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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
JANUARY 7,1947
Kansan Comments...
No Quarter
After the November elections, many experts and others not so expert predicted that President Tru-man would not try to buck congress on anything in the next two years. They reasoned this way:
Congress will have a rough time between now and the next presidential election. The people will be disgusted after two years and want a change. If the president has not fought with congress, then the Democrats can say, "See, the Republicans had their chance—they controlled both houses, the president didn't give them any trouble, and still they didn't do what you want. Why not put the good old Democrats back in?"
It sounded good at the time, but the president's state of the union speech to the joint meeting of the house and senate didn't sound as if the president plans to be a rubber stamp for congress.
Many of his points, such as anti-strike legislation and unification of the armed services, don't promise much of a straight political fight. But his stand on excise taxes and income tax reduction gives every promise of a knock-down and drag-out battle.
The Republican leaders have announced they will reduce personal income taxes 20 per cent at once and allow the wartime excise taxes to die in July. The president takes the other attitude—tax heavy now and pay off some of the national debt.
Reducing taxes is always popular, but. . The debts for World War I may be paid by our generation, maybe; if taxes are reduced now, the debts for World War II will be passed on to our children even unto the third and fourth or even fifth generation.
Buck-Passing
If you want to see the old buck-passing game in high gear, try to find out when the hills on and near the campus are going to be cleared of snow and who is going to clear them and how they are going to be cleared.
The city engineer says he doesn't have any equipment that can climb up the hills leading to the University. He seems to think that all that can be expected of the city is to put up the barriers and red flags and oil lanterns on the steeper hills. He says take the streets which don't have much of an incline.
The University buildings and grounds superintendent says that the University takes care of its property and the city takes care of its. He says anyone who knows anything about Lawrence won't try to drive up the 12th or 13th or 14th street hills. He also says no one has any trouble getting up the south drive past the back of the library.
We saw cars digging down through the top snow into the ice underneath. We saw them skid. We know that when snow melts as it does today, it'll be slippery if it freezes tonight which it will. We know that someone may be hurt if the University and the city don't get those hills cleared now.
In 1945, $36,000 worth of stamps were sold at the K.U. post office. In 1946, $50,000 worth was sold, not much of a jump when compared to the jump in enrollment. Guess when the male comes here, the mail doesn't leave here.
Filibusters
The 80th congress was saved from a black eye at the very first of its existence by Senator Bilbo's sudden decision to have his operation for cancer now instead of after a fight to be seated in the senate.
Filibusters have played a long and inglorious role in the nation's senior lawmaking body. Many times important problems confronting the nation have been held up when some long-winded senator read recipes and almanacs and miscellaneous poetry in an attempt to gain by sheer stamina what he couldn't gain by reasoning or compromising.
And every time the ordinary, tax-paying citizens of the United States have sickened at their stomachs at the spectacle of a legislative system which allows one man or one small group of men to waste the time of the U.S. senate.
Any law which would place a time limit on speeches in the senate would be branded immediately as a "gag" on free speech and unlimited debate, and probably would have no more chance of passing than a snowball has of existing in a blast furnace. However, there is one solution to the problem, a solution to which no one could object without proving he was more interested in parliamentary tricks than in good government.
The solution is merely to require that all speeches be relevant to the legislation before the senate. The presiding officer—the vice-president—would be the judge of whether what was being said was to the point. Judicial bodies require pertinancy—why can't legislative bodies?
The navy and a retired contractor are squabbling over the ownership of Palmyra atoll, a group of islets now being lashed and drenched by South Pacific winds and waves. The Americans stationed on the atoll have their own ideas as to who can have the atoll after they're rescued.
Senate, House Choose New Leaders
Washington. (UP) — Thumbnail sketches of the new congressional leaders—House Speaker Joseph W. Martin and Senate President pro tem Arthur H. Vandenberg:
Martin is a chunky, teetotaling red-faced, 62-year-old bachelor of Scottish-English descent. He is the son of a North Attleboro, Mass., blacksmith and eldest of a family of eight children. To help a family of slender means, Martin began work as a newsboy when five years of age. After completing high school, he declined a college scholarship to go to work. He became a newspaper reporter at 18 and publisher of the North Attleboro Chronicle when he was 24.
Martin was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1912, serving two years. He followed that with three years' service in the state senate and dropped out of the political picture until 1924, when he first was elected to Congress. He has been House Republican leader for seven years.
Vandenberg, also 62, is a tall booming-voiced orator whose thinning hair does not detract from his generally handsome appearance. Once regarded as an isolationist, he has worked hard for international cooperation at United Nations meetings. He has a silver tongue and a sharp wit that served well in the Senate and at United Nations meetings.
Like Martin, Vandenberg was once a newspaper editor and publisher, but gave that up when he came to the senate in 1928. Vandenberg also is the author of several books on Alexander Hamilton and the holder of a half dozen honorary college degrees.
He was a United States delegate to the United Nations Organization meeting at San Francisco, 1945; a United States delegate to the assembly meetings of the United Nations, 1946; and accompanied Secretary of State James F. Byrnes to the foreign ministers' meetings in Paris and New York last year. He was given the 1946 Collier's award for distinguished service in Congress.
It's quite a coincidence that walking became a cold and wet proposition just before the taxi companies raised their Lawrence rates.
Washington. (UP)—The line-up of the new Congress is:
Republicans—51
Democrats—45
Senate
House
The Party Line-Up
Republicans—245
Democrats—187
Others—1
Vacant—2
Division of the Senate in the expiring Congress was Democrats, 55; Republicans, 39, other parties, 1; vacant, 1; House-Democrats, 236; Republicans, 191; other parties, 2; vacant, 6.
Vacancies in the new Congress were caused by the death of Rep. Robert K. Henry, R., Wis., and the resignation of Rep. John J. Sparkman, D., Ala., who will be in the Senate.
103 Kansas Counties Send Students Here
All but two of the 105 Kansas counties are represented in the current University student body. The 103 counties sent contingents ranging from the 752 from Douglas to four each from Grant, Haskell, and Hodgeman counties.
Second high is Wyandotte with 551 students. Shawnee follows with 445 and Sedgwick is fourth with 394. Johnson is in fifth place with 309 students. Wallace and Wichita are the two counties sending no students this semester.
The 752 students listing their homes in Douglas county include many veterans originally from other parts of the state but who have located their families here during their schooling.
Other counties represented by more than 100 students are Barton, 110; Butler, 106; Leavenworth, 164; Montgomery, 154; Reno, 192; and Saline, 100. Counties sending between 50 and 99 students number 25. Twenty-one are represented by 25 to 49 students, and 48 sent less than 25.
Eggs Survive Crack-Up
Chicago. (UP)—The automobile carrying Walter Houb, 39, and his mother, Mrs. Bertha Subotka, 60, struck an electric suburban train. They not only escaped injury, but two dozen eggs in the car remained intact.
And How Do I Reduce In That?
Daniel Bishop in St. Louis Star-Times
U.S. Must Back Foreign Policy Senator Reports
Washington. (UP)—Sen. Wayne Morse (R.-Ore.), who has just returned from a six-weeks tour of Europe and the Middle East, said today that our present foreign policy must be supported and strengthened "if we are to win the peace and avoid another war."
In a statement summarizing his observations abroad, Senator Morse said:
ONE. Americans "inexcessably" have let down military government and state department officials rendering "devoted service" abroad. The result is that "we have permitted American prestige to suffer among the allied liberated and conquered countries."
TWO. "Our failure to supply adequate personnel and security protection for our own military stores and property abroad and our weakening of the security forces of our military government has played right into the hands of anti-American elements abroad."
THREE. He was "convinced that the Truman - Brynes - Vandenberg-Connally foreign policies not only must be supported but must be strengthened if we are to win the peace and avoid another war."
Asserting that the war drove European hates and ideologies under fire, they are smoldering preparatory to their eruptions. Senator Morse continued.
"The American people should recognize the realistic fact that we cannot afford to retire into the supposed security of our own national comfort.
“If the next 20 years are to be something else besides an armistice between wars, we must make clear . . . that we are in Europe to stay for whatever period of years future events demonstrate that it is necessary for us to stay, until the nations of the world learn through the functioning of the United Nations the habits of peace.”
"They become easy victims of propaganda, disseminated by those who seek falsely to attribute to America and sources of Europe's ills."
"People haunted by the specter of starvation and disease find little sustenance in discussions of political idealologies—even that of democracy," he said.
He said Europeans had to struggle for enough food, shelter, and clothing "to just barely exist."
The senator asid the European struggle for food has made the American farmer a key figure in international affairs.
8
Jaytalking ---
Most disgusted vacationers were the guy and gal who went to a friend's home for a party after a New Year's Eve dance and found to their amazement that their host intended to sit up and celebrate with them.
After seeing the numerous "Rhoten Smith" bylines, we wonder who would have filled the Dove's columns had Rhoten not written what he wrote.
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