ustxtxb_obs_1977_05_06_50_00020-00000_000.pdf

JOHN M. BLAIR BACK IN STOCK 4TH PRINTING $15, now at your bookstore PANTHEON OUR 35th YEAR “The wheeling and dealing of the seven sisters is a joy for lovers of pirate stories or tales of international intrigues.” The Boston Globe “Excellent… it shows that the oil embargo was mainly another hoax sold to gullible journalists.” NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN, Chicago Tribune THE CONTROL OF OIL Letter from Madisonville Congressman Charlie Wilson was in town last week. He came to Madisonville to hold what he called “a sort of town meeting” with his constituents here in Madison County. Wanted to see what we had on our minds. Well, I had something on my mind and wanted Charlie to know about it. So I went down to catch his act at the courthouse that night. I wanted to try to corner Charlie on this business of his supporting the Trinity River project, that John Henry Faulk rusty old boondoggle that has become one of my favorite dislikes. It is known along the Trinity as the oldest floating crap game in Texas. I reckon most of you know about the Trinity River project. It was dreamed up by a pack of wheeler-dealer boys in Dallas and Fort Worth, along with some banker and speculator types up and down the Trinity watershed for the exclusive and sole purpose of making a bunch of rich folks a lot richer. The whole multimillion dollar boondoggle is supposed to be paid for by you and me. So every year the boys in Dallas-Fort Worth charter an airplane, line up local political hack types from down the river for window dressing, and go sailing up to Washington. There they wine and dine congressmen on the public works appropriation committee, with the help of Jim Wright, Charlie Wilson, Dale Milford and other Texas congressmen. Then they badger and bluff Congress into funding their scandalous charade for another year. This year the Trinity boondoggle like to have got shook off the public tit, seeing as how Jimmy Carter has caught on to the waste and destructiveness of such water projects and opposes encouraging such delinquency any further. However, our Texas congressmen rushed in and saved the day for the project. At the hearing this year in early April in Washington, the Trinity boondogglers had their forefeet as well as their snouts in the public feed trough. Charlie Wilson had rushed back from an Acapulco vacation to help scratch their backs during the feeding. I asked Charlie why he kept plugging the boondoggle, lending it aid and comfort, when it’s a matter of record that in the only referendum on the subject, a bond election in March, 1973, the project was repudiated by the voters. It seemed to me that if the intended beneficiaries of Best seller “Everything you always suspected about the oil industry but weren’t certain was true is true.. And Blair has proved it for you in the best book to be written about the oil industry.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch “The definitive book on oil has finally appeared… In the future official Washington cannot plead either ignorance or confusion about how the oil industry operates.” front page, N. Y Times Book Review “Blair has prepared a devastating case.” Business Week