ustxtxb_obs_1960_02_19_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

THE TEXAS OBSERVER Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON Power at The Republicans’ policy of “partnership” in public power projects \(which means, in the translation from Madison Avenuease, that the government builds the costly dams and the private utilities skim off the presented to Texans by one of our own Texas Democrats in Congress. Rep. Clark Fisher has introduced a bill which would permit the government to build Diablo Dam on Devil’s River ten miles above Del Rio and then sell Central Power & Light the “falling water.” Central Power and Light, according to its proposal to the government, would install generators and sell the power for its own profit. The government policy of encouraging REA cooperatives by selling them wholesale power would be scuttled. , The issue is well set out by an REA engineer, .Charles Robinson. He recites that while CP&L has offered $337,000 a year for the falling water, the water is worth more than $1,000.000, and government installation of generators and sale of the public power would yield more than half a million dollars a year surplus for the retirement of costs of other aspectS of the darn project. The American government builds a darn across the wide, shallow Devil’s River, a tributary of the muddy, moody Rio Grande, and then feeds the gathered water into the Rio Grande as it is needed by the people along the river. For the public at large the government accomplishes the storage of water, flood control, irrigation and the generation of hydroelectric power. Will the government give that power to a corporate middleman, as Fisher’s bill proposes, thus letting the cost of the power for consumers be increased and the costs of the clam be paid only by the taxpayers ? Or will the government keep the public project public; sell the power cheaper without the corporate middleman; and apply the half million dollars profits which still result every year to other costs of the dam? Texas has slept while our “Go along to get along” congressmen have been running too thick with the private utilities. Now we have before us a case for public power as clear and refreshing as a swim in Devil’s River. Will our delegation stand up for the people who elected them or for Central Power & Light? Bartlett /Wears Exclusively in the Texas Ob .server 5ecierat Ad ira 5octto The Shadow Side There has been so much hollow hypocrisy against federal aid to education in Texas. The buglers of the right sound out against federal 5he The New York Times reported that the boos and applause competed for predominance when Gov. Pat Brown mentioned Lyndon Johnson’s name to the 3,600 delegates attending the California Democratic Council convention at Fresno. Americans for Democratic Ac.tion, the national liberal council, condemns Johnson as a symbol of compromise and political opportunism. Spokesmen for the NAACP say Johnson could not carry Negro voters ; as though to underscore this prediction, the Republican National Committee issues a release condemning Johnson as a hypocrite on civil rights, citing 20 years of his votes against many forms of civil rights. The Progressive Magazine, Marquis Childs, and Doris Fleeson declare Johnson the most conservative of the Democratic candidates. As though to prove this, too, former Senate Republican minority leader William F. Knowland says Johnson is the best of the Democrats ; only Knowland is of course for Nixon. Is it not obvious to allTexas Democrats includedthat Johnson’s nomination would mark the end of the Democratic Party as the nation’s liberal party? 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. FEBRUARY 19, 1960 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager 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. control, but their troops are firing at their real enemy, the progressive income tax at the federal level. All the politicians tell us we are behind Russia, our schools are falling down, we must do something !anything but a proper national effort to strengthen the schools. Is it not curious that some of the right-wing forces which cry out against federal control of schools \(a danger about themselves financing teachers’ pay supplements and “Americanism” curriculum guides in a program for business control of the public schools .in Texas. It was a good clay for Texas school children when the two Texas senators, Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough, voted for $1.8 billion in federal aid to education, including $62 million the first year for Texas. In a recent session of the Congress, the vote of the Texas House delegation provided the decisive margin for the defeat of fed eral aid. Gov .. Daniel is still providing official bleating about federal control under which Texas congress men might again mute their sorry votes against better public education in America. But Reps. Jim \\Vright and \\Vright Patman have taken a lead in advocating federal aid ; perhaps other Texas solons will join them now that they have the Johnson and Yarborough examples. \\\\Te hope that the time has finally come when Texas in Congress can be counted for federal aid to education”without federal control.” 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. CADDO LAKE Perhaps, alas, the next stage in the liberal movement in Texas is back to the country. Granted, I am influenced , by the pastoral I am living now. The typewriter rests on the warming cement before a fire, glowing like fiery crystals under the logs. One hears of liberal friends who are tired and leave the town for a ranch, though that never seemed the way for them. To be sure, the legislature is “almost within our grasp,” as another, indefatigable friend said. There are vigorous contests for seats in Congress from Texas, as though the members from this state actually had some rights other than getting their cues from Rayburn for delegation unity. But these are not matters that stir the soul ; they touch the substance but not the imagination of our politics, are the steady burning of the fire.; but not the dancing life of roaring flame that transfixes us. Perhaps the issues proclamations in Houston this weekend will suggest some possibility of engaging and involving 1960 in Texas. W HEN ONE thinks over the course of demOcratic life, one can become appalled by the endless procession of vituperative contention, passionate pleas for the right and the wrong, sophistries and platitudes. Earlier tonight, on Shreveport television, Senators Long and Ellender of our neighbor state reported to their people from our national capitol. Senator Long was concerned that federal judges supervising voting rights in the South would engender contempt for the judges and, as he said, “fantastic contempt for government, itself.” So concerned he was, he believed that judges who enforced such rights would become.”why, sort of quislings, or collaborators, or, in the old Civil \\\\Tar-Reconstruction term scalawags !” Senator Long is devoted to respect for the courts and wishes to suggest to his enlightened constituents every justification for their contempt of them the better to prepare them against temptation. Senator Ellender’s worry was the payment of one dollar and twenty-five cents for an hour’s work. He has al ways been in favor of a decent wage, he said, not, however, reciting particulars ; on. the other hand, “it is possible to go too far,” and beyond $1 an hour is too far ; would lead to “federal agents coming into our shops”; and only a plot of the “socalled liberals”; and,” said the senator, in a rush of fierce resolve, “I’m against it !” There was about that last assertion, too, something confidential, and reassuring : “Don’t worry, men, we understand what they are saying, and I know what you mean !” H OW LONG has this been going on? How long have politicians played with plastic faces and covered conditions with symbols? Nothing can stir real interest in the public life when the mummery is as transparent as thisas transparent as a newscaster who has been flatly reading out the truth about the news, suddenly shifting into how marvelous the new Buick is, and so little believing himself, his Nv hole manner changes, and he italicizes with his head, and makes exclamation points with his eyebrows. We are all being trained in lying. Nothing will interest the people in politics until some strong voice sounds forth with clear and worried truth. Tell us, Senator Kennedy, Humphrey, Symington, not only that you will arm us better, but that you Nv i 1 I give us some new shape to human relations, some stirring course to call to worthy cause the waiting warriors of the folk. \\Ve do not need to be told to mistrust Mr. Nixon ; we need to be told why you trust Mr. Johnson. \\Ve do not need to be told we are second in the world; we need to be told why we are secondary in the hearts of the oppressed. We can feel in our minds the sadness in the spirit of our country. Where arc the Jef fersons, the Houstons, the Lincolns, the Roosevelts? Howdied the voice of Joe McCarthy and millions still sound like him ? ‘What sallOw weakness has infected the strong traditions of our free society ? Those left to call even the name of liberty cry shrill, betray their panic, are jeered to the outposts of the nation’s mind. Will television tell no vision? Will million voices have no voice? Waiting in the shadow side of firelight, we pray for the surging tide of time. R.D.