ustxtxb_obs_1960_04_08_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

“BOW” WILLIAMS Automobile and General Insurance Budget ‘ayment Plan Strong Stock Companies GReenwood 2-0545 624 LAMAR, AUSTIN Let’s Abolish the Poll Tax! and the Chicago law firm of Jake Arvey another $15,000 in connection with a previous case in which F.P.C. awarded an $8 million rate increase to Tennessee Gas. F.P.C. held that these two fees related “to matters of an entirely different character” from the ordinary legal fees in the case and decided that Tennessee Gas could not pass them on to consumers but would have to pay them out of profits. AP has reported that FPC records showed Corcoran received $305,907 for legal services and expenses from Tennessee Gas in the five years ending with 1958. One of Corcoran’s law partners, James Rowe, a former aide to Johnson, is now a top adviser to Sen. Hubert Humphrey. Chiefly Postal Business Books Shown by Appointment STIEFEL’S Dealer in Rare, Out-of-Print Books 1312 10th St., Huntsville, Texas Telephone 5-4449 Use our International Search Service for those hard to find books at no extra cost to you. Top Party Chiefs Argue TIPRO Magazine Roasts Majors AUSTIN Top Democratic officials in Tex as continued their dispute this week. The committeeman, Byron Skelton, said national chairman Paul Butler should be removed from office. The committeewoman, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, said Skelton should go easy talking ‘about obligations when the Texas Democratic quota has not been raised. J. Ed Connally, the state chairman, said he is busy with a fund drive for “the state party, whose main purpose” is to nominate Sen. Lyndon Johnson. Connally also said he questions whether Mrs. Randolph would support Johnson as the party nominee. Mrs. Randolph said “what . I have said before. I will support the nominee of the Democratic OThe Dept. of Public Safety began investigating four of its Denton officials on charges they dated married women. Sen. Floyd Bradshaw, Weatherford, criticized D.P.S. for making this public to the damage of the men’s families before all the facts were known. A Tarrant Ciounty grand jury accuse d Sheriff Harlon Wright of “highly reprehensible, irregular, and perhaps illegal conduct” and some of his deputies of “highly unsavory” conduct but returned no indictments. Ferree Says Work May End HARLINGEN Frank Ferree, “the border Samaritan” who was the subject of an extended Observer study in January and February, 1958, has advised supporters of Volunteer Border Relief that without new financial aid his program will end shortly, perhaps within a couple of months. Ferree and others incorporated Volunteer Border Relief to help the poor along the Texas–Mexican border. V.B.R. is registered and approved by the International Cooperation Administration of the federal government and has distributed government surplus foods and other goods and services to needy Mexican nationals and U.S.side Latin-Americans. “The E. C. Sams Foundation,” Ferree said in a written report to supporters of his program, “has decided to discontinue our allotments due to an editorial I released objecting to the nearly one fourth of United Fund collections cities, going to the Boy and Girl Scout National Organization while local Valley families were badly in need of milk, food, medicine, etc.” He borrowed $300 from a bank in February, and he contributes $100 a month himself, Ferree wrote, “but to operate a bus and car six days a week the length of the Valley, with other costs, makes it impossible to continue without new help.” Since Christmas, when, Ferree said, V.B.R. “gave cheer to some 5,000 Mexican border children,” he has been hauling heavy loads of fruit and vegetables given by Alexander Packing Co. of San Benito and Elmore & Stahl, Texas Valley Citrus, and Bolin sheds in Pharr. “Pharmaceutical firms are sending us large shipments of medicine and vitamins,” he said. TILE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 8 April 8, 1960 Party, no matter who he is . .. I have never failed to support the nominees of the Democratic Party.” Skelton led off in Temple saying Butler should unite the party and stay impartial about candidates but invited the Southern states to take civil rights or leave the party; said a Southwesterner would not likely get the nomination and attacked congressional leadership; said Kennedy would get the nomination; and “incited open rebellion” in the South. Butler should be removed “before he completely wrecks the party,” Skelton said. Mrs. Randolph said whenever she brings’ up the subject of the Texas quota to the Democratic Party, Skelton says, “another day.” OTwo Dallas policemen were cleared of brutality charges by a three-member trial board in the alleged roughing up of a man and his wife on a traffic charge. OThe historic Austin county courthouse burned at night. It was a three-story brick and plaster structure. Only the frame was left. OThe State Board of Water Engineers, by 2–1 vote, approved building of two reservoirs on the lower Trinity River with a 70-30 division of the impounded water between Houston and the Trinity River Authority, also assuring residents of the Trinity Basin certain rights to water that falls in that area. WASHINGTON A $60,000-a-year Tennessee Gas Transmission Co. attorney, “Tommy the Cork” Corcoran, will be the key figure in House hearings investigating his private representations to Federal Power Commission members in what House members say were “unethical” procedures. Public testimony here has established that Corcoran made “ex parte” calls on F.P.C. commissioners to solicit a seven percent rate of return instead of 6.25 percent as recommended by F.P.C.’s staff for a Tennessee Gas subsidiary, Midwestern Gas Transmission Co., on a new pipeline system to import gas from Canada. The theory against such contacts is that private contentions cannot be answered by other interested parties. Subsequently F.P.C. reversed its staff and left the rate of return open pending Midwestern’s completion of finance plans. The forthcoming investigation may have oblique political implications for Sen. Lyndon Johnson. Another oil scandal could not help his presidential candidacy, particularly since Corcoran has been one of the leading figures in his showcase of supporters from New Deal days. The New York Herald Tribune dug up the fact that Tennessee Gas paid Corcoran’s firm $60,000 MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 “He now speaks of June: when June comes, will it be July? and when July comes, will he speak of August? And so on, ad nauseum,” she said. Skelton, she said, criticizes Butler for allegedly supporting one candidate while Skelton spends all his time and uses his office for an unannounced candidate. “Could it be that Mr. Skelton and Mr. Connally are not interested in supporting the Democratic Party on the national level?” she asked. Connally said he has “supported and contributed more money this year to the national fund than has Mrs. Randolph, and she has not contributed one cent to the state party program.” He said he will cooperate with “any fundraising affair for the national party.” OThe Rev. Rhett James, Ne gro candidate for the Dallas school board, lost to Mrs. T. H. Rutherford, the white .incumbent, 15,683 to 7,578. . . . Dallas school board has asked for a rehearing in the Dallas school integration case and authorized circulation of petitions f* a desegregation referendum. . . . Mayor Lewis Cutrer, Houston, appointed a biracial committee on race relations. ODist. Judge P. L. Bush in Dallas signed a temporary restraining order forbidding a Cedar Crest property owner from showing or selling her property to Negroes. A rock with a match attached was tossed through the window of a Dallas Negro preacher who earlier had bought, then sold a house in a mixed-race area. AUSTIN Texas oil independents, gnashing their pumps under the restraint of oil production cutbacks, evidently have turned a corner, for they are now openly attacking the oil pipeline companies, the Federal Power Commission, and “tax windfalls” for “large U.S. corporations” in the oil business in their official magazine, the TIPRO Reporter. The current issue of the magazine draws a deep breath, considering how dependent independent producers are on pipelines and major companies, and argues that the FPC’s concept of the public interest “generally coincides with the interest of pipeline companies.” Recent decisions are reviewed, with the conclusion that FPC policy advances “the relative position of the true utility the interstate pipelinesat the expense of the non-utilitythe independent producer.” One FPC decision nettling the independents: denial to producers of the right to renegotiate their gas contracts with pipelines when the end-of-service date specified in the contract arrives, Many independents ‘are caught in longterm contracts with pipelines at very low prices. AUSTIN “The Gilmer Road,” its critics’ label for a proposed farm-to-market road in Edwards County which will cross telephone lobbyist Claude Gilmer’s ranch, threatens to become a focus for slowly increasing criticism of the entire farm-to-market road program. Joe Harry Bower, the Edwards County rancher who has tirelessly inundated state officials and newsmen with written and telephoned protests about the $335,000 project first examined as a public issue in the Observerwrote the Observer about his latest exploit. “I made one test \(on a Thursing the average traffic volume of the Gilmer Road,” he said. “I went to a place, south of Claude Gilmer’s house and north of Hackberry, on the present county road that the Gilmer Road will replace, and I parked my car by the side of this county road at this place. The magazine attacks the pending Boggs bill permitting tax deferrals on foreign profits by saying that its primary beneficiaries “would be a handful of large U.S. corporations involved in largescale foreign oil operations who would be allowed … to reinvest foreign earnings into operations abroad tax-free.” The magazine even reprints extensive excerpts from a U.S. attorney general’s report saying the national oil pipelines network has “grave potential for control of crude oil markets” and suggesting “anti-trust litigation.” And TIPRO quotes, evidently approvingly, from the Saturday Evening Post last month on the subject of federal regulatory bodies: “There is also a strong suspicion that many of them have ceased to function in the public interest and have become, in effect, Washington branch offices of the industries they are supposed to regulate.” Whether this outspoken criticism from the more and more independent Texas independents will worry the pipelines and the majors, one cannot say, but it is something new in Texas. I arrived at this place at 8:40 a.m. and I stayed at this place until 7:46 p.m. During this period of eleven hours, absolutely no vehicles passed by me on this county road. During this period of eleven hours, I did not see a single person.” Bower charged the present county road has an average traffic volume of two cars a day. Bower’s interest: he does not want the road cutting through his land. Recently the Senate tax-saving committee heard Bower, and afterwards Sen. Floyd Bradshaw of .Weatherford said that under present law the Highway Dept. must spend the third of a million dollars, even though no one wants the road and it will damage the ranches. Bower suggested changing the law. Officials of the Highway Dept. have stated that the county’s officials have provided the necessary formal requests, and the 16mile road will be built. Review of the Week in Texas `THE CORK’ AND F.C.C. `The Gilmer Road’