ustxtxb_obs_1984_05_04_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

The final assembly of all U.S. nuclear weapons takes place in the Texas Panhandle. Houston has more oil company headquarters than any other city in the world. The whole state reeks of Sunbelt boosters, strident antiunionists, political hucksters, and new industry and money. THIS IS THE LOOK OF TEXAS TODAY and the Texas Observer has its independent eye on all of it. We offer the latest in corporate scams and political scandals as well as articles on those who have other, and more humane, visions of what our state can be. Become an Observer subscriber to. day, order a gift for a friend, or instruct us to enter a library subscription under your patronage. Send the Observer to name address city state zip this subscription is for myself gift’subscription; send card in my name $20 enclosed for a one-year subscription bill me for $20 My name address city state zip THE TEXAS OBSERVER 600 W. 7th, Austin, Texas 78701 able to send your children to college, you are able to put food on the table, clothing, you are able to buy a house, you could tackle a mortgage because you had stable pay.” The task at Kelly Air Force Base is keeping the huge Lockheed C-5 cargo plane at what the Air Force calls “constant readiness.” The number of C5s has increased in recent years because the Rapid Deployment Force wants to be able to use them to fly troops to places where American forces are not stationed. At Kelly, in 600 buildings, the C-5s are overhauled, repaired, modified, and repainted. Kelly also does some work on B-52 nuclear bombers and C-130 cargo planes, buys and supplies all of the fuel for Air Force aircraft, and buys other Air Force parts and supplies. At Kelly is the headquarters of Special. Weapons, which means nuclear weapons. Kelly keeps track of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons stockpile. “People have to realize that it’s a deterrent and so forth,” Kelly spokesman A. D. McCall Jr. said about the special weapons. According to McCall, no nuclear weapons are deployed at Kelly, but the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. , reports that nuclear weapons are kept there. Kelly was in charge of purchasing Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. “We bought it we bought all of it and sent it to Vietnam, ” McCall said. “It was used for defoliation of the jungles to see the target. It was a pure and simple defoliant. You had to find the troops.” “From a superficial standpoint,” Maury Maverick Jr., a San Antonio lawyer and newspaper columnist said, “the bases aren’t as polluting as the chemical companies in Houston. But you see thousands and thousands of civil service workers normally liberal Democrats who are on the payroll of making war. New Deal Democrats did that, made a civilian middle class that makes its living off the military. We’re all caught up in it.” Besides the people now employed on the bases, 30,000 retired military people and 19,000 retired civil service workers and their dependents live in San Antonio. “Military people retire and stay here,” said James Sandifer, a spokesman for Lackland and an Air Force retiree. “The merchants are good to us. We’re only five hours away from the Cowboys, three hours from the Oilers. The Gunslingers are here. We’re two hours from the coast. The only thing you can’t do is snow ski.” City Councilwoman Maria Berriozabal “We have a retired military who are basically very conservative,” William Sinkin, the president of Texas Bank and a longtime Democratic party activist, said. “They exercise a very leavening conservative influence on the political constituency. They’re not mean they’re just conservative.” “They vote against us all the time,” liberal activist Kathleen Voight said of the retired military. “That’s the reason Henry B. Gonzalez couldn’t be against the Vietnam War. . . . That’s the reason we couldn’t get our nuclear freeze through. Some of the City Council members said, ‘I just couldn’t afford to do that [support the freeze]. That’s where my meat comes from.’ ” \(In 1982 a nuclear freeze resolution failed to get the necessary support to be brought to Three U.S. Congress members have districts that include parts of San Antonio: Tom Loeffler, Abraham Kazen, and Henry B. Gonzalez. Loeffler and Kazen consistently vote for military spending and actions and have been awarded 100% ratings by the ultraconservative American Security Council. Gonzalez, whose district lies entirely within San Antonio, has voted for the B-1 nuclear bomber and anti-satellite weapons but against money for the weapons, and covert aid to Nicaraguan rebels. There are many side effects caused by the large presence of retired military personnel. One is described by COPS president Sonia Hernandez: “When you have a lot of retired military living in your area, they take up jobs and are willing to settle for less fewer benefits, lower wages, because they have their retirement pension. Then everyone else has to live off that standard, and that’s an extremely low standard. They retire very young say somebody goes into the military at 19 puts in 20 years 39 is not real 10 MAY 4, 1984