ustxtxb_obs_1984_06_01_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

Hightower has a habit of blaming the Reagan administration for farmers’ problems and that Hightower is gunning for his job in the event the Democrats win the White House. V Sonia Johnson, running for President on the Citizens Party ticket, made small headlines in May when she urged people to make a citizen’s arrest of Ronald Reagan for his violations of the Neutrality Act. A UPI story quoted two experts who said technically Johnson has a case. “The president’s foreign policy in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in strict legal terms, is in violation of the William LeoGrande at American University. “It is a criminal offense to furnish money for a military exercise against a government at peace with us,” said Dan Wallace Jr., a professor of international law at Georgetown University. V In a story on how lobbyists in Washington D.C. are paying more and more money in guest speaker fees to our distinguished public servants in the U.S. Congress, The Wall Street Journal used the case of Rep. Charles Wilson, DLufkin, as an example. Wilson, a member of the military appropriations subcommittee, took in $7,500 in speaking fees from military contractors last year, as compared to $3,000 in 1982. Wilson was paid for appearances before such firms as Avco Corp., United Technologies Corp., Boeing Co., TRW Inc., Northrop Corp., and Lockheed Corp., according to the Journal. V One of the most popular fishing and boating lakes in Central Texas will be closed again, for the third straight summer according to the Rockdale Reporter. Alcoa Lake, near Rockdale in Milam County, serves as a cooling reservoir for the Sandow Power Plant, which provides electricity to Alcoa Aluminum’s Rockdale Works, the nation’s largest aluminum smelter. The addition of the Sandow generator in 1982 has caused the water temperature to become too high to allow public recreation, according to Alcoa. V Among the political ripples from Jesse Jackson’s run for the Presidency: A Fort Worth pastor on May 19 became the first black ever elected chairman of a Democratic senatorial district convention in Tarrant county. The Rev. L. B. George ousted the “long-entrenched District 12 chieftain Ben Proctor,” as the Fort Worth StarTelegram put it, in a district convention that went 47% for Mondale, 27% for Jackson and 23 % for Hart. The StarTelegram referred to George’s victory as “the biggest bombshell dropped at the Tarrant County conventions.” Texas’ populous counties have more than one convention, holding them in state Senatorial districts within the county. V For now, at least, Texas residents from Galveston to Brownsville can take some fresh breaths of relief after the EPA’s decision on Wednesday, May 23, to disallow off-shore burning of hazardous wastes. The EPA decision comes after a popular outcry against their earlier endorsement of plans to burn over three million gallons of polychlorinated biphenyls and other toxic wastes in the Gulf of Mexico. Texas governor Mark White, a critic of ocean incineration, praised the EPA’s decision as a “victory for common sense in the application review process.” The EPA’s decision, however, may offer only a temporary respite. Jack Ravan, EPA assistant administrator for water programs, also ordered the development of a comprehensive research plan to consider the possibility of developing incineration sites in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico. And Ron De Cesare, also of the EPA, says that incinerator ships could begin burning chemical wastes as early as 1985. “It is still a potential and viable method of disposing of waste . . .” he said. AFTERWORD Bubba and Beauford Discuss Deficits By Fred Schmidt Draw ing by Be t h Ep s te in Tehachapi B_ EAUFORD, you snap that in front of you like you knew how to read. Sit down, Bubba, and shut the mouth. Texas Observer where the hell you get that? Lying on a bench down depot. Could you just sit? What you into there? The deficit. Known all about deficits all my life. Fred Schmidt, originally of Cuero, was an oilworker who later became Secretary-Treasurer of the Texas AFLCIO. He now lives, sculpts, and writes in Tehachapi, California. Want I should tell you? I want you to be quiet. This here says that Reagan’s letting it run up. Goddamn, that ought to tickle you, you voted for him . . . said you wanted to go for a winner. Reagan’s the alltime winner when it comes to deficits. I didn’t vote for him to run the deficit up. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson did enough of that. How come he’s doing it? It’s all out of character for him. There you’re wrong. I might just enlighten you. Whathahell you know about it? Enough to know that Roosevelt and those others did it for good reasons, like getting those guys on skateboards off the streets. at the bus 22 JUNE 1, 1984