Show washington ashington snapshots by james preston the capitals unofficial sideline side line une spectators s are having their big 1 I told you so inning weeks before congress convened when word wora first began to leak out that the were going to wheel notional national defense into the legislative spotlight these observers began making predictions on just why itald what the defense defens pro grain would embrace irace it would include they speculated just about every pot iet project they could by the farthest stretch of imagine imag lna Ind tion be pictured as a defense re lui rement first to be dropped gently into tills this classification was part of WP A other lessor lesser lights have followed now however the side liners say they hava detected the master st stroke roice to wit revival of two of the lie largest sp anding ng projects ever started but which were dropped after a flurry of protests charges and congressional Congress fonal revolt ono one of the ae projects Is the florida I 1 1 ida cagial cann l which would cost about the other Is an experiment to develop power from the flow of the tides in bay maine this project called for an original expenditure of about about was spoilt spent on each project be defore they were dropped congress sounded the death knell by refusing to appropriate further funds after engineers had called th the capassa project foolhardy and the florida project impractical they are revived now as part of the national defense program and there Is auy anything thIng but e enthusiasm in army and navy 1 circles I acles the military services would rather see the money spent en necessities another power project this one already completed Is in a delicate situation incidentally it Is TVA which Is finding it difficult to satisfy the comptroller general or a little matter of strawberries aud and crean cream the comptroller says he been able to get in intelligent answer as to why iti it was necessary to spend some six million dollars on strawberry patches a freezing plant a strawberry marketing k ebing boat a dairy herd and othor other incidentals on the TVA project while this tussle goes on a three sided scrap Is on in another part of the capital city participants ire arc the Troa treasury sury and justice departments part ments and the intelligence corps of the arm army 7 and navy the bone of content contention lon Is the business of rounding up spies the department of justice and the lie treasury secret service branch are aie at odds over which wh ieh should conduct spy trials and thus got get the publics nod of approval and half the alio glory that goes with it jealousy has existed ever since the department part ment of justice began publicizing its activities in contrast to the silence of treasury secret agents on the other hand the intelligence corps operatives would like to see all the fanfare of publicity that has marked recent spy trials stopped it believes publicity hinders hindera their work of trailing down spies they contend the spies recently tried were small fry and that the publicity line hao caused the big shots to go into hiding biding until the heat Is off the city father lu in the national capital the district of columbia commissioners are learning a lesson that the rest of the nation already knows they say they would be a lot happier these days if they just had a good big industry in washington an industry that Is other than politics industrial plants have been discouraged cou raged by law from the dis brict in 11 the first place industries could not lot meet stringent zoning limitations in the second place the smoke of industrial furnaces would dirty tho white marble of government buildings now however the he district oom com lire are struggling with a budget problem adding to the troubles are their limited tax sources government salaries are not tax uble the government owns a large portion of the land la in the district and the other property owners are alre already ady carrying n tax bierden burden so go said the era last week ns As they adopted a sales iks tax plan if we just had a good big industry here giving jobs to a lot of people whose salaries were not exempt from taxes we have to work out a sales tax plan |