Stirrings & Beginnings

Entrenched in the town halls of a third of Italy's municipalities, many Red mayors have long engaged themselves in a lucrative tax racket. Sometimes they call in private firms to collect local levies (a frequent practice in Italy), but add a twist of their own: the party kickback. On the books, the collectors got an exorbitant 30% commission; they actually kept a generous 18% to 20%, and handed over the rest to swell the coffers of the West's biggest, richest, strongest Communist Party. Typical annual payoffs for the Reds: 17 million lire ($27,200) in Modena, 4,000,000 in Pisa, 1,000,000 in Pistoia to Nenni's fellow-traveling Socialists.

The government has begun a drive against such corruption in Tuscany (80% of whose towns are Red-governed). By last week 56 mayors and local administrators had been put in jail. Not all were Communists, but most were. "McCarthy-ism," cried the Communist L'Unit`a, in incoherent rage. The campaign had a double effect: it hurt the Communist treasury and exposed the Communist moral rot.

The arrests are another indication of renewed vigor by Premier Mario Scelba's administration. One hundred former Fascist buildings grabbed by the Communists at war's end have now been recovered. Last week the government approved a new supervisor for Bologna's huge, Communist-run cooperative, which had been operating hotels, restaurants and bars for the Reds' profit. The government also began an investigation of financial shenanigans in Turin's Red-run cooperative.

These promising beginnings by Scelba's administration were somewhat obscured by headlines announcing a plan that has in it more of promise than of beginning. Budget Minister Ezio Vanoni addressed himself to Italy's very real problem: 2,000,000 unemployed, another 2,000,000 underemployed, a housing shortage of 15 million rooms. His solution, which Scelba's cabinet discussed until 2 o'clock one night last week, is a ten-year plan to invest $8 billion worth of private and public capital in building productive enterprises. The intention was laudatory, but the details vague. Particularly vague was where the money would come from; Signor Vanoni apparently counted on the U.S. Treasury.

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