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5he y it Ag ain AWARDS ANNOUNCED Observer Notebook Thursday night, right after the Senate had scotched the best attempt Texas has ever made to enact loan legislation, the Observer actually overheard in the rotunda an East Texas member of the House, one of the well-known allies of the sharks: “They’ve just saved our skins.” The Senate had, indeed, done it againa little too uncomfortably, true, slightly too publicly than usual, but done it nonetheless. We can only wonder how long the people of Texas will continue to support this cynical, anachronistic institution. For decades the Senate has been the coroner and the undertaker to decent, progressive legislation. General Teddy Walker ducked out of the clouds over the Balcones Divide at 2:30 p.m. Friday, landed at municipal airport, jumped into a car owned by an Austin gentleman named Jim Harmon who deserted the Taft Republicans after ’52 because he couldn’t take their socialistic tendencies, and drove down to the Democratic headquarters on Lavaca to file for the Texas governor’s race. Yes, we did say the Democratic headquarters. Next thing Robert Welch will file for the Italian Assembly as a Christian Socialist. Teddy sort of intimidated the good members of the press, who nudged after him like kiddies begging lollipops from the late Lucky Luciano. Only after he had left his fellow Democrats at 1010 Lavaca, having dodged the fellows from Ted Dealy’s Dallas News, did he deign to embrace the Observer staffers following in his 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 2, 1962 Willie Morris Editor and General Manager Bob Sherrill, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Ronnie Dugger, Contribbting Editor Hopelessly gerrymandered, sensitive to the slightest touch of the prevailing lobbies, versed in the subtleties of cloakroom politics and voice votes, it has thwarted House majorities time and time again. We believe it has had its day. Ramsey is gone. Young men are gradually coming in. All 31 seats are up for grabs in May. Voting margins are closer than ever. A group of young liberals and moderates, with enough voting issues to stock fifty campaigns, are on the move. That 16-14 vote may very well prove to be the last gasp of a political era. wake and offer them’ a super-secret private interview. Over vodka and good White Horse Scotch in the Red Room of the Texas Council of Churches, Teddy explained that he and H. L. Hunt, a small businessman from Dallas, were out to save good Texas Democrats froth the snares of the Kremlin; he specially is concerned about Allan Shivers, Price Daniel, John Osorio, John Ben Sheppard, Tom Sealy, Ben Ramsey, and Will Wilson. Leaving the Observer his ACA voting data, donkey in label, with “the penitent eye of a man who had just come out of a towering rage,” Teddy quietly departed again for his Petroleum Tower in Dallas. Lost somehow in the excitement was the disturbing fact that Teddy, having plumped down his $1,000 filing fee, took an oath to representative government. Could this mean he has given up horses for tricycles? Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $5.10 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 15c each. Quantity prices available on order. EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone G Ree n wood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: Mrs. R. D. Randolph, 2131 Welch, Houston 19, Texas. AUSTIN AFTER WATCHING Dungan’s textbook lads at work the last three weeks, the Observer is tempted to start a new organization : the Texas Hysterical Society. Its operating motto: “This is a republic and not a monarchydammit!” We note also that “McCarthyism” is now part of the language. Webster’s new international dictionary defines it: “A political attitude of the midtwentieth century closely allied to know-nothingism and characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals, by means of widely-publicized, indiscriminate allegations, essentially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.” It is rumored that the Amarillo school library, after disposing of such communist tracts as 1984 and Brave New World, will purge Mr. Webster of his M’s. TWO SAYINGS now making the rounds among Texas Republicans: “The Democrats got 30 years out of Hoover. Maybe we can get 20 out of Lyndon.” “These Texas Democrats for Nixon and Democrats for Eisenhower and Democrats for Lodge are a little like Buddhists for Christ.” WE ARE PLEASED this week to announce our special Oscars for the late lamented session. As usual, our winners were chosen on the basis of thoroughness, zeal, effectiveness, friendliness, dogmatism, and devotion beyond the call of duty. Banker’s Man of the Year, to the man with the most unescheatable temperament, goes to Rep. Ben Jarvis of Tyler. His prize will be three days with Price and Bill Daniel in Guam. Our Small-Small Loan Shark Man of the Year is Sen. Abraham Kazen of Laredo. For his outstanding services, Chick receives a $50 loan from Texas Observer Ltd. at 450 percent interest. The Herman Goebels-Evetts Haley Book-Burning Prize goes unanimously to Mrs. Myra Banfield of Rosenberg. For winning this one and the DAR Revolutionary of the Year Award in the regular session, Mrs. Myra will receive vicuna-bound copies of Andersonville, Tropic of Cancer, Memoirs of the Marquis de Sade, Fanny Hill, Van de Velde’s Ideal Marriage, John Wilkes’ The Hell Fire Club, Brammer’s The Gay Place, and the latest edition of Webster’s new international dictionary. The Myra Banfield Sportsmanship Award goes without competition to Rep. Bob Bass from the metropolis of DeKalb. Bass gets a week as Roger Shattuck’s guest at Harvard University and two days trapped in a barn with Frank Dobie and Ernest Mossner. Once more our special Award for Being Supreme goes to the plenipotentiary agent for the Divine Being in the Texas House, Rep. W. T. Dungan. For his keener insights than all others into the nature of reality and for his generally super-dooper talents, Dungan will receive a Unitarian Hymnal. 4:SEN. CHARLES HERRING is not only a fine fellow, he has good taste and a senseof propriety. When the time came last week for Herring to be feted as “governor for a day” as president pro tern of the Senate, he chose a quaint old-fashioned open-house levee in the governor’s mansion. This was in some contrast to the extravaganza launched in Sen. Bruce Reagan’s behalf last fall. Beside the usual soiree in the Driskill, Reagan saw fit to receive, after the usual lobby tapping, a portable television set, a fivepiece set of luggage, a hand-tooled leather belt with an engraved buckle, a gold wrist watch, a sterling silver coffee urn with tray and cupsand, oh yes, a 1961 Oldsmobile Super 88 station wagon. SEN. ANDY ROGERS of Childress and Rep. H. G. Wells of Tulia had a seemingly harmless little bill at the start of the special session. The farmers in their area buy gas from Pioneer Gas Company to run their irrigation pumps. Recently there has been one rate increase after another. The farmers got together and decided Pioneer Gas Company should come under the rate-supervision purview of the Railroad Commission, from which it had been exempted by a statute some years ago. They hired a gas rate analyst who looked into the situation and concluded that the rates they were being forced to pay were much too high and would certainly be lowered if Pioneer came under any kind of regulation. Rogers and Wells teamed up to try to do something. Rogers got a bill through the Senate in the early days of the special session placing Pioneer rates under the RRC. There were only four dissenting votes. In the House, Wells got the measure out of committee by a 13-1 vote. Then the gas lobby, Bailey Jones and the boys, got wind of what was happening. Pioneer Gas sent Stoney Wall down to fight it, and the entire gas pipeline lobby helped tack on amendments in the House so the Senate could kill it dead when it came back. Thursday the bill went back to the Senate floor and was defeated, 14-12. Wells, who did not appreciate the turn of events, told the Observer wistfully: “All the bill would have done was to allow the Railroad Commission to regulate the rates. Our farmers deserved some recourse. They wanted to have the right to go to the Commission and ask, why did Pioneer raise their rates? That’s all. Pioneer wants to make more than a reasonable profit. Isn’t it as simple as that?” * THE UNBELIEVABLE fiasco in the closing moments of the session Thursday, when Gov. Daniel’s appropriations bill was junked by a shouting, swarming mass of House conservatives, almost tempts us to join the Republicans. It was a classic example of the unrelieved meaninglessness of a one-party legislature. Spearheading the move was Rep. Jim Cotten, the ranking old maid in a chamber amply stocked with fussy quibblers and meticulous non-entities. In the first days of the regular session last January, Cotten was such a strong supporter of the victorious speaker, Turman, he was rewarded with some of the choicest of committee plums. A big-wheel behind Turman in the liberal-moderate coalition which triumphed over the Spilman conservatives, Cotten figured prominently in “organizing” the House leadershiporganizing in the politically civilized, two-party sense. But the victorious liberal-moderate coalition of January, as Observer readers know all too well, became the amorphous, quarrelsome, pessimistic minority of July, disintegrating under the glare of the conservative lobby and faltering finally into total defeat. Thursday’s wrangle was the crowning blow : Cotten, the appropriations chairman, Cotten the speaker’s man, Cotten the “administration” workhorse, moving out of the shadows to embarrass the governor, the speaker, and the session. * THE HOUSTON school board is faced with a ticklish question in weighing the suit of the American Civil Liberties Union to allow the ACLU to use school facilities for meetings without taking the nonsubversive oath. Among subversives, ACLU members are noted as being among the most vicious stickers of used chewing gum under auditorium seats in the business, and, really, with people like that, does an oath mean anything? i tiorJeJ and 5ric y cieJ THE TEXAS OBSERVER