ustxtxb_obs_1966_08_19_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

is “the highest rate on a government issue since 1921,” and the 5.6348% paid by AT&T on a debentures issue is “the highest rate the utility has paid since 1923,” the ported from Washington this month that President Johnson’s participation sales act “has become a source of some embarassment to the administration and of dismay to the financial community.” “It will send the government into the drum-tight securities market to sell private investors $4.2 billion worth of ‘participation certificates’ in the next eleven months. This could push sky-high interest rates still higher,” the AP said. “Many officials concede privately that they flinch at the prospect, but it is White House policy . . .” The ranking Republican on the House banking committee, saying he acted for all the Republicans on that committee, has offered a bill to suspend the sales for a year. Sen. John Tower lost his attempt in the Senate to slash funds for the rent supplement program for the poor. i/ Sen. Ralph Yarborough is one of ten co-authors of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s amendment sharply increasing social security benefits. It is this bill’s distinctive feature that it raises some of the money to pay for the increases from general tax revenues. frof “Texas Co-Op Power,” magazine of the REA co-ops in Texas, credits Yarborough with leading a fight that reversed an official ruling that REA administrators had to solicit offers from all area commercial power suppliers before they could approve loans to co-ops for the generation and transmission of power. Reviewing, in the course of introducing it into the Congressional Record, President Johnson’s recent speech at Jeffersonville, Ind., Yarborough said Johnson talked about “this government’s ‘concern for the care of human life and happiness.’ He stressed the government’s willingness to negotiate instead of bomb in Vietnam, ‘to reason instead of resort to force.’ He talked about the education bills and medicare legislation that this Congress has passed and is considering . . .” In an aside, Yarborough said the President had gone to the Midwest “to get contact with the people .. . to rub shoulders with them and to ‘press the flesh,’ as we know he loves to do and does so well.” g/ Cliff Carter, who has been President Johnson’s chief executive at the Democratic National Committee, surprised Washington by resigning to return to private business. 1,00 Texaco made it clear in Washington testimony that it wants more than $3 an acre for mineral rights to 25,000 acres of landrights without which the government is not likely to establish Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas. The Birchers Grow fr . Texas has more Birchers than any other state in the U.S. except Cali fornia, and the total membership has in creased twofold, to about 100,000, in the past two years, according to two regional managers for the society, Tom Davis of New York and Rex Westerfield of Dallas, in a Houston pres conference. About 1,000 members are Jews, they said. In San Antonio Davis, in a speech, said the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith “is a ‘Gestapo type’ organization that operates a vast intelligence network in the U.S. for the purpose of smearing anyone who dares oppose its philosophies and goals.” He also called it “a Himmler agency.” B’Nai B’Rith itself, Davis said, is respectable. According to the John Birch Society magazine for July and August, the United States is now 60 to 80 percent controlled by “the International Communist Conspiracy.” Minutemen in Politics “or The Minutemen, who arm and train in secret to be ready, they say, to fight the communist takeover, have formed the Patriotic Party. Robert DePugh, national Minuteman coordinator, spoke from Washington by leased wire to an organizing meeting of the Patriotic Party in Dallas. Charles Martin of Fort Worth, in a press conference in Dallas, was quoted. that Minutemen are currently gathering information on communists and their sympathizers in Dallas-Fort Worth. Martin said the new party is the political arm of the over-all. “resistance” organized by DePugh. According to another spokesman, Howard Helms, who said he is an associate member of the Minutemen, the Minutemen “have access to police files, school records, and other information” in their research about communists. Helms said the Patriotic Party has already elected members precinct chairmen in both major partiesboth of which are currently communist controlled, he said. R. A. Wisk, Dallas organizer, said some Birchers are joining the Patriotic Party. Helms expects Klansmen and members of the Constitution Party, too. About 75 delegates from six states attended the Dallas organizing meeting. The speaker, Capt. K. M. Riker, a retired Air Force security officer, advocated repeal of the income tax and social security and said, “We must resist with every fiber of our being the attempts to legislate away the right to bear arms.” The party plans a Texas convention in Dallas Sept. 10. tog Five Klansmen picketed a concert given in Dallas by Mrs. Martin Luther King. g/ Group Research reports the formation of “Constructive Action,” a hyperconservative organization. H. L. Hunt’s favorite word for conservative is “constructive,” but G. R. says Southern Californians control the new group. Helms said the Patriotic Party backs Tower over Atty. Gen. Waggoner Carr for U.S. Senator. The two Bircher spokesmen said their organization will not endorse either one; that both are considered conservative. Carr and Tower Carr was quoted in the Dallas Times Herald from Washington that he knows President Johnson will be helpful in his campaign “to the extent that he and I may feel would be prudent. . . . I imagine the President would not want to get in the position where Texas people would feel that he were trying to influence them in their decision.” Carr was quoted that he would visit with Texans in Congress as time permitted, including Yarborough. “I consider all of them my friends. I don’t want to count Yarborough out,” he said. Evidently Leslie Neal, Sr., who sponsored a cocktail party for Carr at the San Antonio Country Club, does. A story about THE MARCHERS ARE ASSAILED The Valley marchers proceeded northward into the farming country between San Antonio and Corpus Christi. They had fairly good crowds evenings, but their welcomes as they reached destinations during the day were chilling as they left the areas where large concentrations of Mexican-American voters have proved political power. Rex Westerfield, Texas public relations society for the John Birch Society, and Father Sherrill Smith of San Antonio, a supporter of the march, became engaged in a widely reported debate about the march in San Antonio. Westerfield reportedly charged that the strike is led by self-proclaimed revolutionaries; that funds to support the strike were collected at the American Communist Party convention in New York recently, and that the party’s newspaper, the Daily Worker, has given the strike extensive coverage. Father Smith replied, the San Antonio Express reported, that communists are supporting the strike and the march, but “because communists and revolutionaries are in it doesn’t matter. What can we do about that?” Smith was also quoted that communists are not completely bad and if some communist precepts happen to be the same as Catholic ones, so much better for the communists. Eugene Nelson, veteran of the Delano, Cal., grape pickers strike and the leader of the Starr County farm workers’ strike, said there are no Communists in the strike or march and no money or aid has been received from them. Rev. Antonio Gonzales said he’s talked to all the marchers and each is an outstanding citizen. Roy Evans, secretary-treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO and a key supporter of the Valley marchers, said, “We don’t tolerate communists inside the labor movement because they don’t believe in free trade unionism. It’s prohibited by our constitution. The best thing the Birchers could do is join the march. A minimum wage and collective bargaining agreements would do more than anything else to thwart the communist rabble-rousers.” Through his office, Gov. John Connally said he had “no comment on any aspect of the march.” Nelson hinted the marchers may go on to Washington. August 19, 1966 9