ustxtxb_obs_1983_11_11_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

CORRECTIONS In John Duncan’s “The Issue Is Proportionality” \(TO, the first full sentence on page 18 should have read: Only 32% of anglo-on-anglo cases were tried as capital murder, and only 25% of anglo-on-minority or minority-onminority were tried as capital murder.” In Betty Brink’s report on the Wilson-Bryant feud \(TO, identified as Ray Martin is actually Pete McKinney. Martin is McKinney’s predecessor. well as for others, on social programs. Almost 80% of transfer payments today or so-called welfare payments, entitlement payments come without any consideration of need. . . . We’re going to have to look at that. . . . As cumbersome as government is in administering funds, and given the heavy erosion that happens all the way along the way when the government turns to passing out money, it’s a very very costly thing for our society to have erected so many programs that are not in any way based on need. . .. That will require some very very tough doctrinaire are not going to be equipped decisions, and the people who are to make them. . . . POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE v The U.S. Forest Service plans to make twenty separate clear cuts in the proposed Four Notch Wilderness Area near Huntsville to control Southern pine beetles. \(See TO, is one of ten proposed wilderness areas being heard by the House Subcommittee on Parks and Lands this month. The Texas Committee on Natural Resources and the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club say that clear-cutting to get rid of implemented [by the Forest Service] between September 1, 1982, and June ‘ According to the Austin Report, after Texas Department of Corrections Director W. J. Estelle’s recent retirement announcement, the Board of Corrections called for a full investigation of alleged brutality by TDC guards and denounced “utilization of force for punishment.” Board chairman Robert Gunn insisted, says the Austin Report, that Estelle was “absolutely not” pressured to resign. V The Texas House Ethics Committee will investigate allegations of misconduct by Rep. Ron Wilson \(DSept., 1981 and July, 1982, Wilson overspent the Health Services Committee budget by $6,700 when he chaired that committee, that he collected unauthorized per-diem expenses, that he collected pay for committee work on 33 Saturdays and 32 Sundays \(departing from what the Ethics Committee calls “accepted practices and traditions of that he charged telephone calls which, the Ethics Committee says, “do not appear likely to relate to the subject of the committee interim activities.” V The U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by the State of Texas to overturn the reprieve of James David Autry, who is sentenced to death for killing a convenience store clerk in Port Arthur. \(See TO, that Autry will not be killed by the state at least until the Court rules on a California case on “proportionality” the comparison of sentences given to different criminals for similar crimes. In mid-October Governor Mark White confirmed his belief in the death penalty. “We go through a long and lengthy appeal,” White noted. “We go through appeal after appeal after appeal. . . . And I haven’t seen anybody say ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’ V Former state Senator Walter “Mad Dog” Mengden has come unleashed again, this time issuing a statement attacking the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on disarmament. “The Bishops’ letter is idealist. It is not lucid,” Mengden said. “Actually, I suspect they are, at bottom, pacifists,” he continued, “but lacking the courage to reason forward to what lies in their hearts. Pacifism is an honorable conviction, as long as it is purely personal. If, after the Great Surrender, Archbishop Bernardin, without resisting or protesting, is lead down to the cellar of Chicago’s City Hall to be shot in the nape of the neck as was done to 114 Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic bishops in the Soviet world it is his personal drama, to be respected, even admired. But no one has the right to offer another’s throat to the knife of the assassin.” After that inspired literary flourish, Mengden moved on to discuss the political motives behind the letter: “The purpose of the Catholic Bishops’ plunge into politics is a partisan political attack on the Reagan Administration and is an attempt to give respectability to propoliticians, such as Walter Mondale and John Glenn. . . .” But even old Mad Dog can’t be all wrong. He concluded his attack by noting Robert McNamara’s support for the bishops. “If there is one man who is responsible for the tragedy of the Vietnam War,” said Mengden, “that man is Robert McNamara. He once said that he would be proud to have it called ‘McNamara’s War.’ We certainly don’t need any advice from him.” V Dallas school superintendent Linus Wright has proposed a state corporate profit tax and personal income tax to pay for better teacher salaries and other school improvements. He says that proposed gasoline and sales tax increases won’t provide the money the schools need. Only four states besides Texas have neither corporate profit nor personal income tax: Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming. v The state senate seat to be vacated by Lloyd Doggett has attracted two contenders: Rep. Gonzalo Barrientos, Mexican American Legislative Caucus chair, and Cathy Bonner, an Austin media consultant and veteran of the Ann Richards and Austin pro-Mopac Expressway campaigns. In turn, Barrientos’ soon-to-be-vacant state rep. seat has several contenders: Ed Small, president of the Austin School Board; Lena Guerrero, who managed Ron Mullen’s successful campaign for Austin mayor; attorney Brad Wiewel; and East Austin community activist Paul Hernandez. V Regarding the ever-impending special session of the legislature to resolve questions of teacher pay, education equalization, state employee pay, farmworker compensation, and highway construction, Ross Perot says such a THE TEXAS OBSERVER 15