ustxtxb_obs_1962_08_17_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

OBJECTIVES: To promote the interests of Senior Citizens in harmony with the National interest. To encourage increased opportunities for community service by Senior Citizens. * : WILL YOU JOIN US in our efforts to remove “Dread” from the years ahead? Help make possible 44.. our “Golden Years” to be ones which can be lived with Dignity and Security. This is every-::: 4. one’s concern who looks forward to living. Join uswith your efforts, your time, and your con: tributions. 4. ; WE ARE WORKING FOR: fi 4. 1.Support of complete medical coverage for the aged under Social Security. 2.Elimination of all means tests. 3.State law against job discrimination due to age. 4.Minimum state old age pension to be increased in states to reach $250.00. 5.Establishment of adequate housing for Senior Citizens of inadequate income. 6.Provision of emergency income and welfare services to be made by state and federal government, working together ef for the maintenance of minimum family income until older persons suffering from long-term unemployment can find new jobs. 7.A law against compulsory retirement by industry. 8.Establishment of offices in all major cities in Texas to be staffed with personnel competent Senior Citizens. 9.Employment opportunities and retraining for the aged. AL LIEBERMAN, Executive Secretary to -handle problems of t 4. MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION 1962-1963 TEXAS COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS, INC. P. 0. Box 15007 Houston 20, Texas NAME ADDRESS CITY ZONE STATE HOME TELEPHONE BUSINESS A NON-PROFIT, NON-PARTISAN, EDUCATION AND ACTION ORGANIZATION. fi 4. TYPE OF SIGNED TITLE 4. MEMBERSHIP: Senior Citizens Group No. of Members tie INDIVIDUAL 4. Please make checks payable to: TEXAS COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS, INC. AMOUNT ENCLOSED $ DATE 1-\( 0 z O a 44 PRINT FOR MAILING PURPOSES NAME ATTN \(Officer of organization if a ADDRESS CITY Zone State Johnson’s Office and the Estes Controversy Kerr thereon of enclosure.” The fact that Freeman himself replied to Johnson was described, at the Agriculture Department, as routine procedure according to protocol. Rayburn Protested The late Sam Rayburn had earlier protested to the Agriculture Department that his North Texas district was being “robbed” of cotton allotments and asking that the matter be “cured.” Some of Estes’ allotments were transferred from Rayburn’s district. It is of incidental interest that, according to an Agriculture Department official, the department wired Estes on Jan. 18, 1961, telling him that his bond on his grain warehouses would have to be increased from $700,000 to $1,000,000. On Jan. 25, 1961, a day after the Foster letter to Carter, Estes visited the Agriculture Department. Rep. Odin Langen, R.-Minn., has charged that this visit resulted in the abandonment of the higher bond demand. The Observer has learned, direct from Washington, that testimony before Senate investigators Wednesday of this week included references to material about the Vice President covered in the accompanying story. \(Some Texas dailies examined Thursday morning contained no references to the Ai. Agriculture Department memorandum which twice mentioned the Vice President’s office’s interest in the Estes case was read into the record. In one of these references, the memo stated, “We understand that the Vice President has recently discussed this matter with Correspondence so far made public in no way involves Johnson’s office in this issue. Carter’s memo transmitting Foster’s protest to the department was received there Jan. 31, 1961. Late in the year, 1961, the Agriculture Department decided the Estes allotments should be cancelled. Jan. 6, 1962, Yarborough, Rutherford, Estes, Estes’ lawyer John Dennison and others met with Agriculture Undersecretary Charles Murphy and counsel John Bagwell. The issue was: had Estes properly transferred his cotton allotments to Texas from other states? It will probably develop in future testimony that Yarborough’s position was that the transfers should not be ruled all legal or all illegal, but should be judged separately and each decided on the facts. A decision was reachedit is attributed to Murphy, according to Kamerickto rescind the cancellations, pending more study. Murphy has been an intimate po the Undersecretary,” that is, Charles Murphy, Undersecretary of Agriculture. An Agriculture Department spokesman said a spokesman for the Vice President said it was not the Vice President, but Walter Jenkins, who spoke to Murphy about Estes’ interests. It is apparently this episode to which the Observer’s authoritative source alluded when he mentioned Jenkins. The second reference has to do with the events recited in the accompanying story about the interest from Johnson’s office in Estes’ cotton, allotment in January, 1961. litical associate of Johnson’s. In May this year, the department finally rescinded the allotments and fined Estes more than half a million dollars on account of them. It is commonplace among insiders in Texas politics now that Estes was one of the state’s few wealthy backers of liberal politicians, including Yarborough, and that he meant little–or nothing politically to Johnson, who has always had access to plenty of wealthy contributors since his election to the Senate. At the same time, friends of Yarborough’s have desired that Yarborough not be required to bear a share of the political impact of the Estes case in Texas politics disproportionate to his involvement. This has caused brisk interest in Johnson’s, or Johnson’s office’s, role, a year before Yarborough’s. Johnson spokesmen have represented that he did not even see the Foster memo and took no interest in the matter. Holleman Case The Observer does not have direct knowledge of its authoritative source’s statement that Walter Jenkins, Johnson’s administrative assistant when he was senator, has had some official correspondence pertaining to Estes’ affairs. The source said he had examined such correspondence in the possession of Senate investigators. A footnote should probably be added concerning the puzzling Jerry Holleman episode. Holleman resigned as Assistant Secretary of Labor with a statement he had accepted a $1,000 gift, a check, from Estes for personal expenses. Just before this, Estes had tried to contribute to a labor-leader banquet in honor of Johnson at the Labor Department on Jan. 12, 1962. Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg, Holleman said, declined the money and paid for the banquet himself. Speculation has been accelerating among informed insiders that there is more to this affairs than met the eye. Why would Holleman take a $1,000 gift from Estes, with such a gift’s possible political ramifications? He said it was to help make ends meet. His salary was $20,000 a year. Where is the actual cancelled check? Why has it never turned up in the Estes papers? Why has it not been presented in evidence in the Senate investigations? Physically, where is it? With admitted obliquity, it can at least be said that the political repercussions of a gift of $1,000 from Estes to such a banquet for the Vice President could have been disastrous not only for Johnson, but for Goldberg and possibly for the entire Democratic administration. This, of course, could appear obvious only in the afterlight of the Estes scandal; but that particular consideration, logical though it seems, has not seemed to have much cutting edge in the public disputes heretofore. Perhaps this is what Sen. Karl E. Mundt, S.D., ranking Republican on the McClellan subcommittee, meant when he said, last May 25, that the Holleman-Estes relationship was being explored further. “We’re just not satisfied that the whole story has been told,” he said. If it hadn’t as of May 25, it still hasn’t. R.D. this Second Annual” Freedom Forum is planned.” Schwarz did not speak at this program. Other topics on the program by other speakers were these: “Americanism vs. Communism”; “Testament of Freedom”; “Communism in America”; “Web of Subversion” \(the speaker on this subject was Dr. Robert Morris of “Facts in Our Economic Survival” \( on which the speaker was L. D. Webster, vice president of Lone tion in the Preservation of Freedom”; “Basic Concepts of American Government” \(the speaker was the director of programs for the American Farm Bureau FedPriceless Heritage” \(on which the speaker was Dr. Kenneth Wells of the Freedom Foundation in Pennsylvania, who is helping Kerr prepare the curriculum for his uals”; “The Press”; “Citizens in Action”; “What Can I Do?”a thematic question in Schwarz’s literature; and “I Was a Slave in Russia,” a speech by John Noble of Illinois. Once again, to the Observer, Kerr attested to his friendship with Jews. Of his Youth Force, he said flatly, “It includes the Jews.” Kerr expressed exasperation that whenever anyone takes up “this sort of thing,” \(a program a strange, wild subversive with almost crippling implications that are completely unsupported. “I’m distressed that some of the leading Jews won’t let the youngsters hear anything that has a Christian flavor,” he said. “With people like Schwarz operating, this could become a leading problem.” \(That is, anti-Jewish feel”America’s getting to where it’s very difficult to get together even on God, believe me!” he exclaimed. Kerr said that a Protestant, a Catholic, and a Jew have beenat Dallas school superintendent W. T. White’s suggestionmade top level leaders of the Kerr Youth Force crusade in the Cotton Bowl Oct. 21. R.D. Welfare Funds entail more than the loss simply of the $304,356 Texas would receive for the day scnoot program. The state would lose $409,351 in federal allotments this fiscal year; and if it can’t match the funds next year, it wilt lose $716,3b2 for welfare projects. The failure of Texas to match government funds for child welfare would be unprecedented, he said. “In past years we have been able to take care of all federal child welfare funds available to us,” he said. The $325,000 which the department lacks could be obtained in two ways: either by an emergency appropriation from the Texas legislature, or by securing funds from ‘local sourceslocal child welfare boards and county cornmissioners courts, through which tile state welfare office works. Watson did not feel he is in a position to indicate which course of action will be decided upon. But whatever the decision, time is 4. an important factor. The first government funds are for the fiscal year which began July 1. The Public Welfare Board meets approximately a month from now, and assuming the board accepts the day school program, it will still be necessary to obtain the lacking $325,000. The year could slip by without Texas’ putting the government funds to usc. C.D.