ustxtxb_obs_1978_11_03_50_00024-00000_000.pdf

ANDERSON & COMPANY conFEE TEA SPICES TAM JEFFERSON SQUARE AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731 512 453-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip THE COS PRICE *Ira usas TO OWAIWOO TWAT TO MOP IMANNIVICOT NATO4411 Texas Farmers Union Mk. 4 600 LAKE AIR DR. WACO, TEXAS 76710 617 772-7220 `Dialogue A liberal for Krueger Last spring, I campaigned and voted for Joe Christie for U.S. Senate. On November 7, though, I’ll be voting for Bob Krueger, and I want to share my reasons with any liberal who is contemplating not voting for the Democrat this time. The first reason is John Tower. It is not just that he voted against the ’64 Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and practically every other piece of mildly progressive legislation to come up in his 17 years. It is also that Tower professes the ideology of the Republican right wing, complete with its contempt for minorities and the disadvantaged, its obsession with big business and its cynicism toward programmatic goals. So what the liberal must contemplate in Tower’s return to the Senate is not merely his ineffectuality \(a plus, tive history at a time when liberal programs are everywhere under attack from the right. The second reason is Bob Krueger. The charge I hear leveled against him most often in liberal quarters is that he’s too effective, and that he has presidential ambitions. Since he is not a liberal, the argument goes, it is best to stop him now. This is an interesting viewone doesn’t often hear intelligent people complaining that a politician is so able he should be defeated. As for getting a liberal senator, that will happen in Texas when one of two senator feels the stirrings of presidential ambition and consequently shifts to the left to appeal to the more liberal national president fixes a senatorial race in Texas by convincing a conservative candidate to step aside in favor of a liberal. The post-war history of Texas politics, I suggest, confirms this view. Of course Krueger is not a liberal, but that’s not the issue now. He is bright, energetic, effective and likely to develop in the directions liberals value. If you doubt that, consider his eloquent defense on the House floor in 1976 of the bill to extend the Voting Rights Act to Texas chicanosKrueger and Barbara Jordan were the only two Texans to vote for it. The “rebuilding” strategy that brought us Richard Nixon in ’68 and has kept Tower in office all this time will not advance liberal politics. Philip C. Bobbitt Austin Coverage disappointing The Observer’s coverage of farmworker issues is disappointing. There was no mention of the UFW occupation of the Border Patrol office in Progreso, gation into Mrs. Contreras’s death at the border. There was no coverage of the successful UFW summer strike of H-2 Mexican nationals and U.S. workers in Presidiosurely a first for Texas organizing. And the last issue ignored the Democratic platform’s specific call to extend workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits to farmworkerswhen else has this happened? There’s a lot of movement. Where’s the Observer? And why isn’t it there? Rebecca Flores Harrington San Juan We stand corrected Re: “Representation for the District” by Viki Florence \(Obs., I do not propose to quarrel with Florence’s editorial point of view. It has its merits, viewed from a one-man, onevote perspective. That perspective, I hasten to add, is one which we can forgive senators for not having, given our constitutional tradition. I do quarrel with her numbers, however. My figures show the constitutional amendment passed the House with 127 members voting against it, not 12. So she should have written, “Two of the recalcitrant ten dozen plus seven were Texans.” Glen Larum Fort Stockton Right you are. Our mistake. So while more than a fourth of the House voted against D.C. representation, only a twelfth of the Texas delegation was against it-not bad. -Eds. IF YOU ARE an occasional reader and would like to receive The Texas Observer regularlyor if you are a subscriber and would like to have a free sample copy or a one-year gift subscription sent to a friend here’s the order form: SEND THE OBSERVER TO name address city state zip this subscription is for myself gift subscriptionsend card in my name sample copy onlyyou may use my name $14 enclosed for a one-year subscription bill me for $14 MY NAME & ADDRESS THE TEXAS OBSERVER 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 Postmaster: If undeliverable, send Form 3579 to The Texas Observer, 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 24 NOVEMBER 3, 1978