ustxtxb_obs_1954_12_27_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

THE MOST STIMULATING social event of the Sabine area season. The Seventh Annual Governor’s Duck Hunt, attended, of course, by the namesake, his lieutenant, and more than a dozen of our wonderful Texas Senators. Distinguished celebrants sketched above during important policy discussion while cruising down the Neches. Party later disembarked from Ava at Port Arthur to disappear in the intracoastal marshes for a duck hunt. Good time by all. Texas Company and 40 other businesses’ were hosts as usual, of course. Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American. art. JEF.14.haS ON tpl 5or Mom Are Reit 50lli ? AT&T never has seemed sufficiently grateful that present public policy grants it a virtually complete monopoly on the Nation’s telephone system. Witness its present behavior in Houston. It claims it is worth only $35 million when the City wants to tax it, but when time comes to decide how much profit it should be permitted to make on a percentage-of-worth basis, it claims it’s worth $87 million ! The City, quite consistently, says that both valuations should be around $57 million. The Mayor, Roy Hofheinz, said in a sworn affidavit that the president of Southwestern Bell told him that the company will pay its city taxes when its demands for higher rates are settled. The Houston Post flatly endorses the idea by saying: “If the rate question is settled, then the telephone company should pay the $3 million taxes the city claims it owes. In fact, the payment of this money should be a consideration of the settlement.” This incredible suggestion is contrary to every mature conception of public policy and individual justice. Everybody else has to pay taxes. AT&T has not the slightest right to say to a city, we will pay ours only if you will let us charge the people higher telephone rates; yet that is the obvious 3f veiled meaning of what the Bell president told the Mayor. Imagine the swiftness with which a poor individual tax ayer would be slapped down if he told the Internal Revenue apartment : “I’ll pay my income taxes if, and only if, you let me make re money in my business.” AT&T is a gargantuan outfit, working in every community to extract maximum profits, regardless of public policy. It fights the decisions of the publicly-selected city councils at every turn. It hires high-powered lawyers to make its case. It releases what statistics it wishes in each community. It stores hidden profits in Western Electric, a subsidiary beyond public utilities regulation. And now it has the temerity to object to submitting the Houston rate question to twelve citizens on a jury. Roy Hofheinz is right. Take the case to a jury. Let the people decide : For Whom Are Bell’s Tolls ? The monopolists or the people? ey Silence We etra We have been defending the right to speak so long, we ‘lave come, in practice, to doubt it ourselves. What has become of the Truman plan for national health lsurance? Senator Johnson left it out of the Democrats’ 1955 program. People suffer and die every day because they’ve been afraid of the doctor bills, yet you have to look far to find a citizen who will speak out for it now. Why is there no widespread resistance to the obvious and tumoral role of big money in politics? England has conquered the problem with state-financed elections, and no damage to her cherished democracy. How can our Texas conscience tolerate the slums in our By silence, we betray what a program is because of what t’s called. The only way for men of good will to regain the offensive l America is to speak of the rights and the wrongs, not of he right we all have to speak of. them. Damn McCarthy! ‘ull speed ahead! It may be good for the conscience to peak out for the right to speak out; but it is not good tough for the country. 0.11g &xtts Obstrurr Incorporating The State Observer, combined with the East Texas Democrat December 27, 1954 Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per anir,.m. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 5c each. Quantity orders available. Entered as second-class matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the act of March 8, 1879. MAILING ADDRESS : Drawer F, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas. OFFICE OF PUBLICATION: 604 W. 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone : 70746. Ronnie Dugger 3 Dell Sackett Editor y Business Maanger We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above al’ interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy ; we will take ord’ from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresen’ truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human g ell, Now, Senator, What’s Good for the Texas Company is Good for the State . . TEXAS AT LARGE Adlai Leads Ike in Texas; Houston Press Apologizes Confessions Of an Ex-Red Governor Shivers convened the Texas Industrial Commission last February to look into “communism in Texas labor unions.” Only five witnesses were called. Four were professional ex-communists who came from all over the U.S. for the hearing; the fifth was a labor leader who was invited by wire the next-to-last day of the hearings. From these facts alone, the propagandistic purpose of the hearings should be clear. One of the four ex-communists called was Harvey Matusow, an employee of Senator McCarthy at the time a Senate sub-committee was probing McCarthy’s finances. He made extraordinary admissions in a television interview with Drew Pearson on Nov. 8, and since they bear on the dignity and worth of the proceedings of the Governor’s Industrial Commission, we reprint excerpts from the transcript. Matusow Senator McCarthy made arrangements for me to go to Utah and campaign for Senator Watkins …. They were friends at that time, and apparently aren’t now …. I attacked Senator Watkins’ opponent as being pro-Communist. PearsonWell, was he pro-communist? MatusowNo, he was anti-Mc Carthy. * * * During the 1952 investigation of the Senator by … the Senate Cornmittee investigating Senator McCarthy and Benton, I helped conceal certain facts from that Committee …. In relation to. the $10,000 that Mr. and Mrs. Bentley lent Senator McCarthy, I took Mrs. Bentley out of the United States to Nassau in the Bahamas, so that she would be unavailable to that Senate Committee. Q.Did Senator McCarthy want her out of the United States? A.He did, sir …. * A.Well, the press in New York . The New York Times, the Herald Tribune and Time Incorporated, had been attacking Senator . McCarthy, and he was sore about it and wanted to take his revenge, shall we say. Q.Did he want to make them appear to be communist, or what? A.That’s right. Attack his attackers by calling them commun ists. * * A.One day I came to realize that Senator McCarthy was using the tactics of the Communist Party, and these were directly opposite to my beliefs us a Christian. Bruce Alger, the Republican Congressman from Dallas, accepted two suits, two pair of slacks, a sport coat and a topcoat at an “appreciation breakfast” given him and Mrs. Alger by 100 White Rock area friends Dec. 24. Mrs. Alger, an exmodel, was given a $200 gift certificate. … Only 46 percent of Texans think Eisenhower should run again though they gave him a 53 percent majority in 1952. Joe Belden of the Texas Poll reports that 37 percent say he should not run again and 17 percent have no opinion. As to how Eisenhower is handling his job, 69 percent approve, 22 percent disapprove, 9 percent have no opinion. Belden also reports 44 percent of qualified voters want Stevenson for President in 1956, 43 percent Eisenhower, 13 percent undecided, if it’s Stevenson vs. Eisenhower. Stevenson also has a one-point preference among “all adults.” … Lyndon Johnson is discouraging National Chairman Paul Butler from making “prematurely partisan” statements; is displeased by Butler’s early statement that Eisenhower can’t unite the country; and plans to limit Deomcratic Party policy fights with the Republicans to matters Democrats can act upon in concert. … Defending a court decision that upheld the right of nudists to publish their magazines, the El Paso Herald-Post editorialized: “We hope the decision stands. It protects the basic rights of an unpopular minoritythe nudists today, but perchance any of us at some future time.” … Jim T. Lindsey of Texarkana is the next Speaker of the Texas House. A lawyer, farmer, and rancher, he is 28. He says he is a conservative who wants to do what has to be done without spending too much money. The session opens Jan. 8. . . . Lloyd Bentsen, retiring fr, Congress Dec. 31, admits he i. re-enter politics. He was mention,. for the governorship until Shivers decided he wanted it again. In an interview with the Corpus CallerTimes, Bentsen said McCarthy indicts groups instead of individuals and this “undermines public confidence”; that “unfortunately” there is no practical substitute for the UN; and that Eisenhower has done “fairly good” on foreign policy but “had some busts” at home. … AFL in Texas is working for farm-labor-minority unity. Jerry Holleman, executive secretary, has urged farmers and Latin-Americans to work with labor in recent speeches. This is in line with Texas CIO’s declared objective of a “statewide liberal organization” emphasized at the Austin convention. … The Houston Press last week apologized to organized labor for printing a letter on Sept. 6 signed, with a fictitious name and . saying that “all unions anywhere in the country are under the absolute control of Communists or their agents.” The Press apologized for letting the letter be printed; called the charges “completely false” and “ridiculous”; and said labor unions are “established institutions” and labor union members “loyal and … devoted to American democracy.” It is understood that there was a threat of litigation involved.