ustxtxb_obs_1972_03_03_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

Every garden variety politician in the United States knows that one of the fundamental citizen safeguards that came out of the New Deal was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and these bills proposed to wipe that out for state banks and replace it with a state corporation. The least that must be concluded is that Barnes was not attending to his duties. WE DO ARRIVE, sooner or later, at the question such facts as these about Barnes put to us. What attitude shall we adopt toward them? The politician himself asks us to accept them as ordinary, natural, just fine. “I simply could not afford to be in politics if it were not for Herman Bennett,” he has said. But we do not expect people to go into politics to get rich. We expect them to go into politics to serve the people and defend their interests. The politician’s business angel says everything is all right, youall just mind your own business. “What I do for Ben 13arnes,” Herman Bennett has been quoted, “is between me and him, and even he doesn’t know about all of it. I don’t think he needs to be worried about it. Wrong. What Herman Bennett does for Ben Barnes is between Herman Bennett, Ben Barnes and the people of Texas Ben Barnes wants to elect him governor. Electing Barnes governor would be tantamount to making Bennett the 16 The Texas Observer governor’s private business agent. The unbreakable and usually undiscoverable links between construction contracts and politics were the foundation of Brown & Root’s rise in a political partnership with Lyndon Johnson. The new governor would also be a contractor, and Herman Bennett would be his partner. At present Texas state government has again become the most sordid political mess in the United States. The SEC scandal is the headlined case, but the context in which the situation has developed has, as its primary characteristic, politicians whose main work seems to be their private wealth instead of the public good. Barnes can breathe his sigh of relief that he didn’t We have truly missed you since we moved to Washington. I keep saying that I don’t care but I do. So go ahead. Send me the Observer. Get my thin liberal blood boiling again. Raise my adrenalin level. Help me to laugh a little at 1972. Convince me that we’re going to win a few, lose a few. And that it really matters. Now that I. F. Stone’s Bi-Weekly has gone, your light shines even brighter. So keep that candle lit. Doris Ullman, 1101 New Hampshire N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037. No boob The T.O. is of course an opinion publication; one expects to find editorials larded in news items. I was sorry, however, to find a rather shabby piece of innuendo in the Feb. 18th issue of your magazine. You seem to imply that Dolph Briscoe refers to his property as his “little ol’ million-acre ranch”; in other words he is a vulgar boob. I happen to know, as no doubt you know, that Mr. Briscoe does not express himself in this manner. I realize that Dolph Briscoe is about the only prominent member of your party right of Mrs. Farenthold who is not suspected of having his hand in the till. The fact that you need to resort to snidey-cute innuendoes seems to indicate that you cannot find anything substantial to use against him. Mack Pryor, 800 Laurel, Uvalde, Tex. 78801. The Observer did not mean to imply that Dolph Briscoe is a “vulgar boob,” simply that he has a little ol’ million-acre Ooops Isn’t there one among you at The Texas Observer, who hath enough English to know, that only the third person borrow from Sharp’s Sharpstown bank or buy any of the red-flag National Bankers Life stock. But his lax standards in relating to the opportunities provided him to become wealthy do not qualify him to be trusted with the governor’s power at a time when that power must be used to clean up the statehouse and give the state government new people, new standards and new ideas. R.D. A Note On Sources The facts on which this comment is based are well known and can be found, for example, in The Texas Observer, 1-15-68; Houston Chronicle, 6-20-71, 7-22-71, 1-9-72; Dallas News, 1-21-71, 8-8-71; San Antonio Express, 5-27-71 ; Austin Statesman, 7-22-71 ; Houston Post, 7-22-71; Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 10-20-71. Dialogue singular of the present indicative hath a solemn, variant ending -th? “The polls speaketh”, forsooth! H. D. Vos, 601 Earl St., Kingston, Ontario. In error It has been brought to our attention that the Observer’s story on Roy Orr in the Feb. 4 issue is incorrect in its chronology of Orr’s background from the time he graduated from high school until 1961. After his graduation in 1951 \(not the late 40’s, as the Observer remained in DeSoto working for a Dallas insurance company. The company did not transfer him to Abilene until 1959. He lived in Abilene only 15 months, returning to DeSoto in Jan., 1961. Ed. A nice letter I am appalled from time to time when a subscriber writes in to cancel his subscription. It’s hard to conceive a condition which would prompt me to do such a thing. \(Any publication hated by In my opinion, if Texas is ever to be the kind of place we liberals want it to be and believe it can be, then it is up to us to get busy and make it that way. I am therefore starting a piggy bank today in which I shall place my loose change daily. Once a year I shall mail this money to T. 0. to help make up for those cry-baby liberals who cancel their subscriptions. I urge others to do likewise. Ray Hoke, 811 Graceland St., Houston, Tex 77009 13 Up the candle