ustxtxb_obs_2000_07_21_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

The OBSERVER is looking for a person with AD SALES EXPERIENCE to sell ads part-time for the Observer on a commission basis. Needed: self-starter with excel lent telephone and people skills, ability to work on deadline, desire to help impoverished journal build nest egg for new millennium. Familiarity with non-profit ad sales useful but not necessary. Web-friendly very advantageous. Please send queries and resumes to Ad Sales Search Texas Observer 307 W. 7th Street Austin TX 78701 No phone calls or e-mails please. THE TEXAS 13 server lv,00818:00,Wizeog:,?’I ..;,wy 307 West ,5th Street Austin, Texas ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731 512-453-1533 Write Dialogue The Texas Observer 307 W. 7th St. Austin, TX 78701 [email protected] “Dialogue,” from page 2 did notice that he made no mention that the man who has received the longest and harshest sentence to date is a young, white man from a very well-liked and upstanding family in this community. I guess my point is that it shouldn’t matter what color these people are, what should matter is that all drugs should be off the street and that the people responsible should be put away. My husband believes they should all be executed and I am real close to agreeing with him. I have only been in Tulia for two years, but I see what walks the streets late at night and it isn’t blacks or Hispanics or whites, it’s trash no specific color, just plain trash, and if the majority of them that got caught this time are black that is just a coincidence. The next time it may be all Hispanics or all white, but I can think of a lot worse things people could think about Tulia, Texas than the fact that we are not going to tolerate the sale of drugs to our children and in our community. Chalone S. Hefley Tulia Nate Blakeslee responds: I thank this reader for pointing out an egregious error on my part: Tulia does indeed have a Dairy Queen. I spent five days in and around Tulia and somehow missed it; in my defense, it may have been one of the few places in town where Agent Tom Coleman never claimed to have bought drugs. As to the white defendant mentioned, had Mrs. Hefley been able to get past the Dairy Queen issue and reach the end of my article, she would have noted that I do in fact discuss the significance of his case. FROM THE FRONT LINES More than “several” people \(as was report,,d in the had a bone to pick with T.N.R.C.C.’s unabashed support for polluters’ rights and disregard for public health at the June 20-21 Sunset Commission hearing on the future of that agency \(see Nate Over eighty gave testimony, much of it laced with outrage at an agency that consistently supports hazardous landfills, toxic incinerators, nuclear waste dumps, dispersal of sewage on rangeland and even onto schoolyards, and poison-belching cement kilns all of them more likely than not next door to some poor, minority community. For those who stayed to hear the two days of testimony, some of it lasting until 11 p.m., long after the suits fronting for industry had retired to the bistros and four-star suites to draft their responses, there were powerful stories to be heard. From across the state people skipped work, car-pooled, and disrupted their lives to travel great distances to wait and wait to tell the committee their personal histories. Throughout the messages of strength and courage, of persistence in the face of tremendous odds, ran a common thread: when you find your health and quality of life threatened by a corporate polluter and you decide to fight, then you are probably going to be fighting more than that polluter alone. You will also have to fight the state environmental agency that should be protecting you from rogue polluters. No wonder this state is number one in pollution. Thanks a stackfull, George W. Gary Oliver, Marfa Bill Addington, Sierra Blanca KING GETS ONE RIGHT Re: “The Bush Files” on www.texasobserver.org Mr. King, you are absolutely correct. Welfare is bad, abortion is evil, affirmative action is racist, public education is hopeless, the Bible is the final moral authority, and William Jefferson Clinton personifies total moral bankruptcy. The only thing you got wrong is “knee jerk.” These are well thought-out positions, based not only on the Bible, but on common sense, and on what works, as opposed to what doesn’t work look around you. Ernestine S. Boniceili Millington, Tennessee JULY 21, 2000 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 15