ustxtxb_obs_1959_05_02_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

THE TEXAS OBSERVER 10 l=f14-,\( ,=.11. 1 -ner`Show Your New Book to the Nice Man, Junior’ tr ,o\(c% E. Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer LYNDON AND CIRCE Our grandmotherly Capitol, her pink grace shrouded, these spring evenings, in the turquoise sky, has mused over many a more disastrous caper in her flock than this latest one. H. B. 727, “the tax bill,” passed the House, but, like most capers, it means little beyond its own happening. The growing fear of a gutted state government they would leave lying in the rising heat of summer will bring a majority of the lawmakers to the decisions they must make. To be sure, the House abdicated its responsibility to the lobbyists who control the Senate. But only by a very thin majority, in the desperate extremity that evolved, and not for long. Governor Daniel withdrew his substitute plan because he could not pass it ; thus he kept it “fresh and clean” for the special session soon to ensue. This left the House no recourse but to kill the worst parts of H.B. 727 and vote on the alternatives individual members offered. Speaker Carr gave every man his fair turn at the microphone, and at the spent conclusion of the fourth day, no one had any more amendment s. They should have scrapped H. B. 727 and started again, putting together a package that would attract a majority, but the Speaker did not want a compromise badly enough to make real concessions to the anti-sales taxers. He thus helped create the confused and negative situation. Thanks to the careful study given the bill by Rep. Tony Korioth, many sneaky little tricks on the public welfare were caught and thrown out. Korioth also led the attack on the bill’s profusion of sales taxes. Even so, the 74 men who voted for H. B. 727 must answer to the people for a bill nine-tenths reaction and one-tenth confusion. Perhaps from the deadlock in the granite dome now there can be extracted a compromise of some gas and oil taxes, some taxes on now untaxed businesses ; but no more selective sales taxes ! Perhaps Rep. Anderson’s measurea third income tax, a third profits tax, a third sales taxis sufficiently displeasing to everyone that a majority will accept it. Perhaps, as the Dallas News and Horace Busby hope, we will have two or three special sessions, and in a fit of suicidal desperation the legislature will pass a general sales tax. Much depends on Governor Price Danielwhether he fights daily without respitewhether he sells out for a penny a gallon more on gasoline sales or increases his proposals on oil and gasjust how, and just how well, he rallies the people against the sales taxers. We have hope that he will lead well. Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON g ramma o Seen Woroe ActiectiveJ If the Governor really believes college students should be required to take a full year, two full courses, of Texas history, which recent statements indicate, he is asking the legislature to butt its majority-ruled nose into the personal educational decisions of every Texas student. When you consider a requirement that a student spend one-twentieth of all his college study time on Texas history against a perspective of centuries of human experience and the manifold areas of knowledge and beauty open to him in a university, no adjective asinine, jingoistic, stupid, provincial is too strong. We hear a lot of claptrap about local self-government ; the politicians should remember there are also much deeper rights of personal self-government. 3/. 158 As we close editorials this week “the heat is on” from Lyndon Johnson’s Washington menagerie to pass H. B. 158, juggling around primary dates to his benefit and the damage of poor-boy candidates for state office. Let him remember he may run the legislature like a military brigadier, but not the national convention of the Democratic Party. mho!, The House criminal jurisprudence committee proved itself honest and responsible even when working under coercive political symbols this week Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas. under the Act of March 3, 1879. May 2, 1959 Bonnie Dogger Editor and General Manager Lam Goodwyn, 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 prices available on orders. by sidetracking the bill to outlaw nudist camps in Texas. Legislative busybodies were outvoted ; the traditional Western respect for sincere belief and for minority customs prevailed. Let people run around naked on their own property if they want to. Life in the campsno whiskey, no pi-ofanity, no shady stories, no immoral conduct sounds dull enough to put most of the dirty -minded prohibitors to shame, and if it’s not, whose business is it? PriceJ The producers’ bill to require inspectors’ “personal knowledge” of purity of milk imported from other states means Texas cities would have to send inspectors to every other state where they buy milk. In effect this would prevent milk imports and this -would raise the price of milk three or four cents a quart. There is no doubt that present health standards are sound and adequate. This is another special interest bill in which “free enterprise” is trying to use the legislature to snuff out competition. The House should kill S. B. 277 outright. 50 Cenb Every member of the House who voted against Rep. Bill Kilgarlin’s motion for favorable action on a 50cent minimum wage for Texans ought to be held responsible for anti-social opportunism or political immorality. Those three dozen who voted aye will be remembered many years from now as the vanguard of the changing times in Texas, the first few friends of the criminally underpaid. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 1010 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. 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 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 NEW YORK Way back in high school days we voyaged with Ulysses, experiencing strange sights and sounds. Especially do we now remember the withstanding of Circe and her ship-wrecking sirens. Old Ulysses, not to be deprived of hearing the song of these ladies, but not wanting a broken ship, ordered his men to lash him to the mast and commanded that wax be poured in their ears so that the Isle of Circe might be enjoyed without danger. There was no wax around, no mast to be lashed to, when we took our position at the weekly luncheon of the Texas delegation in the national Capitol. Things proceeded well, and at the dramatic moment L.B.J. entered to the applause of the Texas members and their guests. We shook hands and back patted. The late arrival sat next to Ralph Yarborough at the head table. Unfortunately, Mr. Sam was in Texas; his office commented unequivocally that he did not go down to close the nudist colony in Fannin County, even though it is very close to some of his properties. The pleasant meal moved to a close, and then I began to wish to the missing mast. Lyndon put arm around my shoulder and turned on a charm voltage of at least 7500. Now any of you THE OIL TAX AUSTIN Ernest Joiner writes in the Ralls Banner that “the one sensible revenue bill” in the legislature is Rep. Bob Eckhardt’s plan “to make 16 major foreign oil companies, none with headquarters in Texas, pay for depleting Texas of its oil and gas reserves.” Continues Joiner: “These 16 corporations took a net of about $3 billions out of Texas in 1957, leaving Texas little but exhausted reserves. Eckhardt is one legislator who is not controlled by oil. Oil is the Number 1 Sacred Cow, and it controls the government of Texas. By the same token, it controls the people and politics of Texas … We want to be controlled by oil, even if we have to foot their bills through increased personal taxes on bread and butter. Americans love to pick up the tab for corporations.” folk who cuss Lyndon but have not had this treatment had better reserve judgment. Here the guy was, with every right to raise Old Ned with me, actually praising me for supporting him against Coke Stevenson. He assured me that this little old meany writing I had been doing about him was of no consequence ; that he knew he could count on me when it mattered, and it came to voting. Just as he intended, he put me to a little soul-searching work. Had I changed; h h e a l d l? Lyndon; or just plain what the In the ensuing flashbacks, I saw his refusal to help the late Congressman Marty Combs, a devoted New Dealer, receive a nomination to the federal bench he well deserved … his courting of the chamber of commerce crowd at Marshall, the very same Eisencrats who had called him far worse things than has the Observer … the annual dinner of this outfit in 1953, as he praised Bob Taft to worm his way into the confidence of the political primates in attendance. He even gave President Eisenhower a good word, and suggested he knew what things were about. I could recall no backslapping and shoulder grasp at that meeting: such salutes were reserved for the “I Like Ikers” who had never supported him and never would. Even so, until 1956 the writer was willing to be a Lyndon man. Then came the Dallas convention, and L.B.J. either wittingly or unwittingly engaged in the old “harmony” sellout and kicked his friends while rewarding his enemies. The Shivers crowd stayed in the saddle and the true Democrats barely won a national committeeship over Lyndon’s vigorous infighting …. There followed the Fort Worth performance under his aegis that fall, and the battle of San Antonio in 1958. In all engagements he was with the party wreckers, whose operations these old eyes have witnessed since 1928. Either Lyndon changed, or I never truly knew him. As for the future ? Boy it’s nice to have a leading candidate for the presidency place arm around shoulder and give out with electrifying charm and persuasion. In this Lyndon has no equal. Shucks, I’ like it, and I’m not about to destroy it all by supporting him. FRANKLIN JONES