Word: kerner
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Faced with the kind of decision that must torture the conscience of a Governor, Democrat Otto Kerner (a onetime county judge) spared the condemned man's life, changed Crump's sentence to 100 years "without parole"−a condition that some lawyers doubt that a Governor can legally impose...
Nearly the entire staff of Crump's prison is marshaled behind the mounting save-Crump crusade, including the warden, the guards, the doctors, nurses, social workers and psychiatrists. Illinois Governor Otto Kerner has been besieged by requests for clemency from the likes of Billy Graham, Father Charles Dismas Clark (the "hoodlum priest"), state representatives, the former warden of San Quentin prison, the former county sheriff, a host of lawyers, sociologists and teachers. Two Chicago dailies, the American and the News, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, have weighed in with strong editorial support for mercy. A Chicago TV station...
Vacillation. Yet when Kerner was finally forced to act. he vacillated. He ordered a pay freeze for all the state employees under his control, but granted a million-dollar raise to 1.775 teamsters in the highways division. He banned new hiring, except for emergencies, yet the number of employees grew. The new employees, he lamely explains, were an "absolute necessity." Without approval of the legislature, he cannot transfer money from the few special funds that have a surplus into the nearly empty general revenue fund-yet he refuses to call a special session. "I will not take the risk...
Last week Kerner chose the unusual forum of a Boy Scout executives' meeting (a retired major general in the National Guard. Kerner is also a Boy Scout supporter, recently hiked 22 miles to open a Scout trail) to announce his boldest decision so far: he wants to slash state welfare spending, possibly by as much as 35%. to get by until the legislature meets in January. Welfare costs absorb one-fifth of the general fund, have been running some $4,000,000 a month above their allotment. Kerner wryly concedes that this cut maybe "politically unpopular." "Indefensible...
...Kerner refuses to say if he is for or against an income tax. He has. he says, appointed a commission to study...