Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (July 29, 1963)
EPSON IN WASHINGTON . . Automation Blamed PACE t HERALD AND NEWS, Klamath Falls, Oregon Monday, July 29, 196 ''You Suppose the Boys on the Hill Will Jump for Joy?" As Rail Culprit ' FBI, Crime And The We have grown so accustomed to annual increases in crime rates that it comes as a mild surprise to learn from the FBI that in 1962 murders showed a 2 per cent decline injnumber from the previous year. ; There seems to be no profound explana tion, other than the fact that police work in this field is extraordinarily good. The FBI, in its annual report, says that over the nation the police cleared up 93 per cent of willful killings in 1962. These include both murder and so-called non-negligent man slaughter. Unhappily, that does not indicate a 93 per cent rate of conviction. Of those cases disposed of by the courts last year, about half resulted in dismissal, acquittal or reduction of the charge. Often it is complained that the courts themselves, through the action of either judg es or jury, are guilty of incredible softness toward the perpetrators of crime serious and minor. The FBI makes no such complaint, what ever it may feel on this score. As a matter of fact, intelligent studies of court performance are sadly lacking. Judge and jury act from a wide variety of motives, only one of which may be an inclination to "take it easy" on the de fendant. The FBI does note that other factors, too, help explain why a big disparity may exist be tween the number of arrests and the number of convictions. (Houston Press) The "Fair Traders" in Congress haven't given up and a hearing on their current bill to fix prices was held at the end of May. :'. This year the legislation is called a "Qual ity Stabilization Bill," for reasons which aren't exactly obvious. But under whatever name, this is a scheme to avoid competition in the retail business, especially drugs, and to soak the consumer a few extra billions. Price-fixing in any form is obnoxious to the American free enterprise system, par WASHINGTON By WASHINGTON STAFF Newspaper Enterprise Assn. ': WASHINGTON (NEA)-ln the Kennedy family, there is a stand ing joke that their double Irish heritage (Kennedy - Fitzgerald! makes the menfolk a little fat around the jnws. The President especially likes to dwell on this. (Not long ago, as a case in point, he sent an inscribed photo graph to his brother. Sen. Ed ward M. (Ted) Kennedy. It is a picture of the two of them on the platform at a Boston Col lege ceremony. j The view of Teddy shows a (harp, distinct bulge on the right fcide of his jaw. The President's icrawled inscription, witli a line Brawn to (lie bulge: ' "Honey Filz" grandson stores nuts for the winter." When Tanganyika's 40-year-old President Mwalimu Julius K. Ny erere was introduced to the Na tional Press Club In Washington, the story was told of his resigning a job as a tenclier in a Catholic school only eight years ago. Ho then walked 25 miles (o his home to begin a new career In poli tics. "But that's nothing," observed Press Club President Bryson Bash. "Wo liavo young men in this country wlio walk 50 miles Just to stay in politics." T Rash also related that Nyer fcre'a first political motto was J'Freedom." Ho changed this lat pr to "Freedom and Work." Ho elaborated this with the slogan: Trent a guest as a guest for two ilays then givo him a hoe." A popular lino since Defense Secretary Bob McNamara came to the Pentagon is, "A good ex ecutive Is a person who goes around with a worried look on his assistant's face." The reasons behind Agriculture Secretary Orvillo Freeman's Russian trip aro somewhat of a mystery to Rep. Bob Dole, R Kan. ; ; Noting that Moscow was Free inan's first stop, Dole points out ijiat if Freeman had a yen to visit Moscow, he could have (rav eled to Moscow, Kan., wilh less difficulty. "Many wheal farmers In that area have questions which must be answered Immediately," he continued, "If he prefers anotlicr Sometimes the police discover they were wrong, and there is no formal charge. When young persons are involved, special local or state laws may dictate leniency. Sometimes, despite police "clearance" of a case, the evi dence proves insufficient for an indictment. And, though this could hardly apply in a mur der case, the victim of a crime often refuses to co-operate in prosecution of the alleged offender. So it is not a simple matters of the police doing a great job in some fields and the courts not doing so. Nevertheless, it is most interesting to note that only half of the "willful killing" cases which reach the courts results in conviction on the original charges of murder or non-negligent manslaughter. The FBI points out that not only in the matter of killing but in other crimes against the person as rape and aggravated assault, dismissal, acquittal or charge reduction is more common than for crimes against prop erty. This seems to indicate a considerable re luctance on the part of the courts to act harsh ly or too swiftly in areas where the penalties may be severe even unto capital punishment. A tendency exists in some quarters to de pict the courts as agencies of brutal retribution eager to speed defendants toward death or a life term. The figures do not support them. Obviously much murder and mayhem is never penalized at all. They Never Sleep ticularly so when it is designed to push prices only one direction up. That has been the definite effect when ever these "Fair Traders" have succeeded in getting states to legalize their plan. Their apparent hope in Congress is to keep at it until attention is distracted by weightier affairs, then get their bill passed by default. Any Congressman concerned with the household, budgets of his constituents is bound to be against it. NOTEBOOK Fat Jaws A Problem slate, he can find a Moscow In Idaho (potutocs), Arkansas (rice), Iowa (corn), Michigan (dairy farms) or Texas (cotton) not to mention the Moscows in Vermont, ' Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maine." Sen. Karl Mundt, R-S.D., tells one on roving Ambassador Avcr cll Harriman, chief of the U.S. delegation to tho test ban talks in Moscow. "At least wo'ro represented by an optimist," Mundt points out. "A roving ambassador hardly stops any place long enough to learn how bad tilings really are!" New security restrictions at the Executive Office Building some times aro exasperating even to top government officials. Visitors must be cleared by whomever they are seeing. Glenn Scaborg, Atomic Energy Commission chairman, late for an appointment recently, was vexed to learn that somebody had forgotten to notify the guards ho was due. Seahorg produced reams of identification to no avail. After BW5 WORLD ' Now would Ukt to propose ipirijf tub-tub-lub-commlttn It mak a it tidy of tbt jinHnit of lb iptchl tub-tub commillet." 1 Courts several lengthy phone conversa tions by a guard, the commission er was given a curt, "You're O.K., Seaborg. You can go on up." A reporter asked the guard if he hadn't recognized the AEC chairman. The guard shook his head, adding in a tired voice, "Buddy, they all look the same when they come through that door." Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver Jr. doesn't operate by (he usual bureaucratic standards Congress has come to expect. At the end of the fiscal year, Shri ver turned back to the Treasury $3.4 million he hadn't spent be cause he's behind on his training program, instead of hurrying up to spend the money before tile appropriation expired. The $108 million Shriver is ask ing for the current year is, he insists, rock bottom. Congress men say to him in effect. "Come on now, Sarge, you know you put some padding in there so we could mako a cut." He shakes his head and insists $I()U million Is his actual need. IN WASHINGTON . . . JFK By RALPH de TOLEDANO The President, if you are ready to accept the word of his offi cial spokesmen, is in "high spir its." He believes that everything is going fine. Much of this happy happy feeling derives from his belief that Comrade Khrushchev is feeding out of his hand. (Others with the same belief have usual ly ended up minus an arm.) On Capitol Hill, however, the gloom is so thick it can be cut with a knife. Democratic leaders in House and Senate say frankly that the present Congress may go down as the most do-nothing in history. In the past, "do-nothing" was a comparative term. But this year, at least in the House, it is almost literally true. In close to seven months, not a single "must" item in the President's program has managed to get it self enacted and the honorable legislators, looking back at some 500 wasted hours on the floor of both chambers, wonder where the time went. Tho leadership is also in a tremendous tizzy over what will happen when the civil rights bills, the tax reform measures, and oth er controversial matters hit the Congressional fan. In the past, there could always be a speed up as the heat and humidity of Washington made a visit to the constituencies seem like a heaven ly escape. But "If summer's here, can adjournment be far behind?" no longer applies. Sen. Joe Clark (D.-Pa.) has been haranguing tho Senate on its inability to pass anything more than 14 of the 102 measures sent up to the Hill by the White House. Only two of those 14 ratification of a coffee agreement and a feed grains bill went beyond the rou tine. The log-jam is so bad that many federal agencies have not had their appropriations approved and so are living in effect on bor rowed time and money. Some Democrats hope that the President can pass off the blame for this notorious inactivity on the Republicans, and that Mr. Ken nedy's two-lo-one preixmderance Almanac By I'nlted Press International Today is Monday, July 29, the 210th day of 1963 with 155 to follow. The moon is approaching its full phase. The morning stars arc Jupiter and Saturn. The evening stars are Saturn and Mars. Those born today include Benito Mussolini, founder cf fascism and a dictator of Italy, in ltua On this day in history: In 1588, Queen Elizabeth I. lear f ill of a Spanish invasion of Eng land, traveled to Tilbury to spur on her troops. In 1734, the first international boxing match took place. The British champion knocked out the French contender. In 1014. a successful telephone conversation between New York and San Francisco heralded the building of the first American transcontinental telephone line. In 1045, an armada of Ameri can bombers dropped 3.500 tons of bombs on six Japanese cities. The bombings follow ed a warning broadcast. Believes 'All Fine' in Congress can be obscured by a steady stream of attacks on GOP "obstructionism." But this tactic has begun to wear thin. It is clear to those who bother to read a newspaper that the Republicans in Congress couldn't pass a resolution in favor of motherhood without the sanction of the Democratic leadership. The GOP vote counts only when a substantial number of Democrats oppose a piece of legislation. The Republicans are hardly to blame and it would be rank in gratitude for the President to be labor the GOP's Senate leader ship. In fact. Senate Republican Whip Thomas Kuchel of California ' is considered a kind of crypto Dcmocrat by many of his col leagues. On the theoretical and practical levels he differs from his opposition in almost noth ing. The Minority Leader, Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, makes anti-administration noises from time to time, but the most chari table thing to be said about him is that he is ineffective. Why, then, the utter torpor in Congress? Senator Clark, who has most of the endearing qualities of a Harold Ickes, blames "antiquated' Congression al procedures. This is nonsense, for Congress can move rapidly and Rayburn Death Proved Bad Blow To Kennedy By LYLE C. WILSON United Press International It is President Kennedy's bad luck that Sam Rayburn died and that it was deemed necessary to put Lyndon B. Johnson on the I960 Democratic presidential tick et to hold the Deep South. "Mr. Sam" and Johnson were congressional leaders who knew how to lead. That cannot be said of the leadership of the 88th Con gress. The Democratic Party en joys majorities in the House and Senate. Democrats chair the committees, occupy the seats of power. The President in tlte White House is a Democrat. With all of that going for the New Frontier, the Kennedy ad ministration is unable to move its legislative program. The U.S. Congress does not function much beyond the routine of convene recess - convene - recess again, more a vegetable than a living organism of government. Leadership Complicated The President has complicated more than simplified the leader ship problems of his legislative agents. For example: There are at this moment before Congress three major Kennedy proposals, each with an A-l priority. They are: tax reduction and re form, civil rights and railroad strike legislation. This is the seventh month of the 88th Congress. All but two of the routine appropriation bills await action. Fewer than half a (Uen major bills of any kind have been enacted in this first seven months. The President re cently reported himself content that he had got the country to moving again. If so. it is time he turned his attention to lite Demo cratic 88th Congress. No economy nor system of gov ernment nor political administra tion can long endure an absolute stagnation of public business. If decisively when it wishes. The answer lies in the kind of lead ership the Congress is getting from the White House. Relations between any Presi dent and the Congress are always a touchy matter. The New Fron tier has aggravated this in two ways: (1) It has pressed much too hard for legislation that had no chance of success. This has cre ated antagonisms that carry over to proposals which could have been pushed through. , (2) The President has relied far too much on Attorney General Kennedy to "win over" recalci trant legislators. Young Bob Ken nedy is hardly a popularity con test winner in the Administration. On the Hill, this is worse be cause there are many who re member him when he was coun sel to the McClellan Labor Rack ets Committee. At the time, one important Senator said to me, "The only time Bobby talks to me is when he shouts orders. But Jack protects him." These per sonal considerations would not matter very much if the Con gress felt any enthusiasm for the President's program. Being reluc tant to start with doesn't help when the blandishments and the arm-twistings begin. Republicans would knock off fighting among themselves long enough to consider the stagnation now prevailing, they might dis cover the delights of lining up to gether to fight the Democrats. Republicans should be the last to forget that a lost and hope less cause produced a political miracle in 1948 when Harry S. Truman directed his presidential campaign exclusively against the Republican 80th Congress. HST called the 80th the worst. On its record so far, HST might want to revise his estimate in favor of the 88th Congress. Session Draws On This session probably will con tinue through Thanksgiving to Christmas. President Kennedy made an effective I960 campaign complaint that President Eisen hower had failed to provide the nation with leadership. That in vites attention now to the situation in Congress where the Democratic leadership does not lead and the Democratic majori ties reject the leadership of Pres ident Kennedy. This situation, of course, will change considerably in tlie final weeks of this session. Then there will be a hurricane of legislative activity. Congress will be on a day-and evening scheduled to en act vital legislation. This will be accomplished by short cuts, half baked debate and consideration. Emerging is likely to be a great deal of ill-considered legislation. That is the environment, for example, in which the Senate probably will be compelled to consider the test ban treaty. The sossion-end legislative traffic jam will not permit time for intelli gent consideration of a test ban treaty although tlie fate of the human race may be written be tween the lines of that document. Too bad Lyndon and Mr. Sam can't lake over again. By PETER, EDSON Washington Correspondent Newspaper Enterprise Assn. WASHINGTON NEA For the long haul, the most important part of President Kennedy's spe cial message to Congress on the railroad crisis may be his pro posal for handling all technologi cal unemployment. This would make "automation" the key word in the rail dispute. It would replace "featherbed ding" and "compulsory arbitra tion" as the catch phrases nam ing the issue up to now. The President's proposal to turn the case over to the Interstate Commerce Commission may or may not be accepted by Congress. If Congress does pass the pro posed joint resolution before July 29, and if the ICC can then im pose temporary work rules, the trains will be kept running fur at least two years. The hope is that in this period the railroad employers and their on-train employes will settle their differences by collective bargain ing. But they already have bar gained unsuccessfully pn the work rules issue for four years. Since the dispute is bound to get worse instead of better, there is little reason to believe it will be solved permanently by tem porary measures. If it is not solved, then the whole rigamarole will have to be gone through again under Rail way Labor Act and National Me diation Board proceedings. So, for the long-range solution, the President proposes tackling all the complicated problems of automation the displacement of workers by labor-saving technolo gical advances. He falls back on the old stand by gimmick of bureaucracy. He will appoint a committee to study the problem. This one will be called the Presidential Commis sion on Automation. Its job will be to identify and describe the major types of work er displacement likely to occur in the next 10 years. It will rec ommend just what private busi ness and organized labor should be responsible for in solving the problems caused by automation. It will recommend what state and local governments should be re sponsible for. And then finally you guessed it it will recommend specific ad ministrative steps which the fed eral government should .take to WASHINGTON REPORT . Popularity Rating . Looms For Kennedy By FULTON LEWIS JB. President Kennedy, admittedly fearful that his popularity has badly slipped in recent months, will get his first real clue with in 48 hours. Voters in Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District will go pollward Tuesday to elect a suc cessor to tlie late Francis Wal ter, the revered Democrat who won 16 straight terms in the House. Despite tlie fact that Walter won re-election easily last fall. Republicans feel they have an excellent chance of victory. The 15th is a "swing" district. While Walter picked op 57 per cent of the vote last November, Republi can Bill Scranton carried the district in his successful race for the governorship. Also carrying the 15th was Democrat Joe Clark, who won re-election to the Sen ate. The GOP candidate is Bob Bart- lett was nominated in a district and civic leader making his first run for public office. A good-looking graduate of West Point, Bart ielt was nominated ina district wide convention attended by Re publican workers from each of the district's four counties. Local Democrats had little to say about the man who now bears their standard. He 'is State Sen. Fred Rooney, handpieked by Philadelphia boss Bill Green for tlie race. Rooney's nomination was approved as routine business by members of the Democratic State Committee, meeting behind closed doors in Harrisburg, 90 miles from Uie district. Boss Green, a Congressman himself, is apparently trying to regain the vote he lost in Pennsyl vania's Democratic delegation when the legislature reapportioned one of his Congressmen out of a job. Democrat Rooney has pledged himself to support of the Ad ministration program. He repeat edly boasts that President Ken nedy has endorsed his candidacy. Republican Bartlett has made foreign policy a major issue. He has ripped the Administration for what he calls its do-nothing poli cy in Cuba. Laos, and South Viet nam. Deploring the disintegration of NATO, Bartlett savs. "Nations meet its responsibilities "to share tlie costs and alleviate the losses of automation job-displacement." All this is to be done "in such a way as to assure both the con tinued advance of our technology and the continued well-being of our people." The Presidential Commission on Automation will have until the end of 1964 to study and report. Tlie effect is to sweep the whole problem under the table till after election. Nobody knows yet who will be on live commission or what it will find to report, but the indicated course is to set up another fed eral government welfare pro gram. Surplus people those displaced by automation would be handled something like surplus crops. They would be kept at govern ment expense until they can be reprocessed or retrained so some body can find some use for them. The extent to which the govern ment would bear the costs of technological displacement for both management and labor is spelled out In an earlier para graph of the President's message. There are no dollar figures men tioned, but the total would be millions. "The nation as a whole, which shares in the benefits, also would bear part of the burden imposed by advancing railroad technolo gy," says the President. To the extent that retraining benefits are now available to rail way workers under the Manpow er Development and Training Act of 1962, the carriers would be re lieved of this obligation, the mes sage points out. Under the proposal submitted by the carriers to their on - train employes, the employers them selves offer to give displaced workers substantial dismissal pay, preferential rehiring rights, or liberal allowances to retrain for new skills. But now the government seems to be preparing to relieve rail way management of these costs, while promoting more automa tion. "The unfairness of placing the entire burden of readjustment costs upon either the carriers or the workers is an additional rea son why legislation is particularly appropriate in this case," says the President, This legislation has not yet been " drafted to apply to the railroads, but look out for it when it comes. will follow us and people will respect us only when we begin to act like a leader," Rooney's lieutenants, who in clude 30 high-priced union "stra tegists" brought in from out side the district, have attempted to smear Bartlett, a moderate conservative, as a "right-wing extremist." As proof, they point to an article favorable to the GOP candidate carried in Hu man Events, the leading anti Communist Washington weekly. Exclaimed one Rooney backer over Radio Station WAEB in Al lentown: "Human Events Is de scribed by every political col umnist and analyst in the coun try as being to the right of the John Birch Society." The statement is absurd. And nobody would have known that better than "Tad" Walter, who himself wrote for Human Events. A long-time subscriber, this is what Congressman Walter said about the publication that Roo ney's men now claim is to the "right of the John Birch Society": "I look forward each week to Human Events' timely and inci sive presentation of the news. In m; capacity as chairman of the House Committee on Un American Activities, I particular ly appreciate its courageous op position to the threat presented by tlie Communists and their al lies." Rooney's aides have charged that Human Events is bank rolled by oil millionaire H, L. Hunt, whom they call a "notori ous radical rightist." Hunt has contributed no funds to Human Events, save $9 a year for his subscription. Other sub scribers include Sens. Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield and Claire Engle, all key Administra tion supporters. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q Which of our statei in known as commonwealths? A Massachusetts, Pennsyl vania, Kentucky and Virginia. Puerto Rico was made a free commonwealth associated with the United Slates in 1952.
