ustxtxb_obs_1975_10_31_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

Vote ‘yes’ bus service is being provided for the elderly, especially in small towns where this is not commercially feasible. ,Money that once went into highways is being used for people rather than steel and concrete. FINALLY, I found Vermont much more tolerant than Texas, though it may be unfair for me to judge Texas by Dallas. I was astonished by the number of Vermonters pioneering new life styles both in isolation and in intentional communities. Often these are people attracted by a back-to-the-land appeal but a large number are simply experimenting with a new life style that is environmentally responsible. Vermont is exceeded only by California, Oregon, and New Mexico in the number of communes and many seem more durable than those in the western states. I attribute this, in part, to local tolerance. When I asked our senior selectman about a large commune in our town, his only reply was, “They pay their taxes.” The public schools also showed freedoms we don’t often find in Texas. Since many towns could not afford to maintain local high schools, they often pay tuition for students to go anywhere they prefer.. Thus a number of alternative schools have developed largely paid for by public tuition. If students desire, they can go to one of these and take such courses as homesteading, outdoor survival, or respect. Or they may choose a conventional school. After all, why should all students be fitted through the same funnel? In short, I found Vermont a much more open society than I experience Texas, or at least Dallas, to be. Possibly the media are responsible for this difference. I have read The Dallas Morning News for 14 years, probably out of sheer masochism though it has some excellent reporters. But I must say that The Caledonian-Record in Vermont, with one tenth of the DMN’s subscription, had a much more cosmopolitan ‘editorial page. I sometimes wonder if the editors of the DMN have ever traveled outside of Texas. Certainly they give conservatism a bad name by confusing it with provincialism. Conservatism can be both cosmopolitan and intelligent, as I found out in the staunchly Republican Caledonian-Record. I became convinced that the DMN is provincial, not conservative. Vermont and Texas, I was forced to realize, are two very distinct states of mind. Both cherish independence, though I am convinced that in Texas this means an indifference to others and in Vermont a sense of “we’re all in this together.” In many ways, Vermont’s rock-ribbed Republicanism seemed to me in closer touch with the realities of the future than Texas’ Democratic establishment. Obviously, I was attracted by thinking small, by frugality, by environmental concern, and by openness. Meanwhile, I am earning a living in Texas. Austin This being a journal of free and hence occasionally cacophonous voices, I hereby differ with my publisher and urge you all to vote for the new constitution. All of it. I do so in part because I am resigned to an ameliorative approach to government. I consider the proposed constitution better than the one we have now. Taken all in all or even part by part, I consider it an improvement. No, it is not the constitution I would have wished for Texas. I can think of a number of ways in which it might be improved, but and perhaps this is my conclusive admission that I am becoming a mere liberal I say half a loaf is better than none. I say we should take what we can get and run with it. We’ll live to fight another day. We always have. We always do. It is true that some articles are worse contains some real clinkers and Local mixed with its good. But as a practical matter, either this whole package goes, or none of it goes. The voters are not going to tax their brains trying to remember which combinations and permutations of the propositions they’re supposed to be for or against. Granted, you are Observer readers and thus by definition more than usually willing to tax your brains \(if not your This decision involves strategy as much that the cumulative content of the proposed constitution is an improvement on the current constitution \(you don’t have to grant that the new constitution is question is whether we can do better if we wait. The experience of other states that have tried and failed to pass new constitutions shows that we will have to wait at least 10 years before we get another shot at it: at least 10 years, and, given the political propensities of this state and the bitterness over the con con’s performance, more than likely at least a generation. My editor has asked, “Do we really want to go into the last quarter of the 20th century with this proposed new constitution, with all its inadequacies?” But I think the real question is whether we want to go into the last quarter of the 20th century with the constitution we have now, which is not merely inadequate, but insane. The trouble with our constitution is not simply that it’s long and clumsy and has 220 amendments. The trouble is that it’s a pile of manure. The Legislature can’t legislate, the governor can’t govern, and the judicial system winds up in two supreme courts. One of the best things about the new proposed constitution is that it’s easy to change. You don’t like some part of it, you can fix it. You can fix it a lot more easily than you can the one we have now. If the new constitution passes, and the people want to change some part of it, they vote the change and the new language replaces the old language. The way it is now, with 220 amendments, we can vote to put new language into the constitution, but that new language does not ripple up and down the length and breadth of the monster, expunging all contradictory language in its path. It’s just added on and adds to the confusion. Everything else to the contrary notwithstanding stays in. No less an authority than Speaker Clayton has been going about the state urging conservatives to vote for the new constitution on the grounds that the next reform effort may be more liberal than this one. If that were true, it would be a good reason to vote against this one. I don’t think we should vote for this constitution just because it is opposed by George Brown, Walter Mischer, Gus Wortham, Jim Elkins, the real estate lobby, etc. But experience has shown that when a reform measure fails, the next time reformers try to get it through, they modify it to placate the people who opposed it on the last go-round. That means that next time we have to pacify Brown, Mischer, Wortham, et al. Pardon my knee-jerk, but I doubt that bodes any good for the people. On one of the most troubling points in the new constitution, the tax break for corporate farmers and the timber interests, I think we need to look at the other side of the case. According to a reliable source, some representatives of some of the biggest corporate farming interests have been sniggering gleefully over their coup in sneaking themselves into the tax break designed for small farmers. That’s enough to make one vote against Proposition 6 right there. But as State Rep. Neil Caldwell, who was chairman of the finance committee at the con con, has said, there is an extent to which the talk about the small farmer versus the corporate farmer is just so much smoke. I am not much inclined to give United Brands the same break Joe Doaks gets, but there is more to the problem than that. Small farmers are fine fellows and I hope there will be lots of them around in the years to come, but their day is over, gone, and it is not coming back. They do not account for the bulk of October 31, 1975 23