Few Notes of Interest

Two items I found interesting in the news this past mouth I will note here.  First, the US Congress has awarded the Congressional Gold Medal-the highest civilian honor-on the code talkers of World War II fame.  They were American natives indians who used their language to create a military code the enemy-the Japanese-could not de-code.  This article says they were active in both World Wars (WWI, I am not sure of; it will need to be checked).  Thirty-three tribes made contributions to the "code talkers".

Source:  "Washington: Congress honors Code Talkers".  From wire reports in The Virginian Pilot, date in early Nov 2013.

Second, the state of Alabama has "posthumously pardoned" three black men falsely accused and convicted on rape in 1931 in the case known as the "Scottsboro Boys".  Nine young black men, riding a train thru Montgomery, Alabama, were accused, tried and convicted of the rape of two white females on the train with them.  Within three weeks of the events on that train, eight of the men were sentenced to death by the Alabama judge after a trial by an all-white jury.  The case got national attention at the time and led the US Supreme Court to overturn the convictions and order new trials.  The high court ruled that blacks should have been included on the jury and that the men did not receive "adequate legal representation".  The state re-tried four of the men, after dropping charges against five of the defendants.  They were convicted and sentenced to prison in 1937.  One of the four escaped from prison and eventually died in Michigan.  The others were finally pardoned by Governor George Wallace in 1976.  They were paroled some time before the pardon, so I don't know how long they remained in prison.  The state, with this decision, hopes the case will be put "to rest".  This article clearly states that the men were not guilty of any crime involving the events on that train in 1931.  The three men were Haywood Paterson, Charles Weems, and James A. Wright.

(Source:  "Alabama hopes to put "Scottsboro Boys" case to rest" by Alan Blinder of the New York Times.  In The Virginian Pilot on 11/22/13)

1940 US Census

On April 2, 2013 the government was to release the census from 1940, which had not been public for the last 72 years.  Historians and geneologists will be interested in what will be found there.  Some areas of interest will be, a) info on refugees from wars in Europe in the 1930's, b) info on the 100,000 Japanese Americans who were later relocated to internment camps after Pearl Harbor attack, c) info on the large migration of black Americans from the rural south to northern cities in search of jobs and a better life. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr of Harvard University has prepared a documentary for PBS entitled "Finding Your Roots" which was to air March 2, 2012.  In the case of Japanese Americans the census will paint a clearer picture of the extent of the groups community and the amount of loss suffered by those interned.   A topic interest will be the level of income of ordinary Americans at the time.  A picture printed with the article noted below shows a census worker interviewing a family of four outside a railroad car that was converted in a home.  I note this because it seems to me to be a novel way of providing housing for some in need.  The "house cars" were part of the Mohawk and Hudson RR line and the NY Central.  (could this  be a method of housing the homeless today?)  

The web site that provide these census records "will be free and open to anyone on the Internet" but these records are not "name-searchable".  

http://1940census.archives.gov/1940 and www.the1940census.com.  

(Source:  "Details of daily life from the Great Depression" by Cristian Salazar and Randy Herschaft of the AP.  In The Virginian Pilot on 3/19/12)  

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court ruled in early June of this year that the police "are justified in taking DNA samples from anyone who's arrested".  The court rules that DNA is no different from taking fingerprints and photographs of those arrested.  These forms of search are considered reasonable under the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.  The decision was a 5 to 4 ruling with Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan writing the minority opinion.  More research will be needed on this issue.
(Source:  "Court approves DNA swabs" in The Week from June 14, 2013)

Songs and the Labor struggle

I came across this while reading a novel by Ivan Doig entitled Work Song.  It is set in the Montana copper mining fields near the town of Butte-called the "richest hill on earth"-in the time period of 1919.  The major theme is the importance of song as a way to rally the workers around a protest.  There was a book called the Little Red Songbook that was made up of labor protest songs from 1909.  One of the items was a IWW song aimed at the Salvation Army; an organization the radical workers group said were more interested in "saving souls" than in providing relief for striking workers.  That song had lyrics we have all heard before.  

         "You will eat, bye and bye,

           in that glorious land above the sky.

           Work and pray, live on hay

            you'll get pie in the sky when you die"

I an also reminded of a labor song sung in the movie Matewan that was about the West Virginia mine wars on the 1920's.  That was the song "Gathering Storm".

Cost of War in Iraq: Another estimate

"The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $ 4 trillion to $ 6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting".  This according to a Harvard University researcher.  The researcher-Linda Bilmes-said that Washington "increased military benefits in 2001...seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and extend its ranks".  We have spend $ 2 trillion already but the rest will be the ultimate "price tag".

(Source:  "Wars may cost public as much as $ 6 trillion" by the Washington Post.  No author noted.  Printed in The Record on 3/29/13).

US war in Iraq

Special Inspector General to Congress issue his final report on the war in Iraq and questions whether the effort and cost were "worth the cost".  Stuart Bowen's report says "the US has spent too much money in Iraq for too few results".  It would seem the problem was the "misspending of money" according to PM Nouri al-Maliki.  In March of 2003 "Congress set up a $ 2.4 billion fund to help ease the sting of war for Iraqis.  It aimed to rebuild Iraq's water and electricity systems, provide food, health care and governance for its people; and take care of those who were forced from their homes in the fighting".  Six months after this funding Bush II asked for another $ 20 billion.  To date we have spent "more than $ 60 billion in re-construction grants to help Iraq..."  That's about $ 15 million a day.  Counting all military and diplomatic costs the other aid, the US has spent at least $ 767 billion since the invasion.  A US research group-National Priorities Project-estimates that the cost is $ 811 billion.  A GOP senator-Susan Collins-says Bush II should have given the aid as a "loan instead of an outright gift".

(Source:  "Report: America's time and $ 60 billion wasn't worth it in Iraq" by Lara Jakes of The Associated Press.  In the Virginian Pilot on 3/6/13)

World War II era

I came across the following items while reading the magazine The Week.  

First, in the book review of The Girls of Atomic City: The untold story of the women who helped win World War II by Denise Kiernan by Touchstone publishers.  The women were "young secretaries, chemists, and technicians" that were part of Oak Ridge, Tenn. working on the Manhattan Project.  The women  who were technicians "monitored panels of dials and never realized that they were enriching uranium", finally received the news of the bombing of Hiroshima, some were proud of the part they played and some felt "pride often mixed with shame and guilt".  I found this line interesting and as the reviewer wish for more details.  "A brief mention of an injured black worker who became a human guinea pig for radiation's effect on the body left this reader wanting more".  (Source:  Review in The Week for 4/19/13 on page 22).

In the same issue of The Week is a note about an internment camp for Japanese Americans in Heart Mountain Wyoming that was "packed with makeshift buildings on a patch of desert here that was ringed by barbed wire", is one of only two such camps open to visitors.  There is a web site for information, heartmountain.org.  The writer of the article in The Week states "the internees faced grueling conditions.  Multiple families shared tiny barracks with communal toilets, and when winter's sub-zero temperatures arrived, gaps in the walls let in cold winds".  As the writer says the climate conditions were "...almost as cruel  to these individuals as their government".  (I have always been amazed that our government could expect draft age men to volunteer for the armed forces while their parents faced these conditions.  Also that many such men did volunteer.

The third item I came across was a note about a PBS program that stated that during WWII "British intelligence planted listening devices among German POW's netting both military secrets and a glimpse of the Nazi's dark soul" (Source:  "Secrets of the Dead: Bugging Hitler's Soldiers".  In The Week 5/3/13)

Lyndon B. Johnson and Billy Sol Estes

I came across a pretty far-out political accusation about LBJ in a obit article about Billy Sol Estes.  Estes was a "fast talking Texas swindler", a preacher and someone who had contact with a number of famous American politicians in the 1960's.  He was convicted as a swindler and spent time in jail.  In 1953 the US Chamber of Commerce named Estes "one of America's 10 outstanding young men".  He died recently at the age of 88.  I found this line in the obit interesting and certainly troubling if true.  "Many of his statements were self-serving and never proved-particularly allegations about Johnson.  Estes said he had given millions to Johnson, and that Johnson had ordered seven killings disguised as suicides or accidents to cover up his connections to the frauds and had then set up the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 to become president".  The obit notes that he was convicted of federal charges in 1963 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, was paroled in 1971 and convicted of tax fraud in 1979 sending him back to prison.  Bizarre claims, to say the least, but could there be any truth behind them?

(Source:  " Texas swindler made millions and captivated millions" by Robert D. McFadden of the New York Times.  In the Virginian Pilot on 5/15/13.

Stockholm Syndrome and Mark Twain

I know we have all heard about situations in which a person held as a hostage may-in some cases-bond with their captors.  Wikipedia.org defines the Stockholm Syndrome as follows;  "in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors".  I was surprised when recently I was reading Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer-the 1922 edition.  On page 273 Tom and Huck talk about being pirates and taking hostages.  They would kill the men but keep the women.  Twain then notes that "Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave.  If you drove them out they'd turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books".

Presidency of George W. Bush

An editorial in the newspaper, The Record, makes an effort to review the good and bad points of the administration of George W. Bush-the 43rd President of the US.  

On the positive side are the following points.  1) credit for education reform done with the help of Senator Ten Kennedy.  2) brought peace to Sudan.  3) made an effort to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa.  4) after the attack on 9/11 he built a coalition of countries to support the US going into Afghanistan.  

On the negative side are the following points.  1) "an unnecessary war on Iraq "that has cost billions...and much human lose of life and instability in the region".  2) civil liberties have been "abridged".  3) our nation has been "embarrassed" by our treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the "indefinite detention" of suspected terrorists at Gitmo Bay.  4) the news black out of returning coffins from the wars in the Middle East.  5) the Clinton era "good times" he inherited were lost and the federal deficit grew.  6) the economy failed and the gap between the rich and poor "widened".  

Bush tried to bring about immigration reform but failed due to his own party going against him.  There are also issues that will take historians some time to figure out, but " for now, the Bush legacy is not a good one".  That might change after years of review.

(Source:  "Bush in Stone: 43rd president's legacy is unknown".  An Editorial in The Record on 4/27/13). 

Miranda Warning

In 1966 the US Supreme Court issued the Miranda warning thru the case of Miranda v. Arizona, as we all know.  What I did not know or had not thought about was the non-absolute nature of the warning.  In the case of New York v. Quarles in 1984 the court issued the "public safety exception" to the Miranda warning. I read of this recently in the case of the Boston police questioning suspects in the marathon race bombing there of late.  In the Quarles case a police officer arrested a man in a near deserted supermarket who was wearing a shoulder holster for a hand gun but the holster was empty.  After handcuffing the man the officer asked where the gun was and the suspect indicated its location.  This happened before he was given the Miranda warning but the court stated that the statement by the suspect about the gun could be used in court. In 2010 in the Berghuis v. Thompkins case the Supreme Court stated that the suspect "must state he is relying on this right" or any statement made can be used.

(Source: an article in the Virginian Pilot on 5/3/13 on an internet search re Wikepedia)

Gun Laws

Senators Joe Manchin, D-WV and Pat Toomey, R-PA had been working on a compromise gun legislation in the US Senate.  It failed this week to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a suspected GOP filibuster.  Prior to the vote I saw this article in a Virginia newspaper that outlined some part of our gun laws to date.  I will quote.  "Federal background checks currently are required only for transactions handled by the roughly 55,000 federally licensed firearms dealers; private sales such as gun show or online purchases are exempt (my emphasis).  The system is designed to keep guns from criminals, people with serious mental problems and some others"  The last sentence must have been put into the article as a joke.

(Source:  "Senators work toward bipartisan deal on gun background checks" by Alan Fram of The AP.  In The Virginian Pilot on 4/8/13)

Drug Search

In Florida the police used a drug-sniffing dog-and I believe other methods-to detect the presence of marijuana on an individual's property.  A court in Florida ruled the search to be illegal as the police did not have a warrant, probable cause or the permission of the owner to conduct the search.  Recently the US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in favor of upholding the Florida court ruling.  They ruled that the 4th Amendment was violated because police lacked "probable cause" to search.  It seems the police brought the dog onto the property in question and the dog detected the drug (nothing wrong with the ability of the dog in this case).  The case is known as Florida v Jardines 2013.  Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion.

(Source:  "the two-way breaking news from NPR" on line dated 3/26/13.

Cause of Crime

I read recently of an interesting explanation for crime in the US.  An article in Mother Jones by a Kevin Drum suggests that the decrease in crime that has occurred of late has something to do with less lead in the air.  "Research has provided strong evidence that lead exposure damages the brain, lowering IQ and impulse control and leading to violent behavior".  He notes that crime increased in this country after the 1950's because of "fumes from leaded gasoline" with "millions of children in car-choked urban centers breathing in fumes".  This resulted in the increase in crime in the 1960's and 1970's but when non-leaded gasoline was phased in the 1980's that increase in crime began to decrease.  "Cutting lead pollution ...is the most effective crime prevention tool we have".  The same source indicated there are those who disagree with this theory.

(Source: "Lead: The connection with crime" in The Week for 1/25/13)

Racial Equality

Not all people in the old south in the 1960's were  bigots.  I am sure that goes without saying but it is good to know and read about someone who did speak out against the racial hate that occurred during those days.  One such person was Eugene Patterson who from 1960 to 1968 was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution.  "He wrote thousands of columns-many addressed directly to fellow white Southerners-setting out the campaign for desegregation in clear moral terms..."  He saw first hand what racial hatred led to in Nazi Germany when he served in WWII and when he returned to his native south he spoke out about it in this country.  His most famous column was written in response to the bombing of the African American church in Birmingham, Alabama in which four young black girls were killed.  It was titled "A Flower for the Graves" and was printed in his paper on Sept 16, 1963.  The column began with this line:  "In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child.  We hold that shoe with her.  Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand".  He later worked for the Washington Post and the St. Petersburg Times.  He died recently at the age of 80.  ( I remember, when I was young, thinking for a long time-without knowing really why-that the Atlanta Constitution was one of the major US newspapers; this could be why)

(Source:  "The Southern editor who fostered racial equality" in The Week on 1/25/13)

JFK Assassination

The son of Robert F. Kennedy has offered his opinion as to the death of his uncle-President John F, Kennedy.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr said recently that he believes the Warren Commission was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship" and that his uncle was not killed by a lone gunman.  He suspects that Mafia leadership was behind the killing.  The younger Kennedy said that he suspects that his father's campaign against organized crime may have had something to do with the assassination.  Kennedy Jr said he had "investigators examine the phone records of Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald two days later, and found that they 'were like an inventory of top Mafia leaders'".  What I find personally upsetting about the death of JFK-other than his death itself-is that elements of the government or major leaders in our government may have acted to keep the truth from coming out.  As was said re Watergate, its the cover up that was the most appalling.  Its just like the sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church; its the cover up that is the hardest thing to accept.

(Source:  "JFK conspiracy reignited".  A short report under "The US at a glance..." in The Week for 1/25/13)

Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson was the world's first black heavyweight boxing champ at the time of the turn of the last century.  He was imprisoned for the "crime" of a romantic relationship with a white woman.  Let me repeat, he was jailed for dating a white woman.  Today there are some who are seeking a presidential pardon for Johnson.  Among those are Senators Harry Reid, John McCain and William Cowan and representative Peter King who are requesting a presidential pardon from President Obama.  A resolution calling for a pardon was passed in 2009 "but Obama did not act on it".  (I wonder why Obama did not sign the pardon in 2009).

(Source:  The Virginian Pilot on 3/6/13)

Calvin Coolidge

"Silent Cal" was the President most admired by Ronald Reagan for his attitude of as little government as possible.  A new bio by Amity Shlaes calls Coolidge "our great refrainer" for his "aptitude of brevity".  He allegedly gave all his bureaucrats one pencil each (to write policy) and expected the stub to be returned.  With Andrew Mellon (Treasury Sec) he advocated "scientific taxation" which was an early effort at supply side economics; tax less and gov't revenue would increase.  Which it seems it did during the years of his admin.  The source for this article states the following:  "During the 67 months of his presidency, the national debt, the national government, the federal budget, unemployment (3.6%)and even consumer prices shrank.  The GDP expanded 13.4 %"

This source also offers the following anecdote:  "When Pres and Mrs Coolidge were being given simultaneous but separate tours of a chicken farm, Grace (his wife) asked her guide whether the rooster copulated more than once a day.  'Dozens of times' she was told.  'Tell that to the president' she said.  When told, Coolidge asked, 'same hen every time?'  When the guide said, 'A different one each time', the president said: 'Tell that to Mrs Coolidge"

(Source:  "Remembering the wisdom of 'Silent Cal' Coolidge" by George Will of the Washington Post.  In The Record on 2/19/13).

US Steamboats

I came across an article about the drought conditions in the Mississippi/Missouri Rivers recently.  It noted the volume of steamboat traffic on the river systems in the post Civil War era.  This author notes that "it wasn't uncommon in the 1800's to have hundreds of steamboats pass by St. Louis each day..." (that number seems hard to believe).  He also noted that the boats were "sometimes lined up two miles deep and four boats wide in both directions...".  The average life span on a riverboat was about five years but that if a boat make one run from St Louis to Fort Benton, Montana and back it made enough money to pay for itself with a profit.  This created a situation where the owners were not that concerned if they lost a boat to the hazards of the river.  The drought has now turned up the "remains of 500 to 700 steamboats...at the bottom of the Missouri river" with just as many in the Mississippi river.  It is interesting to me to note the level of river traffic occurring at that time.

(Source:  "Drought-plagued rivers reveal sunken troves" by Jim Salter of The AP.  In The Record on 12/23/12)