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The amendments Austin The Nov. 7 ballot will include 14 proposed constitutional amendments. It can be argued that a constitutional amendment is even less trustworthy than a politician standing for election, that the little things can turn around more completely and be harder to remove. Therefore it is not without trepidation that we recommend the following votes. YES on Amendment 1, which would provide annual salaries of $8,400 for members of the Senate and House of Representatives. You get what you pay for. YES on Amendment 2, abolishing the Lamar County Hospital District. YES on Amendment 3, establishing salaries for justices of the peace. YES on Amendment 4, granting authority to the 63rd Legislature to establish a constitutional convention. There is simply no question that the present constitution must be replaced with a workable document. While the 63rd Legislature is not the ideal body to do the work, there is no guarantee that a specially-elected group would be any better: those are the facts of elections in Texas. The key is in the commission created by the Legislature. If you’re interested in constitutional revision, the time to start working for a representative commission is now. Your representative, your senator, will be responsible for helping to create that commission. He or she should be informed immediately that the commission should all citizens of Texas. YES on Amendment 5, granting certain tax exemptions to disabled veterans. YES on Amendment 6, granting certain tax exemptions to elderly persons. YES on Amendment 7, providing conformity between the Texas Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. YES on Amendment 8, providing four-year terms for the offices of governor, lieutenant-governor, attorney general, comptroller, treasurer, land commissioner and certain other state offices. It’s true there should be limits on the number of terms such top office-holders may serve; the lack of such limits is not a compelling reason for opposing an attempt to introduce some trace of statesmanship into the executive branch. NO on Amendment 9, allowing directors of soil and water conservation districts from holding other state jobs. YES on Amendment 10, allowing the Legislature to propose constitutional amendments during special sessions, altering the method of listing amendments on the ballot and reducing the time necessary between publication of amendments and their appearance on the ballot. YES on Amendment 11, providing salaries of $22,500 per year for the lieutenant governor and speaker of the house of representatives. NO on Amendment 12, allowing dual office-holding to certain persons. YES on Amendment 13, setting a standard interest rate on governmental bonds at 6 percent, an increase as well as a standardization. YES on Amendment 14, freeing certain school monies for use on a per-scholar basis. McGovern… Commission we get the administrative nullification of the control of natural gas prices. From Nixon himself we get his latest in his series of vetoes of the Congress’ attempt to solve our common human problems in this case, the $25 billion pollution control bill. “Sargent Shriver and I want to win, but not at any price,” McGovern says in an appeal for small contributions. “We refuse to sell out to the big oil interests and corporate lobbies in order to raise the money.. . .” That is a statement Nixon, John Connally, Larry Temple, George Christian the whole lot of them cannot make. You can give up to $50 to McGovern and deduct it from your income tax if you itemize deductions. A couple can give $100 and so deduct it. That kind of gift buys nothing but participation in the crusade to awaken and restore the moral imagination and the moral intelligence of the majority of our people. George McGovern is not perfect and has the astonishing gall to admit it. He is no sugar daddy to come and solve all our problems and tell us not to worry. He will make demands of us: demands that we stop searching for a safe daddy-willtake-care-of-everything leader. Demands that we face up to our problems as a nation and our responsibilities as citizens. McGovern is demanding that we begin to act like grown ups, that we begin to take our leaders without the sugar-coating of a personality created by image-makers to appeal to the largest possible majority of Americans. McGovern will not be an easy president. But it’s time we grew up. For Sanders John Tower, letting his hair down during a 13-hour session with 150 or so Republicans at a political seminar in San Antonio last Aug. 5, said, according to the Austin American the next morning, “I think we’ve got a favorable political climate this year. Exploit the situation. It is exploitable.” By vicious Joe McCarthy-type radio jingles that are being broadcast by “Texans for Tower,” we know now what Tower meant. Barefoot Sanders is making valid points against Tower: that he is an absent senator far too much of the time; that “his votes on issues are right along the line with Goldwater”; that the California bill for Lockheed is the kind of legislation he gives his all for; that Tower has voted against, and Sanders is for, manpower training, summer jobs for youth, higher social security and unemployment compensation, higher minimum wages, funds for wiping out hunger in America. “If Tower had his way,” Sanders says of this senator’s votes, “there would still be a poll tax, there would be no federal aid to education, no federal aid to higher education, no student defense loan funds, no medicare, very little environmental legislation, no voting rights bill, no consumer legislation worthy of the name, no farm program, no mass transit program, no housing program.” Sanders still won’t name McGovern, although he has made it a little clearer he is for him. Sanders is against national health insurance and against cutting the defense budget. He beat Yarborough. I can’t cheer Sanders. But Tower! That has to be the worst senator in the history of Texas, not excepting Joe Bailey. Sanders is entirely correct Tower is “a senator for rent.” A vote for John Tower or a failure to cast an effective vote against him would be a vote for a cynicism and a dedicated service of the corporate special interests that are part of the growing organic scandal of American politics. I will vote for Sanders, myself, with a one-directional enthusiasm against Tower. R.D. November 3. 1972 3