ustxtxb_obs_1987_05_15_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

With enough votes to sustain a Clements veto of new taxes, the House was now at an impasse, he said. But Democrats thought the Republicans were all talk. “I think Mike Toomey lost a lot of credibility” in the House debate on the budget, said Rep. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen. Hinojosa said Toomey and the Republicans were not able to come up with a single budget cut on the House floor. “Why? Because they know that the budget is down to the bone and there’s not much more that can be cut.” The Republicans knew that cutting the state budget would lead to higher local property taxes, Hinojosa said. “They want it both ways. They’re really trapped. They have trapped themselves by their rhetoric, their clichs, and their self righteousness.” Rep. Paul Colbert, D-Houston, put Republicans on the spot in the House debate by offering an amendment that would have cut the appropriations to whatever the current funding level was, thus linking a revenue bill to a spending bill. Republicans refused to go along with his amendment and it didn’t pass. Colbert said the Republicans were full of “a lot of rhetoric, but there were no motions to cut because they don’t want to face the responsibility of saying what it is they would cut. And that’s why I was making my motion.” The Republicans claimed that the budget bill was just too complex to cut on the House floor. But they also knew that very few individual cuts could have survived a House vote. Even though they’ll be back to rail against a tax bill, we have witnessed the bankruptcy and the irrelevance of the Republican idea. Their fanciful notion that state government is a profligate enterprise lies discarded and discredited on the House floor, like a moldering news clipping from the Reagan era, ready to be swept up by the cleaning crew. And the sooner the better. D.D. DIALOGUE Dugger’s “Diatribe” Fie on Ronnie for his diatribe against the English First movement \(TO, necked and wrong-headed as Sen. Helms is in some of his views. People in this country have always spoken many languages and there was no fuss. It wasn’t until the Hispanics began their push for bi-lingual education and Spanish ballots that some of us became concerned. In my view, they are the racists. They have flown in the face of tradition that requires new corners to adapt to the customs of the community. What makes them more special than the Germans, French, Italians, etc.? Some of us fear the development of the kind of friction plaguing Canada’s French and English speaking people. And we think bi-lingual education and Spanish ballots are expenses we don’t need. The Berlitz school of languages has been successful for years and they permit only the language being taught to be spoken in their classes. Something else concerns me. As we know, each language defines reality for those who speak it. No two exactly alike. And since English speaking countries have had the most suceess in establishing stable democracies I think we can assume that there is something in the stnicture of English that defines democracy more clearly than others. Why dilute it? And before you label that a racist statement, prove it wrong. Miriam Hotard Tomball Way Off Track I have read the Texas Observer since my undergraduate UT days in the late 1940s \(if you include its predecessor enjoyed many fine articles from your pen and generally have agreed with you on most of them, which is why I have continued as a subscriber for so long, in part. But, Man, you are way off track in your April 3 observation that “The Movement is Racist.” No doubt there are some who could enlist in the battle to preserve a single language and use it as an expression of their racist views, but to brand all of us with this same epithet is as narrowviewed as you seek to make the English advocates. Some of us just happen to feel that a multi-lingual state is divisive and promotes and perpetuates racism. Some of us would hate to see in Texas what we recently saw in Canada, where a non-English-speaking portion of the country tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to withdraw from the rest of the nation. Some of us feel that Switzerland would get along better if it did not have three basic languages primary among its citizens. Some of us feel that the language differences in Europe are part of the reason there has never been a United States of Europe and why the cultural differences there are as divisive as they frequently are. Some of us feel that the later immigrants to this country should follow the example of our forebears and all learn the same language so that “out of the many, there might truly be one” e pluribus. unum. Some of us feel that Theodore Roosevelt was right when he said, “We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.” If I know my own Christian heart, I am not a racist. I have been known, in fact, to take some rather unpopular stands against racism, including many years ago in an article in the Observer. I am for English as an official language because I believe in the long run it makes the best economic and political sense as well as the best moral method of promoting true brotherhood. C’mon, Ronnie, think a little further. Gus Browning Kilgore Locke and Long How ever much we wrangle over marginal issues, John Locke and Huey P. Long just won’t go away, because they told people what they already knew. The right to share in the economy is at least as important as the right to gripe about it. Sen. Paul Simon’s jobs bill should be the centerpiece of the Democratic program. J. Burns Houston No Solicitation While I greatly appreciate your article, “The Wasteland,” \(TO, a statement on page 10, right hand column, as follows: Gloria Chaplin continues to knock on doors to solicit powers of attorney and the Plaintiffs are now represented by Tom Pearson and Don Maierson, .. . Because the statement is made in a sentence also including the name of the current Plaintiffs’ attorneys, the implication could be drawn that either myself or Mr. Maierson had authorized Gloria Chaplin to “go door to door soliciting powers of attorney.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The solicitation of business is forbidden by the Texas 4 MAY 15, 1987