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DO YOU TEACH political science sociology history civics economics government social science social studies literature journalism creative writing Your students may welcome the opportunity to receive The Texas Observer at special reduced rates for a semester. For orders of ten or more copies of each issue sent to a single address the cost for the semester is just $1.75 per student \(including Semester subscriptions will begin with the first issue in February. In addition eacli student will receive two special reprints of articles appearing in recent issues: REFORM IN TEXAS an analysis of the status of several public policy issues and proposals for change. A 1970 VOTER’S GUIDE the voting records of the members of the Texas Legislature on all key taxation issues during the past session, tabulated according to the Observer’s concept of “right” or “wrong.” Send your order now to The Texas Observer, 504 West 24th, Austin, 78705. You may revise your order as the class rolls settle, at which time we will bill you. We also invite requests for sample copies of recent issues, as a method of introducing the Observer to your students. Cty. Cmsr. Roy Stanley, wrote the American Society of Newspaper Editors, protesting and asking what could be done. They received a. letter from Norman E. Isaacs, president of ASNE, saying that personally he found “this kind of action almost incomprehensible and certainly not representative of the overwhelming number of daily American newspapers.” He told the Tyler group that the society is considering a grievance process under which a complaint such as the Tyler group’s could be reviewed formally, and their protest had been referred to the chairman of the committee on establishing this grievance process. So the Tyler Telegram has become an example, among American newspapers, of why newspaper editors need a process to evaluate legitimate grievances of newspaper readers. The Barnes Watch Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes is one of those slick politicians who tries to convince voters from left to right that he’s for all of them. This traditional but noxious kind of politics requires that a watch be kept on Barnes, even or perhaps especially this year when he is on the sidelines of Texas politics. First, a report from the graveyard shift. In December Barnes went to Meridian, Miss., to talk to the chamber of commerce there. In the Meridian Star of Dec. 4, 1969, that paper’s columnist, John Perkins, who had talked with Barnes at the airport, said he “may one day turn out to be the political messiah to lead the strife-torn left and leftist-drifting National Democratic Party out of the wilderness. . . . “Barnes had some caustic words for the liberal wing of the national party and predicted the present course of ‘reformers’ such as Sen. Fred Harris, George McGovern, Edmund Muskie, and Edward Kennedy would lead to an election calamity . . . unless the Democrats regained their senses and veered back to a more moderate course. . . . “[Barnes] said he had warned Hubert Humphrey in Fort Worth just prior to coming to Meridian that unless moderate leadership was forthcoming soon, the Democratic Party was charging pell-mell into an election ‘crash’ in 1972. . . . “Barnes contends that it is political suicide for the Democratic Party to invest leadership in such Senate liberals and ultra-left ‘reformers’ as Harris, Eugene McCarthy, Kennedy, McGovern, and Muskie when ‘they can’t even carry their own states consistently in presidential elections for the party’s nominees,’ ” the Mississippi columnist wrote. This month in San Antonio, Barnes presented his Texas version of this message, by which he casts himself against the principal leaders of the National Democratic Party. James McCrory reported in the Express of Jan. 6: ” ‘There’s a void,’ Barnes complained. `Sen. Muskie’s not doing it, Humphrey has no forum, Kennedy has personal problems, and Fred Harris [senator and national Democratic chairman] is allowing the McGoverns and the people who want to divide Texas and the moderates of the South and Southwest to become too vocal and obtain too much of a voice.’ ” So Harris, says Barnes, is letting McGovern become “too vocal.” And how does Barnes propose that Harris keep McGovern from speaking? Humphrey, Barnes admits, “has no forum,” while the people Barnes puts down have obtained “too much of a voice.” Could it be Barnes who’s in the void? His unity-harmony line is the same Shivers-Daniel-Johnson-Connally cant that has debased Texas politics for two decades. The game is to accuse the liberals of dividing the party while you are dividing it to keep them from “obtaining too much of a voice.” As long as big money runs Texas politics, opportunistic Texas politicians will play this game. Oil Slick in the Bay At last, and late, the Texas Water Quality Board has planned public hearings in Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Houston, and Brownsville on the spillage of oil, chemicals, and other dangerous substances into or adjacent to Texas waters. Evidently it took an oil slick reported in northeast Trinity Bay near Baytown, which was serious enough to cause the governor to send a four-man inspection team, to get the water bureaucrats moving. R.D. January 23, 1970 15 Give Us A Voice The prosecution of the “Chuckwagon Gang” is an attempt to silence political dissent at U.T. The attempt need not succeed. The defendants are willing to speak any time and any place. They need you to listen and understand. If they can be sent to prison for two to 20 years merely for speaking their minds then no one is safe. Invite one of the “Gang” to speak at your Church, political, or discussion Write: The Chuckwagon Defense P.O. Box 8343 University Station Austin, Texas 78712 Phone: 478-0609