ustxtxb_obs_1970_01_02_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

Alabama right about us Texasn? Are we so provincial we cannot even apply California’s ‘miserable experience with offshore wells to our own situation? If ever such investigations and public hearings have been conducted by state government in either Texas or Louisiana, I’ve yet to hear a word about them. On Newspapers I remarked in this column from California that no Texas newspaper provides the service the Los Angeles Times does for California, publishing a listing and assay of the state’s leading corporations, modeled on Fortune’s 500. It is good to see now that this year for the first time, Texas Parade, a magazine provincial Reader’s Digest, has published such a directory for Texas, listing the state’s top 100 publicly-held corporations and giving the rankings of major utilities, insurance companies, and banks. The top ten state-based corporations, ranked by sales, all grossed more than a quarter of a million dollars in 1968. They were, in order, Ling-Temco-Vought Brown & Root, $805 million; Texas million; Anderson, Clayton & Co. The big ten banks in Texas, with assets ranging from more than two billion on down to a third of a billion $1.1 billion; Texas National Bank of $710 million; Fort Worth National, $529 $454 million; Frost National \(San 14 The Texas Observer #chtile Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 National, $303 million. The big five life insurance companies by assets are American National Lyndon Life of Dallas, 37th among the Texas life insurance firms, had assets of $13 million. Texas Parade does not give profits for the general corporations, banks, or insurance companies. Why not? We’re old enough; we can take it. For the power companies, however, net income is given. The big five in Texas as ranked by assets, but in this paragraph identified with their net profits, are Houston Lighting and Power, $43 $33 million; Texas Power and Light In My Opinion Austin A Dallas News columnist made an interesting observation the other day in interpreting the legislative voting record published by the Observer. Mike Kingston notes that most of the Republicans in the Legislature voted “right” more often than “wrong” in the Observer’s view. “. [TI he Texas Observer poll doesn’t bear out the contention that Republican and conservative are necessarily synonymous terms. Of the nine Republicans in the House, for instance, six voted ‘right’ 50% or more of the time according to the ultraliberal Observer standards. In the Senate, ‘arch-conservative’ Republican Henry Grover of Houston had only one less `right’ vote, 10, than did Dallas liberal Mike McKool, who had 11;” Kingston writes. He goes on to note that the Republicans with the more conservative voting records were not as conservative as a number of Dallas conservative Democrats. “The tendency for the present Republican legialators to vote with the more liberal representatives and senators emphasizes a point that the News has made editorially for some time: two-party politics doesn’t necessarily result in conservative government competitive, yes, but not always conservative or better government,” Kingston says. “In Texas, the Republican problem is this: Conserviative Democrats have provided a fairly clean, effective government. Aside from the hard-core party followers, the GOP must pick up disgruntled Democrats and Dallas Power & Light, $17 million. Actually, since the last three named are subsidiaries of Texas Utilities Co., it is they, considered as one, which dominate the Texas power field with aggregate 1968 profits of $74 million. Four pipeline transmission companies, and their profits, are listed El Paso Natural Gas, $40 million; Texas Eastern million; and Panhandle Eastern Even though quantitative in the grossest sense, this information helps us get hold of reality in Texas in our imaginations gives us a statistical water-color of the musculature that controls most of our politicians and the images that are projected into our minds from all around us. It’s a beginning. R.D. antiestablishmentarians to broaden their power base and elect candidates.” Hmmmm The cover article of the Texas Bar Journal, publication of the state bar “The Attorney, the Difficult Female, and Psychological Expertise.” Lawyers were advised as to the characteristics of two types of women who, one must assume, give attorneys a hard time the “Passive-dependent female client” and the “hysterical personality type.” A lawyer should be helpful and empathetic, the article concludes, but “At the same time, misplaced sympathy is not a good answer . . . The lawyer will be able to provide [ the difficult woman client] with sound counseling if he can empathize with her in a healthy understanding way, and yet not become caught up in her behavioral pattern in a seductive, destructive, or neurotic manner.” Travel Notes Two recent travellers abroad are now back home in Texas. State Rep. Frances Farenthold, the Corpus Christi legislator who succeeded in persuading the Legislature to reprimand Land Cmsr. Jerry Sadler, blew her cover last month by going to “Italy.” Well, so she said. Mrs. Farenthold probably was in Sicily. Sicily! Doubtless conferring with Mafia headquarters prior to smuggling some more jewels into this country in a A Lettish GOP?