ustxtxb_obs_1962_09_07_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Connally Inspires I Grist for New Novel AUSTIN John Connally, Democratic nominee for governor, mused a while when Navy Secretary about the threat of military control of the United States and provided grist for a novel on that subject, the current Look Magazine says. Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey’s Seven Days in May is a novel of a President’s conflict with a secret military group seeking to seize control of the United States. They wrote a piece for Look maintaining that military men are permeating government councils in Washington, and military challenges to civilian authority could cause profound trouble. They begin their article in Look: “On a summer morning in 1961, Secretary of the Navy John B. Connally Jr. leaned back in his chair in a private dining room in the Pentagon. As a white-coated mess attendant cleared away the last of the breakfast dishes, Connally ruminated on the state of the country. ‘I’m worried,’ he said. ‘Up to 1945, an individual could have some feelingeven in a world war that he had some control over his own existence. But when that atomic bomb expolded over Hiroshima, something happened. People began to feel helpless. Now, with hydrogen bombs all over the world, the individual feels even more at a loss to help control his own destiny. You can sense the feeling everywhere.’ “Connally went on to say that in a monolithic state, such as Russia, it doesn’t matter much what the individual feels. But in a democracy, where leaders govern only by the collective consent of millions of individuals, the attitude of the single citizen is crucial. If people no longer believe they can influence events, Connally argued, democracy is in dangerand a dictator could take over. There is no magic in the American system: It can be preserved only by millions of citizens working day in and day out to nourish a system of government now almost two hundred years old. But do Americans still work at it? Or are they, Connally wondered, beginning to give up? “Connally talked on, casually yet earnestly, trying to convey his own ideas about the state of the nation. A listener could not fail to be impressed by such talk in the inner cloisters of the Pentagon, coming as it did from t’-e man who headed the most powerful peacetime Navy in history . “His thoughts, unknown to him, were amplified and placed in the mind of a fictional President, who in Seven Days in May, faces, a decade hence, a kind of crisis few ever dreamed could occur in this country.” . . . and a prediction “IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGER’ HEAR JIM DOBBS Each Weekday Monday thru Friday 6:20-6:25 A.M. KTBC Radio 590 \(Pol. Adv.Paid for by Jim Dobbs for Congress, ##########I4~~I~###################~4~,. HOUSE DEBATE A PRELUDE? Hot Exchange on Poll Tax NOCONA John Connally said this week the state Democratic convention in El Paso “should come up with a platform which recognizes the problems we are going to face in the next two years,” then added he does not wish “to divide groups or segments in this state” and that he doesn’t think there should be anything in the platform “to appease any particular segment of people.” The Democratic nominee for governor said he favors abolition of the poll tax and replacing it with a strong registration statute. But it is not inconceivable, he said, that a fee would be attached to a registration act. The present poll tax, he explained, raises $6 million annually for public schools. Predicting a general election turnout of more than 1.5 million votes, Connally said he did not think the election would be close provided the I Dallas’ ACLU Meets I DALLAS John deJ. Pemberton, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, will address a public meeting in Dallas Friday, September 14 at 7:30 p.m. at Selecman Hall, 5950 Bishop Blvd., on the SMU campus. The meeting is being sponsored by the newly formed Dalias Civil Liberties Union. Pemberton, a graduate of Swarthmore and Harvard, has long been active in civil rights affairs in Minnesota. He belongs to the American Society of Friends and is a Republican. He will discuss the status of civil liberties in the nation today. Democrats c ease thinking they have nothing to worry about. He added: “We will have to work. The Republicans are dedicated and , they work at it.” Voter interest will be great, he said, because Democrats have unprecedented competition in state and local races. Connally said the state will confront the problem of either new taxes or deficit financing unless the money dilemma embodied in the budget board’s report that $200 million in new revenue will be needed is solved. “I am against both new taxes and deficit spending and I hope we will not have to impose any new taxes, but it looks like we are going to have to do a lot of searching.” He said he would urge the legislature to crack down on deviated drilling in the oil industry. “We ought to be swift in our denunciation of those who have done \(the oil should be equally swift in ferreting them out. I think it is a deplorable situation that has occurred.” He advocated giving the Railroad Commission sufficient funds, staff members, and authority to clamp down on illegal operations. And he reiterated one of his campaign themes: establishment of an advertising program to bring tourists to Texas, for which he would ask $500,000 in the next legislative session. Subscribe to The Observer Debate last week in the U.S. House on the anti-poll tax constitutional amendment, which was not reported in any great detail by Texas dailies, no doubt struck many of the major themes to be heard in the next session of the Texas legislature. Some kind of action in the session beginning in January is likely on two fronts. An attempt will be made to ratify the constitutional amendment approved by Congress, which would apply only to federal elections. Second, a serious showdown is almost certain \(Obs., Aug. a state constitutional amendment repealing the poll tax in state and local elections. The latter would require a two-thirds vote of both houses. Cong. Bruce Alger of Dallas was the lone Texan joining in last week’s debate. Only six Texas congressmen Brooks, Gonzalez, Rutherford, Thomas, Thornberry. and Youngvoted for repeal. Argued Alger: “I have always been against the poll tax as a voting qualification in the state of Texas, but the end does not justify the means. If we want to change this state prerogative in Texas, Texans will do it in due time at Austin. This resolution is the wrong way to do it. We do not have discrimination in Texas because of the poll tax, but whether we do or not, it is not the business of other states to tell us our voting qualifications. . . . This is the wrong way to do it, and you will live to rue the day you do it.” Cong. Emanuel Cellar of New York, on the other hand, argued that both national party platforms have repeatedly pledged poll tax abolition, that the five states \(Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Missisthe tax were among the seven states with the lowest voter participation in 1960, and that the poll tax has been “a burden on the white man’s ballot as well as on the colored man’s ballot.” Addressing himself to a number of House liberals who favored abolition by direct statute with more sweeping electoral reforms, Cellar said, “The fear that a constitutional amendment would take too long is illusory. The first ten amendments, constituting the Bill of Rights, were ratified in approximately nine months. The 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th amendments each required only one year, while the 21st and 23rd amendments took less than a. year. And remember, 45 states do not have a poll tax.” Cellar termed “specious” the excuse that poll tax receipts are used for educational purposes in some states. “Poll tax proceeds might be used for many good causes,” he said, “for bird sanctuaries, homes for inebriates, baseball parks, or what have you. But since it is Inherently obnox. sous, the good does not justify the evil.” When the amendment is ratified, he said, “it is hoped that it will liberate the minds of the five poll tax states” and prompt them to abolish the tax in state and local elections. The argument assailed by Cellar, that poll tax payments provide revenue for public schools was emplayed by Cong. Armistead Selden of Alabama. Pointing out that $405,000 went into Alabama schools from the tax last year, he said: “It is a contribution to the strengthening of the country, the state, and the community.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 September 7, 1962 Other arguments from statesrights Southerners: Cong. Jamie Whitten of Mississippi: “Can anyone imagine that any citizen who is unwilling to contribute $2 toward schools could contribute anything toward sound government? Poll taxes are levied on all races, creeds, and colors.” Cong. Carl Elliott of Alabama: “The people of Florida, or New York, or California have no more right to tell Alabama citizens not to raise revenue by the poll tax than they have to tell them they should abandon the income tax in favor of statewide lotteries.” Cong. Edwin Willis of Louisiana: The anti-poll tax amendment “would be an entering wedge and a foot in the door which through pressure groups, however sincere, would inevitably lead to other amendments concentrating the entire election procedure and machinery in the federal government.” It was Cong. John Bell Williams of Raymond, Mississippi, who presented the most dire warning, however. “It is time that Ameri cans take stock of where we are heading,” he said. “We need voting qualitynot voting quantity. We need an intelligent electorate instead of ignorant puppets at the polling place. “Free bread and free circuses brought about the downfall of Rome, and it was a thousand years before there was a flicker of interest in reviving civilization.” The amendment would aid the “social planners” and “leaders of bloc voting groups” in making “intellectual eunuchs of Americans” and would cause “future generations to weep. In the anguish of their tears, I hope they are able to rise above the enveloping ashes of governmental decay and reclaim the mantle of individual responsibility which this House proposes to bury.” Among the proponents, Cong. Dante Fascell of Florida argued: “No constitutional amendment can be called an invasion of states rights. The very heart and foundation of our system of democ racy and way of free life is a respect for . . . the federal constitution which is amendable and,.. when amended as prescribed in the constitution establishes rights for all Americans.” Fascell added: “Certainly we do not intend to permit moneyhowever insignificant’ the amount to remain as a criterion for the free man to exercise his privilege of participation in his government.” Three congressmen, Dwyer of New Jersey, Lindsay of New York, and Curtis of Missouri attacked the amendment for not applying to state and local elections. They also criticized the Kennedy administration for what they believed to be its mild stand on civil rights. Said Lindsay: “The real difficulty lies at the local level, in school boards and in those other areas where the anti-civil libertarian forces go to work to the detriment of all citizens of this country and to the detriment of the free democratic process.” Mrs. Dwyer said that out of 27 recommendations from the Cornmission on Civil Rights, the administration has requested Congress to act on only two of them, poll tax repeal and establishment of a sixth-grade education as proof of literacy for voting purposes. W.M. Legion Contributes To New Pamphlet AUSTIN The American Legion played a major role in preparing a new booklet now available for junior and senior high school teachers, Teaching for Communism, the current issue of Texas Outlook reports. The booklet, developed by a joint committee of the National Education Association and the Legion, “lists guidelines for selecting content and materials, for classroom procedure, and for community relations,” the magazine says. NEA president Ewald Turner said, “The teacher has been put into difficult positions in some communities when she teaches about communism. With this joint publication, the teachers will have less risk of community groups objecting or bringing pressure on them.”