ustxtxb_obs_1976_06_04_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

is already lining up support for a race against Tower and U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson of Lufkin is strongly inclined in the same direction. Briscoe is saying that his top legisla tive priority next session will be an anti-crime package because organized crime is creeping into the state. The lieutenant governor, the speaker, and the attorney general “will be united behind” the package, which will include court-ordered, court-supervised electronic surveillance, the governor says. Briscoe’s keynote address to the Texas Legislature in 1973 advocated legalized wiretapping and a new death penalty bill. A limited death bill was passed that year, but the wiretapping proposal was a casualty of the Watergate scandalthe plumbers gave tappers a bad name. Houston Police Chief Pappy Bond told reporters in Sink City that Briscoe has endorsed his surveillance proposal. Bond’s bill would allow wiretapping only in investigations concerning the sale, possession, or manufacture of hard narcotics. Applications for taps would be made by district attorneys or the state attorney general’s office to a district judge, who would decide if there was probable cause for placing a wiretap. A phone could be tapped for 30 days and a judge could grant one 30-day renewal. Within 90 days of application for a tap, the suspect would have to be notified by a judge of the application and whether it was approved or denied. Briscoe’s crime-fighting package also will include allowing voluntary oral confessions in criminal trials, longer jail sentences for major crimes, denial of probation “to perpetrators of the more heinous crimes of violence’ and stronger laws against welfare fraud. The governor adds that the concept of restitution by criminals “has a great deal of appeal.” Capitol reporter Pat Conway wrote a column noting that the Texas Or ganized Crime Prevention Council got $176,000 last year and produced a report on organized crime for Governor Briscoe. Conway notes that the council labored mightily to come up with the following self-evident conclusions: “The Texas Department of Public Safety has found that the sale and use of narcotics is directly proportionate to the size of an area’s population.” “One of the more traditional offenses associated with organized crime has been prostitution. In contacting local police agencies throughout Texas, the council has confirmed that prostitution is present in a variety of forms.” “It has often been said that corruption is the handmaiden of organized crime…. All available data indicates that organized crime flourishes only where it has corrupted local officials.” For this we need federal grants? Briscoe, whose name was on farm to-market legislation 20 years ago, has been asked by the City of Dallas to support a new major highway program to benefit urban areas. It’s the Urban Streets Plan, which would bring state funding to city loops and expressways that the federal government does not want to fund. \(The Observer suspects that the Urban Streets Plan would not include the stringent environmental restrictions written into federal The Rolling Thunder Revue \(Bob Dy lan, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, did a freebie concert at the Gatesville State School May 15. Dylan was said to have been hesitant about doing the show because the Revue was not particularly well-received by the black inmates at Hurricane Carter’s prison in New Jersey. But the Texas gig was a success. Many of the young Texas Youth Council wards didn’t know who Dylan was \(one fellow didn’t even know what New a break from their routine, to be outdoors on a Saturday afternoon, and to see some pretty women. \( “Lots of guys were more interested in talking to the chicks near the bus than they were in hearing Dylan play,” top, wowed the Gatesville audience. The show was arranged by the Jail Arts and Education Project of the University YMCA in Austin and the Austin Sun. Post mortems We hear tell that no one was more . chscombobulated by Don Yar brough’s victory at the polls than the REAL Don Yarborough. “Why didn’t I run this year?” he asked. “I could have been elected God. Where were all those votes when I needed them?” Yarborough is said Court seat on the grounds that everybody meant to elect him anyway. Charlie Holmes, former aide to Rep. Bob Eckhardt and more recently head honcho in George McAlmon’s unsuccessful congressional race in El Paso, came up with the best primary post mortem so far. “We went back over it after we lost, and we re ally felt we’d run a pretty good campaign. We got some bad breaks from the media, but on the whole, we decided we made only one mistake. Getting into the race.” There are some Texas liberals who don’t like and don’t trust U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan of Houston, Texas’ only black congressperson. Jordan has always made an effort to get along with the Texas Establishment. She went so far as to be a character witness for John Connally during his bribery trial. And now she’s added another sin to her anti-liberal record: Jordan wrote a letter to El Paso blacks endorsing conservative incumbent Richard White over George McAlmon. Jordan’s endorsement is said to have sabotaged a press conference during which local blacks were to announce their support of McAlmon. Mc Almon has a record of supporting minority interests which is clearly, absolutely, and by far superior to White’s. Wild makes deal The Watergate Special Prosecutor has given Claude Wild, Jr., Gulf Oil’s former Washington lobbyist, immunity from prosecution for testimony about payments he allegedly made to Sen. Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. No word yet as to whether Wild might also tell of his alleged payments to Texas politicians. Jake Jacobsen pled no contest in his San Angelo state trial and received seven years probation. The proceeding concerned an $825,000 loan made by .First Savings and Loan Co. of San Angelo in 1970 when Jacobsen was the majority stockholder. JacAsen was the man who accused John Connally of accepting a bribe from the dairy industry. The Justice Department promised not to prosecute Jacobsen for the savings and loan transaction in exchange for Jacobsen’s testimony against Connally. A Dallas federal judge refused to go along with the deal, but it was upheld by a higher court. The state went ahead and prosecuted Jacobsen on its own. Atty. Gen. John Hill has ruled that Governor Briscoe had no right to withhold half of the Legislature’s $4 million appropriation for community-based corrections for juveniles \(see Obs., using a rider on the appropriations bill, Briscoe dribbled the money out: Hill’s ruling, requested by Rep. Lane Denton, chair of the House Social Services Committee, says that the rider gave Briscoe authority to either withhold or grant the money, but not to play games with it. Atty. Gen. John Hill has gone and, by dad gum, sued the State Insurance Board in order to get them to release records requested by Jackee Cox, a freelancer who has written extensively for the Observer on health insurance and health cost questions. On March 25, Hill issued an June 4, 1976 7