ustxtxb_obs_1991_06_28_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

This is Texas today. A state full of Sunbelt boosters, strident anti-unionists, oil and gas companies, nuclear weapons and power plants, political hucksters, underpaid workers, and toxic wastes, to mention a few. -40 BUT DO NOT DESPAIR! server HE TEXAS b T TO SUBSCRIBE: Name Address City State Zip $27 enclosed for a one-year subscription. Bill me for $27. 307 West 7th, AUSTIN, TX 78701 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23 Gorbachev and reform they will get the credit; if it does not, some of the blame may be laid at the door of ostensible Democrat Strauss. Meantime, when the principal issues between the Soviet Union and the U.S. are trade, grain and oil, Strauss is well-placed to benefit a few of his past and future corporate clients such as Archer/Daniels/Midland, the grain giant on whose board he sits. After all, when Strauss became trade representative under Carter, his law firm had exactly two lawyers in Washington. It now has two floors of a building that would have shamed most, though not all, Roman emperors. One long-time liberal lobbyist in Washington noted that although Strauss supposedly severed his interest in his law firm \(Akin, tative, “that didn’t stop Akin, Gump from advertising to various lobbies and associations that Bob was still part of the firm and sure knew a lot of people in government,” he said. T SHOULD NOT BE thought that Strauss is a particularly evil figure; he is, at best, merely a dismal representation of one. Some say Connally kept Strauss around at the University of Texas and afterward in order that the crass, gauche, small-town boy might make the rapacious dirt-farmer Connally look all the more patrician by comparison. Then, as now, for Strauss, proximity to power took precedence over both who held it and what is done with it. As someone remarked after the 1980 defeat of President Carter, for whom Strauss served as campaign manager, “Strauss showed real loyalty to Carter. He waited a whole week before having dinner with the Reagans.” Actually, Strauss didn’t wait that long. After the election, Scripps-Howard News Service reported that in the midst of the 1980 campaign, James Baker and Strauss entered into a business partnership, South Bay Beer Distributors in Los Angeles. Baker owned 9.9 percent of the company at the time, while Strauss, his son Rick, and two business associates each owned 3 percent. Former Republican Party vice chairman Richard Herman owned the largest portion of stock. Baker acknowledged discussing the deal with Strauss during the campaign. Evidently, Strauss’ proclivity for climbing into bed with the opposition is neither new nor restrained. Strauss, who has a retinue of press followers rivaling that of Henry Kissinger, has been savaged only in the havens of the ideologically pure such as the Republican Street Journal and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times. The Journal closed its story with a quote from one of the fresh-faced zealots of the raw-meat right, who sniffed that Strauss would not be in Russia to negotiate freedom for the oppressed Russians but to negotiate business. One may be allowed to hope that Strauss does as good work on behalf of his country as he has done on behalf of the Republican Party. On past form, we already know he’ll be the richer for it. Political Continued from page 24 servative bulimia.” Lukefahr explains: “I’ve seen the symptoms in far too many of my recent site visits. The staff is usually haughty. They don’t like the College Republicans, or the ‘libertarian faction,’ or the ‘squishy moderates’ at their own paper. Indeed, the editor usually becomes quite animated, full of enthusiasm even, as Lukefahr talks about the staff infidels who he thinks are dragging the paper in ‘the wrong direction.’ \(Strangely enough, many people seem to delight [his italics] in the notion of right on target: the staff has conservative bulimia.” Elsewhere in the newsletter, referring this time to the campus left, Lukefahr complains that “campuses are still populated by far too many students who oppose the free exchange of ideas.” Lukefahr never addresses, of course, the contradiction that arises when right-wing student newspapers which constitute the front lines of the “political correctness” assault conduct their own ideological purges. Instead he wants to gloss over the differences: “Once the establishment press is as open to your views as they profess to be already,” Lukefahr writes, “then you can argue publicly amongst yourselves. For the time being, you need to circle the Volvos and protect your small community from the egalitarian savages who are after your scalps.” RHETORICAL POLLUTION? Rhetoric about “politicizing the classroom” may have implications outside higher education. At last year’s conference, AIA founder and top manager Reed Irvine invoked the politicization theme when he argued in his opening remarks, “Many professors have changed from ‘red’ to ‘green’ by joining the environmentalist movement, calling their motivation [sic] as a fierce opposition to the free-market system,” according to AIA ‘ s newsletter, Campus Report. Other speakers at that conference were Dartmouth Review cofounder Dinesh D’Souza and Charles Sykes, author of Profscam. This argument was quickly adopted by Republicans in high government office. According to the Spring/Summer 1991 Quayle Quarterly, Vice President Dan Quayle invoked the same image in a speech to the American Paper Institute and the National Forest Products Association. Quayle said: “There is a different type of environmental exploitation that we have to guard against, different from careless timber harvests or blatant pollution or irresponsible waste disposal. Today we are faced with the ever-increasing political exploitation of the environment. This type of exploitation can have consequences every bit as dire as the physical waste of our resources.” Quayle’s press office told the Observer that copies of the speech are not available to the public.