ustxtxb_obs_1957_04_23_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Ah for Dear, Dead Days MARSHALL It is the French, I believe, who have classified leaders as those of the head and of the tail. The first determines his course and sets out on it ; the second follows the mob’ts course. As attributed \(I think inas he goes my mob, I must join it and find where it’s going, so I can lead it.” Our senior senator is presently attempting to find which way his mob is going. He has propounded a questionnaire and distributed it I Franklin Jones among his constituency, even including the writer. In it he seeks answers to some twelve inquiries on subjects as varied as whether postal rates should be increased to whether our government should confer with “governments of which we disapprove” on peace plans or “follow policies which would withdraw us from the rest of the world.” …. Robert G. Spivack, Washington columnist, reports to the Observer that “Oil-rich Texas spends an average of $255 per year per pupil” in its schools and has insufficient schoolrooms for 55,590 of its students. The average for the country is $295 per pupil. “The averao -e atitoiSt spends more than $3 a year on gasoline,” Spivack says. …. Corpus Christi Caller notes the Young Democrats’ convention took a stand “against Johnson and Rayburn and for Yarborough,” says this may mean Yarborough, holder” of an “immensely important U. S. Senate place … has become the logical leader for loyalist-liberals.” If Republicans leave the Democratic primaries, says the Caller*, the loyalist-liberals can win important state posts in 1958 “if they can find the right candidates.” …. A newsman at the Young Democrats’ convention in Dallas observed, “Experience covering political conventions has taught me there are always two ‘sides fighting for controlthe side which won and the side which maintains it was robbed.” …. Atty. Gen. Will Wilson has reportedly been discussing running against Governor Daniel in 1958. He has received some feelers from conservatives .’ and has put some out to liberals. …. Tom Moore, the Waco DA who got so many votes in his race .against Wilson for attorney general, is reported moving totvard “middle ground” in preparation for his next race. …. We inadvertently left the names , of medical lobbyists Phil Overton and Jim Dannheim out of our lobbyist issue last week. We didn’t, mean to slight them. Anybody el se left out need only call it to our attention. …. The Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. reprints a letter from Franklin Jones in the April 2 Observer’s “Stump” as evidence the Texas Association of Plaintiffs’ Attorneys is “trying to thwart the effort of employers and labor to find an equitable solution” to the workmen’s compensation problem. …. The Observer has now heard from enough sources to confirm the report that Lyndon Johnson recently jumped a group of Texas labor leaders in Washngton for “condoning” the Observer, which has been somewhat critical of the senator editorially. He was assured the Now, of course, what’s really worrying the senator is whether Texas ”Democrats are following policies which mean they are withdrawing from the rest of the senator’s political life. But we must take the matter as though it were serious. No blueprint is furnished showing how the neat trick of withdrawing from the world may be brought about, presumably because a later poll will determine this. We should expect such tail leadership from one who has kept his sails free to shift his course for every favorable wind. Here he is in Washington with access to information the electorate could not hope to have and he takes a poll on what our foreign policy should be instead of setting a course and explaining to the people why. Not that anyone desires a man on a horse in the Capitol ; but we should all be weary of the endless buck-passing and cloakroom fixing that has been characteristic of the Eisenhower administration. The only time our senior senator has moved boldly has been when he was dealing from a stacked deck in state conventions of the Demo unions have no investment in the Observer, but to no avail : he continued to blame them for criticisms of him in these columns. Rep. Wade Spilman, McAllen, chairman of the House Cox committee, feels that any criticism that the lobbyists in general have not been investigated \(aS in the to be directed at the House at large, not at him. It is his position that it. has not dawned on him that the House intended to direct such an investigation by its resolution authorizing his committee’s probe. . . Rep. Jean Hosey, Galveston, asks what’s wrong with being sponsor . of a narcotics bill and representing a client charged with a narcotics offense. A story from ‘Galveston published here pointed thiS out, and Hosey thought it ought to be added that every accused person is entitled to a lawyer. …. Senator George Parkhouse, Dallas, said the Observer misquoted him a week or so ago when it quoted him on the following question on the Code of Ethics bill : “When a man won’t live by the goddam Ten Commandments, how is the legislature gonna. legislate morals for him ?” Parkhouse said he “sure didn’t say that.” He indicated NEW WAVERLY With insurance companies crashing down around us like rotten trees in a high wind ; and naturopaths lurking behind stinging’ nettles called tape recordings ; and grand juries bringing in indictments against newspaper editors a n d publishers f o r printing proven truths and against citizens for making affidavits to proven facts ; and wicked persons tossingacid in faces in attempt to blind one man and scare a lot more ; and legislators trying to pass laws to make us like those countries we read about that have only one political party on their ballots ; and governors with cohorts trying to bluff a whole great state of 254 counties into paying one mah , $15,000 to do what citizens have always done for themselves without salary : With all this to think about, shall we recline upon a mossy bank and sing Tra-la-la, Spring is here ; and we have elected Yarborough ; and the drouth is broken ; and the price of cattle has improved ; and the that if he had used the word it was likely with reference to the Code of Ethics and certainly not the Ten Commandments… “In other words it was a matter of a misplaced goddain ?” Answered Parkhouse, “That was about it.” …. The San Antonio Express, supporting Governor Daniel’s move for reorganization of the insurance department, said, “Texas needs an insurance commission that has not the slightest taint of laxness ; it needs an agency to regulate the industry in the best interests of the policyholders.” . Legislators have grown gunshy over the recurrent publicity concerning retainers, payoffs, insurance scandals and other matters. As a Look Magazine photographer took pictures in the Senate recently one member -vvas heard to remark : I hope this isn’t another rehash of what occurred tinder the past administration …. The past should be dead and gone.” …. Senate Leader Johnson churns up such nervous energy that he can’t sleep nights. He has talked seriously of giving up the leadership to relieve the tension. His doctors, who have seen him through one heart attack, have ordered him to “take it easy.” bluebonnets are blooming; and the first quail is inquiring if the “peas are ripe”; and the idea of a few new clothes for Easter enters one’s dreams ? Or shall we, figuratively speaking, take a notch in our belts and shift our shooting irons a little further forward like the sheriff does in the whodunnits and journey to Austin to take an inventory of what is left of our once proud CaPitolif anything? If we decide to do that, I suggest that we take along a few nails and a hammer to nail down what is left. For reading matter to go to sleep on I suggest the Saturday Evening Post article “Those Texas Scandals,” Nov. 12 ; the Look Magazine article, “These Scandalous Years in Texas”; the two Harper’s articles on Texas’s corrupt politics ; the New Yorker’s Letter : from Washington dealing with Texas oil money in the U.S. Senate ; and Hill Miller’s New Republic article on Democratic Leadership, 1957 style. AUSTIN With the Legislature now working in the final month of its regular 120 days and dozens of important bills still awaiting action, it becomes more obvious than ‘ever how great the need for annual legislative sessions. Members of both the Senate and House finance committees have worked long and hard compiling the $2 billion plus appropriations mealur e. Conference committee members are still burning the midnight oil to come up, with a final spending bill at the earliest possible date, tentatively May 1. If they are successful and the final bill is completed by then, the bill will still emerge so late in the session that the teacher pay increase and other spending measures ate liable to receive only a minimum of attention. With time running shorter and shorter in regular session, it is unlikely that a ta.x bill of any sort can be passed to get more money for teachers or for any other purpose. Thus t h e mammoth biennial spending bill is one of the greatest deterrents to passage of any legislation which requires additional tax revenue. But this is not the most serious objection. The biennial bud. get plan is an absolute masterpiece of inefficiency. If one started out to devise a means of -wasting tax dol-. lars he could scarcely deliberately arrive at a more effective method of burnino -b thousand dollar bills. 9 Any state department official will tell you that it just isn’t in the cards for him, or anyone else, to sit down and efficiently plan a budget for two years in advance. As Rep. Carlton Moore, Houston, pointed out in committee discussion of the question, “Any official or employee of a big corporation would not .only be fired, he’d be sent to the nearest hospital to have his head examined if he proposed the firm should try to plan its budget two years in advance.” Most department heads ask for all the money they . can get and try to have it doled out to them with as-few strings attached as possible. There is no’ question that the taxpayers of Texas would get a.great deal more for their money if annual sessions were held and an annual budget was adopted. The biennial budget matter is just one important reason why Annual session should be instituted. Another is that by meeting annually the legislators will have just twice as much opportunity to become aware of the needs and the wishes of the people. The lobbyists will have more than twice as much work to do to delay and sidetrack legislation. The eventual result might be that the state might get its insurance scandals really cleaned up, payoffs stopped, decent care and financial aid for its ill and needy, better schools, and dozens of other improvements of which even the biggest and richest state could be proud. BOB BRAY Drew Pearson WASHINGTON Clyde Ellis, the national REA lobbyist, has written me that I’m all wet about him ,working a deal with Lyndon Johnson last year to support Gov. Price Daniel of Texas against Ralph Yarborough, now the senator-elect from Texas. Glad to have his statement,_ though it’s not what Ellis’s staff told Texans. at the time of the Price-Yarborough race. Page 3 April 23, 1957 THE TEXAS OBSERVER Annual Sessions Need Is Clear cratic s Party, as when he and Mr. Rayburn kept our national committeewoman out of the convention hall at Fort Worth. Otherwise he has run with Ike. For example, the two contrived to weaken the hand of both the executive and legislative branches by promulgating the Eisenhower doctrine for the Middle East. Thereby an historic precedent was set : the chief executive acquiring from Con , gress the power to act in emergencies that he already possessed. Will not this precedent curtail the independent power? And has Congress thereby yielded in advance its power and duty to have an accounting from the executive as to the use made of the power? Buck, buck, who’s got the buck? But be of good cheer! If the senator discovers the people are beginning to find Ike out, away we’ll go with him !with Lyndon, as usual, leading the mob. Ah, for those dear dead days when the strains of the Missouri Waltz could be heard from a White House pianist with a firm, if blunt, touch, and when there was a sign on the desk of the chief executive reading, “The Buck Stops Here.” The Listening Post Nails and Hammer, Please