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Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer INDISTINGUISHABLE Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art. JEFFERSON `Of Course It’s Not Fixed Look for Yourself’ No reluctant candidate, Waggoner Carr ! He thinks he has “an obligation to run” for governor or attorney general. Clearly enough he seems to mean, “No one but I can do the job. The people need me!” We suppose Governor Daniel had good reasons for his veto of the money the legislature appropriated It’s easy to be uneasy about dumping drums that will burst encased in cement that will crack full of radioactive refuse that will then “diffuse” in the Gulf of Mexico 150 miles off the Texas coast. But for Yarborough’s alarm, who knows what the smug sanitarians of the AEC might have done? But what is to be done with the lethal, sterilizing, deforming, invisible death being concentrated at points all over the world like a suicide collects knives ? Long run there’s only one humane solution : put the stuff on rockets and fire it into space. However, there will be consequences. Zong? Rejoining what Doris Fleeson calls “the Eisenhower Johnson blur,” Speaker Rayburn has reversed himself and decided he gives up on closing business tax loopholes and favors the Republicans’ tax raise on the people’s gasoline. Even so the ungrateful Republicans used his weakness to pass a plan worse than his. How long are the Democrats going to stand for this Now Fight, Now Turn-Tail Leadership? The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Abilene Reporter News and Corpus Christi Caller-Times \(in identical and Dallas Times-Herald seem to think that telling a politician you’re going to try to lick him for reelection is a crime, or at least a sin. What did electricians’ president Jim Carey say ? He wrote to the congressmen who voted for the Landrum-Griffin bill, including the 17 Texans, “We wish to assure you that we shall do all in our power to prove to the working men and women in your district that you have cast your lot against them and they should therefore take appropriate action at the ballot box.” This the S-T calls “impulsive and emotional,” the R-N and C-T call a threat, a blunder, and a boner, the H-P calls “intemperate and insulting,” and the T-H 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. AUGUST 28, 1959 Ramie Dagger 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 only an innocent would accuse the sophisticated if somewhat brassy Speaker of such a political indiscretion. He must mean something else. Ah! Of coursehe didn’t say whom the obligation’s to. to replace the Austin State Firetrap for Senile Psychotics. When it burns down, he can tell us about them again. 09unh We may have to footnote our poems to the universe with the admission it’s also used as a garbage dump. And how will we know where the stuff fires off to? Just as a few heretics defended the Indians of the American continents from exploitation by the invading Europeans, humanitarianism will be challenged by the Martianists, or the Orionists, or the Milkywayans, or perhaps simply the universarians. And they may retaliate. Or maybe they’ll dump their stuff on us first, and well retaliate. But to return to earth, we are grateful for Senator Yarborough. Since WhBi2? Sen. Yarborough, at the request of the Willacy County commissioners court, has introduced a bill to let the Sen Benito International Bridge Co. build another toll bridge across the Rio Grande near Los Indios. Since when has Yarborough, a people’s friend, started favoring profit-taking from the public roads, of which bridges are properly a part? And why specify a named company? says was presumptuous and a flagrant abuse of the right to write congressmen, concluding : “It is one thing to petition members of Congress and something else to threaten them with punishment for voting their convictions.” In other words, it’s arrogant to tell a congressman that his convictions are repugnant to you and you mean to oppose him when he tries to get back his public job. It’s a threat to state a plain intention to do what you have a democratic right to do. We understand congressmen calling this blackmailthey have to do something, the rear end of their britches is flapping in the breezebut the newspapers have less excuse for the hypocrisy. They are using the national prejudice against “labor bosses” like Russian hacks. What they merely mean is, Don’t cuss our boys like that, it’s not nice. 7 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 terve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. MARSHALL As the outcome of the report from the conference committee considering the Landrum-Grif fin-N.A.M. labor bill is awaited, some events need examination. If labor’s travail has done no more, it has briefly lifted the racial smog from the Southern DemocratsRepublicans coalition for a quick look upon its true and ugly features. This unholy alliance springs from a reactionary dedication of Southern political bosses, not from the word passed on to the color-blinded Southern electorate that we must “keep the nigger in his place.” Labor of the North may have known this all along; it is hoped Labor of the South now senses it. Our gallant Southern lawmakers not only wish to maintain ‘a labor pool with workmen available at wages far under those paid in the North ; they also wish now to put Labor, along with the “nigger,” in its place, and re-establish the conception that after all it is a commodity; a cipher in the balance sheet of profits and losses. Perhaps the bitter disillusionment of the AFL-CIO with the result of its tactics will be useful. The greatest sufferer is the Democratic Party, which has manifested its ever-present split personality again. One wishes for the good old days, when it was thought best to exorcise an evil spirit rather than pamper it, even to the extent of taking it on a trip to the psychiatrist. The pronouncement of a few holy words, while kicking the back end of these coalitionist defeatists out of the party, might create one mark of distinction between what are fast becoming our indistinguishable major parties. THERE SEEMS a stirring Northern liberals that gives hope. On Aug. 20 the pro-labor members of this group refused to go along with the Southern Democratic farm leaders in their effort to have Congress adopt a committee recommendation that Secretary Benson be forced to barter $350 million worth of farm surpluses for foreign minerals. In retaliation for the actions of Rep. Cooley, Democrat, North Carolina, and Rep. Poage, of Texas, in coalescing with the Republicans on the Landrum-Griffin bill vote, Northern Democrats aided in giving their recommendations a walloping 143 to 52 defeat in a standing vote. The size of the majority indicates what would happen to the tail, if the dog really took over. The character of the two coalitions points up the tragedy of the breach. Measures seeking to aid Labor and Farm groups should be supported by all Democrats, but it is high time the Southern group be made to understand that they may not be , labor-baiters in the morning toward their pro-labor cohorts, but champions of the little ‘man in the afternoonif he is not a member of organized labor. There are many measures dear to the heart of the Southern reactionary that need the support of Southern liberals. Every ounce of that support should be witheld from the coalitionists. I T WOULD NOT be mete and just to end this piece without a remark or two about Lyndon and Mister Sam. The Speaker of the House went down with guns blazing in a particularly humiliating defeat that at once destroyed the myth of his supreme power and the belief that Congress is controlled by labor. His defeat began years ago when he followed Lyndon after Mr. Eisenhower’s first election in building Ike into a national idol. ‘ He got his just reward for this bit of trickery. He laid it on the line, and of course Ike won. But poor Lyndon, alackaday, even the syndicated columns are now accusing him of duplicity. In an Aug. 20 column, Marquis Childs refers to a strong suspicion in the House that the Senate leader planned the defeat of the Kennedy-Ervin bill in the House to retard the chances of the Massachusetts Senator for the Democratic nomination, while advancing his own. Passage of the Kennedy-Ervin bill would have made Senator Kennedy the father of labor reform. Acceptance of a compromise bill will put Lyndon in the role of Little Johnny Stout, who valiantly pulled poor pussy for the well. Contrary to the nursery rhyme, he also pushed her in, but no one saw him do it. Reckon the Speaker of the House made a sacrifice bunt, or did he, too, get the full Lyndon treatment ? FRANKLIN JONLII 5hefi g ad 911r. Carr 5.1/___.,4 _go __gain, crater 5/ip 5hat Crazy 54e Papero and Arn Carey THE TEXAS OBSERVER