Focus on Washington

Two dramatic political events this month have influenced the fate of the Civil Rights bill now before Congress. The 2-1 Reagan strong showing of Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the California primaries further strengthens congressional opposition to the “open house” section of the bill, since their showing reflected—in part—widespread opposition to “open housing” laws and civil rights excesses. (The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which wants to strengthen the Administration’s bill, admits mail to Con- – gress is running 100 to one against the housing section.) And the shooting of James Meredith in Mississippi makes it almost as certain that the other four portions of the bill will pass—especially that one providing stiff penal- ties for violence directed against civil-rights activists. What remains to be worked out is the compromise. A Republican effort to divide the bill in two met with Democratic opposition, but the Administration may find that to be the only way of obtaining any civil rights legislation this year. @ Pressure on high-level federal bureaucrats to con- tribute to Democratic campaign coffers is becoming a way of life in Washington. Latest reports concerned the $100-a-plate Democratic dinner on May 10. A spe- cial House Republican Task Force on the federal civil service merit system has proposed legislation to bring more workers under the Hatch Act’s “no politics” pro- visions, and to give the Civil Service Commission more power to enforce violations of the law. Their proposals will get nowhere, of course, and even if they did there are doubts they would be effective, since the chairman of the Commission, John Macy, has been blatant in his disregard of the axiom that the Civil Service Commission is supposed to stay out of politics. Just this April, for example, Macy was the principal speaker at a $50-a-plate fund-raising dinner for Rep. Clarence Long (D., Md.). @ Political pressure on federal employees is old-hat, but what is astounding is the amount of pressure placed on them this year to buy U.S. savings bonds. This column has heard of high-level defense intelligence officers being assigned the job of calling heads of ie a tary departments that are falling behind in their quota — oe —at night, from their homes. Civil-service columnists for Washington newspapers have been flooded with re- — & ports of intimidation. Employees at the Office of Eco- nomic Opportunity have been told it is matter of “loyalty to the organization,’ and have received personal mem- orandums. Commerce Secretary John Conner promises “a personal canvass” of those who don’t comply. For some reason President Johnson has taken the savings bond program as a sign of personal loyalty. Postmaster General Lawrence O’Brien heads the drive, and has told agency heads that “the President personally is following the progress of this campaign and he will accept nothing less than the minimum immediate goal of 75 per cent, a will consider adequate nothing less than realization of our long-range goal of 90 per cent, and will be satis-_ fied with nothing less than achievement of the 100 per __ cent record established by the White House.” That doesn’t leave much room for individualists. — @ The Administration is continuing its vendetta against — . the National Right to Work Committee. Internal Rev- — = enue’s investigation of their files, reported earlier in this column, has now gone on uninterrupted for more than seven months. Unable to unearth any wrongdoing, the ~ first IRS agent was “reassigned” and the second one be- came “sick.” The Committee now is being investigated by a third agent, requiring the entire process to start — Ss again. The Department of Labor, also getting into the act, is resorting to a mis-use of the Landrum-Griffin Act in an attempt to require the Committee to open its ae records to government investigators. Reed Larson, the Committee’s executive vice president, says that “the ob- vious purpose of the Secretary of Labor, who was chief Administration spokesman for the bill that would have repealed 14(b), is to force the National Committee to disclose the names of its 22,000 supporters—including 8,000 rank-and-file workers—thereby exposing them to harassment by government agents and irresponsible union officials.” @ Is Sol Linowitz, head of Xerox, about to receive the gubernatorial blessing of Robert Kennedy? According to | % Washington rumor, several of the Senator’s aides are preparing speeches for a Linowitz campaign against Nelson Rockefeller. —CATO