ustxtxb_obs_1957_03_19_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

‘Now, This Won’t Hurt a Bit’ Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer 1/401141t TWO LAWS, PLEASE Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON Contraot It fell to the ministers and the Young Democrats of the state to speak up for the law of the land the other night at the first House hearing on the segregation bills. The East Texas group called on speakers to threaten that the “bedrooms of white America” will be forced open by school integration and, in the noisome figure used by Rep. Joe Chapman, that enforcement of the decision would be “simmering ever’body down to a slow brown gravy.” In contrast, the speakers against the bills invoked the dignity of man, the law of the land, the Christian .doctrine of brotherhood, and progress toward full rights for all students with the deliberate speed the Supreine Court . requires. We were happy that so many clergymen rose and were ocunted when their counsel mattered most. We were happy that the Young Democrats of the state had the courage to face the inevitable insults of racist cross-examination. We were amazed that not one member of Speaker Carr’s state affairs committee would ask for a ruling on the constitutionality of the legislation pending. Apparently Carr is supporting the racists behind the .scenes. The obstinate refusal of the Rouse to grant low-paid state employees a raise on salary up to $2,400 can be explained only by fear of a tax bill. The argument went like this : If you give the poor devils a raise, it will use up the small surplus available for teachers, but the teachers have to have a raise, and that will mean a tax billspecifically, a tax on natural gas. In moral effect, therefore, the House decided it would rather let 15,000 or so lowlevel state workers go without a raise than tax natural gas. Of . such stuff is the . old-timey statehouse reaction. made up. Nevertheless, it’s a far better appropriation bill than we’ve ever had in the past, and we commend the House for passing it. We trust the committee on loan shark legislation will come up with a bill along Rep. Tony Korioth’s proposed lines. The sharks ought to be licensed, put tinder a definite overall total charge limit \(say 36 percent a year on the declining baljail terms for -violations. Anything less than thisor ludicrously more, like Ed Sheridan’s “jailhouse bill” will let the sharks go on robbing the poor. We are still scratching our noggin over the Herring bill. Just how Senator Herring figured calling off the election would let the people elect their senator by majority vote gets way beyond our logical powers. We think the Senate ought to be commended for preserving the rules Incorporating The State Observer, combined with The Zest Texas Democrat MARCH 19, 1957 Ronnie Dagger, Editor and General Manager Bob Bray, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity orders available.. liktered as second-class matter April 26, 1987, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the act of March 8, 1879. In one evening, Chapman, a provincial satellite of Joe McCarthy, accused by name two patriotic liberal organizations of being on the Attorney General’s subversive list, although they are not and have not been ; “wondered” if a Negro who testified had studied “in Moscow,” when in fact. he had studied in England on a U.S.-sponsored Fulbright fellowship; and, with Rep. Reagan Huffman of Marshall, a partner in this shameful proceeding, accused the NAACP of being communistinfiltrated with absolutely no evidence to that effect. .But worst of all this small band of East Texans wants to coerce the House to vote for a series of bills which are avowedly intendedadmittedly intendedto preserve segregation in defiance of the law of the land but which lean for their constitutionality on assertions on their face that they are not meant to maintain segregation. They ask the members to vote for legislation they admit was conceived in hypocrisy. \\Ve do not at this point see much hope that enough of the members will refuse to be intimidated to keep the bills from crossing the aisle to the Senate. eneral of the game after the game had started. We tried, but we were not able to join in the teary House outburst climaxed by a $59,000-a-year tax remissionon behalf of the Moviehouses of the Silent Turnstiles. \\Ve went to see War and Peace, and we did not conclude, from the prices they were charging, that DeMille, Zanuck, et al, are yet redticed to begging for customers with such inducements as “popular” prices. Further, there is little difference between the appeal of the movies and TV ; one merely requires a little exercise of the flanks to reach. We do not strenuously object to the tax remission for this, and only this, reason of state policy : that if people will while away their time watching spectaculars, soap operas, and giddy-yups, it is better for the sinews of the state that they get a little exercise doing it. ea/ goomo We would like to sayin spite of Governor Daniel’s ill-timed demurrer that Reports of Corruption had Been Greatly Exaggeratedthat the Governor and Speaker Carr have given no sign of reluctance to clean up, but that on the contrary they have pitched into the mess awaiting them with zeal and sincerity. If they will keep at it, and carry through with stiff legislative reforms, with criminal penalties, we may cautiously hope for more tranquil times. TELEPHONE in Austin : GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE : 2601 Crawford St, Houston, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, treasurer. 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 hasten values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy ; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit MAILING ADDRESS : 604 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. AUSTIN . Now we know that Garland Smith and Byron Saunders were tied to BenJack Cage by not-sofragile strings when they were insurance commissioners. It’s all . so curious, like the dig -ging up of proof of ancient skulduggery in some long-lost kitchen midden. Politics changes eras so swiftly, the current revelations have little political meaning -, except that Allan Shivers doesn’t look like a very strong write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate. Saunders, the stiff-necked, upright attorney who presided over the destinies of multi-million-dollar corporations, was paid by ICT over many months. When it looked like ICT was in had trouble and new management moved in to clean it up, the payments stopped. A transaction was entered onto ICT company books by which it was made clear that the company had been paying Saunders $6,000 for ‘ some mineral rights to some land. Saunders thought it a very fine transaction, all perfectly proper, perfectly proper. Meanwhile, his colleague, Garland Smith, or, as Governor Shivers used to call him, Good ‘Ole Chink, was also in an interesting position. Chink’s daughter was ‘married to Max Rychlik. Max was getting $8,000 a year from ICT for a job with no duties. He was paid, he said, to stay available on some PR deal ICT had in mind in Austin. The fact his father-in-law was insurance commissioner, why, that was just a coincidence. Then -we suppose it was coinci In retrospect we may now be able to understand , a lot more about the U.S. Trust & Guaranty collapse. A. B. Shoemake put a bullet in his head, but perhaps before he did so, he found some financial transaction he could enter into with Smith and Saunders which Smith and Saunders would regard as perfectly proper. No doubt, if there was such a connection, it was just as innocent and ethical as the deals with BenJack Cage. When men as high in life as that can’t see anything wrong with such financial transactions with the head of a vast insurance empire they are charged to regulate you might as well throw away the lid. A law should be passed requiring every state official to make public disclosure to the Secretary of State of any financial transaction between him . or his immediate relatives or asso ciates and any individ ual or firm he is charged to regulate under severe penalties of law. ANOTHER law should be passed definingthe difference between a legal fee and a bribe. ‘Without prejudgingthe guilt or innocence of Rep. James Cox, it remains true that had Cox been a lawyer instead of an insurance agent, he could have demanded from Dr. Howard Harmon, the naturopath lobbyist, a $5,000 “legal fee” instead of a $5,000 bribe. Any lawyer in the legislature can, with utter impunity, take a bribe, call it a legal fee, and be immune from prosecution for bribery. A bona fide legal fee for a specific service rendered is easy to define. The trouble arises in the “retainer fee” area. Some lawyers are retained for a regular fee for whatever leg -al work might come up. Some lawyer legislators are retained for a periodic fee for whatever legislative work might come up. What’s the difference? Why, the difference is simply that the services one performs are legal, and the services the other performs are legislative. This is a question of fact that can be submitted to a jury like any other. If they go passing some code of ethics that says it’s not nice to profit from public office and you really ounghtn’ta ; if they do nothing about top-drawer public officials entering into financial transactions with men they’re suppoSed to be regulating \(however bona fide, proper, ethical, upright, moral, scrupulous, and correct the transacfull investigation of the lobbyists who lurk behind all this trouble, lurk in the shadows, fearful of light then no matter how boring the subject becomes, we may just settle on corruption as a way of life clown here, and “politiCal demag -ogues and out-of-state publications” \(to use Governor Daniel’s have to carry on with their irresponsible calumnies against the purity-, sanctity, repute, dignity, honesty, and honor of the state. R.D. bstrurr I tr…..11