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J1 \( . , , hiAtiLb 1C 18 60 St . 00.5 part spe.+6., Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.Jefferson Hypocrisy in Action: Three Weeks to Go It’s 44 or $93, You See Shivero, nixon, The Hypocrite-Democrats’ movement is losing force in Texas. It was the kind of tactic the voters needed a while to recognize. They like to believe the best about people, it seems. They seem to know now that Allan Shivers is a Republican trying to use the state’s Democratic tradition for big business purposes, and that “Democrats” who take and keep high party honors and then work against their party are rightly regarded by Democrats as ingrates and deceivers. This is a free country, a man can be a Democrat, Republican, independent, socialist, prohibitionist, Dixiecrat, or indifferent, but straightforward men do not use the gifts of their friends against those friends. E. B. Germany and Ed Drake, two Texas delegates to the Democrats’ national convention at Los Angeles, have now endorsed the Republicans. Germany obviously has an uneasy consciencehe keeps writing columns \(for which he buys the space in East has abandoned the Democrats. Drake is another matter. He says he “sympathizes” with the Nixon ticket but evidently has enough respect now for Democrats’ indignation with their county “chairman” endorsing the GOP that he is not saying anything outright. He just leads the prayer at the Shivers rally for Nixon. They will be with us always, one supposes ; but they are fewer now. Shivers, head of the so-called “Democrats for Nixon,” has taken up Nixon’s basic campaign tactic of trying to suggest that the Democrats are soft on communism. When Nixon gets in a hole he always does the same thing. He provoked the QuemoyMatsu “debate” because he saw that he was losing his arguments on national policy and destiny to a better informed, more articulate, more humane, and much more sincere John Kennedy. If Nixon were elected, the national honor would be committed in advance to war against China \(and therefore islands off the China coast. Perhaps when the time came we would want to defend the islands. It is certain, though, that making the commitment now for political purposes is irresponsible. Nixon’s motive is the point. He understood that he advocated a dangerous course and that Kennedy would probably say no, let’s not make ooe eaptiOtO These ,Baptists. First the big-shot Dallas minister says John Kennedy is lying. Then the Baptist ex-president from Missouri says Nixon is a liar. We are beginning to wonder what good Christianity has done them. Many of their ministers tell us the great danger is a Catholic sending an ambassador to the Vatican without reminding us it was their own Baptist President who last tried that and got thumped to the mat. At least with such leaders the ordinary Baptists don’t have any sensible choice but to think for themselves. 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, 18’h.. OCTOBER 14, 1960 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Willie Morris, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $5 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 15c each. Quantity prices available on order. & McCarth y that commitment now. That was what he wanted 2a stance from which he could call Kennedy naive, wooly soft on communism. It is a terrible shadow Toe McCarthy still casts upon our national life and the man lurking cunningly within it is Richard Nixon. His Texas imitator Shivers willingly took up the mud-pot and accused Kennedy of “appeasement.” We hope that, just as Shivers’ hypocrite-Democrat stance has caught up with him, this tactic will catch up with Nixon now. The voters, many of them, will remember that when Adlai Stevenson took the statesmanlike stance for an end to H-bomb tests, Nixon and Eisenhower said he was soft about the Reds; but now all of them agree this is a necessary objective. What we are dealing with in the Quemoy-Matsu issue is . the willingness of the Republican candidate to say that he will risk world peace for two small islands off the China coast in order to gain a cheap advantage in the election, and another proof from Kennedy that he thinks clearly, that he will lead the nation steadily, that he will not be a nervous triggerman poised beside the squawk-box from which the next President could plunge the whole world into death and contamination. Kennedy has gone so far on behalf of national military preparedness, no reasonable man can accuse him of softness on communism ; but demagogues can, and seekers of victory at any price. What’s the matter with Texas A&M? They have a fine college campus, a nice town, a lovely countryside, a solid state endowmentbut they don’t want girls there. Their loss is Sam Houston State’s and the rest of the state’s, gain, of courseall the girls for miles around College Station and Bryan go off to other colleges. But it seems to us that the spit-andpolish schoolboy militarists have had their way around A&M_ long enough. Girls are nice. They have a right to go to any college financed by state funds. They might even like some of the Aggies, sooner or later. 119 or ne The Observer’s subscription meetings around the state have been attended by many of the good people of the stateby housewives, professors,, students, farmers, small businessmen, lawyers, people who want us to be able to go on. We have learned through the last six years that the only way to tell people that the Observer is here, the only way to get them reading the paper, is person-toperson, telling friends, taking their $5 and sending it in. The people who came to our meetings made plans for just such work. We hope all our readers will undertake to talk to at least one other likely Observer reader get their $5and send it in. If we can reach 10,000 subscribers we are here to stay. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: Mrs. R. D. Randolph, 419 1/2. Lovett Blvd., Houston 16, Texas. 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. WESLACO Economics is supposed to be difficult, and can be if you take it up for a Ph.D., but now and then something comes along that makes everything fairly clear. Consider the dispute about telephone company rates here. General Telephone has some dignified attorneys, men handy with words like confiscatory and quick to recognize “a classic nonsequitur.” They do not, however, understand democratic politics. A city government, they lectured Weslaco’s city commission, is not supposed to protect telephone subscribers from increased telephone rates. They had the point worked out very well, but they forgot that the people of Weslaco elect the city commission, not General Telephone Company of the Southwest. They regarded an extra four cents a day per Weslaco telephone user a “minuscule” burden compared to the $93 a day the telephone company would not get if the increase was denied. They figured it out on a head count and concluded that each citizen of Weslaco would bear only .05% as much burden from the higher rate as General Telephone Company of the Southwest would have to bear if it was not granted. They have never heard of the commonwealth, these San Angelo lawyers, of the general welfare, or the idea that the welfare of the country is the sum total of the welfare of all its individuals ; nor have they read their Bentham, their Dewey, nor even their Galbraith. They are, however, well in tune with the theory now in vogue in Spain that plunder for the corporations is all right because it only hurts each citizen a little bit. Tom Sealy, the Midland oilman now red-hot for Nixon and Lodge, has accepted the chairmanship of the Texas businessmen’s Sales Tax Committee. If you don’t insist on a Ph.D., it all fits together. Nixonthink back to rememberis firmly committed to a national sales tax, and opposes new taxes “on business.” The businessmen meeting in Dallas argued that their Sales Tax will cost each Texas family only about $50 a year. What they had in mind, you see, was $50 a year versus, say, $5 million a year General Motors or El Paso Natural or Humble Oil might have to pay. Just as General Telephone’s lawyers said, the burden on the individual is “minuscule” compared to that on the companies. The companies do have large sums of money with which to buy politicians who will educate the people into a better-spirited acceptance of their exploitation. Sometimes we believe the high cost of campaigning has permanently, radically polluted democratic politics. But then along comes the city of Weslaco and its gamecock town commissioners and a few liberal lawyers and they simply lay General Telephone out could across the railroad tracks that run up and down the Valley. They discover what Observer readers have long known, that the Texas telephone companies charge Texans more for in-Texas long-distance calls than for interstate calls because the in-Texas calls are not regulated by the state or the F.C.C. They discover that General Telephone used six different depreciation schedules, and that curiously, the different results in different parts of the books all worked to the financial advantage of the company. And when they came across that line in the General Telephone brief that it is not the duty of the city government to defend the citizens against telephone rate increases, one of thema lawyer, a commissioner, a city secretary, who knows?wrote down beside that, “Then they are defenseless!” Nixon made his mistake when he agreed to debate Kennedy on equal terms on national TV. Seeing the blunder he has reverted to calling anybody opposed to him wooly about the Reds. But they caught on to General Telephone, as they will now and then, and maybe they will catch on to Nixon, too. R.D. Company THE TEXAS OBSERVER IF 40.7 ..Sooner or Zater The Individuals and The