ustxtxb_obs_1968_07_12_50_00018-00000_000.pdf

he made all of the decisions that could affect the beer industry,” including “establishing policy” for the board and making recommendations to the legislature. The report said there is considerable evidence that the board’s recommendation has been largely “controlled by the very industry it was designed to regulate.” Where were the three appointed board members, W. D. Noel, the chairman, and Alfred Kegley and 011ie R. Crawford? Well, said the attorney general’s report, they had been “most cooperative” during the investigation, and “While more aggressiveness on [their] part . . . may \(sic] have resulted in a discovery of abusive deficiencies, we cannot criticize these individuals too much for failure to devote still more ‘free time’ to the state’s business.” \(One takes the report writer’s meaning to be that the board members are not to be blamed too much, although the sentence can also mean the oppoDiscussing the situation in Dallas, the report says investigators “found numerous cases of apparent favoritism in the granting or withholding of private liquor licenses by the Liquor Control Board. We found in some cases that Dersons denied beer permits by the county judge had been granted a private liquor license by the Liquor Control Board for no apparent reason.” In Odessa, where’ it was alleged that liquor chain store operator Tom “Pinkie” Roden had considerable influence with board personnel, the attorney general’s office, \(which worked tandem on all this investigated the sale of the Lincoln Hotel by a corporation in which board member Noel had an interest to a corporation in which Pinkie Roden had an interest. “We could not find,” the report says, “a violation of the law or a conflict of interest” on the part of Noel; but “we did find” that a private club with a board permit was operated in the hotel. “No definite evidence of criminal misconduct developed as to top administrative personnel of the Texas Liquor Control Board,” Martin’s report also says. R.D. Hunger in Texas Washington, D.C. Poor people in fourteen Texas counties are to receive free food under the United States Department of Agriculture’s commodity distribution program because of the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, even though not many Texans trudged through Resurrection City’s rain-soaked paths or joined in the demonstrations protesting hunger. The Texas counties are among the 42 counties in eleven states where the USDA is setting up federal food distribution programs for the needy because local officials have refused to start them. Under the program, federal people come into a county, certify those eligible to receive surplus items, rent a central distribution site, and distribute the food, including canned chopped meats, butter, dry beans, bulgar, flour, cheese, corn meal and canned vegetables. The 42 counties are among 1,000 classified last July by the USDA as the poorest in the nation. USDA officials claim they always planned to take some action in the holdout counties, but have been waiting for local officials to take the initiative. Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman announced during the first weeks of the Poor People’s Campaign that he was ordering personnel into the counties to start the programs. According to USDA figures as of March, 18 July 12, 1968 ed ,##40#4~.#4410/ MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 .11114444 Texas now has 94 commodity distribution programs and ten food stamp programs. Counting the 14 new distribution programs, just fewer than half of the state’s 254 counties have some type of federal food aid program. A private study of the USDA’s national school lunch program by a group of national church organizations shows that as of 1966, only 73,078 Texas children were getting free or subsidized lunches, although Texas families below the poverty level or receiving welfare aid included more than 400,000 children. The Texas counties in which the food will be handed out under the recent decision are Cass, Cherokee, Comanche, Freestone, Goliad, Gonzales, Hill, Lee, Leon, Madison, Tyler, Waller, Washington and Williamson. How much answer the agriculture department’s programs will be to the counties’ hunger problems remains to be seen, since the campaign’s leader, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, told Secretary Freeman that even in counties where there are food programs, people are still hungry because the percentage of the poor participating is so shockingly low as to make such programs “an illusion and a cruel hoax upon the people.” Poor campaigners also complained of graft among local politicians distributing the food, of persons too poor to afford transportation to the distribution site, and of persons Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 not knowing about the programs in their area. Campaign leaders also point out that while the commodities do provide some food, they fail to meet the nutritional needs of the poor. Poor leaders estimate there are 10.7 million Americans with poor diets because of the inability to buy proper foods. Charges that people are starving in a nation of plenty have raised the dander of Texas Congressman W. R. Poage, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. In response to the private report, Congressman Poage conducted his own hunger study in the 254 Texas counties, asking local officials if hunger exists because persons are unable to get food through the various relief programs. The Poage study concluded that “in not one single county of those responding vere there current cases of starvation reported and few instances of hunger as a result of inability to buy food or receive public assistance, but in many there were stories of people, especially children, suffering malnutrition.” CHARMAYNE MARSH PROFFITT The writer, a former editor of the Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas, reported for UPI in Washington before joining the Washington bureau of the New York Journal of Commerce. CLASSIFIED ANNE’S TYPING SERVICE: Duplicating \(multiNotary. Specialize in rush jobs, including Sundays. Formerly known as Marjorie Delafield Typing and Duplicating Service. Call HI 2-7008, Austin. BOOKPLATES. Free catalog. Many beautiful designs. Special designing too. Address: BOOK-PLATES, Yellow Springs 8, Ohio. EARN WHILE YOU LEARN major appliance repair. Write: Equimatrix, T-16-W. P.O. Box 31306, San Francisco, Calif. 94131.