ustxtxb_obs_1958_11_07_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

AD0111101102 gog Facom WOO&0116 TA At Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer SALES TAX ENDORSED Maas Mitorruer Lid those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON I’m on Your Side’ 5he etectiorto The people have flooded over their leaders and left them behind, relics, bobbing on the wake. The question is whether the Democratic sweep was a reaction to the horrible because true Republicanism of the last few years or a demanding impulse of its own. In either case the question is what will the Democratic leaders do? Surely the Senate now will have no use for Rule 22, for the oil depletion allowance, for the insurance tax giveaway, surely now we will get from the Congress national medical insurance, federal enforcement of integration, perhaps we can even expect a foreign policy which does not handle the impoverished peoples with sterilized tongs. We regret Mr. Harriman’s defeat but do not regret Mr. Rockefeller’s Nixon-fixing victory. Rockefeller is much more liberal than Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps now Nixon \(“the young man with a wet his September song for a national sales tax. Perhaps now, also, Mr. Knowland can devote more of his energy to the defense of Formosa. “Arm him with a hula hoop and unleash him on Red China,” suggested a dissolute Austin intellectual Wednesday morning. Mr. Nixon can be expected to join Gov. Daniel now in the Johnson for President movement. But Texas Democrats are far less likely to waste off their energies into Johnson’s crucible of ego, deceit, and contempt for others. History is being made, and not in Johnson’s jeep bumping around his ranch in the hill country. As we say elsewhere we’re for William 0. Douglas. It was a good day for the country and a bad one for Texas. Dallas returned to the Congress the pure right-winger, Bruce Alger, defeating Barefoot Sanders, a skillful, enlightened man who seemed to have tailored his program to the Dallas mind. We can think of only two 57/ grayout When K G U L, K T R K, and KPRC TV stations in Houston refused to sell advocates of Amendment One program space for presenting the case for the amendment, they denied the people adequate discussion of the issue through a medium which belongs to all of us. Two of them were happy to sell spot announcements 20 seconds for $260!but the much cheaper program time was not for sale. Such refusals raise the question of more stringent regulation of. TV in the public interest. Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. NOVEMBER 7, 1958 Ronnie Dagger Editor and General Manager Larry Goodwyn, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Dean Johnston, Circulation-Advertising Entered as second-class matter, April 28, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE.: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0748. HOUSTON OFFICE: 1012 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Dean Johnston. ways out for Dallas. One is a wildeyed liberal candidate who says what he means and more important who he means. The other is prayers for flood rains before the dams are built on the Trinity. Everything else has been tried. The big money and the big newspapers teamed together to sink the amendment for annual sessions and adequate legislative pay in a sludge pit of crawfish and crud. The liberals started working too late with too little. The stuffed-shirt press served their major advertisers like pompous corporation lawyers. “So we endorsed the amendment two months ago !so what ?” Talk to us again about states’ rights, you rotterstalk to us again about states’ rights and deny us a full time legislature. You have yet to see the day, that fight is hardly cocked. And no more nonsense, fancy dans of the Huckster trade, about “advertising Texas.” That vote was no mandate. If you want to advertise it, go advertise itnone of our concern. Let the daily newspapers so droolingly concerned for the advertising \(and so indignant against paying legislators a responsible and send free copies to all the suckers who are supposed to be so dumb they don’t have research departments to tell them where to locate new plants. The papers take the people for fools, they might as well take the businessmen too. The apparent election of the Negro lady, Mrs. Charles E. White, to the Houston school board is at once a marvelous event itself and a rebuke to the segregationists the more delightful for its ironic justice. We expect that Mrs. White will give Houston’s TV school board fans many a lesson in human dignity ; she will confront the racists with their first solid loss there. Houston may never be the sameas though there was much chance for that anyway after the Democratic primaries this year. We congratulate Senator Yarborough on his six year term ; we have not recently heard the drum-bitch about “the minority candidate.” We present Gov. Daniel a ragweed for his subtle fight for Amendment One, so typical of his crusading administration. We congratulate the Jaycees for their integrity in standing by Amendment One while their seniors, like Daniel and the dailies, were wilting into the wings. And we congratulate the citizens for resisting, anyway, the arguments against Amendment Eight, thus making it possible for the aged, the lifelong sick, and the dependent young to get medical treatment even when they can’t afford it. Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. We will serve no group or party but will hew 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 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. West Texas Chamber of Corn merce endorsed a general state sales tax if legislative studies show new revenue is needed. The proposed tax would add a percentage tax to the price of every retail sale except for food and drugs. “No other way out,” said many directors. Burl Godfrey, president of the chamber, said. “The sales tax is distasteful to everyone, but we have had to come to it.” He added that if the Gilmer-Aikin laws designed to improve Texas schools are continued in force, they will “bankrupt the state.” An anti-Jewish aspect to the right-wing Constitution Party is suspected by Anti-Defamation League officers in Texas because of a mailout from the party from Houston citing quotes that communism is fostered in the U.S. “by international bankers and war promoters who seek world control” and that the responsibility for World War I rests on “the international financiers.” The industrial and occupational safety study commission set up by the legislature voted 4-3 not to make any recommendations to the legislature after having received testimony on industrial safety for months. Voting against recommendations of a remedial law : Sens. Doyle Willis and Crawford Martin, Rep. Joe Pool, and E. C. McFadden of Dallas. Voting for them, M. B. Blair, Rep. D. Roy Harrington, and J. E. Lyles, lobbyist for railway conductors and brakemen. AFL-CIO charged the commission with failing to discharge the duty the legislature gave it. “Texas Businessman” says the businessman is already in Texas politics but asks for things usually “for himself.” The purposes of business in politics, says the business newsletter : “To tighten the screws on competitors, to use the legislative powers to make mandatory the public use of his products, to dump taxes on some less powerful segment of business, to shut off the right of entry and competition in an area of trade and commerce. Yes, it is true there has been a trend to government controlsbut Reuther at his imagined best could not contrive, nor pass, the restrictions that are concocted, even now, in the law offices of the businessmen’s retainers The business position remains essentially private.” VTexas Businessman editor Hor ace Busby told the Texas League’ of Municipalities convention that “Urban Texas is today the captive of Rural Texas,” especially in the legislature. Arguing against one-party poli tics for Texas, in response to Atty. Gen. Will Wilson’s plea for such politics in the Observer, Lynn Landrum in the Dallas News writes, “One-partyism is not good for Texas. What it boils down to is a multifactional uproar … Our primaries are shambles, our conventions are riots, and nobody is really answerable to the people for a good, honest administration …” Political Intelligence IThere was an unpublicized crisis in Austin over farmers who had leased land pre-empted for floodways, put it under cultivation, and then resisted the plowing under of their the Rio Grande went on its rampage. James Garner, deputy state disaster relief director, told the Observer, to use the police power if necessary to get the sandbags out” \(o f the Ferree, the border samaritan, wired Daniel calling for action. Daniel wired him back, “As you know my assistant, helping to get the inlets open to the floodway, and I have been advised that they are and will relieve the situation …” They were and did, the Observer is advised. Cuero Record ran the full-page ad “What is Reuther Up To?” discussed in the ‘Observer Oct. 3. State Democratic committee Dol lars for Democrats chairman Bill Parker, Greenville, has appointed a steering committee for the drive. Members are Sen. Charles Herring, Agriculture Cmsr. John White, W. St. John Garwood, and Ed Lyle, Austin ; Jimmy Knight, San Antonio ; J. Ed Connally, Abilene ; Tom Perkins, Jr., McKinney ; J. J. Berg, Panhandle; Larry Blackmon, Mineral Wells ; Ed Levee, Texarkana ; and Martin Elfant, Houston.