Roosevelt names new ambassadors
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Editorial: Who pays for ‘prosperity’?
Democrats appear to be relying heavily on “Roosevelt prosperity” as a pro-fourth-term factor at the November polls.
Prosperity? Sure, many people not in uniform are making more money than they were before the war. (Mr. Roosevelt was President then, too, incidentally.) But where does the money come from?
An analogy might be the case of a man who borrows $1,000 from a friend and then throws a big party for the generous pal. Should the latter feel a warm glow of camaraderie – or should he start worrying about the money?
The recent tax report of the research committee of the Committee for Economic Development estimated that “after the war the average cost of supporting the activities of the federal government, if spread evenly over the entire population, would be more than $500 a year for a family of four.” And a footnote added:
This would not be the full picture… It is estimated that state and local governments, after the war, will have to collect around $12 billion a year in taxes. Accordingly, the total cost of government in the United States after the war, if spread evenly over the whole population, would be in the neighborhood of $850 a year for a family of four.
Or put it another way. The national debt today is some $211 billion. It certainly will go past $250 billion before the war is over. The total population is around 136 million. Suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that the population consisted entirely of four-person families – 34 million of them. A little arithmetic shows that the average share of that $250-billion debt will be $7,353 per family. This is an obligation that a good many of us have neglected to put down in our personal budgets.
In short, “Roosevelt prosperity” turns out to be a patty at our own expense. Guests will be presented with the bill as they leave the festivities. And they will have to settle it – through taxes, or through inflation of one kind or another which will chop down the value of their savings and their income.
Of course, most of the expenditures have been necessary, because of the war. But he who attributes the pleasant state of his bank account to economic wisdom on the part of the White House, and expects more of the same indefinitely from that same erratic economic fountain, is living in a fool’s paradise.
Editorial: Dewey keeps the offensive
Governor Dewey is showing skill as a political campaigner who can take the offense and keep it.
The New Dealers were still sputtering denials to his charge that they fear the problems of peace and demobilization when he let go his haymaker indicting the “planned confusion” of their labor policies. And before they could think up the answers to that one, he hit again by challenging the indispensability of one man, which the New Dealers themselves have chosen as the campaign’s primary issue.
Mr. Dewey used the words of Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate, Mr. Truman: “The very future of the peace and prosperity of the world depends upon his reelection in November.”
And how, asked Mr. Dewey, is a fourth term indispensable to that?
The first essential to peace and prosperity, he said, is unity in our government and unity and strength among our people. But the record shows 12 years of setting “group against group, race against race, and class against class,” labor against employer and labor against labor. And 12 years of quarrelling and bickering among the high-up New Deal administrators.
“An administration which cannot unite its own house even in war can never unite the nation for the tremendous peace tasks ahead of us.”
A second essential to peace and prosperity is “joint, harmonious action between the President and the Congress. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of 12 years of trying to bring Congress into popular disrepute, 12 years of “executive arrogance toward the elected representatives of the people.” For, said Mr. Dewey:
As a result, no bill which this administration can propose to Congress is today received with anything less than suspicion.
My opponent has demonstrated that he cannot work with the present Democratic Congress. How in the name of the future of our country can he be expected to get along with the Republican Congress which will be elected this fall?
A third essential is “a strong and vigorous America with jobs for all. Is a fourth term indispensable to that?” Not on the record of an administration which, after spending $58 billion through seven peace years, still had 10 million unemployed – and “we had to have a war to get jobs.”
We’ve a hunch the New Dealers will talk less about the indispensable man from here on to Nov. 7.
Creation of work suggested as basis for new tax program
High national income will permit payment of post-war levies, Ruml says
By Beardsley Ruml, written for United Press
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Millett: ‘Blessed event’ news has now reached the ultimate
Seems as though public knows about pending births before mothers
By Ruth Millett
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Stokes: Cooperation
By Thomas L. Stokes
With Dewey’s party –
Republicans expect to make much capital out of a point stressed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey in his Portland speech about the troubles that President Roosevelt has with Congress.
It may be effective. The Republican presidential candidate put it very persuasively last night:
Every step we take in these critical years ahead must have the joint support of the Congress and the President. Can any such joint action and harmonious relationship be achieved under this administration?
And again:
We need an administration that wants to work with the elected representatives of the people and that knows how to do it. We can get such an administration only by getting a new Chief Executive.
Governor Dewey put his finger on a very vulnerable spot. He dramatized the wide rift in the Democratic Party between the New Dealers and left-wingers. on the one hand, and on the other, the conservative Southern Democrats who go traipsing off with Republicans on virtually every domestic issue to form an anti-administration coalition that makes it so hard for Mr. Roosevelt to do business with Congress on any liberal measure.
Both sides vulnerable
The President has let them alone lately. But it is a real dilemma that has spread gloom through the progressive political forces of the country.
They do not like to look ahead to such a situation in what Governor Dewey termed “these critical years ahead.” Nor do they get any encouragement from anticipating a Republican Congress if it is going to follow the general course of the Republican minority in recent years on both domestic and foreign policy.
Governor Dewey must prove, as in the case with his progressive labor program, that he can carry his party and Congress along with him. The record of his party in Congress is his highest hurdle, and is the vulnerable spot on his side.
He must convince progressives that it is going to be different with him. or they will take a chance with President Roosevelt and the possibility that, if he is elected, he will be able to carry a Democratic Congress in with him which for a time will go along with him,
Democratic split cited
The Republican candidate dramatized, likewise, a Democratic Party, once fairly closely knit, that is now beginning to shake loose at the joints. This was clearly demonstrated at the Chicago convention when the Southerners were emitting rebel yells of dissatisfaction over the new power in the party assumed by New Dealers and CIO labor.
Republicans have capitalized upon this. In Congress, Republicans are egging on the Southern conservatives, fraternizing with them sweetly, throwing their support to them at every opportunity, often accepting without question the leadership the Southerners exercise so effectively through their committee chairmanships and other posts of power and influence.
In the campaign the second-string performers, not Governor Dewey himself, are exploiting the CIO’s PAC at every opportunity to frighten off middle-class voters and tempt them into the Republican camp.
The whole tone of the Dewey presidential campaign has been to stress his ability to work with political leaders and his Legislature.
Since his nomination, Governor Dewey has worked hard at it, in the Governors’ Conference in St. Louis and on this trip. He has spent hours with local politicians on this trip, getting acquainted, listening to their troubles and making a fine impression, according to reports.
What will Johnny be like when he comes home –
Wecter: Soldiers don’t turn out to be criminals
Teaching a man to shoot enemy doesn’t mean he’ll come home and shoot neighbor
By Dixon Wecter
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Forrestal: Legion asked to support military training law
Convention endorses program calling for aid to veterans, payments to widows
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Allen: Maybe Sinatra could make the Germans swoon
By Gracie Allen
Hollywood, California –
First it was Bing Crosby… Now they’ve got Dinah Shore singing to the Germans in their native tongue to lull them into surrender. It begins to look like the tonsil is mightier than the sword.
And we haven’t even turned Sinatra loose on them yet!
Imagine what might happen if Frankie, like some modern Pied Piper, started to work on those Rhine maidens. I can just see Frau Goering sitting in front of the radio in bobby socks as Der Frankie croons: “Ich bin nicht much to look at – nein schön to see.”
She squeals and says, “Ach, Hermann, stop the shooting! I want to hear Frankie! Ich liebe dot boy!”
To which Hermann replies: “Stop the shooting? But what about Der Fuehrer?”
And she says: “All right – one more shot, but be sure you hit him.”
I don’t know, Gen. Eisenhower, it might be worth a thought.