ustxtxb_obs_1957_01_02_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

IF YOU BUY A CAR, A HOUSE; If any of your policies expireCALL `Bow’ Williams Automobile and General Insurance 624 Lamar GR 2-0545 AUSTIN, TEXAS Represents ICT Insurance ,Co. and other standard stock companies LET’S ABOLISH THE POLL TAX’ The Texas Observer now has subscribers in all of the 254 counties of Texas. SPECIAL RATE: $4 for first gift subscription $3.50 for second gift subscription $3 for each additional Do you subscribe? If notfill out the blank below. If soget a friend to fill it out! P. S. Should you get more than one new subscriber, list them on separate sheet of paper; careful to give name and correct address. GIVE THE OBSERVER TO A FRIEND ……… 4P 4/. 414 THE TEXAS OBSERVER Subscription Blank Please enter the following name for one year’s subscription : Name Address Mail the subscripti*n to Texas Observer, 504 West 64th Street, Austin, Texas. Legislature To Open On Tuesday at Noon LAST-MINUTE APPOINTMENTS Shivers Extends Influence Debate on the school desegregation. question is generally expected. Rep Jerry Sadler of Hick’ ory Grove is expected to take the lead in berating the Supreme Court and seeking, by state legislation, to circumvent the courtdeclared federal law. Governor’elect Daniel and Speaker of the House Waggoner Carr are understood to favor a si*ty-day hold-off, on the issue to permit action on issues about which, as Daniel says, there is no doubt of the legislature’s authority to act effectively. Anti desegregation legislation which might pass the House could expect heavy going in the Senate, principally because Senator Henry Gonzales, the new LatinAmerican senator from San Antonio, is prepared to fight it long and bitterly, and Sen. Chick Kazen of Laredo has indicated a similar intent. About twenty legislators met at Marshall and supported the Shivers Advisory Committee on Segregation program to circumvent integration. Rep. Reagan Huffman of Marshall agreed to introduce bills to forbid integration unless approved by school patrons at a special election, and cut state funds to districts which do inter grate. THE SPENDING ISSUES \(old age pensions, aid to unemployables, suppbrt of eelymosynary institutions, higher teachers’ and will depend for their solution on the availability of new revenues. But the legislators will also have to come to terms, by action or inaction, with many other demands for changes and reform. Texas loan sharks, operating with various devices by which they increase their charges on small loans, will be the object of one reform spearhead. Credit insurance is sure to come under fire in this connection. Workmen’s compensation legislation will likely be passed. Union interests will be seeking higher weekly maximum benefits, while employer and insurance interests will be trying to bargain such raises off for pro-business change in the law. The unions and the Texas Manufacturers’ Association may, or may not, get together on an industrial safety law. The legislators will be confronted with a plan from the Legislative Council to raise their own salaries and hold annual sessions. Various social groups will be seeking strengthening of the state probation and parole system. The new governor’s authority will be thrown behind tougher narcotics enforcement and penalties. Legislation enabling municipal-federal slum clearance contracts will be requested -again. Htmdreds of bills-will be introduced in the opening weeks. Affected interests will fight to advance and protect themselves in the committee hearings. By the time most important legislation reaches the floor, the principal decisions will be made. R. D. Governor Shivers leaves office. January fifteenth, but his judgments about people and their politics will hold sway throughout the state government f o r years to come. His appointments Saturday and Monday merely pointed np. the fact that the appointees of the man who has been goVernor longer than anyone in Texas history will have effective control of most of the non-elective executive posts of the state government for the rest of this decade. Shivers named to the Veterans’ Land Board, under the reorganization voted last November, L. E. Page of Carthage and William Gossett of El Campo. Page, former Texas department commander and national vice commander of the American Legion, resigned from the State Democratic Executive Committee late last year because he was for Eisenhower. Gossett is a banker. The constitutional amendment dropped the governor and attorney general from the land board. Land Commissioner Earl Rudder is still a member. AUSTIN As of yesterday, the first day of 1957, the State of Texas began receiving two percent on its $130odd million time deposits in Texas banks. Five years ago the rate was one half of one percent. In 1950-’51, Texas earned only $156,620 on its deposits of “surplus” funds in Texas banks. In fiscal 1955-’56, the interest was $1,747,801, more than ten times the level of five years earlier. This is the “new situation” in state bank deposits revealed in State Auditor C. H. Cavness’s annual report. Behind it is a story of pressure and criticism on the man principally responsible for taxes subsidizes another guy who is paying $50. It tends to make people wards of the state, and it develops political machines in the cities.” What, then, should be done about the slums? “That’s a serious problem,” Dies says. “We should enable people to buy homes with long term very low-interest financemake it possible for anybody to own a home. The FHA plan should be more liberalized for people in low income groups.” Federal aid to school construction foundered in Congress in good part because of Dies’s work. “I opposed it as it was, with the Powell Amendment” to bar aid from segregated schools, he said. Would he have favored it without the amendment? “I would have John Q. Adams of Dallas was appointed to the Battleship Texas Commission. H. D. Barrow of Jourdanton replaces J. R. Norvell on the Court of Civil Appeals. John F. May of Karnes City, district attorney, succeeds Barrow on the 81st District Court, and Richard L. Dobie of Cotulla, La Salle county attorney, succeeds May. L. D. Ratliff, Spur, is new judge of the 110th districtcourt. Stanley Banks, Sr., of San Antonio, is now on the Library and Historical Commission. Shivers Saturday also made various reappointments, most of them for six years, to the Lower Colorado River Authority, Upper Colorado River Authority, Central Colorado River Authority, Runnels County Water Improvement District, the Board of Tuberculosis Nurse Examiners, Municipal Retirement System board of trustees, Upper Guadalupe River Authority, and Lower Concho Water and Soil Conservation Authority. On Monday Shivers announced 13 appointments to state agencies. He named to the Teachers Retirement Board John V. Wheat of the deposits, State Treasurer Jesse James. On June 13, 1955, The Texas Observer pointed out that if James had merely followed the auditor’s recommendation that half the state’s dormant funds should bear interest, the state’s interest return between September, 1950, and August, 1954, would have been $2,436,274 more than it was. Under recurring criticism from the auditor, James increased the interest rate from one half of one percent, to three fourths, and then to one and one-half. That, James told the Observer in 1955, voted against it either way,” he said. “Texas has ample resources and revenues for its schools. That was designed to set up in Washington a bureau to let them go out and build schools. It would have set up a number of conditions and requirements, not only in methods, but in curriculum.” Dies is for 90 percent of parity, for all basic crops with strict crop controls. He says he will work next session “for a resolution calling on to submit to Congress a comprehensive program for the drouth. stricken states.” He would favor a 50-50 cost split between the states and the U. S. “without any further delay.” He favors the construction of reservoirs throughout the affected states. He opposed the $20-a-dependent tax cut the Democrats espoused and also voted against the Eisenhower Administration’s tax bill, which the Democrats said helped Tom Hickman of Gainesville succeeds Sam Aldridge of Farwell on the Public Safety Commission employee representative on the Texas Employment Commissebn, has resigned, but no successor has been named. John M. Scott of Fort Worth succeeds Earl Baldridge of Fort Worth on the Trinity River Authority \(through Other appointments: Miss Nellie Louise Scales of Austin Texas Commission for the Blind; J. Ross . Hopkins of Carthage Woodworth of Orange \(Sept. 10, pact Commission; E. B. Musick Sr., of Rusk, T. E. Acker of Jacksonville, John B. McDonald of per Neches Municipal Water Authority; a n d Miss Bernice Johnston, Austin, to fill out an unexpired term on the State Board of Nurse Examiners \(through is “just about the limit banks will pay.” The tight money policy of the federal government made pos sible the January first increase. In September, 1950, the state had only $21 million in time \(in the banks have $169 million in demand accounts, for which they paid the state nothing. By August 1953, this had improved slightly: the ;ratio was $43 million to $202 million. For the first tithe, the state was paid interest on about a third of its surplus funds in 1954on $78 million, against $145 million in the demand accounts. Now accounts are evenly divided. the richer taxpayers. Dies says he is opposed to “any tax cuts.” He is opposed to any plan of national health insurance, which he would view as “socialized medicine.” He is a member of a House group on health and science, however, and feels proud of his ‘work on health resources and mental health legislation, especially legislation helping finance medical research with federal grants-inaid. On the current crisis in the Suez, he tends to justify the invasion of Egypt. `.`It may turn out to be one of the most far reaching things that ever happened,” he says. “If Russia took over Eastern oil, the very life blood of the democracies, where would any of us be? So I think it’s not wise to be quick to condemn them \(Briting in quickly.” THUS IS DIES readying for the reavy campaigning of the next few months. He thinks Ralph Yarborough will be his chief opponent if he announces, and he is anxious to get the fight into the open. “What can he say about me?” he asked. He thinks his position on party loyalty secure and unexceptionable; he has kept out of state politics. “Will he call me a reactionary? If he says I voted against federal aid to education, why, every Texas member voted against it! Is he against Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn? What vote have I cast against the best interests of the people? Name it!” THE TEXAS OBSERVER ?age 4 Jan. 2, 1957 State’s Bank Interest Is Improved `NAME IT!’ CHALLENGES MARTIN DIES