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Alan Pogue Impeachment rally at State Capitol, 1974 their electoral power and insistence the whe’rewithal to demand that their state constitution be fully sustained and zealously implemented to the end that its guarantees of fair laws and procedure are maintainedregardless of a fleeting popular notion of order. But even if Texans do not seize the opportunity and insist on the preservation of personal rights and civil liberties vouchsafed in their own constitution, in time the energy crunch and other economic bedevilments will become such a stark reality that our way of life, the lifestyle of most Americans, will return to the old ways of moderation rather than plenty. Simpler means of living must be resurrected, and from relative adversity there will follow a renaissance of constitutional government that plucks the electronic eye out of all privacy invading mechanisms and then insures a full measure of application of the Bill of Rights and other extant amendments, both federal and state. As citizens turn the corner into the 21st century, their rights will be more. completely achieved and protected than ever before. Sam Houston Clinton is a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Of privilege and pride .By Margaret Carter Fort Worth The Observer will need to watch and analyze the flexible conduct of privileged people as they maneuver to keep their advantage. In the ’30s they denounced the New Dealafter the banks had been rescued. In the ’70s they are the principal beneficiaries of New Deal-type measures that were intended to protect the poor. They did not learn from the Depression that their continuing prosperity depends on their being the richest players in a game where everybody has some chipsthat concentrating all the chips in a few hands stops the game. The Observer needs to watch, and propose counteraction for, attempts by the privileged to make the poor pay the costs of the recession. Fifteen percent interest is obscene. Rationing by price is cruel. Allowing utilities to raise their rates every time their customers’ conservation efforts effectively reduce their volume is insane. Using public funds to bail out failing businesses without taking a hand in management passes understanding. When Bob Montgomery \(an economics professor at the University of United States would back into socialism while calling the process anti-socialistic, even he did not foresee that tax money would be used to subsidize the least able corporate executives, provided the mistakes they made were big enough to have highly visible disastrous results. In the interest of “national security” John Connally is likely to restructure the government and the economy so that power will flow from an agency he cannot manipulate to one that he has invented. As president, he would seek to achieve his ends by using the emergency powers of the president. Restructuring the tax system goes on continuously in proposals to weaken the income tax, both by creating or widening loopholes and by financing with tax credits expenditures that would be better un derstood if they were financed with appropriations. Property owners try to make sure that the poor will pay the cost of local hard times by advocating Proposition 13-type ceilings on government income from real estate taxes. These measures often place a heavier burden on the small property owners who front for their adoption, in the form of in THE TEXAS OBSERVER 37