ustxtxb_obs_1972_08_04_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

Thumbs up, thumbs down The Senate went ahead and approved John \(“Pollution smells better than Robinson \(Obs., Texas Air Control Board. The senators, however, busted Governor Smith’s Insurance Board chairman, Larry Teaver, a former Lubbock insurance agent. Sen. Oscar Mauzy said Teaver was “unqualified to serve the public in this capacity because of his close association with the insurance industry.” Smith, to the contrary, insisted that his friend “has been the most consumer-oriented member in the history of the insurance board.” Teaver insisted that the insurance industry was behind his defeat. Sen. Mike McKool won a couple of millions for state mental patients indirectly when the House-Senate conferees reported the final appropriations bill for the state. The conferees added $2.3 million in extra funds for mental health and mental retardation over the funds appropriated by the House. They also transferred $1 million from the allocation for a new school for the mentally retarded in Fort Worth to the community centers program for mental health, one of McKool’s goals in his record-breaking filibuster. Opposing adoption of the final appropriations bill, Rep. Carl Parker attacked it for leaving “the little blind children sweltering in the heat of Austin” and for spending “not one dime . . . to control rats that are eating children in the cities” while spending $1 million to control predatory animals in rural areas. But the final bill was approved easily. Once again it appears that the state will acquire almost 4,000 acres on Mustang Island for park lands. Atty. Gen. Crawford Martin has ruled that the Parks and Wildlife Commission has a legally binding contract to purchase such same acreage and the commission has voted 4-2 in favor of the acquisition. Let us hope that further affiants saith not. From the Dallas Morning News “Weather Vane”: “House members voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution aimed at throwing the press out of State Capitol offices at a recent special session. But when a motion was made to record how each member voted, the results reversed and legislators voted 97-29 to let reporters stay where they are. Many members of the House blame reporters for their defeat at the polls.” Those of you who watched Chairman Larry O’Brien’s opening convention speech on July 11 were probably amused by the “home movies,” the extensive takeouts from assorted Texas precinct conventions, particularly in Austin. One of 10 The Texas Observer the more taking scenes was several seconds worth of footage of Dave Richards laughing on primary night. The dignified AFL-CIO attorney, who successfully argued Texas’ single-member district case this spring, was shown doubled over and then dancing around in high glee. We have discovered the cause of his mirth. He had just been informed that Ben Barnes was running fourth in Travis County. Richards thought it was a caution. Most Texas liberals know Billie Carr, the indomitable Houston precinct organizer. Over the years, we have seen Carr angry, seen her bitter, seen her grim, seen her determined, seen her harassed and mostly have seen her just persevere. On the night of July 11, as the California challenge was defeated and McGovern’s nomination assured, Billie Carr, who is a large woman, danced lightly on her tip-toes like a little girl about to float away. She smiled very sweetly and joyfully and danced very gracefully and murmured very softly, “It only took 20 years.” Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington were in Jackson’s trailer outside the Miami Beach Convention Center one night watching the convention on television. Someone with a floor mike addressed Yvonne Braithwaite as “chairperson.” “Chairperson?! Chairperson?!!” exclaimed Humphrey. “Did you hear that, Scoop? He said chairperson!” “It’s all right, Hubert,” said Jackson soothingly. “That’s the new politics.” When Sissy Farenthold asked liberal Houston Congressman Bob Eckhardt what he thought of het running for governor he told her she ought to run for state comptroller because she might have a chance of winning that lesser post. Later she asked him to introduce her at the Texas COPE meeting. He declined, and Texas Labor refused to endorse her as well. In Miami Beach, she asked him to nominate her for vice president. He said he’d have to check both with McGovern and with labor friends. He decided not to do it. If he doesn’t watch out, Sissy won’t give him a spot in the cabinet when she becomes the first female president. What a plot! Either the Vietnam Veterans Against the War have gone bonkers and abandoned their non-violent principles or the Justice Department has hired some promising new fiction writer. Six VVAW organizers were charged in Tallahassee, Fla., with allegedly planning a riot for the Republican Convention. The script includes a VVAW stockpile of automatic rifles, “fried marbles” that shatter on impact, aluminum wrist-rocket slingshots and homemade crossbows. Two of the indicted Vets are from Texas. To date, the most riotous act of the Texas Vets has been mining the Houston Ship Channel with black balloons to protest President Nixon’s latest assaults against North Vietnam. The Vets launched their mines down near the Battleship Texas and, one VVAW member lamented later, “Nobody noticed.” Now they’re charged with trying to launch a riot. Justice’s bill of particulars against the Vets equals some of the department’s greatest plots. \(Remember the heating system caper of the Harrisburg Seven or the shortlived allegations that the Chicago Eight was going to put LSD in the waterworks and black widow spiders down German or plain? A true story about Dolph Briscoe: After they had led the Uvalderama parade, Dolph and Janey Briscoe stopped off at a local barbecue emporium for dinner. Janey sat down to talk with some television newsmen while Dolph went on through the cafeteria line. He moved rather slowly and finally stalled the dinner traffic altogether. Leaving the pileup, he shuffled over to Janey and asked, “Do you think I should get potato salad?” Farenthold on our Democratic nominee for governor: “Beneath that bowl of pablum, he’s very explosive. His face just blows up and quivers.” The conviction of four black stu dents from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Dallas for possession of marijuana \(see Obs., Oct. 16, Court of Criminal Appeals. Judge Odom, writing for the court, overturned the conviction on the grounds of insufficient cause for. search. The decision noted that the description the police had of the armed robbers, for whom they were searching when they arrested the four black students, would have applied to any four blacks in Dallas County. In closing the decision, Judge Odom wrote that were the case to come to trial again \(the defense attorney grave doubts concerning the admissibility of the introduction of the defendants political beliefs and their weapons into the case.” Of the four students, two, Leroy DeLaine and Arnold Ellis, have just completed their first year of law school at Berkeley and Harvard respectively. Dalton Nezey is about to enter graduate school at UCSB and Irving Brown is completing his senior year there. “The United States has used great restraint in its bombing policy.” Richard Nixon, June 29 “Since 1965, the United States has hit Vietnam with the equivalent of 450 Hiroshima bombs.” The Washington Monthly, July