age had the health insurance; today the fi gure is 77 per cent. . . . Many states are moving to adopt the Kerr-Mills proposal which provides wide medi cal aid to those who need it and can't reason ably pay. Why should every American be subjected to a socialistic solution to a problem which is already solving itself? Why, indeed, do its sponsors refuse to allow participation in the plan by privata in surance firms? . . . The only answer can be the American government is trying to convince us that without Federal intervention Americans would not provide for their future but would squander their substance foolishly. Thus more and more is taken from a man's paycheck and less and less does he spend himself. The Higher, The Funnier (The Christian Science Monitor) Rep. Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has introduced a bill to levy social security taxes on personal earnings up to $5,400 a year instead of the present ceiling of $4,800. Efforts of Kennedy administration spokesmen to relate this to their proposal for hospital care for the aged are slightly amusing. The chairman's bill, they pretend, will improve the outlook for adding their propo sition to social security. They are whistling to keep up their courage. It will have the op posite effect if its significance is at all under stood. The hospital care or "medicare" bill could benefit only if the increase recommended by Mr. Mills were to be used to help finance hospital care for the aged. But the revenue from it is already more than earmarked. The trustees of the social security trust fund reported a few months ago an indicated long-range income deficiency for the fund of about 3 per cent. This situation is due in part to the addition a few years ago of pay ments for disability besides the original old age insurance. The Mills bill proposes to cover only half of the 3 per cent deficiency, leav ing a prospect that the trust fund will run into the red even without "medicare." Is this an argument for adding hospital care for the aged to the cost of social security? The social security payroll tax now is 7V4 per cent on employe and employer together, scheduled to rise to 9V4 per cent in 1968. The "medicare" system would add at least one fourth of one per cent at the outset, probably a great deal more in the long run. HOLMES ALEXANDER . . Latin America Prelude By HOLMES ALEXANDER WASHINGTON, D. C. If Con gress ever "goes home," this re porter hopes to mkc a tour of Latin America. While he's there, of eourse, and when lie returns, he'll be omniscient on Latino af fairs. Meanwhile, what's wrong with some becoming Ignorance? So, as a welcome respite from the race issue, he rocs around Washing ton and tries to find out from resident experts what the hassle down there is all aixiut. He sorts the anecdotes from his notebook: "See!" says a Communist in Guatemala City as an air-conditioned car plies between the air conditioned office and tlie air conditioned apartment w hich house American officials, "they don't even breath Hie same air that wo do." "No, I'm 'batching' It," says a German traveling salesman in Central America. "The Adenauer chancellory won't let my wife out of the country till she perfects her Spanish. I work for a private diescl oil firm, but my government has the idea that every German in Latin America, man, woman and child, is a representative of the Federal Republic." "I,et'! got down to business right away," snys the American salesman to tlie Chilean execu tive, who has been bred to enjoy long, pleasant conversations and slow-growing friendships. "I've got to catch that three o'clock plane." "Why waste my time?" snaps an American official of the Alli ance For Progress to a vice pres ident of a U. S. manufacturing firm which may Invest some of its own money in Latin Ameri ca. "You've Rot to come in here with a specific plan before c can talk." "You ask if we have democracy here." says a Nicaraguan oflicial in answer to an American news man. "Well, you have one kind of democracy in Massachusetts and another in Mississippi: one kind in California and another in Ala bama. Yes, we have our kind." "Thero are as many kinds of Communism as thero are of dem ocracy," says a young Dominican construction engineer. "All the Latin American leaders were Marxists in their voutii. Any suc cessful govemm.'nt in 1-atin America has got to be at least socialist." The reporter doing a cram course on Latin American af fairs remembers such succinct, hearl-of-thc-matter statements. It is the same when he turns to reading "I-was-therc" reorts. A "Saturday Evening Post" article makes him suddenly understand why Latinos react with hatred toward neon signs advertising American made goods, even though the Gringo firms bring money and creature comforts to the "other" Americans. Those bla tant commercials offend the La tino's "virilidad" his man hood. How vivid a revelation! Tlic cramming reporter asks a Latin friend for some other word that is crucial to our success in Latin America, and the friend says "simpatia" sympathy. But that, of course, is an inborn quality. It cannot tic suddenly acquired, much less alfected. "No." lie is told. "In Latin America we still think of Mr. Kennedy as trying to build him self into a beloved ex-President. Always the image never the action." Well, you don't become an cx ort on Liit in America hy inter viewing and reading in Washing ton. There is no substitute for spent shoo leather. Hut you begin to gauge tlie dimensions of your your un ignorance by the di mensions of the problem. You can lie a little less impatient with the statesmen who still haven't checked all the answers, ironed out all the wrinkles, stamod out all the Communists, ruked in one hundred cents fur every dollar expended there. You haven't found anybody yet who knows how we're going to "win" in Latin America, or any body who Isn't positively certain that we cannot aflord to lose. , I ft IN WASHINGTON Goldwater's Real Record By RALPH de TOLEDA.NO A new and systematic campaign to tar and feather the "draft Goldwater" movement is in the making. The means being used are these: Senator Goldwater's only chance to win the nomination and be elected comes from his strength in the South. If the Republican Party seeks to take the South ern vote away from the Demo crats, the GOP will have to be come "lily white." In fact, Mr. Goldwater is turning the GOP into the "white man's party." Those who propose these argu ments are very careful to tlis-' claim any malign intent. They have not yet really tried to pin tlie anti-Negro label on Mr. Gold water. But the insistence that he is converting tlie "party of Lin coln" into a Dixiecrat grouping can only lead to false and vicious assumptions. Barry Goldwater is not anti Negro and the Southerners who support him are for tlie most part citizens who are far more in terested in tlie economic problems created by the New Frontier and tlie steady decline of American power abroad. I am not author ized to speak for Senator Gold water, but I do have his record on civil rights and it is one that any American would be proud of. This is not hyperbole. The men and women of the South with whom I have spoken do not wish to persecute the Negro. They agree that Negro rights should be respected. But they do not want the federal government holding a pistol to their heads. Nor do they want to see the civil rights issue destroy the constitutional fabric o! tlie nation. Long before the Su preme Court decision, many Southerners were working to raise tlie Negro standard of living and to open doors to the colored people. Interestingly, the Supreme Court's 1954 school decision did more to set back Negro-white re lations in tlie South than any sin gle event since tlie Reconstruc tion. Senator Goldwater has long be lieved in voluntary action and cooperation rather than bayonets and court orders. He believes in this even though the Negro vote in Arizona is negligible 13,400 in . a population of almost 1.3 mil lion. When he got out of tlie Air Force in 1946. Mr. Goldwater took a reduction in rank in order to organize the Arizona Air National Guard. As executive officer, he established the first integrated National Guard of the postwar era. He did not do it to win votes STRICTLY PERSONAL By SYDNEY J. HARRIS "To do tlie opposite," re marked a German wit two cen turies ago, "is also a form of imi tation." 1 was reminded of this com ment at a college recently, when 1 was approached by an angry young student writer with a sheaf of manuscripts. He asked me to look through and evaluate h i s work. As kindly as possible, I tried to point out to him tliat every thing he sliowed me was written in (lie spirit of contradiction. And contradiction, which seems to be independence, is always a form of subservience. He was puzzled by this seem ing paradox. Yet it is absolutely true that the writer or thinker whose aim is to be "unlike oth ers" is really getting his cue from tliem: He lets popularity decide which attitude he will take and to be always against tlie popular is as much an enslave ment as to be always with tlie Hpular. Aristotle said that both the master and the slave are tied to different ends of the same chain mid so it is with t h e Almanac Ry lulled Press International Today is Tuesday, July 16, tlie 197th day of 1963 with 168 to follow. The moon is approaching its new phase. The morning stars arc Jupiter and Saturn. The evening star is Mats. On this day in history: In l?.K), Congress eslablislicd the District of Columbia on the Potomac. chronic contradictor: Mass taste determines what he will be against, and he cannot be ori ginal because he is only react ing to other people. What lie mis takes for his "independence" is really a great dependence on so ciety. Somewhere in his fine book of rcllcctions, published more than 30 years ago, "Life and the Stu dent," Charles Horton Cooley observes "It is the mark of a rarely stable mind that antagon ism cannot drive it to extremes." The angry young writer, an tagonized by what he conceives as the stupidity or hypocrisy or apathy of the social order around him, is driven to the extreme of contradicting everything, of dis agreeing with all w hich makes his position as ridiculous as lli.it of tlie most placid conformist. Any philosophy based on a nega tive, on being tlie opposite, has given up its essential freedom. Real changes are effected in society not by tltc eontradictors and opposers, but by those who arc able to synthesize what is best out of the old and the new. A revolution that simply turns over tlie past is doomed to make tlie same terrible mistakes, only in an upside - down position, i And what was uniquely remark able about the American Revolu tion was its willingness to re tain the positive aspects of Eng lish common law and merely modify tlie traditions it broke with politically.) Mo.-t of us define ourselves by what we arc against tlie banker no less than tlie beatnik. And thus we are, in a way. the cap tives of our antagonists. Only great men arc truly free, for they alone define themselves hy eternal standards, and not hy social ones. or to irritate his neighbors. He neither won nor lost votes from it. As a member of the Phoenix City Council, Mr. Goldwater took the lead in bringing about the desegregation of the restaurant at the municipal airport. He was also able to help desegregate Ari zona theaters. He and his fellow Phoenicians did not exercise com pulsion. They were acting with a states' rights framework to do what they felt had to be done. The Goldwater department stores have practiced no discrim ination in hiring as far back as any company official can remem berwhich is about 26 years. All employes eat in the same cafe teria whether they are wliitc, Ne gro, or Indian (also the target of discrimination in the Southwest). Senator Goldwater's sincerity is being assailed because he refused to implement integration by force. Criticism is mounting because he will not vote to end Senate debate if tlie "public accommodations" bill comes up. But like many Sen ators, both Democratic and Re publican, Northern and Southern, he feels that using the "interstate commerce clause" of the Consti tution as a device to open pub lic accommodations to the Negro is a dangerous precedent which can allow the federal government to interfere in every activity of every citizen right down to the shoeshine boy Cloture remains the only way to prevent passage of a measure whose implications can live to plague us particu larly since the Fourteenth Amend ment offers abundant groundwork. I suspect, though I have no way of knowing, that if Senator Goldwater were pressed to the wall, he might justify his posi tion on current civil rights meas ures by noting that all the free dom in the world will avail us naught if the country is pulverized by a bomb as a result of faulty foreign policies. In any case, the proponents of civil rights can argue with Sena tor Goldwater's way of solving the problem. But they cannot ac cuse him of being indifferent to it or in any way anti-Negro. The implication that he is, now being carefully nurtured, can backfire badlv. By PETER EDSON Washington Correspondent Newspaper Enterprise Assn. WASHINGTON (NEAI-A pro posal by Rep. Oliver P. Bolton, R-Ohio, to let U.S. Comptroller General Joseph Campbell and the General Accounting Office which he heads audit the accounts of ail House committees and Archi tect of the Capitol J. George Stewart is something new in Washington. No one has ever had the cour age to suggest that before. But in view of all this year's agitation for congressional reform and re organization, it has possibilities. There has been a lot of crab bing at Congress this session for loose handling of the taxpayers' money. First it was for little . things like spending half a mil lion dollars of the Treasury's for eign funds on expense accounts for overseas junkets. Then it got into big money to finish the $70 million third House office build ing, complete with swimming pool. A plan to build a two-deck un derground garage for the con gressmen at a cost of $8 million has been sidetracked, but it will be back. It was all this tomfoolery which gave young Bolton his idea for having a closer check of con gressional spending. The General Accounting Office is, of course, the watchdog of Congress. Last year Campbell sent Con gress over 800 audits after in vestigating charges of waste and inefficiency in agencies of the executive branch of government. This resulted in savings of over $160 million. Incidentally, this is almost as much as it costs to run Congress $140 million for the House and $28 million for the Senate in the new fiscal year that began July 1. This is an increase of $22 mil lion over last year. On request, GAO in the past has audited some of the rou tine housekeeping accounts of the Capitol the restaurants, barber shops, custodial and police serv ices. These reports have been sent to the clerk of the House or tlie Secretary of the Senate. But they have never been made public. And congressional com mittee financial reports have been approved only by chairmen. To get all this out in the open, Bolton went to the General Ac counting Office for help. GAO's general counsel Robert F. Keller gave informal guidance on how to proceed in drafting the bill, without taking any position on its merits or demerits. The bill has now been referred to House Government Operations Committee under Chairman Wil liam L. Dawson, D-Ill. i On request from this commit tee, says Campbell, GAO will re view how tlie legislation would operate and its costs. Preliminary estimates are that an audit of House committees and Capitol architect's office ac counts would require the full-time services of only one or two auditors. The cost would be $10,- 000 to $15,000 a year, plus the cost of printing public reports, which would be several thousand more. Bolton's bill would grant to the comptroller general "the right and privilege to audit all public accounts of the House of Rep resentatives, as well as all ex penditures of the Capitol archi tect." The Senate is excluded from this bill because one house of Con gress never legislates on the oth er. But the assumption is that if House accounts are put under General Accounting Office audit, the Senate would follow suit. "Enactment of this bill," Bol ton believes, "would grant to the entire press corps facts which are now held confidential. An open accounting would help re establish public trust and confi dence in Congress." Bolton also has under study a proposal to establish a congres sional Committee gn Ethics. It would be patterned after the American Bar Association Com mittee on Ethics which has done much to raise standards of the legal profession. WASHINGTON REPORT . . . Foreign-Aid Program Is Three-Ring Circus By FULTON LEWIS JR. Midway through the campaign that was to carry him up Penn sylvania Avenue to the White House, Jolui Fitzgerald Kennedy aimed some of his most bitter salvos not at Richard Nixon but big-city slums, instead. To be sure, Nixon was the scapegoat. He had voted against urban renewal. He had opposed in 1949 the National Housing Act and in 1952 had sponsored an amendment to end public housing in Los Angeles. Slums, declared candidate Ken nedy, were the shame of the na tion. Forty million Americans, he continued, were forced to live in sub-standard housing. There was the financial cost of slums: crime, delinquency and disease. And the "social cost: For mil lions of children, the slums are an asphalt jungle, a mockery of the American way of life." He pledged an end to all of this. He proposed a five-point, 10 year plan that would turn slums into parks and punks into gentle men. Soon after his election, the Pres ident asked for and got increased appropriations for urban renewal. A press release, dated June 25, explains one of the more ingeni ous programs of the Urban Re newal Administration: A $900,000 attempt to turn the deserted marshlands of southeast New Jersey into a sta'e park and BERRY'S WORLD "Tber gatt tb tongrtuioiul watchdog commitltc'.' "wild bird refuge." The area is represented in Congress by Rep. Milton Glenn (R.), who is unable to fathom how or why it can qualify for federal funds under the urban renewal program. There are no residents in tlie "urban" area Washington wants to "renew." There is nothing but sandhills, and Indiana grass and sea gulls, according to Rep. Glenn. The gift of Federal money is deplored by municipal officers of Ocean City, N.J., as the funds will be used to acquire private property, taking tax ratables from the city. There is no need for a Stale Park, says the Congressman, w ho points to 14 seashore resorts in the immediate vicinity. Their ex istence, he continues, is now threatened by a State Park-financed by federal funds that no body, save some faceless bureau crats, seems to want. As for the "wild bird refuge," Rep. Glenn says it is a flagrant misuse of the taxpayer's dough: "Personally, I have nothing" against birds. Yct-at the risk of ' being accused of discriminating against our feathered fricnds-l maintain that when our federal government starts using urban re newal money to develop bird ref uses at a lime when American citizens are living in slum condi tions, such muddled governmental thinking is strictly for the birds." Ever wonder why the Adminis tration needs more than $4 bil lion to run its foreign aid shop? Consider tlie following, uncovered by Delaware Sen. John J. Wil liams. 1. Washington buys from a Brit ish firm 47 pieces of radar equip ment at a total cost of $2,156,679. 2. Washington then discovers it has no need for tlie stuff and asks tlie British firm, Cossor Radar Electronics, Ltd., to buy it back. 3. After considerable haggling, the British agree to purchase the goods as surplus for $114,500. 4. Cossor Radar promptly turns around and sells the equipment which is still in its original pack ing crates to the Portuguese gov ernment. 3. The Portuguese, using IS foreign aid funds, pay the Brit ish $493,500. The equipment ' is then shipped to Portugal at US expense marked "Free Issue." Republicans will make an all out effort to capture the Senate seat of Democrat Edmund Mus kie. one-time boy-wonder of Maine politics. Likely GOP candidate is seven-term Congressman Clifford Mclntire. -TVs "",
