ustxtxb_obs_1974_10_04_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

national interest,” the paper said. “The former President and his family have been through punishment enough.” Anne Armstrong, the Nixon administration’s token woman, once said she was positive Nixon knew nothing of the Watergate cover-up. Now that her faith in the former President has been rendered inoperative, she is quoted by the Features and News Service as saying, “I was wrong. I was stunned, shocked Many of us were speaking from what we believed were the facts . . . His resignation was the right thing … I was proud of the way he left: with dignity.” Ms. Armstrong is a now a loyal aide of President Ford. As a member of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, she says, “Frankly, I expect to have President Ford’s ear more than I did President Nixon’s. The style of the two men is very different.” Even steven The American Party’s Liberty Lobby has released its ratings of members of Congress, and Texas’ two U.S. senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower, each received credit for being 40 percent “right” on the 10 issues the group considered. Where are they now? Chase Untermeyer of the Houston Chronicle reports that Hank Grover, Goldwater Republicans’ favorite Texas candidate, is still trying to pay off $400,000 in debts from his ’72 gubernatorial race. Grover, a former Lamar High School civics teacher, is now working in Houston for Fuel Resources, Inc., a gasoline marketing firm. Fuel Resources is headed by Frank Cahoon, a former GOP state representative from Midland. Atty. Gen. John Hill wants to create a statewide grand jury to deal with organized crime. Hill was anxious for the U.S. Justice Department to go ahead and prosecute Jake Jacobsen in the San Angelo First Savings & Loan case, which is interesting in light of Hill’s past association with John Connally. Hill was one of Governor Connally’s secretaries of state. \(They weren’t all that close, however. In 1968, Connally supported Eugene Locke Jacobsen promised to spill the beans on an alleged bribe to Connally in exchange for the feds dropping the savings and loan indictment against him. Acting on a request from Atty. Gen. Hill, U.S. Dist. to allow Justice attorneys to nullify the indictment. The Justice Department countered by announcing it simply won’t prosecute Jacobsen, and so the deal is presumed to be intact. 8 The Texas Observer Rep. Ray Barnhart, the Republican from Pasadena, told a group of Gulf Coast area municipal leaders recently that he thought a tax on industry ground water withdrawal might be necessary to combat land subsidence along the Texas coast. There is currently no state regulation on pumping out ground water in the area, and the pumping much of it done by industrial plants is a primary cause of subsidence. Barnhart suggested that the revenue produced from a tax on water withdrawal could be used to finance municipal surface water systems at the same time the tax discouraged pumping. He said he does not presently endorse the idea, but might vote for it under “certain circumstances.” A state jury in Houston, after less than an hour’s deliberation, found two Houston policemen not guilty of stealing $8,000 from a fellow they busted on a marijuana charge. D. W. “Tiger” Albert and B. D. Jackson admitted using an unauthorized, i.e. illegal, wiretap in the case, but the Houston d.a.’s office never bothered to look into the two’s investigative techniques. Now Asst. Dist. Atty. Robert C. Bennett, Jr., says he is “contemplating” legal action to void the conviction of two men apprehended during the bust in question. Albert and Jackson still face federal charges of theft and illegal wiretapping. Candidates George Bush may have missed the vice presidency but two more Texans are angling for Spiro Agnew’s old job. Lynn Ashby of The Houston Post has revealed that Johnnie Mae Hackworthe, a very religious lady from Brenham who used to be a perennial candidate for one office or another, is asking Gerald Ford to forget about Rocky and give her the job. “After Congress has confirmed me and I become vice president,” Ms. Hackworthe told Ashby, “then according to prophecy, Leslie Lynch King Gerald Rudolph Ford will find a more interesting employment, perhaps even try at being King of the `World Government’ long proposed; and that will elevate me to the Presidency, and I ought to be able to accomplish this by Sept. 17, 1975.” Perhaps so, but President Hackworthe will have to contend with a challenge from the Ku Klux Klan in 1976. Dale Reusch of Lodi, Ohio, has been chosen as the top man on the Klan ticket and Scott Nelson of Houston, imperial wizard of the Texas Fiery Knights, will be running for veep. Ms. Hackworthe says she “wants to keep America safe for Americans.” Mr. Nelson wants to return America to “what we had 25 years ago.” A recent Texas Medical Association Legislative Bulletin urges TMA members to write their congressmen in opposition to S. 3004, which would provide some federal funds for political campaigns, limit the amount of money individuals and committees could contribute to candidates and set up a Federal Election Commission to administer the act. “Choice to support or oppose any candidate for public office is an important right,” the Bulletin says. “Use of tax money to pay for campaign expenses of a candidate who you do not choose to support cannot be allowed if public accountability of public officials is to be maintained.” We have a new nomination for The Greatest Single Sentence Ever Written By Robert Baskin. The Dallas Morning News’ Senior Political Analyst got to worrying about amnesty for draft-dodgers earlier this month. So he sat down to warn us that the matter of amnesty is not as simple as our President might have us think. Baskin urges a cautious, case-by-case approach: “There can be no general, sweeping pronouncement about these miserable individuals.” Southern chivalry is not dead. Joe Carter, chairman of the Texas Water Rights Commission, was addressing a group of developers at a TWRC hearing recently, and apparently sensed that what he had to tell them \(that the TWRC would henceforth require them to pay 30 percent of the costs of installing facilities that are currently financed entirely by water Carter tried to add some levity to the proceedings. “I was gonna tell you this joke but I won’t because of our lady present about a couple of colored fellows who were rapin’ under the old log,” Carter began, and then went on to the business of the meeting. Neither the female court reporter nor the while male audience laughed much. This is the way State Sen. Ike Harris explains how he happened to be walletless and on the pavement in the 5700 block of East Lovers Lane in Dallas: He had just parked his car when two women drove up and asked him how to get to a certain address. So he obligingly climbed into the car to look at a map and the car took off. The two women grabbed him and took his wallet which contained $600. Then he either fell or was pushed from the car. According to the Federal Power Commission, Texas Power & Light Co., a subsidiary of Texas Utilities, netted an income of almost $57 million in 1973. That’s 22.3 percent of the utility’s operating revenues. Some 10.9 percent of its operating revenues went to federal income taxes. Another subsidiary, Dallas Power & Light, netted almost $29 million, or 18.4 percent of operating revenues. DP&L paid 5.9 percent of total operating revenues to federal income taxes.