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ability out of the statehouse, any talk of marketplace equity is folly. A House progressive like John Bryant would guarantee greater democracy and responsibility. Polarize with Big Bill Clements. This turkey has all the elements he needs for continued electability. Our mission is to lasso him out. Elect and maintain representative administrations on the municipal/ county/school district level. Dallas, Lubbock, and Fort Worth need solid, vocal opposition; Houston could elect soon a classic Democratic majority; and the primary feuding in San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso should be over just how radical public policy will be, not how conservative. Every Texas metropolitan area has a hugeand growingracial and ethnic minority population. White urbanites will continue to be ravaged by the economy. Black and young sleeping giants reside in East Texas. Farming revolutionaries promise big things on the plains. And the Mexican-American community is ever-expanding. This electorate can return. Texas to its populist heritage, with one alteration. This time, we win. J. Gray McBride is a union organizer in Dallas. The way is clear for dynamic inaction By Jim Boren Washington, D.C. What a fantastic time this is for those of us who are devoted to national drift and mental meanderings! Dynamic inaction \(doing nothing, but way of bureaucratic life. Image enhancement programs are being accepted as the substance of political life. Leaders in government, business, and academe are thundering in resonant tones and moving with adjustive abandon. Civil liberties are being flimflamburgified by a Supreme Court that exalts marginal thinking and articulates restrictive retrogressivity. And, of course, the taxpaying public is singing in agonized tones about the political process in which it refuses to participate. Who cares about more agencies of government at all levels creating more forms and issuing more regulations as long as the ski slopes are open, the waterways are clear for sailing, and the garbage is being collected? Who worries about secret agents developing files on one’s daily life as long as the fairways are mowed and the nets are stretched at the right height? Who cares about foreign policy as long as the chair is comfortable, the beer is cold, the TV reception is clear, and the atomic weapons are deployed? Who cares that the role of universities has been altered by the accommodating influences that flow from government and special-interest grants and contracts? Who cares that institutions that once served are now institutions that command? Feel the excitement in the air! How great it is to be moving into another 25 years of creative nonrespon siveness, bold irresolution, and institutional quibbility! Ours is the challenge of words yet unspoken; hallways untrod, directives unread, policies undreamed, regulations unpromulgated, minds unblown, coffee undrunk, initials unscrawled, smiles unconverted, instructions unmumbled, and money unspent. Let us accept this challenge. Let us remember that red tape is the tape that binds our nation together as one great harmonic entity. Let us profundify simplicity, l’uzzify our goals, and mumble with eloquence. For, verily, within the next 25 years, we may inherit the earth . . . all that is left of it. Jim Boren, the president of the International Association of Professional Bureaucrats, is running for vice president in 1980 as the bureaucrats’ candidate. Withal, a toast to Texas! By Ralph W. Yarborough Austin As The Texas Observer begins to observe the next 25 years, I will offer some observations not on the past 25 years, and not necessarily on what will be our fate in the future. Believing in the politics of hope and affirming the hope inherent in Abraham Lincoln’s query, “Why should there not be a patient faith in the ultimate justice of the people?” I will state some of my hopes for Texas for the next 25 years. These are hopes for 30 DECEMBER 28, 1979 government needs which stood out 25 years ago like a ten-thumbed hand with all thumbs sore, needs that are still unremedied. Let us hope that Texas speedily pulls itself up from 48th place in the nation in the allowance per month for a starving, neglected, dependent child, the Texas pittance being less than $35 per child per month while the national average is over $75 per month. If Texas doubled its monthly allowance, it would still be below the national average; it would still be in the bottom 25 states. Texas is largely a Christian state, professing allegiance to the Judeo-Christian ethic; we are the richest state in the Union in natural resources. If we believe in the humanitarian ethics we profess, why does Texas hang back governmentally, clinging to 19th century thinking and policies? The answer: it is ruled by Big Money, and money has no mercy, only people have mercy. Politically, the people of Texas are periodically frightened out of their wits by multi-million-dollar media campaigns frightened into continuing our state’s Neanderthal neglect of little hungry chil