ustxtxb_obs_1959_09_25_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

-vAittii Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer SIMPLE COMPUTATIONS Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JkyiERsoN Maybe He’s Stuck 4Relreohing ceach Zeat We now have a middling good idea of the attribute prized in politicians by the Dallas Morning News. It’s called “a refreshing lack of zeal.” Wrote the News: “Atty. Gen. Will Wilson displays a refreshing lack of zeal to invoke the antitrust law of Texas against mergers involving Magnolia Petroleum and the Humble Oil & Refining companies… Refreshing also is his candor in admitting that he finds no old Texas court orders that might serve as a basis for action… The two mergers are no more than reorganizations within the corporate structures of the two separateand compet in goil giants which have long been headed in the East.” No sooner had the AP dispensed the anonymous speculation that somebody, sometime soon, was going to oust national Democratic commtteewoman Mrs. R. D. Randolph, than Orange and Harris County Democrats exploded in anger, Jake Pickle said everything is going to be harmonious, Senator Yarborough wired to Texas that Mrs. Randolph is “the best Democratic committeewoman that Texas ever had,” and Senator Johnson’s friend, state party chairman J. Ed Connally, denied any such move was afoot in McAllen. If Johnson and Price Daniel want a fight about Mrs. Randolph, they’ll undoubtedly get ita fact Mr. Pickle and Mrs. Connally seem well aware of. Simitaritieo The Houston Chronicle commends Soviet dictator Krushchev for his opposition to a can-can dance he was shown on a Hollywood movie set. The Chronicle quotes Krushchev approvingly, “We don’t want our people to see such trash.” “What an ironic comment from an atheist …” the Chronicle editorializes. “This shows it is time for Hollywood to lift the false curtain it calls freedom of expression, admit it is giving the American people too much obscenity, and then change its ways.” It is an axiom of political science that the communist and the fascist are not very far apart in the way they want to organize society and subordinate individuals to the mass production of goods and attitudes. The Chronicle editorial illustrates a variant on this axiom : that as between a Russan dictator’s intellectual and ethical strangle-hold on what he calls “our people” and the native cultural authoritarianism in America which masks itself as genteel prudery, there is also little difference. Ronnie Dugger 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. No zealots in Austin, please even for economic competition! When a public official becomes alarmed because Humble Oil, once a Texas company through and through, \(and also Carter Oil Co., and Esso Standard Co., and Oklaall now become wholly coalesced with the world-girdling Jersey Standard, this, in the nomenclature of the Republicans and the Dallas News, is “making political hay.” Let the “oil giants” alone, says the News with 1890 candorthey’re just reorganizing. In other words, give in to the death of free enterprise. The true function of the Attorney General of Texas is to issue a precise and medically accurate death certificate, specifying either “Death Caused by Smothering,” or “Death Caused by Large Blunt Instrument, possibly Power.” 5hio Ri g ht We are concerned by one of the criticisms of the labor reform law advanced by Ed Coffey of the United Auto Workers in Texas. Coffey says that under the provisions of law guaranteeing free debate in unions, “A drunk, a cornmunist, a racketeer, or just a crank, one member among hundreds, who thinks he ought to have the floor to speak and failing to get same, can… sue the presiding officer, the local unions, and others …” Union members have cloture provisions to cut off debate. If they don’t like what a man’s saying they can contradict him, or ask him to sit down; if he is unruly, they have sergeants at arms. But Mr. Coffey neglects the consideration that the right of “just a crank”of “one member among hundreds”to be heard, to be heard to the exasperation of hundreds of members, to be heard true or false, to be heard right or wrong, to be heard smart or dumb, to be heard, to be heard, to be heardthis right yields to no other in a free society. 5aie note This week we begin reports on the breath-taking program of tax equalization which has resulted in lowering many homeowners’ valuations, and raising industry valuations, throughout Galveston County. We presume to ask our readers in the 240-odd Texas counties in which we have subscribersand especially in Harris County ! to pay particular attention to these reports and to ask themselves, How long has it been since we had an independent equalization of assessed values in our county? \(Every time Ed Pooley, editor of the El Paso Herald-Post, sees one of Comptroller Robert Calvert’s reports on where the state’s tax money comes from, he reaches for his pencil and starts figuring; every time, he comes up with the conclusion that Texas consumers are being sucked dry by sales taxes while oil and gas companies get off ridiculously light. Mr. Pooley’s 1959 editorial on this subject entitled “The’ State’s Money,” EL PASO Texas collected. $1,134,574,137 from various sources in the fiscal year ended August 31, That was $17 million more than last year, according to Comptroller Robert S. Calvert’s annual report. Federal aid furnished $326.3 million, the high figures being $165.2 million for highways and $139 million for public welfare. There was also $15.4 million for education. Texas -spent $1,163,883,080, which was $139.8 million more than last year. The deficit was $29,308,943. The big spendings were $406.4 million for highways, $399.5 million for AUSTIN A business approach favoring higher pay for college teachers and more vigorous college education generally was tested out by the current issue of “Texas Businessman,” the advisory newsletter to Texas business. Said the letter: Texas collegesseveral big, some rich, none greatopen this week for the start of another year adrift in the doldrums of mediocrity. That probably is the tersest commentary that can be made on Texas. Texas hasas a resource-5.5 percent of U.S. college students. Only two other statesCalif. and N. Y. have bigger percentages. But, academically, innumerable other states rank ahead of Texas. The reason, simply : public support and understanding. It’s absent. Make the contrast : out in Calif., this month, at San Diego, there opens a new branch of University of Calif. Why ? Few years back, San Diego voted free land to General Dynamics parent of Convair, at both Fort Worth and San Diegoto build an atomic age lab. Over 90,000 persons education, $189.9 million for public welfare and $33.1 million for teachers retirement Natural gas, which was the subjectto put it mildlyof debate in the last legislature, paid $47,592,474 tax on gas worth $669,084,020. Oh, -the poor gas boys .! See how they suffer.! Cigarets paid $51,779,255 on 1,058,23j,832 packages. That’s $4 million more than the gas boys paid. Ah, how the gas boys suffer ! Crude oil paid $136,397,628 on 970,497,562 barrels worth $2,925,697,500. On gasoline, the people of Texas paid $169,640,025 on 3.7 billion gallons. Ah, how the poor old oil boys suffer! They pay 4.6 per cent and the gasoline user pays 30 to 35 per cent. . The legislature raised the tax on cigarets 60 per cent and the tax on natural gas 1/20th of one per cent, for obvious reasons. That’s $31 million up for cigarets and $7 million for gas. Remember that, folks, when voting time comes … turned out for the traditionally dull dedicatory ceremony there. Then San Diego and General Dynamics went to work to get a UC branch : not a popular-level senior college but a full-fledged graduate school. This has come. Around this corebusiness and higher education the expectation is that a city of 100,000 will grow from scratch during ’60s. What’s Texas been doing on higher education? Changing name of the declining Texas State College for Women to Texas Women’s University for ‘prestige’ purposes. Making junior colleges into senior colleges on as cheap a basis as possible. Picking around over the budgetstrying to cut out intramural activity, bravely ‘abolishing’ free parking on campus. No wonder : Convairoperating at both Texas and Calif., points has put its money on San Diego, created 16,000 new jobs in its Astronaut sections within two years while Fort Worth-Dallas tremble over payroll losses. It’s not .the ‘professors’ who’re hurting most. It’s businessmen. THE TEXAS OBSERVER cl eW 7 Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: Entered as second-class matter, April 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, GReenwood 7-0748. Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. SEPTEMBER 25, 1959 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. Colleges and Prosperity