ustxtxb_obs_1975_08_08_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

and Morehead in their coverage of the hearing, which is what journalistic watchdogs would have expected them to do. Neither paper, however, bothered to inform their readers as to their current policies concerning reporters partaking of junkets and gifts. Two days after the hearing the A-S had a front-page Sunday story entitled “Freebies.” Journalists were not mentioned, alas. The Austin daily was making much ado over the fact that Austin policemen get free cokes and discounted food at local fast-food restaurants. A decade of Dolph? Could Texas survive ten years of Dolph Briscoe? The alarming possibility that we could find out the hard way is raised by rumors that Briscoe has been telling associates he just might run for a second four-year term in 1978. Briscoe is notoriously slow about making appointments to state boards and commissions, but surely. at the end of ten years he will have found a state job for every last citizen of Uvalde. Briscoe, the pluperfect waffler, is now waffling on adoption of the proposed new state constitution, which comes up for a vote this November. The guv can’t make up his mind whether he supports it or not. A second shoe has dropped in UT Permian Basin’s Duckgate firing episode. In the last Observer we reported that Dr. R. C. Thompson, one of the two men who cooperated in an investigation of former UTPB President B. H. Amstead, was being relieved of his duty as vice president in charge of business affairs. Now the other talkative administrator, Gen. H. W. Hise, has been informed that his contract as an assistant dean will not be renewed in September. Hise says if he’s not reinstated as an instructor, he will appeal to the UT Board of Regents. State Rep. Neil Caldwell of Alvin \(who was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee at the time that President Amstead made some misleading statements to the committee concerning expenditures The Texas Observer MARTIN ELFANT SUN LIFE OF CANADA LIFE HEALTH DENTAL 600 JEFFERSON SUITE 430 HOUSTON, TEXAS 224-0686 “Apparently the lesson the university is teaching is if you see any hanky panky going on, just keep your mouth shut and you’ll rise to the top.” While Hise and Thompson seem on their way out, Amstead now has a cozy position in the UT Systems office in Austin. Percy Foreman, Houston lawyer extraordinaire, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Dallas, on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Also indicted were two of the sons \(Herbert and right-wing oil billionaire, as well as three other attorneys and a retired industrialist. The indictment alleges that the group paid witnesses to go to prison and keep quiet about wiretapping by the Hunts, who are currently on trial in Lubbock on wiretapping charges. The case seems to involve the CIA, lists of Arab terrorists, and more confusion than a Democratic state convention. ARCO scores According to a recent Council on pollution control by the eight major American oil companies, Atlantic pollution control record. ARCO does the best job of abating air pollution and a fair job of controlling water quality. Shell has the best air control record but it’s not so hot when it comes to water quality. Texaco is the worst water polluter and Gulf is the worst air polluter. In the study, entitled Cleaning Up, the CEP maintains that the big eight can meet federal air and water standards with only a tiny reduction in profits ranging from a low of 0.1 percent for Exxon to a little more than 1 percent for Gulf. KERA-FM, the non-profit radio station in Dallas, is dropping its public affairs format, including live coverage of the Dallas City Council and Bill Porterfield’s talk show, in favor of an all-music format. It seems that some of the station’s executives think that public issues are “a bringdown.” Belated congratulations to the Corpus Christi Caller for a fine series on La Raza Unida, which ran in late June. The Caller next tackled an even more controversial subject, homosexuality, in a thoughtful, straightforward series than ran in mid-July. There were a predictable number of complaints about that series, but the tone of debate in the Caller is so generally civil that even the yahoos who wrote in didn’t sound as yahooish as, say, the ones who write The Dallas Morning News. The Caller’s new editor, Gregory Favre, has come under fire from some readers on account of he’s a foreigner from back East somewhere. He seems to be bearing up under this onerous burden. Senator Steelman? Art Wiese of The Houston Post says that Republican Rep. Alan Steelman of Dallas is seriously leaning toward running for Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s seat next year. Steelman, who is amazingly moderate for a Texas Republican, just barely squeaked by liberal Democrat Mike McKool to retain his redistricted congressional seat last year, and he would be expected to have another tough fight there in 1976. \(Both McKool and liberal State Rep. Jim Mattox are mentioned as aide, Marvin Collins, an experienced political operative, is urging him to challenge Bentsen. Austin Mayor Jeff Friedman and Zavala County Judge Jose Angel Gutierrez were among the progressive officeholders and seekers who attended the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Conference of Alternative State and Local Public Policies in Madison, Wis. Other participants included Colorado State Treasurer Sam Brown, Washington, D.C., School Board President Marion Berry, and U.S. Senate candidate Tom Hayden of California. They coined the term “programmatic left” to describe what IPS Co-Director Marcus Raskin called “working for the reconstruction of American society from below.” The conference was generally considered a success and some participants said they actually learned something. Friedman has invited the group to hold its 1976 meeting in Austin. The Texas Criminal Justice Council is funding Texas Ranger SWAT teams which, in the future, are supposed to handle such things as the Carrasco breakout, snipers, etc. Houston and Dallas already have their own SWATs, so the Ranger groups are being designed to give smaller cities and counties “SWAT capability,” a Ranger spokesman said. The plan is to have four Rangers in each of the six regional offices go through specialized training given by the FBI. Sic transit the myth of “one riot, one Ranger.” In a continuing assault against junk food, the Texas Public Interest Research Group has asked the Austin school board to ban “non-nutritional foods” from school vending machines. The hangup, as Austin High Principal William Robbins points out, is that the revenue from the machines is used for popular extra-curricular programs. “For instance,” he told The Austin Citizen, “in the past we have paid for cheerleading uniforms for girls who couldn’t afford them.” Neither the school superintendent nor the district’s trustees have chosen between the Scylla of threadbare cheerleaders and the Charybdis of teenage cavities. Alice in Wonderland is in the non-fiction section of the Austin Public Library.