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Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 ,* MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Ce tury Building I#Istee POLECAT MOUNTAIN IS FOREVER Larry King’s The One-Eyed Man Sent post-paid for $5.95 plus 12 cents sales tax by COLLOQUIUM BOOKS Colloquium Books P.O. Box 926 San Marcos, Texas Enclosed is $6.07 for a copy of THE ONE-EYED MAN Name “It is the best political novel since The Last Hurrah.” John Kenneth Galbraith Address City, State k :1 7S is r n IFITURA PRESS HI 2-8682 HI 2-2426 first claim to conservative backing for governor in 1968, but the main variable could be Connally’s backing, which might go to his protege Barnes. It’s now part of the insiders’ lore that Connally tried to get labor to go with Sen. Don Kennard, Fort Worth, against Smith for lieutenant governor last spring in exchange for no opponent against Connally; Smith knows this. V The Texas Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, affirmed a ruling in an Austin district court favorable to Woods Exploration and Producing Co., an owner of which is Stanley Woods, losing candidate for governor this spring. The court thus in effect struck down a Texas Railroad Cmsn. rule change of Feb. 1, 1965, which Woods, in an interview \(Obs. April 29, tract oil wells “by 90% of production.”. V What will be the main issues in the 1967 legislature? Obviously, taxation is one. An incautious aside by an insider leads the Observer to suspect that the tax play from the lobbyist groups will be, not the abolition of the grocery exemption from the sales tax, but an increase in the sales tax rate from 2% to 3%. In Washington the House passed an expansion of unemployment compensation that, however, fell short of President Johnson’s program for the imposition of federal standards on the state programs. J. Ed Lyles, a member of the Texas Employment Cmsn. which had joined in op 12 The Texas Observer nosing federal standards in the U.S. legislation, said the commission probably will ask the legislature to raise Texas benefits from their present maximum of $37 a week. Gov. John Connally made it clear, in a speech to the Texas Good Roads Assn. that he is considering requesting lower speed limits and six-month drivers’ license suspensions for major traffic infractions, such as DWI or excessive speeding. This will be. one thrust at the problem of higher auto insurance rates; liberals will have another, the rates themselves and the Insurance Board. Connally’s lobbyist in Washington, Wayne Gibbens, will get a total appropriation of more than $40,000 for his operation if present budget plans materialize; the governor’s mansion may be redone; higher salaries for state executives are in the wind. So is higher pay for low-paid state employeesbut not for teachers, who are going to fight for their program anyway. There will be a drive to de-liberalize the new Code of Criminal Procedure. Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Department of recently joined with the police criticisms of the code that it coddles criminals and handcuffs police. The principal target will be requirements about telling prisoners their rights as to confessions and admissions. Judgeship Compromise go . In a ‘compromise satisfactory to Sen. Ralph Yarborough, President Johnson named five federal district judges for Tex as. Yarborough’s clear-cut victories in the five announced were Woodrow Seals, the U.S. district attorney in Houston first ap pointed in 1961 and a strong liberal, and Dallas lawyer William M. Taylor, Jr., a long-time friend of the senator who served with him in the state attorney general’s office in the 1930’s and campaigned for him in Dallas. Johnson also nominated Dist. Judge Jack Roberts of Austin and Ernest A. Guinn of El Paso to the federal bench in the western district and Houston lawyer John V. Singleton, Jr., to the sou Guinn was former city and county attorney in El Paso. Singleton, a conservative Democrat, nevertheless is regarded as fair by Houston liberals, notably the time when he called them and said that, although the conservatives then controlled the Harris County Democratic executive committee, the liberals could have the state committeewomanship from Houston under certain circumstances. The liberal Mrs. David Carr became the committeewoman and has since been an outspoken raiser of difficult questions at the state Democratic party’s meetings . . . Johnson also named three judges to the fifth circuit court at New Orleans, including one Texan, Irving L. Goldberg of Dallas, who was said originally to have been a Johnson choice for the Dallas judgeship Taylor will now occupy. Yarborough, saying that “the President and I have labored for long hours to fill these lifetime federal judicial appointments in Texas,” congratulated Johnson on “his patience and diligence” and said he would support all the nominees for confirmation in the Senate. V Sen. Yarborough, as chairman of the Senate labor subcommittee, proposed, and the subcommittee agreed, that the proposed $1.60-an-hour minimum wage be made effective early in 1968, instead of in 1969 as voted by the House. V Yarborough has broken new ground with a bill to require that federallyaided highways avoid all federal, state, and local parklands and historic sites unless there is no alternative, all precautions are taken to minimize destruction of the affected areas, or appropriate substitute land is provided. Introducing this measure, Yarborough referred to “dreadful situations such as that of Brackenridge Park,” in San Antonio. An expressway is to cause changes in that park’s golf course and to go over a segment of the park land. Gonzalez & HemisFair w r Cong. Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio, in leading out, fists flailing, for the revision of HemisFair’s contract-letting practices in San Antonio, made powerful enemies in the San Antonio Establishment, so that he may expect more opposition for re-election in 1968 than he otherwise would have. The dispute over whether insiders in HemisFair should be able to make money from HemisFair cuts deep. In the upshot, officers of HemisFair and its 20-member Campaign Cards & Placards & Bumperstrips & Brochures & Flyers & Letterheads & Env elopes 8zVertical Posters & Buttons & Ribb Dns & Badges & Process Color Work & Art Work & Forms & Newspapers & Political P rinting & Books 8z Silk Screen Work & Maga er to ti a u t 0 1714 SO CONGRESS A AUSTIN 1C & Silk Screen Work & o ltical Printing & qovelties & Mimeograph Supplies & Conventi