ustxtxb_obs_1959_05_16_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON Delucement Let us pause for a glance at the unpleasant truth about the state tax situation. Governor Daniel and the liberals do not yet have the votes to pass a tax bill. Speaker Carr, Rep. Burkett, and the reactionaries do not, either. There is a middle group who are now waiting for a firm compromise they can vote for. The Texas Senate will sabotage every constructive of fort from the House until the House sends over a tax bill with which the representatives can face the people. Then the Senate will cave in, because the senators have to run for re-election, too. But the lobby has marked the first special session as the “Kill the Daniel Program Session.” They are going all out for s o c i a 1 irresponsibility. They are going to try to kill off the natural gas tax increase, the franchise tax increase, the , bill to reclaim abandoned accounts that belong to the state, and even the book-keeping bill. Their attitude essentially is “The public and the state be damned.” They hope to come back in a second special session and pass their stinking sales tax. They are even threatening that if they do not get what they want they will produce four-fifths of both the House and Senate in favor of two years of deficit spending! Let us be clear headed about where lies the blame for this mess. Govvernor Daniel’s moderates have been open for reasonable compromise at all times. The most idealistic of the liberals are prepared to accept a few selective sales taxes in trade for taxes on business. It is recognized among Governor Daniel’s moderates that no one can get everything; that each must give a little. g oo” ho d The Observer presumes to commend the Jacksonville Daily Progress for its initiative, courage, care, and restraint in exposing and then following through on the beating of a Negro prisoner by two police officers in the Jacksonville jail. Evidently they were trying to force him to confess to a theft. But for the Daily Progress’s work on the case, the practices in question might have continued indefinitely,; as, for all any b o d y knows, they had been going on secretly until they were discovered. We have carefully traced the paper’s work on the case in a story on page seven so that other East Texas dailies might emulate this excellent example and we all might have some renewal of confidence in the persistence of decency and fairness even in the East Texas context. The case raises the question of why the Texas legislature, in this age, failed to enact Rep. Eckhardt’s bill to exclude from trials confessions obtained under any circumstances except examination by a judge. Have we so abandoned our faith in the innocence of a man until he is convicted that we and our representatives approve beating . him until he falls on his bloody face and signs the confession thrown at him? MAY 16, 1959 Ronnie Dexter Editor and General Manager Larry 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. But the big lobbythe giant corporations, the arrogant lobbyists, as Daniel has angrily saidare against any such compromise. They want a general sales tax and they’re determined to get it if they have to gut every Texas legislator with his people back home. Preston Weatherred, writing from his “Adolphus Towers” in Dallas, sent out a letter to his fat-cat friends calling another “secret” meeting for the special session’s opening. A general sales tax, he said piously, is “inevitable,” and its proponents are asking, “Eventually, why not now ?” These hypocrites of the right these big-money boys who fought of f a legislative pay raise because they wanted the legislators to need their slimy favorsthese pompous conmen for Eastern greedwill do their worst to thwart the Texas legislators from passing a tax bill which makes sense for the people. We have confidence that a majority of the House can put together and accept a tax package with taxes on natural resources, business, and some selective sales. Not a penny in sales taxes ought to be included beyond those absolutely required to put together the majority, for sales taxes are consumption taxes on the most needy among us. By persevering, those House members who want to serve the people of their own state instead of the gangrenous corporations of the East are going to beat Preston Weatherred, Vincent-Elkins in Houston, Phillips Oil in New Jersey, and the bankers, the gas pipelines, and Andrew Howsley, all rolled together into one reactionary snowball bound for hell. But the fight has just begun and nobody ought to think it’s going to be easy. Who C0121,01 The El Paso Herald-Post rued the defeat of the Eckhardt oil tax and ripped the legislature for it in this editorial, “Texans Are Defeated” : “The state legislature defeated the bill of Representative Robert Eckhardt of Houston that would have levied a graduated tax on crude oil , production. “The bill would have increased the tax on the big companies and lowered it on the little fellows. “Naturally, since the bill favored the people of Texas, it was defeated. It was not surprising to find that Big Oil got 91 of the 138 votes cast. There were only 47 votes for the people ; 12 didn’t vote …. “This vote indicates who controls the Texas Legislature. Representative Eckhardt said his bill raised the taxes of only 17 big firms that produce more than half of Texas oil. He said there were reductions for 6500 producers who are Texans. “But the 91 representatives voted for the 17 big firms, against the 6500 Texas f irm s, and against all the people of Texas. “The net profits of the 17 were more than $2 billion last year. The tax would have cost $18.6 million. A hundred legislators at $10,000 each would have cost but $1,000,000.” 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 CITY From little hen clucking noises sometimes come cataclysmic changes. Who can say that we may not mark a milestone in the return to political decency at the point where La Luce got off the bus to Brazil ? We who heard aghast the implications of her address to the 1944 Republican convention could not then foresee its full fruition in McCarthyism; the numbers racket of Secy. Brownell; Cohn and Shine ; the lying composite picture of Sen. Tydings and Earl Browder ; the cry of treason against all Democrats ; and the resulting intellectual and moral exhaustion of the present Eisenhower administration. She called President Roosevelt a liar, andone shudders yetsuggested that if the G. I. Joes he had sent to their deaths could vote, he would not be electedthat it was for them she spoke. A war-strained country was caught with its morals down in that year; abuse of the president had become commonplace. The cry that a. president had lied the country into war was not resented, and a desperate and degenerate political party, seeing it get by, cut loose with both barrels. Dean Acheson became the Red Dean ; troops had been sold out in Korea ; Chiang had been leashed”I hold here in my hand a listI say, I hold in my hand here a list of 87 \(of what little moment is the exact who are presently working in the State Department.” The evil days had come upon us, and their effects are far from gone today. The circumstance that the. first charge of bad faith or lack of honor in the matter of the country’s safety officially charged against the national administration came from a lovely of the American stage seems to have deadened the sensibilities of the \(We hope it won’t shake up our readers, but we wish approvingly to reprint this editorial from the Fort Extremely Dubious The aid-to-Lyndon Johnson bill passed by the Legislature, setting forward the dates of the Texas primaries by eleven weeks, strikes us as extremely dubious legislation enacted by extremely dubious means. Partly it was passed to help clear the road for Senator Johnson in whatever drive he may choose to make for the presidency. Partly it was designed to give advantage to the conservative element in its fight for control of the Democratic party machinery in Texas. Though few would object to furthering a native son candidacy for the Democratic nomination, legislation which brings about a drastic change in the state’s election procedure seems questionably necessary to that purpose. And unless it represents a needed improvement in the election process in Texas people to the enormity of her charge. She was so prim, so beautiful but none added : and so deadly. There is a tinge of poetic justice in the fact that her personal slanders of 1959 against Sen. Morse did her in, when she said far less against him than she had against the wartime president. Whatever Freudian origin may have been behind the metaphor of the syrupy tongued E. McKinley Dirksen as he implored the Senate not to thrash out old straw, or beat an old bag of bones, his plea should have been rejected. There was a comic opera flavor to the examination of Mrs. Luce’s qualifications by such boo-boos, but under it all lay the crucial issue, whether those who set in motion the persecutions of the late forties and entire fifties should be acquitted with the “tut tut” of letting bygones be bygonesand rewarded with high honors from the White House. Are we to forget the odd little fellow who was Attorney General under Ike, and his Chicago charge that Mr. Truman harbored communists in his administration; the Vice President, who said the Democratic Party was one of treason ; and the whole foul mouthed retinue that brought the present Administration upon us ? If we are, we have failed in our responsibility to future politicians who might consider promotions an approval of the technique of the Big Lie, and a guide for future tactics. No, it’s a pity Clare’s slip is showing, but it fell so far down in 1944 that she could not pull it up. May her embarassment not be in vain, and may we have more Democrats in the Senate with the strength of purpose to bring the rest of the slanderers to bay. FRANKLIN JONES which scarcely can be provedsuch a change should not be made to serve the interests of any political faction. The rush act by which the bill was passed, and t h e log rolling which made it possible, raise other questions about the Senate action which sent the measure to the Governor with final legislative a p p r ova 1. Public hearings were dispensed with and a “quickie” committee session speeded the bill to the Senate floor for a vote. And in the vote-trading which made this possible, two other measures were given approval by the Senate without more than cursory consideration of their merits. These were a proposed aid-to-veterans resolution and a bill which would weaken the vaccination requirements for school children. Permanent legislation giving a violent wrench to established practices in Texas can be justified only if the change provably is in the public interest. No convincing evidence of this has been offered in connection with the juggling of primary dates. Fort Worth Star-Telegram _Aloi r huo 5otvero 1 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 4/110 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. ti Star-Telegram on LBJ