ustxtxb_obs_1985_08_16_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

Clean Water Freeze Iced Near the end of July, the United States House of Representatives voted on funding for the Clean Water Act and public housing. In a close vote, 207-219, the House rejected an amendment that would have frozen funding for the Clean Water Act. Only one Texas Republican, Jack Fields of Humble, voted against this amendment. Democrats from Texas who voted “No” were: Brooks of Beaumont, Bustamante of San Antonio, Coleman of El Paso, de la Garza of Mission, Gonzalez of San Antonio, Hall of Rockwall, Leland of Houston, Ortiz of Corpus Christi, and Wilson of Lufkin. The Democrats who voted for the funding freeze were: Andrews of Houston, Bryant of Dallas, Frost of Dallas, Leath of Marlin, and Stenholm of Stamford. In another vote on the same subject, the House passed a measure to provide $21 billion over nine years to strengthen and extend the Clean Water Act. Only one Democrat voted against this Charles Stenholm of Stamford. Jack Fields of Humble was the only Republican to vote for the measure. By a 213 to 204 vote, the House approved an amendment by Steve Bartlett, R-Dallas, to cut $500 million from public housing funds. This would reduce the number of new housing units built from the originally requested 10,000 to 5,000. The Democrats who voted to cut the funds were: Andrews of Houston, Bryant of Dallas, Hall of Rockwell, Leath of Marlin, Stenholm of Stamford and Wilson of Lufkin. Democrats who voted against cuts were: Brooks of Beaumont, Bustamante of San Antonio, Coleman of El Paso, de la Garza of Mission, Frost of Dallas, Gonzalez of San Antonio, Leland of Houston, Ortiz of Corpus Christi, Pickle of Austin, and Wright of Fort Worth. All the Texas Republicans voted for the cuts on this except Tom Loeffler of Hunt, who was absent for the vote. tial between the patient and doctor. Jimenez, who has handled more than 30 prostitution cases since June 3, thought the traditional punishment for prostitution, probation and a hefty fine, was lacking in effectiveness. “There’s got to be another way to handle this situation. These people have to be educated,” said Jimenez. He explains that the majority of arrested prostitutes are young, and that they only learn about the business from other prostitutes. Jimenez wants these people to learn about the hazards of their profession. “My interest is to educate through the Health Department.” The first person to try the new program was an 18-year-old man, convicted of his first offense. Besides being able to check the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and veneral disease, Jimenez hopes that the program will educate first-time offenders and encourage them to pursue a different career. Buy Texas vi The Department of Defense will have spent more than $32 billion in Texas by the end of 1985, putting us in second place behind California as the military’s favorite place to shop. About $4 billion of that figure will purchase petroleum and natural gas products and services. The $32 billion does not include money related to the Navy port planned for Corpus Christi Bay, which will be the base for the battleship USS Wisconsin, a missile carrier, a missile destroyer, an aircraft carrier and a minesweeper. The opening date for this port is scheduled for 1990. 1/ Sorry to have kept this from you for so long, but after the legislative session ended in May, the Young Conservatives of Texas announced that “80 percent of our objectives were met this session” and gave their ratings of the legislators. Rep. Tom Waldrop, the Democrat from Corsicana, was a hero of the young conservatives, with a 100 percent rating on the basis of 29 House votes. “Another hero of the conservative philosophy this session,” according to YCT, “was Rep. Bill Ceverha, RRichardson, also a recipient of a perfect 100 percent rating.” Ceverha, everyone’s favorite fringe resident, was singled out for his “countless hours” of work to eliminate state inefficiency and for his leadership in the Texas Conservative Coalition. In the Senate, the YCT rated John Leedom and Buster Brown as the most consistently conservative voters. Afterlife fro Labor Day promises to be a hot one in Dallas, when television evangelists and their followers converge on the city to march against Southland Corp. for carrying Playboy and Penthouse magazines in its 7-11 stores. Falwell, who opposes the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights, says these magazines are “geared to demean women and exploit them as articles of commerce.” The 51-year-old crusader has made a tape recording outlining his plan for the future of the Moral Majority, his university and other schools. After Falwell dies, this tape will become available to his top aides, who will listen to it to learn whom he has chosen to lead in his place. t/’ When case analysts from the Texas Department of Human Resources began a review of child abuse cases to prepare for a state inspection, they ran into a little problem. Although records from Rusk and Cherokee counties show they have received 752 reports of child abuse since 1982, Ron Black, the region’s administrator, said preliminary findings indicate that as many as 600 cases were not investigated or were not properly documented. The department has sent an emer gency task force to investigate the claims. “Obviously, the ball got dropped somewhere,” said Mr. Black. fro In a speech to the American Bar Association in July, Attorney General Edwin Meese accused the Supreme Court of weakening the Constitution, charging that recent decisions affirming a strict separation of church and state “would have struck the founding generation as somewhat bizarre.” “We hope for a day when the court returns to the basic principles of the Constitution,” he said. Meese praised some rulings from the court’s just-concluded term, rulings that he said were “more progressive” in expanding the powers of police to conduct searches without court warrants. 1/ Always thinking ahead, the Senate last month approved, 98-1, a four-year continuation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a program designed to prepare the United States for future shortages by socking away a cache of some 750 million barrels of oil in underground caverns. Political Intelligence is reported by Dawn Albright and Richard Kallus. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 15