ustxtxb_obs_1974_12_13_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

his reasons to himself, for the time being. As to the next UT-Austin president, LeMaistre said, “It would be wrong of me to recommend anyone who does not have the support of faculty and students.” Conversely, he added, it would be wrong to recommend someone supported only by faculty and students. A few weeks ago, LeMaistre said he would not necessarily be bound to choose a presidential nominee approved by a faculty-student advisory committee. And on other fronts, UT Regents Chairman A. G. McNeese, Jr., said he doubts the charges that individual regents interfered with the day-to-day operations on the Austin campus. The Austin American-Statesman offered up an editorial in support of LeMaistre, entitled, “Who’s Running the Show?” The chancellor is, the Statesman said, “answering only to the board of regents, and through the regents to the governor, and ultimately to the public. When this authority is denied, control of our state institutions passes from the final authority, the tax-paying citizens who make it all possible.” Big investigation . The Texas Water Rights Commission has appointed George Parr’s former attorney to investigate Parr, his nephew, and the affairs of the Duval County Conservation and. Reclamation District. AccusatiOns that the Parrs diverted assets of the district to ‘their personal use came out of the trials of George \(for income tax auditing firm has been hired to go over the district’s books, and the TWRC has chosen Judge T. Gilbert Sharpe of Brownsville as conservator. Judge Sharpe represented the elder Parr in his mail fraud trials during the late Fifties. Another defendant in those trials, D. C. Chaps, was president of the water district’s board of directors during the four years when, it is alleged, the district’s funds were being misused. Still another, Dist. Judge 0. P. Carrillo, now presides over the 229th District Court in Duval, where any suits arising from the TWRC investigation will be filed. Bill Collier of The Houston Chronicle reports that Atty. Gen. John Hill advised the TWRC not to appoint Judge Sharpe as conservator. But TWRC Chairman Joe Carter says Judge Sharpe’s connections with Parr will “have no effect on Sharpe’s performance. If anything, this will help Judge Sharpe since he already knows many of the people there.” The State Republican Chairman, Jack Warren, is going to Washington to address other state party chairmen on the subject of the GOP’s success in Texas this year. Apparently, Texas’ second party did a bang-up job this year by nationwide standards. 8 The Texas Observer SEADOCK, the consortium of 11 oil and petrochemical companies which wants to build a privately-owned superport off the coast, has exercised its option to buy 8,900 acres in Brazoria County to serve as a tank farm and support site for the offshore terminal. As the Observ .er reported in May, the option was handled by the three partners in Johnson-Loggins, Inc., the Houston real estate firm. Floyd Dellinger, one of the members of the Texas Offshore Terminal Commission, the state agency which voted 5-4 in favor of recommending that the Legislature approve a publicly-owned superport, was president of a firm called Johnson Loggins Incorporated Realtors until about-the time the option’ was sold to Continental Pipe Line Co., one of the members of SEADOCK. Johnson-Loggins, Inc., owned 50 percent of Johnson Loggins Incorporated Realtors at the time \(Dellinger owned the other half until he his business and personal ties with the Johnson-Loggins partners had anything to do with the land deal or with his vote in favor of private ownership of the superport. When DPS agent David Dimick was skulking around Dallas spying on a hapless airline pilot who opposed building the Glen Rose nuclear power plant \(“Texas Department of Surveillance,” Obs., Aug. spotted the pilot speaking to one Carl Brannin at a city council meeting. It apparently was supposed to be evidence of the pilot’s subversiveness, Brannin being a longtime toiler in left wing vineyards. Brannin, who is in his 80’s, has been named the Unitarian Universalist of the Year by the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. State snoops please note: the Unitarians described Brannin as a “native Texan; world traveler; omnivorous reader; tireless correspondent; loyal and unfailingly cheerful friend; pioneer civil libertarian; champion of social justice, racial equality, human brotherhood, and world peace; exemplary Unitarian; and above all else, outstanding humanitarian.” Faraints Good grief! Could we have been underestimating Rep. Joe Hubenak of Rosenberg all this time? For years, Hubenak has been telling anybody who will listen that the imported fire ant is the most serious threat to life as we know it in Texas since Santa Anna went out of business. And the Observer, safe in its fire-ant-less Austin office, has scoffed. Now The San Antonio Express reports that the infestation has spread to Bexar County, only 85 miles from our door. Already, the Express says, there are about 100 fire ant mounds per acre at Fort Sam Houston-, and a medical officer there who used to fight the little devils in Florida estimates that the base has twice as many fire ants as it did last year. Underwater Tenneco Tenneco, Inc., of Houston wants to be first off the high dive into deep sea mining. Tenneco recently filed the first American notice of discovery and claim to an ore mine in deep international waters. The papers went to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, along with requests for diplomatic protection and protection of investment. The giant conglomerate -wants Kissinger to give the go-ahead for a subsidiary, Deepsea Ventures, Inc., of Gloudester Point, Va., to mine manganese nodules somewhere in the Pacific. Representatives of the seacoast nations met earlier this year in Venezuela to try to agree on regulations for exploitation of international waters, but they weren’t very successful. Without regulation, the race to extract the sea’s treasures could be worse than a combination of the California Gold Rush, the wreck of the Spanish Armada, and the sacking of Troy. Dist. Judge Herman Jones of Austin has put Shearn Moody Jr.’s Empire Life Insurance Co. of America into permanent receivership. The state attorney general’s office requested the action. Moody was represented in the proceeding by State Sen. Babe Schwartz of Galveston and Frank Newman of Dallas. Members of the Legislature have been told by an assistant vice president of the Federal. Reserve Bank of Dallas that Texas’ economy looks to be in better shape than that of the country as a. whole. William Kelly told the members that the state’s agricultural and housing picture is “clouded by the prospect of further inflation,” but that the oil and gas industry and general retail sales look good. Former Gov. John Connally’s trial on charges of bribery will begin March 19 in Washington. Connally had hoped to win a change of venue, but U.S. Dist. Judge George Hart denied a defense motion to move the trial. The trial date was agreed upon by both sides, with an eye toward allowing a “cooling-off period” after the end of the current Watergate cover-up trial. Connally was granted severance of bribery charges from indictments for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Judge Hart apparently agreed that a trial jury might conclude from a perjury indictment that a grand jury had already found Connally guilty of any crimes he might have denied, Connally’s lawyer, Edward Bennet Williams, also won agreement from Judge Hart that the conspiracy charges against Connally might be “overreaching” by prosecutors. Williams called the conspiracy indictment “a gimmick to get in otherwise inadmissable testimony.” Judge Hart refused to dismiss the indictment but said, “I feel that federal prosecutors bring in conspiracy counts