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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 1963)
PACE- HERALD AND NEWS, Klamath Falls, Oregon Sunday, October 27, 1MB J)E 0LQBAL VI EW . . How Many On The Payroll? How many public relations officers are now on the federal payroll? There are thou sands of them, but nobody knows the cor rect figure. What is their function, and how much are they costing the taxpayers in sal ary? This, too, is unknown to the public, which pays the bills. Rep. John E. Moss of California, who has been invaluable over the years as a needier of federal bureaucrats especially in the sphere of freedom of information has decided to try to find the answers to these questions. As chairman of the House government information subcommittee, Congressman Moss has sent a questionnaire to all federal departments, asking for com plete information on their public relations staffs. He also wants to know which em ployes are performing P. R. 0. functions although listed in some other capacity. A certain number of P.R.O.'s in gov-' eminent work are, of course, essential. Gov ernment departments have become so vast and so complex that employes equipped to interpret their activities accurately for the press and public are essential. But there is too much concentration by these functionaires on creating a favorable "image" of their bosses or their depart ments. Slanting or distorting the facts to such ends should be stopped. During the halcyon days of prohibition, this country was overrun with "dry" agents. The late U.S. Sen. "Jim" Reed of Missouri, who was not one of prohibition's elect, declared that the agents "swarm over the land like the lice of Egypt." This pungent simile is hardly justified in the case of today's P.R.O.'s, but there are altogether too many of them on the federal payroll. An unofficial count last spring put the total at 2,500 not counting the army around the White House with annual salar ies totaling 15 million dollars. Mr. Moss and his subcommittee are rendering a real serv ice by digging out the facts as to this. The job has been long overdue. Hoffa Flexes Muscles If President James R. Hoffa of the Inter national Brotherhood of Teamsters gets his way, virtually all of the nation's truck driv ers will be working under the terms of a single, nationwide contract before long. The rather chilling implications of such an ar rangement are of enormous importance. The first gun in Hoffa's campaign will be fired in November when he sits down with an employer bargaining team that will represent most of the major trucking firms, jhis is anjiinovation, and one that is in a sense a rffc step toward making Hoffa's goal a reality. Negotiation with industry wide representatives is a necessary prelude to achieving industrywide basic contracts. It does not follow that the employers will necessarily bow to Hoffa's union de mands. Various strategic moves in opposi tion to industrywide contracts are open to them. But this is something the Teamster boss has been planning and talking about for a long time, and he will bring to bear all the pressure he can muster. The Teamsters' move is of deep na tional concern. National contracts might force some small truckers out of business. More importantly, such contracts should give Hoffa more power over the nation's economy than any other man in organized labor. This development is one for the pub lic, and especially Congress, to watch with care. WASHINGTON CALLING Ry MAROU1S CIIILDS NEW ORLEANS To realize how deeply commuted the gov ernment is to the manned Jour ney to the moon you have only to lake a look at (lie Michoud op eration of Ihe National Aeronau tics and Space Administration here. It is a world so complex, so highly technical, that Ihe ordi nary individual is bewildered. Millions of miles of wiring, thousands upon thousands of Vidvcs and compressors go into an engine that must function with timing measured in thousandths of a second while burning liquid hydrogen and ox ygen at an incredible rate per minute. To take a great cylinder some what less Hum half the size of Ihe Empire State Building, stuff it with machines of n complex ity undreamed of a decade ago, put three men aboard and shoot it into outer space that is the Uisk currently caling on the best technical brains and skill of men all over the country. To ask whether this is a task worth so much brainpower and so many billions of dollars is lo raise a fundamental question of national purpose and will. In May, l'.Kit, President Ken nedy called for a manned lunar landing by 1970. When Congress and the country seemed to ac cept this goal, the vast enter prise went forward. 11 calls for construction costs alone of $.10 billion. While Michoud, where Stage One of the current Saturn I and later the lunar Sat urn V are being constructed, is big, it is dwarfed by Ihe struc ture at Cape Canaveral to house Saturn V before t h e launch. That building will hold the Capitol in Washington. In cluding the dome and Ihe wings willioiit any trouble, and the door lo let the rocket out is 47 stories high. Currently in Congress and the country questions are being raised about llie 1970 goal. The House cut $012,000 out of NASA's budgetary request foe the cur rent fiscal year, suggesting the familiar threat of Ihe stop-and start uncertainty of the annual appropriation system. Applied lo so vast a project which already lias such a large momentum the result could be confusion worse compounded and a cost even greater than the estimated $30 billion. Top NASA officials say that their best guess is that the So viets will make a soft unmanned instrument landinK on the moon before tlie year's end. The tele vision pictures this advice sends . 3 back to the Russian space center will make sensational news around the world. This puts the question of na tional purpose in even sharper perspective. Will we react to the new Soviet challenge with a de mand for more speed? Or will we take the Soviet success of instrument exploration as proof lhat manned landing is unneces sary and unwise'.' No one, il may be added, expects anything to come of Ihe President's sug gestion in his United Nations speech for joint Soviet-U.S. ex ploration. These questions do not con cern the men directing Ihe 'Mi choud operation, which is be ing carried out in the reconvert ed wartime Wiggins Industries Building. They are immediately absorbed in their job and for the visitor from stagnant, dilatory Washington it is a relief lo see an operation going swiftly for ward. In llie tangled interior of a nearly completed Saturn l's first stage you see three or (our men working on what looks to be a giant electrical octopus. They are working from engineer ing drawings which come in mil lions bom the Marshall Space Flight Center at lluntsville, Ala. Coder NASA supervision Chrysler is doing the Saturn 1 work and Hoeing lhat for Sat urn V. The latter is still large ly in the construction stage. A 20-story glass enclosed cube is going up for the first tests of Saturn V's Stage One engine, as well as extensive new assembly space. By mid-I9M Michoud will have a peak payroll of 10,000 and will probably be the largest single employer in Louisiana. The statistics reeled off by the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce show what an impact this is having on the area, including an increase in personal income of $71,000.1100 a year. Members of Congress from other areas seeing these fat con tracts go lo New Orleans an even fatter share to Houston, Tex.. arc filled with envy. Weren't there Klitical consider ations dictating this choice? Why not South Dakota or Mich igan or Iowa? NASA Adminis trator .lames A. Webb's expla nation is that since Hie engines are loo big to move by any form of land transportation the water routes linking lluntsville. Mi choud, the nearby test center in Mississippi, anil Houston are all important. It is hard to imagine this project sloped or slowed dow n. The machines might be put in mothballs. Hut the men who had been brought here from all over the country and given intensive special training could not be kept in storage, and they are tlie vital key to success. 'Reports Of My Political Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated' Brazil Is Considered Prize By Communists BRAZIL PARAIBA NATAltu-' JOAO PESSOA RECIFE " ALAGOAS VOA VISTA f - ... ' . Y AMAPA S V. MACAPA fcSJ- ' W7Amo',, "MVulS ' ,0 GRANDE V FORTALEZA no NORTE GROSSO I rtKNAMBUCOl ""-tlO I GOIAS I SALVADOR jA8ACAJU , J J BAHIA f ISftfGff'f I 1 CUIAIA r' . MINAS --n ; a J BRASILIA j DO -l j I C J GCRAIS j I 8ELO rZlSPIRITO HORIZONTE 71 SANTO PARANA U-XI rotTO i7rorianopcli$ I ' OwALECkE RIO DE JANEIRO RIO GRANDE DO SUL 1 gwflmop I. BRAZIL'S RICH, beautiful country, bordering on all but two of its South American neighbors, is the true' heartland of South America. WILLIAM S. WHITE GOP Struggle Destructive By WILLIAM S. WHITE WASHINGTON A three-sided Presidential campaign is al ready going on, more than a year in advance of tlie election of November, 1964. in tlie hap piest of all possible circum stances for the incumbent, John F. Kennedy. Only he can relax at this point. The other two, Gov. Nel son Rockefeller of New York and Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, are involved in tlie most urgent contest to come at so early a date in half a cen tury of White House politicking. The first purpose of any na tional politician is to divide his antagonists and thus to rule. President Kennedy, however, is the beneficiary of such a divi sion without having had to lift a hand to create it. This is be ing done for him by Governor Rockefeller. Rockefeller's at tack s on Goldwater have be come incomparably more bitter than any from the Democratic side and incomparably more effective than any from that side could possibly be. When Rockefeller charges that Goldwater's foreign policy views could mean a "disaster for the future of freedom" he not only goes much farther than Mr. Kennedy himself would be prepared to go. He also lifts from the President the w hole burden of taking those early and precautionary steps against Goldwater which otherwise he would have to take. In a word, the situation permits the Presi dent wholly to reserve his own strategy while Republican lights Republican. This, a destructive internal GOP struggle, is precisely tlie tiling which above all others Goldwater has been trying to avoid aware, as he is. that his is essentially a minority party and can far less afford family sniping than can the Democrats. ' This is the meaning of his per sistent refusals to engage Rocke feller in intraparty public debat ing from which Ihe sole unques tionable gainer would tie the op position Democrats. It is all these circumstances and not some Kennedy notion that Goldwater would necessar ily be a soft touch that arc leading many observers to sup pose that the President is active ly hoping for Goldwater's nom ination. Hut the truth is much more complicated. Tlie President has not in fact selected, even in private among his intimate advisers, a "favor, able" opponent. Ho simply real izes that so long as Goldwater remains out ahead and Rocke feller continues lo hit him so hard, Goldwater is inevitably going to be soltcncd up while Hockelcllcr himself is not going lo be promoted tliereby. Thus, the President never discourages llie notion that Goldwater is, in deed, out ahead. For while Goldwater can be hurt to some extent, especially among those w ho generally sup port a strongly internationalist line, il does not follow that Rockefeller can help himself, so far as his search for the nomi nation is concerned. To tlie con trary, the Governor's greatest weakness for the nomination is not even his divorce and re marriage, as so many believe. To (lie professional politicians who will control the Republican convention a far greater liabil ity is simply the divisive nature of Rockeleller's campaign against Goldwater. Il is not that all the pros madly love Goldwater. It is only that they are first ol all interested in keeping the party together. The truth is that in President Kennedy there are mixed feel ings as to which Republican challenger would be prefer able from where he sits. Though Goldwater presumably would be the weakest GOP choice in the urban North and East he would also be its strongest choice in the South, in the Far West and in most of tlie Middle West. An election pitting Mr. Ken nedy against Senator Goldwater, moreover, would create for the President, even if he won, the gravest of posl-clection prob lems. Almost surely the South ern patriarchs who largely run' Congress and will continue lo do so would return here in 1965 unwilling to give the President even as much support as they give him now. A man must not only be elected; he must give some thought to his capacity to govern after election. No other GOP candidate could raise so many difficulties for Mr. Ken nedy in this latter regard as would Senator Goldwater, even if he were defeated. STRICTLY PERSONAL. A strange and rather wonder ful paradox occurred to me the other day, while riding up eight een flights in a crowded eleva tor. As I looked at the passen gers around me, it seemed sud denly plain that what we call the "extraordinary man" is really the ordinary man. By "extraordinary," I am not talking in terms of any spe cial talent or prowess, but in terms of character, of rock-bottom decency, of the "niceness" that we immediately recognize as a sign of strength, not of weakness. Such people are extremely rare, which is why we term them extraordinary. Vet I have the feeling that tliese few arc the "ordinary" people, and we many are Ihe "extraordinary" ones even though in numbers we far outweigh them. What do I mean by this odd statement? To understand it. consider the common cold. For Ihe human organism, a cold is an unusual thing, an abnormal thing, an "extraordinary" thing, if you will. If a person were wholly himself all the time, if he were what he is meant to be. he would never have a cold. It is not a "normal" thing for men to have. Now, this abnormal condition is something that almost every one has at one time or another. Only a handful of people never have a cold. This, of course. By SYDNEY J. HARRIS makes them "extraordinary" when, in point of fact, they are ordinary and we millions who get colds are abnormal. It is not a matter of numbers or statis tics, but of departures from a norm. It seems to me that the moral and psychic and emotional norm for man is also not to have a "cold" that is, to be like those few individuals who immediate ly impress us with their decen cy and largeness of spirit. The only thing extraordinary about them is their ordinariness, which makes them so rare, valuable and respected. They are what we ought to be, arc meant lo be. and could be. They represent the natural man, somehow uncontaminated by the infections that plague the rest of us. more or less frequently. They show us what it is like not to have a cold in the head, and we know instinctively that they, and not we, represent the basic form for mankind. We struggle along with our self-created burdens, our vani ties, our lusts, our pettiness, our piques and our resentments: and through all this, we think of our selves as quite "ordinary" peo ple. Perhaps it is worth consid ering for a moment whether we are the extraordinary ones, sniff ing and blowing through life and they are so ordinary, so much what man was designed (or. as to seem freakishly re mote from us. BERRY'S WORLD "Kttp $oigt sir . OMr mrmoirt might becomf paperback mat trial . . " By LEON DENN'EN Newspaper Enterprise Analyst RIO DE JANEIRO (NEA) -"The Lord blessed Brazilians with a rich and beautiful coun try but he also cursed us with Communists and incompetent politicians." It is typical of Brazil's politi cal climate under President Goulart's regime that the noted liberal lawyer who spoke these words asked that his name be withheld for fear of reprisals. Yet his is also the view of the ordinary Brazilian w h o is generally friendly to the United States and who is probably the hardest working man in Latin America. A young waitress in one of Rio de Janeiro's plush restau rants said: "All I know is that each morning I can buy less food for my cruzeiro." President Goulart's reaction to the mounting wave of discon tent in Brazil so far has been his request to Congress to de clare a "state of siege" mean ing martial law and the sus pension of constitutional guar antees. Pro-democratic Brazilians are convinced that any tampering with the constitution would only play into the hands of the Com munists. The State of Guana bara's fearless and able Gover nor Carlos Lacerda told this writer that a state of s e i g e would "only lead to tlie progres sive subjugation of Brazil to in ternational communism." There is no doubt lhat Bra zil is rated by Moscow as a Latin American prize above all others. With a population of 70 million, it covers almost half of South America and l-27th of the World's land surface. In addition to its vast and yet untapped natural resources. Brazil also has the strategic importance of bordering on all but two South American coun tries. Red agents from Russia. Po land, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, disguised as t r a d e missions, are invading the dis tressed areas of Recife and Northeast Brazil. Should a Red uprising occur in the Northeast, the Castro revolution in Cuba will seem like a firecracker. Brazil has been compared to a gigantic suction pump in the heart of Latin America. A Bra zil which is solidly based and moving toward effective social reforms could provide a power ful example to the rest of Latin America. A Brazil drifting to ward' chaos can pull into its own chaos the rest of the conti nent. Is this what Premier Khru shchev hopes to achieve ty fo menting strikes and "revolution ary" uprisings in Brazil? Is he trying to prove to his Chi nese rivals in the Red world lhat under the cover of nuclear test bans and peaceful coexis tence it is possible to promote "national wars of liberation" without risking a nuclear war? Moscow's strategy in Brazil was actually predicted recently by two top Brazilian Commu nist leaders, Pedro Motta Lima and Jakob Gorender, who wrote in the World Marxist Review that revolutionary strikes and a "restriction of democracy" were historically inevitable. They intimated that political and economic chaos were com munism's best allies in Latin America. And Ihe tragic fact is that Brazil is drifting dangerously into chaos. Much of the United States aid chanelled to Brazil through the Alliance for Prog ress and from other sources has been frittered away by in flation. President Goulart made a firm promise lo stop printing more money, but he never kepj it. The ravaging inflation (1,30? cruzeiros to the dollar) devours each new wage boost and gives the Communist-dominated Gen eral Labor Command an ex cuse for starling another round of "illegal" strikes. President Kennedy warned re cently that the "only effective way lo stop communism" in Latin America is to "remove the great social and economic inequities which breed commu nism." Yet massive American aid to Brazil a country which under normal conditions should need no outside aid has done little to remove the social and eco nomic enequities and check the progress of communism. Lacerda was surely right when he said that United States aid could accomplish little in Brazil under the present politi cal conditions. "It is like trying to sell roses in an opium den or tranquilizers to people alrea dy gone amok," he said. There are forces currently at work which seek to establish military rule. Will it be that the bayonet will become the only answer to communism in Bra zil? The times here are sad, and few doubt that Ihey could grow sadder. EPSON IN WASHINGTON . . Politics Bores Voters n P r-1 , a Tear before blection am mm x ism By PETER EDSON Washington Correspondent Newspaper Enterprise Assn. WASHINGTON (NEA) The biggest trouble about a debate between New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater would be shut ting it off. It is charged that Goldwater sounds off every hour on the hour, but Rockefeller is right be hind him on the half-hour. Both of them have been mak ing speeches, issuing statements, subjecting themselves to inter views at such a clip that they're already stuck needles. They're already beginning to bore their audiences, a full year before the election. The fact that neither is yet a declared candidate bothers no one. They're off and running. But neither seems to have a friend good enough to tell him to stop talking loo much. Goldwater's opinions have been subjected to closer scruti ny so far because he's the more controversial character. Like Gen. Eisenhower. Rocke feller professes to be confused about what Goldwater really stands for, but the governor has been no less prolilie and he can be subjected to the same criti cism. Rocky is against the Kennedy adpviraslntion on just as many counts as Barry. A debate be tween them would be a contest to determine who could de nounce Democrats the most. Rockefeller opened up on the President with a New Year's resolution that the administra tion had not reduced unemploy ment or improved tlie economy. In February the governor took off on Kennedy foreign policy, saying it hadn't achieved its goals. Then he proposed a three part foreign policy of his own easier said than done: Establish a nuclear defense partnership with Europe. Make a trade pact with Brit ain and the Commonwealth. Establish an Atlantic Alli ance political organization. Rockefeller is just as critical a Goldwater of Kennedy's han dling of the Cuba situation, but the governor does not go as far as the senator in how to get the Russians out. When Rockefeller criticized the Kennedy fiscal program, it was to criticize tlie President's $11 billion tax cut while propos ing a $10 billion tax cut of his own. Tlie governor then fell in w ith the GOP congressional line on holding federal expenditures to last year's level and forgetting all about tax reforms. In April, Rockefeller opposed Kennedy's accelerated public works program. In June the gov ernor accelerated $4 billion worth of state construction to create more jobs. Rockefeller and Goldwater ap parently have real differences on civil rights. The senator would leave most of the correc tive action to the state and lim it federal programs. At the Governors' Conferencei in Miami Beach, Rockefeller took the lead for a resolution to work with the President in es tablishing a meaningful civil rights program. What came out was a watered-down resolution asking the executive committee to give the subject high priority. Though Rockefeller followers can claim that the governor won on principle, it was a bad po litical defeat in a fight that Gold water was able to stay out of. On July 4 the governor lit Ihe firecracker lhat exploded the principal difference between him and the senator. Rockefeller re pudiated the reactionary right and challenged Goldwater to dis own it too. The senator's refusal sets him on a course of getting out every Republican vole there is con servative or liberal. Goldwater's refusal to debate Ihe issue formally now doesn't end tlie matter. It is tlie big is sue in every primary fight they both get into. They'll be debat ing it right up lo national con vention nominating time. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q Which president crested Ihe first national monument? A President Theodore Roose c!t, in IMK. 3 i
