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SCHIZOPHRENIA ON THE RIGHT Amarillo’s Two Americas Policy AMARILLO People in Amarillo are learning to identify the good United States and the bad United States. Two of their busiest tutors are among the community’s most effective opinion molders: Mayor Jack Seale, who also is West Texas’, most famous John Birch Society member, and the Amarillo Daily News, most Birch-prone big city newspaper in the state. Teaching the separation between good and bad, however, can get rather confusing in a city of 140,000. Especially when it involves such an elusive topic as the USA. Take the week of October 1-7, for instance. The Daily News led the first lesson with a series of front page editorials blasting the federal government’s entry into Mississippi. President Kennedy of the USA, by sending his marshalls and his troops into Oxford,. was wrong, misguided, and was using a “legal subterfuge” to subvert a sovereign state, a page one editorial on Oct. 1 said. As if to solidify its editorial stand, the Daily News on Oct. 2 stressed headlines over Associated Press stories. Bedecked with 66 red stars placed above front page headlines and pictures relating to the Mississippi situation, the Daily News headline writer used two New York AP stories one above the other. The top one was capped with “Commies Applaud Invasion” in describing support given by the American Communist Party to the President’s actions regarding Mississippi; the headline directly ‘below it, “NAACP Likewise,” w a s placed over an article telling of that organization’s support. The biggest headline that day read, “Flood of .Troops Falls on Oxford,” over an AP story. For the good United States that same week, the press turned to Mayor Seale. Seale declared a substitution on the calendar for Amarilloans: Oct. 23 will be United States Day instead of United Nations Day. The proclamation urged residents of Amarillo to fly the United States flag instead of the UN banner. Last winter Mayor Seale proclaimed Jan. 5 as American Patriots Day in honor of former Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, who graced the city with a visit. Walker was the topic of many front page stories in Amarillo during that hectic week. On Oct. 5 an AP article out of Springfield, Mo., stated that Walker was ordered by a US district judge to “show cause” why he should not be released on bail. The headline writer for the Daily News picked a three-column head to lead readers into the story on the front page: “Walker Detention Is Branded Illegal.” The most interesting journalism displayed on the Daily News’ front pages that week was the Oct. 1 editorial, “Law of the Land,” by Louise Evans, which ran two columns the entire length of the page. In roundly lambasting the USA’s participation in the Oxford event, Miss Evans discussed whether “court-order” government can prevail over The Texas Observer An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper A Window to the South Volume 54 TEXAS, OCTOBER 12, 1962 15c Per Copy Number 28 Brighter Insurance Prospects GOP FIELDS 17 Four Close Races For House Seats AUSTIN The Texas Medical Association, it was learned recently, will push a constitutional amendment in the coming legislature for enabling legislation to extend health insurance to a larger number of the state’s needy aged. The action is interpreted by some as part of the American Medical Association’s nationwide mop-up campaign following its successful battle against President Kennedy’s Medicare bill. Such health insurance would be an extension of the Kerr-Mills vendor plan now available to citizens with an annual income of $1,200 or less and eligible for Old Age Assistance payments. According to proponents of Medicare, as well as the U.S. Senate’s special committee on the aging, the KerrMills program is at best a stopgap measure, and although better than no health insurance plan at all, does not come close to meeting the desperate needs of the nation’s aged. But even if the TMA’s action is simply a strategic retreat, it finds no sympathy from the Texas Research League, a non-profit organization which strongly opposed the meager vendor payment plan in the state capitol last year, and is even more opposed to an extension of it. Although spokesmen for TRL claim their organization will not even enter into the corning debate, there is little doubt that opponents of TMA’s plan to extend health insurance will make ready use of the report TRL presented in 1961. At present there are about 221, 000 people 65 or over in Texas who are receiving Old Age Assistance, and therefore receive less than $1,200 a year from private sources. Under the KerrMills program, which began in Texas last January, they receive the following benefits if they have a serious “illness, injury, or physical deformity” which requires immediate in-patient care in a hospital: Ten dollars a day for bed, board, and general nursing service up to 15 days; and $5 each time thereafter, if required. IFull costs of all services and materialsexcept blood and plasmawhich the physician considers necessary the first 15 days; after 15 days, one half the cost is provided, vor Up to $200 when surgery is performed, plus an anesthetist’s fee when necessary, consisting of $5 plus up to 15 percent of the surgeon’s fee. If surgery, radiology, or therapy treatments are not involved, an allowance of $3 per day the first 15 days and $1.50 per day thereafter is made to the attending physician for each day he actually visits the patient’s AUSTIN At the moment, the state government is preparing 30 Texas insurance companies for the notoriously crowded graveyard for such institutions. These 30 companies have debts totaling $16 million, but somewhere between the company vaults and the auditor’s pencil, $12 million disappeared. In national financial circles, Texas is conceded pre-eminence among the states in collapsing insurance firms. Until 1958 the messy business of trying to give them transfusions, replace their diseased parts, or even let them die and give their transplantable organs to new organisms was handled on a patch-as-patch-can basis. Some case records were so fouled up, no one could tell what had happened to the litigation, the officers, or the company Cadillac. Then, however, trying to shake themselves free of their recent nightmares General American Casualty, US Trust & Guaranty, ICTthe state’s insurance regulators turned on a quiet little accountant in state auditor’s office who kept telling them what was wrong in the Liquidator’s Division and kept turning out to be right. He was C. H. Langdeau, one of State Auditor C. H. Cavness’ most trusted examiners. They asked Langdeau to become liquidator. He said no, but he was prevailed upon. One gets an idea of the tangle Langdeau had to address from a remark in his four-year report for AUSTIN Texas’ conservative moderate dominated delegation to Congress will remain fairly much the same vote-wise after November, no matter how the Republicans fare in the general election. All 22 incumbents in the U.S. House-21 Democrats and Republican Bruce Algerwere re-nominated in the primaries this summer, despite a pair of close calls for conservative John Dowdy of Athens and conservative-to-moderate Slick Rutherford of El Paso against two young New Frontiersmen, Benton Musslewhite and Tom Diamond. A new twenty-third seat will be decided in a statewide at-large race between conservative Democrat Joe Pool of Dallas and conservative Republican Des Barry of Houston. The Republicans, who ran only five candidates for congressional places in 1960, are fielding 17 this year. Their candidates are considered major threats in three races, two of them against staunchly conservative Democrats. GOP aspirants are waging vigorous fights in several other areas where general elections in the past have been little more than minor formalities. In the highly conservative District 18 in the Panhandle, Mayor Jack Seale of Amarillo, an avowed John Bircher and the GOP nominee, is involved in a close race with incumbent the Walter Rogers, a conservative Democrat. H. M. Baggarly, editor of the Tulia Herald, has described the race as “Walter Rogers vs. the John Birch Society.” Rogers’ AFL-CIO record in the 87th Congressa gauge which included the rules committee change, depressed areas, minimum wage, housing, liberal trade, urban affairs, tax revision, and other key administration votes was two “right” and nine “wrong.” In the years 1952-1960 he consistently supported the Eisenhower administration. The whole Panhandle area has traditionally been strong in GOP v otes. Sen. John Tower carried the district over William Blakley by 57.2 percent in 1961. The constituency was briefly represented in Congress by a Republican, Ben Guill, in the ‘fifties. Seale, described by some observers as the “number one John Bircher in West Texas,” is conducting a well-financed, hard-hitting campaign with extensive backing from Amarillo and Pampa businessmen. He has been highly critical of issues like federal aid to education, tariff reduction, and the farm bill. Some leaders of the Farm Bureau are supporting him. Last winter Rogers, appearing before a group of Amarillo businessmen, did not satisfactorily answer their questions on commu PASO Withdraws SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICINE Consolation Prize For Needy Aged? SAN ANTONIO The Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations, political arm of Texas Latins, debated more than three hours in state convention Sunday and then withdrew its earlier tentative endorsement of John Connally for governor. There were only two or three dissenting votes among the 500 delegates representing 21 counties. At the same time the state group, in taking its neutralist position, left it to the responsibility of the county chapters to re-endorse Connally, support Jack Cox, or do nothing. Texas organized labor will also take a second look at Connally in its COPE convention in Houston Saturday. An earlier substitute motion to re-endorse Connally, offered by Gilbert Garcia of Fort Worth, was defeated, 14 counties to 7. Webb, Tarrant, Cameron, Hidalgo, San Patricio, Nueces, and Pecos counties voted for the measure. Voting against it were Medina, Jefferson, Comal, Victoria, Wharton, Kleburg, Ector, El Paso, Dallas, Harris, Atasca, Travis, Guadalupe, and Bexar. The important Bexar delegation opposed the motion 25 to 12. Arguing for the Connally endorsement, Garcia said that although the Democratic nominee had not satisfied all the requirements laid down at PASO’s state convention in August, the state Democratic platform is more progressive than the Republican. Bob Sanchez of McAllen, in a lively floor debate, charged that Garcia is on Connally’s payroll as a paid employee. Garcia did not deny the charge. Earlier, in a Friday night press conference in the Gunter Hotel, Connally said he wondered if PASO had actually endorsed him in the August convention because it had set qualifications “diametrically opposed” to his political position. The strings on the earlier endorsement were that the state Democratic convention, which met in El Paso Sept. 18, spell out a voter registration law to replace the poll tax without fees or literacy tests, and that the Kennedy-Johnson administration and the New Frontier be affirmatively supported. Neither materialized. “I am not anticipating PASO,” Connally said. “They haven’t endorsed me yet. In the first primary they endorsed Gov. Price Daniel, and in the second primary they went for Don Yarborough. “They have given me an endorsement of a sort, with certain conditions. They are trying to tell me how to run my business. I am not bargaining for votes.” Saying he had not satisfied PASO’s conditions and did not anticipate doing so, he added: “I am not making deals with any group or any individual.” Albert Pena, state PASO chair \(Continued on