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Subscribe to the Observer Subscribe for a Friend The Observer “is the conscience of the political community” in Texas. Andrew Kopkind in the New Republic, Nov. 20, 1965. The Observer “has a stable of gifted writers and kindred spirits who contribute to its pages.””Copies find their way to the desks of the mighty and even into the White House.”St. Louis PostDispatch, July 25, 1965. Send $6 for each year’s subscription Texas Observer, 504 W. 24th St., Austin, NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE Zip Code “Despite its shortcomings, the Texas Observer is needed in Texas. Texans would miss its publication . . .”Texas AFL-CIO News, Nov. 15, 1965. “Although we disagree completely . we strongly recommend the Observer as one of the best sources of state political news available.” Official Publication of the Young Republican Clubs of Texas, 1965. to Sarah Payne, Business Manager, The Texas. NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE Zip Code reorganized into a human relations commission to forestall such situations as the one in Watts, Los Angeles. Hollowell favors the 19-year-old vote and blames Lt. Gov. Smith for thwarting it. Smith is campaign ing, but saying nothing that attracts much attention. g/ Haring called a press conference to launch a charge that eight or so South Texas counties have their ballots rigged so that uneducated voters can be instructed to vote for all the names at the top of the ballot \(in one case, all the names at the the entire Connally team. However, faulty research underlay this charge with respect to Kleberg and Kenedy counties, as the Corpus daily discovered and reported. Haring apologized as to those two counties but said his charge stands for Duval and some other countieswhich ones, the Observer has not been able to get clear about. Haring’s point is that the law requires an impartial drawing for ballot placement and that this is not being done in the boss-run counties. Tunnell’s campaign has taken the form of a bland, almost contentless series of speeches about the oil industry. Evidently those backing Tunnell will rely on a lastweeks name saturation campaign, since Tunnell really is not much, if any, better known statewide than Haring. g/ Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall snapped Texas Land Cmsr. Jerry Sadler very smartly, indeed, for Sadler’s opposition to a Guadalupe Mountains na tional park unless the U.S. violates its own fixed rule that it founds no national parks without having the mineral rights to them. Udall hinted that every Texas statehouse official except Sadler is in agreement. Sadler, in steamy rhetoric, re-stated his position that he wants Texas to keep min 14 The Texas Observer eral rights to 45,000 acres, and if he can’t have his way on that, he favors a recreation area, and not a national park. V A “memorandum” without signature is being circulated in Houston promoting “Project Dozen,” namely, the development of a program to get people to go out and get a dozen other people to go take part in the precinct conventions. vir In congressional races, Cong. Bob Casey, Houston, is stressing his seniority in Washington and what he calls challenger Bill Kilgarlin’s greenness, as well as his defeat after one term in the legislature. The Houston Chronicle endorsed Casey and ran a layout in a Sunday section with 16 pictures of Casey in Vietnam. Kilgarlin charged Casey with missing a vote on funds for the Vietnam war while showing pictures he took in Vietnam. Kilgarlin is running on a Great Society program. . . . Mrs. Albert Thomas having handily won the special election for the balance of her late husband’s term, Rep. Bob Eckhardt has continued his hard campaign to win the Thomas seat as of the first of next year. . . . In West Texas a horse race is developing between Eldon Mahon, 47-year-old nephew of Cong. George Mahon, and ultraconservative Omar Burleson. The tone of the campaign may be divined from Eldon Mahon’s theme that the district needs a man of action, not reaction. Mahon recites Burleson’s anti-Great Society votes. Cong. Ray Roberts, McKinney, called attention to the fact that he voted to keep medicare legislation alive, but against a new federal housing department, against federal school aid, and against the Teachers’ Corps billexactly opposite, Roberts said, to the way his congressional opponent, Lindley Beckworth of Gladewater, voted on these same issues. \(Beckworth and Roberts both voted for medicare in the El Boxcars, Anyone? Washington, D.C. Southern Pacific Company and other elements in the railroad industry are deliberately seeking to discourage and destroy passenger railroad transportation, Cong. In a floor speech in the House chamber, Gonzalez cited a recent decision of the Interstate Commerce Cmsn. involving Southern Pacific’s application to discontinue passenger service on two trains in the Southwest. The ICC, after an investigation into the company’s claims of declining demand and loss of revenues, found that the railroad had “deliberately downgraded its service in order to justify discontinuance” of the passenger trains. Gonzalez listed the wrongful acts stressed in the ICC opinion, including failure to publish schedules for the passenger trains, denying the existence of the trains to people who wanted to buy tickets on them, substituting a caboose for the passengers to ride in, and prohibiting all employees and others with passes from using the trains in question. Southern Pacific is now engaged in similar tactics, Gonzalez charged, against Southern Pacific’s own “Sunset Limited” between New Orleans and Los Angeles: the company recently eliminated the pullmans and dining cars from these trains. “Unfortunately,” Gonzalez said, “there are persons within the industry too narrowminded to see the broad issues. To these people, passengers are a nuisance because they require some care and conveniences. It is much easier and cheaper to haul freight. And so in many places of the Southwest and throughout the country, the people have been literally dumped off of the trains so that [the trains] may be used exclusively for freight. The railroad system has become a frankenstein monster to a public that has given away its land for the railroads to build on and its money to support its operations. “The overt acts committed by the railroad company against the passengers make up an incredible list and constitute, in my opinion, an indictment and a guilty verdict against the Southern Pacific for offenses against the public,” Gonzalez said. El EMMIE The many parts of being one are dearest seen when smallest smile allows so shyly open tenderness to dominate the piercing arrows of her mind the wounds from others’ blind and thrashing pain. Among the few I know she most of all lives out the someday-hope that clear and cutting inside contradictions fall in love. CASEY HAYDEN New York City