ustxtxb_obs_1962_05_02_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

‘I’m Game, But Leave An Arm Free’ Moore lor Congre63 The Observer unequivocally withdraws its endorsement of Woodrow Bean for congressman-at-large and recommends in his stead Warren G. Moore of Tyler. Grotesque is the only word to describe the series of events involving Bean. The man who solicited the endorsement of labor, liberal, and minority groups all over Texas has clearly, as R.D. argues in an accompanying column, betrayed the public trust, embarrassed his supporters, and left the race in such a shambles that the excellent chances of a liberal victory are now severely jeopardized. It is a frightening prospect, with all the ingredients of tragi-comedy, but at this late date Bean could still make the run-off. Leaders of organizations which have worked diligently for his election understand the calculated sham of his curious turnabout on the income tax, advocating as he does repeal of the very principle of progressive taxation as upheld almost 50 years ago by the same Sam Rayburn whom he so often professed to admire. The Bean episode will, in these closing hours before the Saturday election, be a good test of the native intelligence of the average voter. Warren G. Moore, an old Yarborough Democrat, was Harry Truman’s appointee as U.S. Attorney in the East Texas district. A firm and undeviating party loyalist, moderately lib Carr o Waggoner Carr has not held a responsible position in Texas public life since 1959. Much, therefore, has been forgotten. The Observer wishes to review the record of Carr’s support of big business, racism, and the enemies of Senator Ralph Yarborough, relying on back issues of this newspaper with dates cited in parentheses. Carr owed his election as speaker’ of the House of Representatives in 1957 to moderates and liberals, to whom he made assurances of fair play. He had been a member of the old ‘Gas House Gang” in 1951, and his assurances were taken on trust. He at once appointed reactionary W. S. Heatley chairman of state affairs, to which he sent bills he wanted killed. Heatley stuck four lobby control bills in a pro-lobbyist subcomconference committee on lobby legislation 4-1 against the stricter conception of the bill advocated by Gov. ensuing bill, a sham, through the House. Carr attended a meeting of Houston’s White Citizens’ Council, which paid his expenses there. A picture taken during the meeting showed Gov. Marvin Griffin waving, a Confederate flag in the background, and Carr advancing behind Griffin, smiling slightRep. Joe Pool, Dallas, introduced a bill to require any organization to register and furnish a list of its members to any county judge who told it to do so. This was the anti-NAACP bill. Carr said, “This is a bill designed to ferret out sneaky, nefarious agitators who are most likely to provoke trouble.” Carr also hailed the bill to close schools rather than integrate, if there was any threat of violence, as a bill making it clear that the legislature “had rather have no public schools at all than to have their children march to classrooms with bayo\(Tom Reavley, whom this news. paper has endorsed for attorney general, told the Texas Press Assn. the NAACP registration bill was “nothing but a restriction upon freedom of Pool introduced a bill in 1957 requiring a run-off for the Senate election. A hundred votes were necessary in the House. One day, the bill had only 90; the next, 103; with which it was rammed through. The switches eral in his politics, he is undoubtedly, as we now belatedly acknowledge, the best man in the race. “I am in favor,” he says, “of adequate medical care for our senior citizens.” On federal aid to education, he states: “Texas stands about 30th in nationwide education. Our standing should be improved. It will take money to do this. Texas can raise the money if the people desire. Any. federal aid should be with complete local control . . .” He favors “such financial assistance to our friends and peace-loving nations as we can afford.” We prefer Moore to Phil Willis, brother of Sen. Doyle Willis. He has now sought to move into the breach and pre-empt as much of the Bean support as he can. He favors the Nixon approach on federal aid to education, approving aid only for buildings and equipment. He favors state medical care and attacks the Kennedy plan with the frequent conservative smokescreen that “millionaires” would also be eligible under social security. As a state representative, his record was not a good one. He had a reputation, in fact, as being something of a labor-baiter. All former Bean supporters, we hope, will rally behind Warren G. Moore, and will make every effort at this late date to urge fellow liberals to join them. If Bean still makes the run-off, the prospects are altogether grim. were caused by pressure from Carr and his floor leaders. \(“I did it as a personal favor to the Speaker,” said server editorialized, “Everybody knew on the face of it the bill was meant to gut Ralph Yarborough.” \(February, With Carr’s full support,Vhe 1957 session doubled state college tuitions In 1959, Carr’s revenue and tax o m m i t t e e was overwhelmingly weighted for the sales tax, and he himself endorsed a “gross receipts” tax which looked very much like a general sales tax and which, the Observer editorialized, “Gov. Daniel well named a ‘gross deceits’ tax.” Meeting with the appropriations committee in secret, Carr tried to forestall all increases in state spending until they Carr subsequently met secretly in the Commodore Perry with businessmen and lobbyists, including Herman Brown, Ben Bolt, and S. J. Hay, the Observer reported the next week. Daniel’s tax bill, including business taxes, passed the House in a 1959 special session despite Carr’s efforts to juggle the rules so it could not come House conferees on taxation 3-2 against the House’s own bill and did not even appoint its author, George Hinson of Mineola, as required by time-honored custom in the House. His conferees gutted the bill for the gas lobby by striking out the taxes, approved by the House, on natural gas pipelines and interstate corporaCar r y’s tax bill was defeated by his own House, 121-27. The House was disgusted with him and rebellious. The Observer editorialized, “Carr betrayed his own House, sided with the Texas Senate and the gas lobby” of impeaching him, Carr histrionically told the House, “If it be your desire to oust me, then be at your work,” left the chamber, and minutes later returned to a standing ovation from roughly a third to a half of the memThe Observer has now fulfilled its duty of reminding voters that as Speaker of the House, Carr served the gas lobby, the supporters of the general sales tax, the lobbyists who were watering down the lobby control law, and the segregationists. Yarborough comes through untarnished; the man didn’t even use a teleprompter. After one of his recent speeches, a student who works in the Observer office reported that four Republicans in the young marrieds’ housing project where he lives decided right there to abandon their hopes for a greater yesterday and vote for Yarborough. A friend noted the other day that if he wins this one, it is going to be with a coalition of young people and old people, which is more truth than poetry. The great majority of his active backers are in their twenties and early thirties; the devotion he inspires in old people out in the hinterlands is one of the overlooked factors in this campaign. It is fascinating to see the extent to which the conservative quality of Cdnnally’s campaign has become something of a national issue. Anyone in Washington_ who considers himself reasonably informed politically now knows, after the flurry of national publicity in the last two weeks, that Connallythe first member of the Kennedy administration to try for election at the state level has turned his back on the New Frontier, aligned himself with the conservative fat-cats, and made things unexpectedly embarrassing in certain unnamed high places. This is not exactly an unwelcomed development. * * THE PRECINCT conventions are Saturday night, and it would be an excellent idea to carry along some resolutions commending the Kennedy administration in areas where it deserves to be commended, and urging various programs of state and national reform. A large group in Austin plans to sponsor a resolution in several precincts,. and we pass it along as a suggestion for following their example : “Resolved : That the recent hearings by the textbook committee of the Texas state legislature are to be deplored for the following reasons: “Whereas, unsubstantiated charges were made concerning the character, reputation, loyalty, and professional ability of authors, elected officials, other individuals and organizations, and “Whereas, said hearings were conducted with callous disregard for fair play, relevancy and good order, and “Whereas, the textbook committee has failed to provide procedural safeguards to protect basic individual rights and liberties long recognized by Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, and “Whereas, the matters under consideration by the committee are the proper function of expert state and local agencies trained in the selection of proper textbook materials for the public schools, “Now, therefore, be it resolved: That the House committee on textbooks of the Texas legislature be dissolved according to law.” THE HOUSTON PRESS made editorial endorsements in eleven of the 12 Democratic races for the Texas House. It endorsed five liberals and six conservatives, which shows it manages to have a certain verve and promiscuity. In only one campaign it did not endorse, the one involving Barbara Jordan, the highly respected young Negro lawyer. The Press might at least have disguised things by foregoing endorsement in one or two other races. Instead, cowardice has seldom been so acutely dramatized. * * IT MAY interest readers of the Observer that the Atomic Energy Cornmission has turned down a request of the Industrial Waste Disposal Corp. of Houston to dump radioactive wastes in the Gulf of Mexico. The A.E.C.’s reason was concern for U.S. Mexican relations. The Observer reported on the possible dangers of the plan some time ago. FINE QUALITY Observer Notebook Zoyakieo AUSTIN WE WERE very deeply impressed all over again, watching Don Yarborough on statewide television this week, with his fine quality of contagious enthusiasm. It is catching on. Connally, spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in his crusade for fiscal responsibility and slashes in state spending, comes across on TV like an urbane upper-bracket obstetrician who missed a proper calling in the afternoon soap operas. This, we understand, is the Madison Avenue touch. Connally’s half hour campaign film, complete with music from the sound track of “Giant,” contends that life is one horrendous orgy of fun and games. It is a delightful anesthesia, much akin to the candidate’s platform.