Nazi Braceros: Hitler's Doctors in Texas Hospitals THE TEXAS

A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES FEBRUARY 28, 1997 • $L75 ENVIRONMENT

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Free Market Enviro-Dollars Pollute Barton Creek The Assault on Environmental Education Senate Rubberstamps the Gov's TNRCC Chairman THIS ISSUE

FEATURES Kicking the Habitat by Michael King 8 "Free Market Environmentalism" is the shell game at an Austin country club with a dubious environmental record. A report from the scene of the crime. The Nazi Braceros by Linda Hunt 14 Revelations by the Department of Energy highlighted secret radiation experiments on human subjects. Oh—did we forget to mention the Nazi doctors? Gasoline Morality? by Jeffrey St. Clair 21 Got those on the road again, running down the highway, don't know where VOLUME 89, NO. 4 to buy gas again, lowdown blues? Good luck... A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are ded- DEPARTMENTS BOOKS AND THE CULTURE icated to the whole truth, to human values above all in- terests, to the rights of human-kind as the foundation of Dialogue 2 Melodious Thoughts 27 democracy: we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent Editorials Poetry by Samuel Hazo the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Uterine Gothic 4 Badtime Reading 28 Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in Legislative Surrender 5 Book Review by Steven G. Kellman publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we agree with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Dateline, Texas AFTERWORD Dollars and Apologies 6 SINCE 1954 Byting the Virgin 30 Bad Bills 7 By Barbara Belejack Founding Editor: Ronnie Dugger Legislation To Look Forward To Publisher: Geoff Rips The Back Page 32 Managing Publisher: Rebecca Melancon Political Intelligence 16 CheetoMan for Hire Editor: Louis Dubose Associate Editor: Michael King Molly Ivins 24 Production: Harrison Saunders Howdy Dow-dy Cover photo by Harrison Saunders Copy Editor: Mimi Bardagjy Jim Hightower 25 Poetry Editor: Naomi Shihab Nye Circulation Manager: Amanda Toering Doublespeak and Corporate Lapdogs Special Correspondent: Karen Olsson James Galbraith 26 Editorial Intern: Mark Murray Low-balling the Economic Forecast Contributing Writers: Bill Adler, Barbara Belejack, Betty Brink, Brett Campbell, Jo Clifton, Lars Eighner, James Galbraith, Dagoberto Gilb, James Harrington, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Paul Jennings, Steven DIALOGUE ► Kellman, Tom McClellan, Bryce Milligan, Debbie Nathan, Brad Tyer, James McCarty Yeager. the "ten most regressive" statement but was Contributing Photographers: Vic Hinterlang, Alan CRUNCHED NUMBERS Pogue. I appreciate the information in "Thus not provided by Citizens for Tax Justice? Contributing Artists: Michael Alexander, Eric Avery, Spake the Governor" (February 14) but it Jay Doubleday Tom Ballenger, Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth Epstein, Valerie Fowler, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, appears to me that the chart is incorrect in Kerrville Ben Sargent, Gail Woods. using the same salary interval for the Editorial Advisory Board: David Anderson, Austin; Elroy Bode, El Paso; Chandler Davidson, Houston; "Next 4 percent" and the "Top 1 percent." Michael King replies: Dave Denison, Arlington, Mass.; Bob Eckhardt, Austin; I also wonder whether the text is correct in Mr. Doubleday is right; due to a layout Sissy Farenthold, Houston; John Kenneth Galbraith, Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; saying the "richest fifth pay 5.5 percent." error, the graph incorrectly repeated the George Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Austin; It seems unlikely that the top quintile last income interval for the "Top 1 per- Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., cent." The correct figure for the "Top 1 San Antonio; Willie Morris, Jackson, Miss.; Kaye would be paying 5.5 percent if the 96th Northcott, Fort Worth; James Presley, Texarkana; through 99th percentiles pay an average of percent" should be "$395,000 and above." Susan Reid, Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; (See corrected graph, page 3. The average Fred Schmidt, Fredericksburg. 5.5 percent, the next 15 percent pay 6.6 Development Consultant: Frances Barton percent and the top 1 percent pay 4.4 per- annual family income in this range, paying Business Manager: Cliff Olofson, 1931-1995 . cent. In any case, I would like to have clar- just 4.4 percent in state and local taxes, is THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted. © 1997, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval ification on the intervals for the last two $743,000.) My textual error, based on an between issues in January and July (24 issues per year) by the Texas Democ- racy Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, 307 West 7th Street, Austin, bars in the chart. Texas 78701. Telephone: (512) 477-0746. E-mail: [email protected]. World Wide Web DownHome page: http://www.hyperweb.com/brobserver One other question: you credit the Citi- Periodicals postage paid at Austin, Texas. ERRATA zens for Tax Justice for the statement that SUBSCRIPTIONS: One year $32, two years $59, three years $84. Full-time In the February 14 issue, the name of students $18 per year. Back issues $3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and Texas has one of the "ten most regressive" bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University Micro- poet Tim Seibles was misspelled in the films Intl., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Anil Arbor, Ml 48106. tax systems in the country and refer to the INDEXES: The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Table of Contents, and Frank Coronado Index to Periodicals: Texas Index and, for the years 1954 through 198I,The graph, which credits another organization Texas Observer Index. was incorrectly identified in the photo POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, as the source for the graph. Am I correct 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. on page 14. We apologize for the errors. that the information in the graph supports

2 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

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eyeball estimate at deadline, is less forgiv- since the U.N. doesn't have the man- County has sort of pushed a button with able: the correct state/local tax rate for the power or resources the U.S. government me. During my thirty-plus years as a mil- top 20 percent of Texas incomes ($71,000 and corporate power structure has, to run itary "lifer," I was seldom able to get an and above), as confirmed by Dick Lavine its "global economy." absentee voting application in time to of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, The one thing we all have in common have my vote counted back here in is 6.3 percent—still less than half the rate is our exasperation at being downsized, Menard. During my years as an officer, I (13.8 percent) on the lowest 20 percent of outsourced, subcontracted and welfare-re- continually stressed to my subordinates family incomes. formed into ever declining states of that they were citizens too and had rights As for the double credit: the chart, poverty—by decision makers ensconced, and responsibilities as such, despite the based on a study by the Citizens for Tax far away in New York and Washington, perception to the contrary often encoun- Justice, appears in materials provided by D.C. I hear so much about "if California tered, especially in the 1960s. It is very the Texas Center for Policy Priorities. For were an independent country, it would be easy to understand a rifleman's percep- more information, contact the CPPP at the sixth largest economy in the world." tion, on the DMZ in Korea for instance, (512) 320-0222. How nice that would be, to be an indepen- that the general public doesn't give a flat Thank you for the opportunity to correct dent and democratic economy owned and damn about him, and this is the reason these errors. run by California's working people, not the Armed Services have done much to some wealthy minority, the majority of make voting an easier thing to do. I used BANANAS REPUBLIC which live on the East Coast and over- to use the cartoonist Mort Walker's hav- A great piece on the Republic of Texas seas. No more NAFTA or GATT, jobs for ing his Sgt. Snorkel admonish his troops ("Xmas in the Texas Republic," by everyone! No more political corruption that "Our job is to defend them, not to Debbie Nathan, January 17). It shows like Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton! No speculate on whether they're worth de- that in addition to the native people of more demagogues like Pete Wilson! If fending," as a bit of levity to defuse the Hawaii, the Chicano community and the getting independence from the overgrown sense of alienation. Western Shoshone Nation [in Nevada], banana republic known as the U.S. is the I have particularly bad memories about people in Texas want out of the New only way out of our economic and politi- the 1972 General Election. I encouraged York- and Washington, D.C.-run corpo- cal ills, then more power to those of us all of my men, stationed in Afghanistan, rate tyranny that the U.S. is rapidly de- seeking independence. to vote, and almost all of us applied to do generating into. We are fed up with our Chris Ellis so. Not one of us was able to get our lives being gambled with by a bunch of San Bernardino, CA completed ballots back home in time to suits and ties on the floors of the New be counted. Local minorities are not the York Stock Exchange and Congress. EVERY VOTE COUNTS only ones who perceive a "dilution of They may be a little off in blaming the The reporting on the Sheriff/County voting power," as the Voting Rights Act U.N. for a lot of it (it's clearly the U.S.), Commissioners' election in Val Verde calls it. There is probably some reason for it, but I wonder about the identification of The Poorest Texans Pay a Greater Share of Their Income in State and Local Taxes the military voters as the decisive element Than Do the Wealthiest Texans that produced the victory of the two can 16%• didates whose suitability might be open to 13.8% question. This happens in a democracy, and there is precious little we can do about it except vote the rascals out next term. In administering primary elections, I am damn careful that the confidentiality of the voters' choice is preserved, particu- larly in the case of mail-in absentee votes. My experience in running primaries has been that the Secretary of States' guid- ance is that "residence" is a matter of the individuals' preference, and that the usual • itt "40 te answer to voter eligibility is "if at all pos- re. 0 0 roe 41‘ eto° ... 4 s ,40c$ 4.0, • 0 0eCiat" sible, let 'em vote." • 0 ts. 0 IP le 404. tit otovrt s,I o.G Richard R. McTaggart, COL, USA (Ret) .0 oc" 0°- ,1. ..,4 t1 ► Democratic County Chair, Menard

SALES AND EXCISE TAXES PROPERTY TAXES

Source: Texas Center for Public Policy Priorities

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 3

•0461.1111111100611104.1100$100011411111.1111111111011111111014114.1110.- ..4.1108.010111611101. , EDITORIALS Uterine Gothic "What about suffering?" an interviewer once asked Bernard Malamuct "la a subject much in your early work" "I'm against i4" answered the writer, "but when it occurs, why waste the experience?" couple of weeks ago there were n February 19, the Senate committee of what was said had nothing to do with 1,782 pairs of old shoes lined up in on Health and Human Services met safer clinics or parental consent. The debate rows at the Capitol complex— Oin the Senate chambers to hear testi- over abortion becomes a battle of anec- suede boots, gold lame sandals, mony on several abortion-related bills. The dotes: a man from a right-to-life group beat-up sneakers and sequinned heels and showpiece bill, sponsored by Republican handed me a packet of information that in- purple slippers and beige flats—all col- Senator Jane Nelson of Flower Mound, cluded not one but two letters from doctors lected by Mothers Against Drunk Driving would require minors to get their parents' asserting that Becky Bell, an Illinois girl to represent the 1,782 Texans killed in permission (or a judge's waiver) before hav- who died after trying to induce an abortion drunk-driving accidents in 1995. Signs ing an abortion. In attendance were a number on her own rather than tell her parents, had were attached to some: "Actual Victim's of Regular Folks—cardigan-wearing moms died of pneumonia, not self-inflicted injury. Shoes," "I Was Killed February 26, 17 Yrs and their kids, mostly—with yellow "Par- Dwelling on the grotesque is doubly Old," or cards bearing just a name. The ents' Rights" cards pinned to their shirts. harmful: not only do horror stories block shoes were arrayed along both walls of a The lurid stories began even before the out discussion but, as Katha Pollitt has skylit corridor, and between them the usual parental consent bill came up. Testifying in pointed out, they cast the entire debate in Capitol crowd of staff, tourists and lobby- favor of a bill sponsored by Republican right-to-lifers' terms, associating abortion ists made its way down the hall; most ig- Senator Chris Harris, which would provide with unscrupulous surgeons, rapes and nored the exhibit. Occasionally, someone for stricter monitoring of abortion clinics to ripped wombs rather than a woman's deci- glanced at the shoes or muttered something: make sure they meet health and safety stan- sion to have a child. The airing of misfor- "Hoo—scary," said one woman. dards, a young woman recalled in some de- tune isn't limited to abortion politics. Just A MADD spokesman later told me that tail how she almost died as the result of an in the past few weeks the Legislature has the shoes had been collected as "a visually improperly-performed abortion. Her uterus granted the spotlight to stalking victims penetrating image of just how many people had been ripped, she said. It had taken six and victims of violent convicts who were lost their lives in one year." There are a years to convict the people responsible; granted early parole, while nationally the number of related bills in the works, he they had only been sentenced to six years politics of "victims' rights" has become added—one to lower the acceptable blood in prison, and "that is not enough," said the both bread and circus. Candidates ask us to alcohol content for juveniles to zero, an- woman, breaking down into tears as the vote for them so that they can crack down other to establish sobriety checkpoints, an- Senators watched. on stalkers and put criminals in prison, and other to outlaw open containers in vehicles. Another man testified that his mentally people who've had relevant personal Perhaps the exhibit of shoes served to re- retarded daughter had been repeatedly raped tragedies become handy props. mind lawmakers about the pending legisla- by her stepfather. Taken to a clinic by the Of course those "victims" are willing par- tion. And maybe "awareness" is a good stepfather, she'd received two abortions at ticipants, and it's sometimes admirable thing for everyone—we look at the shoes, the ages of twelve and thirteen. Had the doc- when people respond to misfortune by be- and next time we're out on a Saturday night tor notified the parents, said the father, this coming advocates for safety standards, say, we're more careful about how we get home. could have been stopped. A 20-year-old or gun control. But too often the notion of Even so, it was a jarring display, for there woman then testified that two years ago, "victims' rights" seems treacherously close was such a discrepancy between the emo- she'd planned to get an abortion but had told to "the right not to have bad things happen to tion invested by the friends and families of her parents at the last minute; they'd talked you." Would that such a right existed—yet it those who died—whoever attached a prom her out of it; and now she has a child she doesn't, and in the end many of these public photo and decorations to a beat-up pair of loves. A pregnant 22-year-old woman spoke victims seem oddly used by the political grey jogging shoes—and the responses from about how much her parents' love and sup- process. Here was this woman, weeping in passers-by. Displayed along a busy office port had meant to her during her pregnancy. front of a group of state Senators, ostensibly hallway, the shoes were, naturally, ignored. And so it went, from gruesome to sappy: in order to make a point (unlicensed or un- The display also represented a broader people spoke, then stepped away from the safe abortion clinics should be shut down) trend, in which personal tragedies are rein- microphone as reporters gently descended that just about everyone in the room seemed vented as political arguments—a little unset- upon them and spectators offered encourag- to agree with already. Legislation does not tling in the case of the shoes, in other instances ing words, pats on the back. This is standard put a stop to grief: in the end, who is served absurd, stomach-turning, and unnecessary. operating procedure—no matter that most by these displays? —K.O.

4 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 • •

EDITORIALS ► Wild About Barry This is of record. Where slept then environmental organizations had provided culture. When McBee responded that be- your lightning? the senators' staffs with information about cause there was no federal mandate protect- Loafed your torque. McBee's eighteen months' tenure at the ing farmworkers, he had eliminated their —John Berryman agency charged with protecting the state's state protection to make the regulations uni- natural resources. The studies, position pa- form, Gallegos didn't even wince. And he legislative process is a pre- pers, and lists of questions about TNRCC when McBee claimed that he had ordered dictable affair, and were the print practices provide a fact-based case against his inspectors to provide advance notice be- medium allowed to print only McBee. And although Republicans control fore all on-site inspections because inspec- what accurately can be called the Senate, it was assumed that the tors frequently found that the person they "news," our already downsized Capitol bu- Democrats—or at least these three needed to speak to when they arrived unan- reaus would long since have been reas- Democrats—would use the nomination pro- nounced was not available, or that gates signed to the police beat. For example, just cess to extract a few promises from McBee. were locked—not one of the three tenors as those of us who are paid to watch the The Republicans' protracted examination of even slowed him down. Lege know to never split an infinitive, we It was a bravura performance. But all also know that whenever the unctuous and WHEN MCBEE RESPONDED THAT bravura. The only tense moment occurred dapper Senator Eddie Lucio gets close to BECAUSE THERE WAS NO FEDERAL when Barrientos took off his gloves and anyone with any real economic or political MANDATE PROTECTING FARM- went after Clean Water Action director power, the Senator's going to violate the WORKERS, HE HAD ELIMINATED THEIR Sparky Anderson, who for just a moment state's sodomy statute. So we all knew what STATE PROTECTION TO MAKE THE must have thought that he had been nomi- to expect when Lucio stopped by Senate REGULATIONS UNIFORM, nated for something. Barrientos demanded Nominations' confirmation hearing for GALLEGOS DIDN'T EVEN WINCE. from him a full accounting of Clean Water Texas Natural Resources Commission Action's ethnic breakdown, then conde- Chair Barry McBee—just long enough to Ann Richards' pro-consumer Public Insur- scendingly dismissed Anderson—who tell McBee what a great job he has done ance Counsel Amy Johnson, at a time when tried to explain that such statistics are not since the Governor appointed him, and that the Senate was controlled by Democrats, available, but that his organization works the Senate would be with him when his might have served as a model for the new in all urban neighborhoods. nomination got to the floor, and by the way Senate minority. If all of this were not on tape somewhere how about that channel dam on the Rio It didn't. in the bowels of the Capitol, I would Grande, and aren't rivers important to all of Truan, a Senator whose reckless courage expect readers to challenge even this brief us and isn't it wonderful that McBee is often provides the pretext for his col- recapitulation. keeping them clean. leagues to dismiss him, asked a few in- Some four hours after they began, the McBee is the chief regulator of what gov- sider's questions about inter-basin water seven members of the Nominations Com- ernment professors call a "captured regula- transfers—and the permitting process for mittee voted to endorse the nominations of tory agency"—that is, a regulatory agency shrimp farms. Then he gently reminded both McBee and Baker, giving a green light controlled by the interests it was created to McBee (and TNRCC board member John to an agency that in a rare moment of can- regulate. In this case, those industries repre- Baker, who is also up for confirmation) that dor Senator Truan had compared to Chair- sent one of the greatest concentrations of their authority is sanctioned by the advice man Hugh Yantis' infamous and oxy- economic power in this state, and like his and consent of the Senate. moronic Texas Water Quality Board—a randy Republican colleague Drew Nixon, Barrientos, who in an exhausting fili- predecessor of the TNRCC. in certain situations Eddie Lucio just can't buster two years ago, at least attempted to By the time that 7-0 vote was cast, Senator help himself. His unseemly public embrace throw his body in the path of Senator Teel Lucio's cameo performance two hours ear- of Barry McBee was hardly news. Bivins' "takings" bill, postured, sputtered lier seemed like a sweet Gulf breeze.—L.D. What follows is. and at one time even asked in his most sten- For two hours, in a hearing room thirty torian voice: "Mr. McBee, do you recy- One week after McBee's hearing, Demo- feet below the rosebeds on the north lawn of cle?" (You really should have been there.) cratic Representatives John Hirschi, Robert the Capitol, Democratic Senators Gonzalo And Gallegos, a solid vote on environ- Puente, Elliott Naishtat, and Lon Burnam an- Barrientos, Mario Gallegos, and Carlos mental issues despite the fact that his district nounced that they are co-sponsoring—with Truan—three of the most steadfast defend- is owned by the Texas Chemical Council, the support of 113 environmental and con- ers of our state's beleaguered environ- asked McBee about his dismantling of pesti- sumer groups—eleven bills to restore public ment—behaved as if they were TNRCC cide protection rules designed to protect access to TNRCC decision-making processes factotum in the service of McBee. farmworkers, while McBee was working for affecting the environment and public health. For weeks, representatives of the state's Rick Perry at the Texas Department of Agri-

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 5 •

DATELINE, TEXAS UT to Bullock: Dollars and Apologies BY ROBERT BRYCE In the wake of a lawsuit recently filed against University of Texas officials, questions of possible admin- istrative coercion and improper political activity have been raised concerning university personnel. n investigation by the San Antonio can deliver your information, then you U.T. Board of Regents, calls the Valdez Express-News has found that U.T.- have power, which, at the Capitol, is the suit "nonsense." Two days after the publi- System officials , have been ability to affect legislation. cation of the Express-News story, Leber- bundling political contributions . U.T. is certainly justified in providing in- mann said he had just returned from a lun- on a system-wide scale over the past four formation at the Capitol. After all, the Sys- cheon honoring Lady Bird Johnson. While years. During that time, U.T. administra- tem has fifteen campuses, 150,000 students there, he saw Bullock's wife, Jan. He joked tion officials from across the state have and 60,000 employees. Texas needs good that he had asked the Lieutenant Gover- contributed nearly $125,000 to Lieutenant schools at all levels, particularly at the uni- nor's wife to tell Bullock that "we love him Governor Bob Bullock. versity level. But how much influence and we are with him and don't let him be When it comes to buying influence and should U.T. have at the Capitol? And who mad at us for raising so little." According to lobbying at the Capitol, the U.T. officials will monitor U.T.'s lobbyists to assure that the Express-News, U.T. officials and the have been walking a very fine line. The they just provide information? Farabee in- U.T. political action committee, along with fundraising on Bullock's behalf indicates sists that they "do not advocate for or against university supporters like Morris Atlas, Jim how important U.T. officials believe it is to a measure." But who watches to make cer- Bob Moffett, and regent Bernard Rapoport, maintain good relations with the Senate's tain that Millsap and the others do not advo- have donated a total of $208,900 to Bullock most powerful curmudgeon. And while cate a position one way or the other? since 1992. Lebermann said he asked Mrs. there is nothing currently illegal about Lundquist admits that U.T. and other state Bullock to tell her husband that "in spite of bundling funds, U.T.'s actions more closely agencies and institutions fall through the press reports, we only raised $190,000 of resemble those of a corporation than a pub- cracks of current state laws. On one hand, she the $10 million he's raised over the past licly funded school system. Unlike corpora- points out that there is a provision in state law five years and we hope he's not mad at us." tions, U.T.'s lobbyists are not required to that exempts members of the executive, leg- When asked if U.T. officials had coerced register with the Texas Ethics Commission. islative, or judicial branches from registering its administrators into giving money to In fact, U.T. officials are prohibited by law with the Ethics Commission if they are com- Bullock, Lebermann replied, "This is from "lobbying" legislators. "The basic pensated for lobbying. On the other hand, Texas, not Louisiana." rule is you can't use state funds for lobby- those same officials are not supposed to Austin may be a long way from the Mis- ing," explains Karen Lundquist, general lobby. "How do you request a report on sissippi River, but it appears U.T.'s counsel at the Ethics Commission. something that is illegal?" asks Lundquist. fundraising and lobbying activities would

The U.T. System office has six staffers in be right at home in Baton Rouge. ❑ its governmental relations department, in- he U.T. fundraising issue will be de- cluding Mike Millsap, the vice chancellor bated over the coming months dur- Robert Bryce is a Contributing Editor for for governmental ,relations. Like many T ing the proceedings in a lawsuit the Austin Chronicle, where a version of other lobbyists at the Capitol, Millsap is a known as Jude Valdez vs. William Cun- this article first appeared. former state representative, a Democrat ningham et al. Valdez (a vice president of from Fort Worth. And Millsap has visited U.T.-San Antonio) sued Cunningham (the many legislators over the past few weeks chancellor of the U.T. System) and other about legislation that would affect U.T., in- U.T. officials in federal court in San Anto- ANDERSON & COMPANY cluding the proposed football stadium ex- nio last fall, claiming that the university vi- COFFEE pansion at U.T.-Austin. olated his civil rights and his right of free TEA SPICES But Ray Farabee, the general counsel for speech. Valdez contends he was forced to TWO ,JEFFERSON SQUARE the System, insists that Millsap and the oth- donate money to Bullock by his superior at AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731 ers do not "lobby." Instead, he says they U.T.S.A. When he turned in his $100 check 512-45:3-1533 "provide information and answer in- a few days late, he was reprimanded by Send me your list. quiries." That description could be made by U.T.S.A. president Samuel Kirkpatrick. Name virtually any hired-gun lobbyist at the Valdez says Kirkpatrick then demoted him Capitol. Every lobbyist in Austin wants to and stripped him of many of his duties. Street provide information and answer inquiries. Lowell Lebermann, a former Austin city City Zip And if you have access to legislators and councilmember and now a member of the

6 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 BAD BILLS Legislation To Look Forward To.. . BY THE BAD BILLS GIRL Long, Cold Wait purpose...is the intoxication of the partici- manner" will be counted, even if received H.B. 323 pants" would be outlawed. So the bill after election day. He also wants legislation Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth (R-Burleson) would primarily affect non-students (a to facilitate voting by service members and Wohlgemuth and four co-authors want to in- large percentage of college drinking is al- others who are "knowingly away and out of stitute a one-year "cooling off period" for ready illegal, since so many of the drinkers communication—like that guy up in the Texans trying to get a divorce. Sounds more are underage). One University of Texas space station," said Madden. "I.e., people like a "deep freeze period," but Wohlgemuth student labeled the bill "insane." who have no way to get home to get a bal- views the current 60-day wait as insufficient. Averitt's bill, filed in response to a re- lot." He's considering fax and e-mail votes. By proposing that failing marriages get the quest from Baylor University officials, pro- Squawk squad teammates Hupp and Isett Han Solo treatment, she said, "what we are poses to classify buying, selling, or dis- have co-authored a bill, also in council at press trying to do is begin the process of changing tributing term papers as a Class B time, that would require county clerks to the mindset of the people of this state." misdemeanor. H.B. 762 would deter stu- count any absentee military ballots received The preposition-packing legislator is dents from cheating, its proponents say. up to ten days after a general election (four also suggesting that a no-fault divorce be Last time' we checked, cheating was al- days for special elections or primaries) pro- granted only with both parties' consent; ready a serious offense at most colleges. vided they are postmarked by election day. otherwise a couple would have to live apart But why not put a few cops on the thesis Maybe the Reps believed Phil Gramm and for three years first. The bill's sponsors beat? There must be some crossing, guards Kay Bailey Hutchinson when they claimed claim that all this will somehow protect due for promotion. that the ability of military personnel to vote children. "If marriage is not going to mean has been threatened by the lawsuits, or something, then we shouldn't have mar- Votes From Outer Space maybe they're just working together to spin riage," said Representative Glenn Lewis In the Works the issue. Senator Madden, on the other (D-Fort Worth), a co-author, who also in- Representatives Suzanna Gratia Hupp (R- hand, has cut to the chase, proposing to elim- sisted that the bill is not "trying to re-estab- Lampasas), Carl Isett (R-Lubbock), and inate state funding for that left-wing organi- lish the dominance of men in our society." Jerry Madden (R-Richardson) zation Gramm loves to hate, Texas Rural What a relief. Less reassuring are reports Senator Jerry Patterson (R-Pasadena) Legal Aid. By filing the initial lawsuit, Pat- of other marriage bills currently being In response to the Val Verde voting law- terson told the Dallas Morning News, TRLA drafted. According to Representative Char- suits (over whether military personnel who "participated in racist, partisan and prejudi- lie Howard (R-Sugar Land) one proposal haven't lived in a county for years should cial actions toward military personnel." would require premarital counseling; an- vote in local elections), Republican law- The Senator is waiting to see "what action other would mandate a one-year waiting makers have joined the GOP squawk squad TRLA takes to discipline itself' at an up- period before marriage. in supposed defense of "the right of the coming board meeting, said a spokesman Visions of a better society: don't let peo- military to vote." Madden says he will file from Patterson's office. After that he's likely ple who want to get married marry, force a bill (currently in Legislative Council) to to recommend that TRLA be denied almost people who don't want to be married to make sure that votes mailed "in a timely $1 million in state funds. ❑ stay together—altogether now, I'd like to teach the world to sing.... The Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas No Quarters and The Texas Observer H.B. 743 proudly present a reading by H.B. 762 Representatives Tony Goolsby (R-Dallas) and Kip Averitt (R-Waco) Rosemary Catacalos Goolsby's H.B. 743 would make drinking games a Class C misdemeanor, supposedly Thursday, March 27 to crack down on college student de- 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. bauchees. Outlawing frat house drinking Sinclair Suite, 3.128; Texas Union games would be silly enough, but the bill UT Austin Campus doesn't specify game location or partici- Reception and Booksigning follow. pants' ages—any game that "includes the consumption of an alcoholic beverage as an For more information, please call (512) 471-2136. element of the gaipe" and whose "primary

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 7 FEATURE Environment for Sale at Barton Creek BY MICHAEL KING Environmentalism pays. That was the central lesson learned from "Environmentalism at the Crossroads," a weekend confer- ence held last month (January 30-February 1) at that Austin ecological crossroads, the Barton Creek Conference Resort and Country Club. rill he conference, sponsored by the Political Econ- he next morning PERC executive director Terry L. Ander- omy Research Center (PERC) of Bozeman, Mon- son would begin his introductory remarks by first donning tana, brought together about a dozen Texas jour- an economist's green eye-shade and then an environmental- nalists for a series of presentations by PERC ist's headband, and explaining that the purpose of free market envi- economists and others on something PERC calls ronmentalism is to bring these seemingly antagonistic worlds to- "free market environmentalism." PERC, a con- gether. Then he leaned over the marble-top conference table and servative think-tank founded at Montana State confided a couple of PERC's favorite mantras: "Wealthier is University in 1980 (it has since become an inde- healthier," and "Only people in rooms like this can afford to be pendent non-profit), says its primary goal is to address environ- worrying about the environment." Hold dearly those thoughts mental problems with "market solutions," as opposed to "com- (while you try to forget the poisoned air of Corpus Christi, the mand-and-control" solutions—i.e., the dreaded "governmental fouled water of the regulations." On the theory, I suppose, that we hapless scribblers HE LEANED OVER THE MARBLE-TOP colonias, the sludged need regular doses of economic orthodoxy to prevent regulatory CONFERENCE TABLE AND CONFIDED and irradiated earth of contamination, PERC sponsors annual journalism conferences in A COUPLE OF PERC'S FAVORITE Sierra Blanca). They Montana, and recently branched out to Minnesota and now Texas. MANTRAS: "WEALTHIER IS HEALTH- were painfully repre- Guests of PERC represented at the Austin conference included the IER," AND "ONLY PEOPLE IN ROOMS sentative of the level of Houston Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Texas Monthly, LIKE THIS CAN AFFORD TO BE WOR- panglossian economic Forbes Magazine (a Forbes editor sits on PERC's board of RYING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT." `ideas" addressed dur- trustees), the Wall Street Journal, UPI, and several smaller publica- ing the conference. tions. While most of the presenters agreed in principle with PERC's Yet it was mostly the Perkies themselves who seemed devoted to economic doctrines, also speaking were representatives of the Lone these oversimplifications. Beyond their sloganeering, the confer- Star Sierra Club, the Save Our Springs Alliance, and even Big Bend ence did offer several notions of interest to environmentalists, al- National Park (which PERC believes should be whimsically priva- though few of these had much to do with ideological caricatures tized, along with all state and national parks). like "command-and-control" regulation or "free markets." The "Perkies," as they cheerfully call themselves, are an affable, Over Thursday evening's grilled salmon, the opening speaker outdoorsy bunch, partial to anecdotes about fly-fishing and big- was Howard Burris, a local businessman who once owned 1,000 game hunting, testimony to their affections for all things natural. acres of west Austin land, at first virtually valueless and then dis- They were even a little apologetic about hosting a conference amidst covered, during residential development, to be habitat for the en- the rolling fairways and garish splendors of palatial Barton Creek dangered golden-cheeked warbler. Burns told an engrossing story Resort, saying they were used to more rustic Montana venues—al- of being whipsawed between oscillating land values and rapidly though reporter Carol Estes, guest at an earlier conference, priced changing regulations, and finally being hamstrung and foreclosed the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch (near Bozeman) at $2,000 a week. I upon in the wake of of contradictory applications of local and fed- guess it's simply a question of what you're used to. eral environmental laws. The pillared excesses of the Barton Creek Country Club include, Although still angered by his experience, Burris was not embit- among other gestures at conspicuous expense, a bar named in honor tered. Even when goaded by his audience, he did not leap to con- of Freeport-McMoRan CEO James R. Moffett: the "Jim Bob demn the Environmental Protection Agency or the Endangered Lounge." One could hardly turn around without bumping into an Species Act. (Indeed, he insisted that if somebody intentionally expensive gew-gaw, but my' favorite touch of fake elegance were tries to skirt the environmental laws, "the government probably the shelves lining the lobby/"library," where we were welcomed ought to hang 'em high.") Instead, Burris said, his story was a clas- with hors d'oeuvres spread across the grand piano. The shelves sic illustration of the political problem of "competing goods": the were filled with the sort of thrift-shop, never-touched, hard-cover need to preserve endangered species with the need to maintain the "books"—long-forgotten novels, out-of-date trade manuals, neo- rights of property owners, each of which is a potentially expensive Victorian memoirs—usually found only in the bedroom suites of proposition. When it comes to the social costs of environmental discount furniture stores. protection, Burris said, "Nobody wants responsibility; nobody

8 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

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Karen Olsson ♦ Better Habitats through Chemistry? wants to pay." In short, his tale was an argument for improved and It is difficult to imagine, for example, what a museum-scale pre- fair environmental regulation (and its adequate funding), not for serve of endangered African animals assembled for the entertain- its abolition. ment of Dallas tourists can tell us about the destruction of African It was hardly the ringing defense of unfettered free markets pro- habitat by the combined forces of empire, post-imperial devasta- claimed by the Perkies. The story would be much the same, at least tion, and multi-national corporate rapacity—except that it needs to from the invited guests, throughout the conference. Much of Fri- be stopped, and as soon as possible. day's session was devoted to presentations by consultants or busi- During the entire conference, the word "corporation" was rarely nessmen who had found inventive ways to combine local (i.e., uttered, but it's probably just as well. PERC Senior Associate micro-economic) forms of environmental protection with com- Richard Stroup (director of the Interior Department's Office of merce: a Midwest landscaper who specializes in native plants in- Policy Analysis during the Reagan' administration) is fond of such stead of lawn grass; a North Texas private zookeeper using upmar- Eco-101 fatuities as "Producing the greatest amount of value for ket "eco-tourism" to help protect endangered African species; an society, net of total cost, is the job of the corporation" (PERC Re- environmental consultant helping to establish birding trails on pri- ports, December 1996). Stroup even seems to believe such bro- vate and public Texas lands; an Oregon environmentalist lobbying mides represent the real world; the original Professor Pangloss the state and raising foundation money to purchase agricultural would have the good grace to blush. Stroup's wife, Jane Shaw, also water rights to use in preservation of salmon runs. Peter Emerson a Senior Associate, is co-author of a just-published parents' envi- of the Environmental Defense Fund described environmental pro- ronmental manual called Facts Not Fear, with an introduction by jects in El Paso, San Antonio, and the Gulf, each of which involves that well-known naturalist, Marilyn Quayle. The book, proclaim- the balancing of commercial interests (utilities, residential devel- ing that environmentalists are attempting to terrorize our children opment, fishing) with environmental protection (air, water, Galve- with made-up horror stories of pollution, is a central document in ston Bay), and each of which requires the intensive cooperation of the current right-wing campaign to stop reauthorization of the Na- industry, citizens, and governments (local, state, and national) to tional Environmental Education Act, which provides funds to pub- achieve economic and environmental ends. Each of these projects lic schools. (See "The Assault on Eco-Education," page '10.) held useful lessons for environmentalists, but also cautionary ones. In fairness to the Perkies, while they preach that private property

THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9 FEBRUARY 28, 1997 owners should be fairly rewarded for incurring public environmen- slow down, rather than accelerate, the economic and environmen- tal costs ("positive incentives matter"), they also insist (at least in tal destruction it has wreaked. (The day before the PERC confer- principle) on the libertarian corollary that those who damage the ence, Anderson had promoted these notions at yet another Austin environment, in Anderson's words, "should bear the costs for what conservative confab, this one sponsored by two PERC allies, the they've done." Anderson has published some useful observations Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute and the Washing- about the environmental devastation sustained by federal subsidies ton-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. Also in attendance of massive western water projects for the benefit of private indus- were TNRCC Chairman Barry McBee, and Texas State Represen- try. His solution? Privatize all federal and state forests, parks, tatives Warren Chisum and David Counts—be sure to look for lands, waters, etc., etc., etc.—as if eliminating the beleaguered PERC's discounted doctrines on sale at a Legislature currently public middleman in this private aggrandizement would somehow meeting in your neighborhood)

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ronmental education changing teaching r locally on s-chool state level. Their message: e ections. said Dan Barry of the education has gone too far, isfull of one- ruzin '!about Clearinghouse for Environmental Advo- sided arguments and outright lies, and environmental iss text- cacy and Research. Moreover, Sanera and asks students to become activists. The real books and environmental groups. Each Shaw maintain deep ties with riv,htwing agenda behind this "reform" campaign, chapter- is reviewed by "experts" and is foundations and dirty industries. however, is to build enough key media detailed in its approach, attacking issues coverage to derail reauthorization of the statistic by statistic. Common beliefs "We Are the NRA" National Environmental Education Act. about rainforests, endangered species, Sanera directs the Center for Environ- The NEEA, which passed the Senate by population, water and air quality issues mental Education Research at the Clare- unanimous consent last year, is slated for are all rewritten. An advertisement claims mont Institute, a highly conservative think action in the House. A look at the connec- that Facts Not Fear offers parents a bal- tank founded in 1979. Sanera is also pres- tions between these individuals and their anced, sound-science alternative to the ident of the Arizona Institute for Public respective organizational affiliations re- "exaggerated claims about the environ Policy Research (MPPR). Both organiza- veals ties to big industry, rightwing think mental crises" that kids hear in school. tions are members of Alliance for Amer- tanks, conservative foundations and the Yet the authors resort to the same one- ica, a nationwide network of more than religious right. This coordinated attack is sided arguments for which they criticize 500 Wise Use groups. Alliance for Amer- conducted by groups financed by environmental education as a whole. For ica's funders include the National Rifle Chevron, Shell, Dow Chemical and other example, the book contends that rain- Association and numerous industry industrial polluters with a vested interest forests are not really being deforested by groups, including the American Mining in undermining environmental education. forces commonly identified in textbooks Congress, the American Petroleum Insti- While attempting to portray themselves as (i.e., agriculture, commercial logging and tute, the American Pulpwood Associa- concerned about the peace of mind of cattle ranching) but by "countries bring- tion, and the Chemical Manufacturers As- America's children, the true goal of the ing on the problems themselves." A sociation. The Claremont Institute and

10 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

s a group, the Perkies, who say they trace their doctrines to us live in, where the only recourse most ordinary citizens have against economic or environmental destruction is the increasingly the "classical liberalism" of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Hume, enfeebled statehouse or courthouse, Perkies respond in unison: A and the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics, dreamily posit an economic universe filled with eighteenth-century What the market can't do, governments shouldn't even attempt. Of yeoman farmers, each supplied at birth with an equal amount of course, Perkies especially hate taxes, of virtually any kind, with property-rights vouchers readily exchanged for swords, one glaring exception: extremely regressive sales taxes for the ploughshares, golden-cheeked warblers, or clean air. As an intel- right to enter or use whatever remains of public parks, lakes, lectual system, it's touching, quaint, and utterly ahistorical; as an wildlife refuges, preserves and the like. They don't call them economic doctrine, it's eerily reminiscent of pre-Columbian geog- "taxes," of course, but "user fees"—set intentionally high enough raphy. Asked what this fantasy has to do with the universe most of so that the only people who can pay them will be, you guessed it,

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most to gain fro education, such as the Amotl Boeing, Chevron, Coors Fo Dow Chemical, Exxon, Ford Motor Com ucation is too critical to tpany Fund, General Motors, IBM, Mobil to , 4; ing . t '`future as a nation to trust it to corpora- Oil, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, General eV'''41 &Tent federal" the envi- tions''ihat pollute. If confronted by who is Electric, Procter & Gamble, and Shell. ronment have gone too far: "EVidently the funding the small group of people making Many of these corporations are notorious EPA does not want to educate students, this attack, the public will respond." for their environmental misdeeds. An but rather indoctrinate them to blind obe- Exxon tanker caused a catastrophic oil dience to federal policies." Profiles of the Marianne Manilov and Tamara Schwarz spill in Prince William Sound, while other three key figures and their organiza- are with the Center for Commercial-Free Shell's operations in Nigeria (a major tional and funding links look remarkably Public Education, known for its UNPLUG source of global warming gases) have left similar. Shaw is a senior associate at the campaign against commercially spon- the native Ogoni people socially op- Political Economy Research Center sored TV in public schools. The Center's pressed and environmentally devastated. (PERC), also a member of the Alliance address is 360 Grand Ave., No. 385, Oak- for America and the Heritage Foundation. land, CA 94610; (510) 268-1100. Re- Corporate Lesson Plans In fact, Adam Meyerson, vice president of search for this article was conducted as While supporting the claim that environ- the Heritage Foundation, is on PERC's part of the "Consumers or Citizens Pro- mental education is biased, some of these board of directors. Many of PERC's fun- grain"—an effort to educate the public same corporations simultaneously are ders are also Heritage funders: Amoco about corporate polluters' involvement in sending out anti-environmental propa- Foundation, Lilly Endowment, Carthage schools.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 11 FEBRUARY 28, 1997 those folks like themselves whom the "free market" has made rich out in relentless detail (see "Dollars for Sprawl," page 13) the several enough to care about the environment. Keeps out the riff-raff, you hundred million dollars in taxpayer subsidies—from highway funds see, and maintains the commercially useful delusion that the "envi- to infrastructure to school buildings to savings and loan bailouts— ronment" is something you drive to in your Range Rover. which underwrote the "private" Barton Creek Resort, Country Club, golf courses, and upscale residential development where we all sat, hat was the tone of much of the discussion, relieved by oc- mulling the ineffable virtues of the free market. The manicured syl- casional doses of un-Perkian sanity. Valerie Naylor, for ex- van retreat, heavily tax- Tample, spokeswoman for Big Bend National Park, delivered THE CORPORATIONS AND THEIR payer-subsidized, also a spirited defense of maintaining the common natural heritage of DEFENDERS HAVE NO INTEREST IN happens to be located in the American people—a pyrrhic gesture, under the circumstances. "FREE AND EFFICIENT MARKETS." Austin's most sensitive Ken Kramer of the Sierra Club argued that defining the problem of THEY STRONGLY PREFER THE and rapidly degrading endangered species solely in economic terms was both wrong and UNREGULATED PROFITS ONLY ecosystem, the Barton self-defeating. MADE POSSIBLE AND SUSTAINED Creek recharge zone for And, although it fell on mostly deaf ears, the highlight of the BY MASSIVE PUBLIC SUBSIDIES. the area's corner of the weekend was the Saturday afternoon presentation by Austin envi- Edwards Aquifer. The ronmental attorney Bill Bunch, who has long fought the good fight beneficiaries of this taxpayer largesse included such public-minded against the degradation of Austin's land and water supply by the cor- free-marketeers as Ben Barnes, John Connally, Jim Bob Moffett, porate privateers who like to masquerade as defenders of the sacred and Freeport-McMoRan. "It doesn't cost us more to save the envi- "free market." In fact, Bunch pointed out, the corporations and their ronment," summarized Bunch. "We spend enormous funds subsidiz- defenders have no interest in "free and efficient markets." They ing the destruction of the environment." strongly prefer the unregulated profits only made possible and sus- As Bunch concluded his remarks, there was a moment of reflec- tained by massive public subsidies. Austin, Bunch said, is a case in tive silence, but it didn't last. R.L. Smith (of the Competitive Enter- point; private interests have repeatedly circumvented the public will prise Institute) suggested, apparently in all seriousness, that Bunch's by ruthlessly promoting, commercially and politically, uncontrolled attack on subsidies was essentially libertarian, and he should there- development into environmentally sensitive areas. Bunch then laid fore support GOP Congressman Ron ("Buy Peruvian Citizenship")

via -giadw74.-4.11700.zikt ARO ucatio states rio tion in grades througl Jonathan Adler of the COmpetitiVe prise Institute complain that environmen- ar tal education is "taking advantage of stu- noms the 34 rn dents' natural curiosity about the world 'thetrie comp ills into the ties y, m and transforming them into activists. - country's water, air and land each year, young students that, while "scientists Meanwhile, cutbacks in education are and encourages children to "fashion bird- have known for years how to deal with forcing schools to rely more and more on feeders out of both plastic and paperboard nuclear 'leftovers,'" Congress stubbornly free teaching materials supplied by corpo- milk containers." Polystyrene Packaging refused to authorize a nuclear dump until rations, many with poor environmental Council's "Plastics and the Environment 1982. The teaching aid recommends using records. "Consumers or Citizens," a re- Sourcebook" urges children to plan a "high radioactivity to 'sterilize' sewage port from the Center for Commercial-Free "plastics treasure hunt to reinforce the di- sludge—turning waste into a benefit from Public Education (CCFPE), notes that versity of plastics." American Plastics our silent servant, the atom." U.S. kids—exposed to an average of Council publishes "Plastics in Our —Marianne Manilov and Tamara . 40,000 TV commercials a year at home-- World," a slick K-12 kit that downplays Schwarz now face commercials in the classroom: plastic's solid waste problem by promot- Shell Oil Company provides a free video ing incineration of plastic (called "white Consumers or Citizens is available for $7 for schools called "Fueling America's Fu- coal" in APC's brochures) as a way to "re- from UNPLUG, 360 Grand Ave., No. 385, ture" that teaches: "It takes gasoline to lease useful energy." The kit makes no Oakland, CA 94610, (510) 268-1100.

12 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

—.0#00.1en.ftse Paul. (For some reason, this remarkable pro- posal brought to mind the image of a row- boat with a bull-horn sent out to stop the Exxon Valdez.) Terry Anderson followed to insist that PERC also opposes subsidies, but that the problem Bunch had just described was obviously "too much government," and "less government meant less opportunity for subsidies."

ut there are subsidies, and there are subsidies. Remember, environmen- B talism pays—"free market environ- mentalism," that is. PERC's leading lights are tenured faculty members at the Montana State University at Bozeman, and PERC it- self is a federally approved 501(c)3 non- profit corporation, allowing its supporters to take tax deductions (i.e., taxpayer subsidies) to fund PERC' s ongoing campaign to hand

over most public assets and public business Harrison Saunders A For Rent: Rm w/ vu, Big Bend Nat'l Pk to private industry. Not surprisingly, PERC has found a ready market for its ideas among those who stand most to people consider the middle of the country...to be their general zone of benefit from their dissemination and enactment. PERC's most gener-• influence," Anderson told me. "So they asked us to do a conference in ous recent benefactors include such friends of the environment as the Minnesota, and now this one in Texas." David Koch told the National Adolph Coors Company, Amoco, Burlington Northern/Meridian Oil, Journal that the family foundations—which also underwrite the lib- Coca Cola, Conoco, Exxon, Pfizer, and Proctor and Gamble. The re- ertarian Cato Institute and "sound science" propagandists Citizens for ally big bucks have come from a group of giant right-wing founda- a Sound Economy—promote projects designed to "minimize the role tions, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the of government and to maximize the role of private economy and to Carthage Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Sarah Scaife Foun- maximize personal freedoms." dation, the Liberty Fund, the FMC Foundation, and a whole group of With apologies to Victor Hugo, the Koch-funded message of the foundations created by Koch Industries (oil, gas, and land manage- PERC conference might be summarized as follows: The rich and ment). The latter group includes the Claude R. Lambe Charitable poor alike henceforth will be free to buy their own privatized piece Foundation, which paid for the Barton Creek conference. "The Koch of the environment. Caveat emptor. ❑

Public Schools: ion from Austin and Eanes School Districts Circle C bike track and soccer fiel $0.6 million from City of Austin Circle C bike track: $0.5 million from State of Texas Dick Nichols park: $1.10 million from City of Austin Federal bailout of Circle C Ranch: $92.0 million from RTC Total Subsidies: $474,280,000 Source: Hill Country Foundation

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 13 FEBRUARY 28, 1997 FEATURE The Nazi Braceros: Hitlefs Doctors in Texas Hospitals BY LINDA HUNT() Washington As energy secretary, Hazel O'Leary got so much bad press that its easy to forget the legacy she leaves her successor and the President: an 'Openness policy" that forced the Department of Energy to release thousands of documents about our government's secret radiation experiments on human beings. But the coverup of a Nazi connection to those experiments by the Presidents Advisory. Committee on Human Radiation Experiment set up in 1994 to investigate the extent of government radiation testing, strongly suggests more openness is necessary. ome experiments took place in the 1950s at the M.D. avoided an ethical issue central to their investigation—our gov- Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research in Houston, ernment's use of Nazi science to further its own goals during the where 263 cancer patients were subjected to whole- Cold War. body exposure to relatively high doses of x-radiation. Some of the missing pieces of the story can be found in Leipzig, One of the doctors conducting the experiments was the German city where Gerstner spent much of his career. Leipzig Herbert Gerstner, an employee of the U.S. Air Force. is best known for its place in the history of music. Like Herbert The Advisory Committee briefly mentioned these Gerstner, Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn once experiments in its final report in 1995, but suppressed called Leipzig their home. ISone of the most important and relevant pieces of information about By the time Gerstner arrived in the early 1930s the city was chang- those tests—that Gerstner was a former Nazi who had conducted ing. Over the next ten years, most of the city's 18,000 Jews would be similar experiments on cancer patients in Nazi Germany during sent to Buchenwald and other concentration camps and their syna- World War II. gogues would be burned to the ground. The University of Leipzig, Gerstner was brought to the United States by Operation Paper- where Gerstner worked, would also change. Under the Nazis, polit- clip—a government project which might be described as a post-war ical appointees who were members of the SS replaced the directors of "Bracero Program" for German scientists and physicians. And like many academic departments. And at least one professor played a sig- many of the Mexican braceros brought into this country to do agri- nificant role in "T4," an early Nazi euthanasia program aimed at the cultural work, Herbert Gerstner ended up in Texas, where in 1950 mentally ill, the first victims of the Holocaust. Dr. Werner Catel, a se- he began his work at the Air Force's School of Aviation Medicine nior official in the children's euthanasia project, was director of the in San Antonio. Paperclip was a secret project run by the Joint university's pediatric center, where there was a special ward estab- Chiefs of Staff, which, from 1945 to the early 1970s, brought 1,600 lished for the killing of feeble-minded children. Catel was later pros- German scientists to America to work for the military and NASA, ecuted in West Germany for war crimes and died in 1981. according to Paperclip records. (Those brought to Texas included That horror had not yet begun when twenty-five-year-old Her- members of Werner von Braun's rocket team, who worked for the bert Bruno Gerstner received his medical degree in 1935. The slim, U.S. Army at Fort Bliss and later for NASA.) 5 ' 5 " med student had come a long way from his humble begin- Jewish community leaders expressed outrage when learning Nazi nings as the eldest of four sons of a carpenter in Zeitz. He wasn't doctors had conducted radiation experiments in Texas. "That some what anyone would call handsome. His ruddy complexion was of these people could have been allowed to enter the United States marked by three deep scars on his left cheek and his brown eyes and occupy positions of importance in our hospitals and military fa- were almost hidden by dark, bushy eyebrows. But he was an excel- cilities is incomprehensible," said Maxine Cohen, director of the lent student, and after receiving an "A" on his final medical exam Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of San An- he was offered a job and an internship at the university, according tonio. "They should have been charged with crimes in courts of jus- to Berlin Document Center records. tice. Instead, they were protected and honored in this country." That same year Gerstner joined the Hitler Youth, and for the next The Nazi connection to radiation experiments should have been a few years he served as a first-aid instructor to Hitler Youth troops. red flag for Advisory Committee members, who in public hearings He became a member of the Nazi Party in May 1937, when the and written statements claimed that medical ethics and the lessons of party re-opened its ranks to Nazis who had proven themselves ac- the Nuremberg war crimes trials were central to their investigations. tive and devoted, according to Berlin Document Center records. He Yet by not mentioning Gerstner' s Nazi past, the report's authors was assigned party membership number 5815500.

14 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

While he interned at the Medical University Poli-Clinic, Gerst- experimental subjects. From October 1937 to September 1939, his ner worked as a scientific assistant in the university's Physiology main work in the physiology department involved studying the ef- Institute, directed by Dr. Martin Gildemeister, a specialist in the ef- fect of electrical current on human skin. Subjects used in these ex- fect of electricity on people struck by lightening and on victims of periments included cancer patients, patients with psoriasis, and a electrical accidents. Gildemeister also studied electromagnetic variety of other people described by Gerstner as "old people and fields—today a topic of interest to people living near electric young" and "the healthy and the sick." power lines—and even reviewed one of the earliest American "Examinations on persons suffering from cancer revealed that in EMF studies for a German medical journal. After Gildemeister cases of cancer the electrical skin resistance is frequently increased," died in 1943, Gerstner continued the work. But Gerstner's publica- Gerstner wrote. "It has not been investigated, however, whether a di- tions on the subject, and his collaboration with a university col- agnostic method for cancer can be developed from this." league with questionable connections, raise some important ques- Who were these people and where did these experiments take tions: Mainly, was their expertise used by T4 doctors working in place? Were they children killed by Werner Catel? Were they pa- asylums and clinics where they were developing an extreme form 'tients from the university dermatology clinic run by SS doctor of shock therapy known as the "Panse method"? Named after Dr. Josef Vonkennel (who conducted typhus experiments on patients, Frederick Panse, a psychiatrist who worked on Germany's eu- according to Nuremberg trial records)? thanasia program, this "treatment" was later described in a U.S. Unfortunately, we may never know the full story about Gerst- government report as "pure unadulterated sadism." ner's experiments. According to U.S. intelligence reports, he told In 1935, Gerstner had worked on a study of the effect of elec- American scientists who interrogated him after the war that his tricity on the human body. His collaborator was Dr. Siegfried records had been destroyed when the Allies bombed Leipzig in Koeppen—a pathologist and close associate of Panse who wrote a 1943. After the war Gerstner moved to a clinic set up at the Uni- book with him after the war. Koeppen also worked with a notori- versity of Greifswald in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. ous department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Brain Re- When he was recruited in 1949 under Operation Paperclip, his search, Professor Julius Hallervorden. Hallervorden had dissected professional history was no secret. And Paperclip policy, signed by hundreds of brains of people killed in euthanasia centers. In some President Truman, barred war criminals and "ardent Nazis" from the cases, he himself extracted the victims' brains immediately after project. But the American officers running the program were more they were killed, according to Nuremberg records. concerned about the Soviets than about Paperclip scientists' Nazi In his book Erkankungen der Inneren Organe Nach Elek- pasts. Army intelligence agents questioning Gerstner asked him trischen Ufaellen, Koeppen described how Hallervorden removed about Soviet activities in Germany—not his wartime Nazi activities. the brains of corpses after Koeppen had autopsied them. "Haller- Operation Paperclip brought Gerstner to San Antonio and the Air vorden has investigated six brains of electrical accident victims au- Force's School of Aviation Medicine (SAM), a center for military re- topsied by me," Koepen wrote. Further on, Koeppen wrote that search into the effect of space travel and jet flight on the human body. Hallervorden examined the brains of ten more people who he He signed a one-year contract at an annual salary of $5,400. claimed had also died in "electrical accidents." A dozen German aeromedical experts were Given all that, a study that Gerstner and Koeppen published in already working at SAM when Gerstner ar- the German medical journal Virchows Archiv should have caught rived in 1950. Dr. Hubertus someone's attention. The article, after all, vividly describes exper- Strughold, known as the "fa- iments that compared the marks left on human skin from electro- ther of American space cution with those caused by burns. medicine," was in In one experiment, a man's left hand was exposed to extreme See "Doctors," page 18 heat while his right hand was subjected to an electric current. Another experiment was conducted on "fresh human skin" 161.4b,- that Gerstner and Koeppen claim a "surgical clinic was (4444:0 kind enough to leave at our disposal." Photographs ac- 4.4.4:91NP 4‘441.1*-;14 z• companying the article show a man's blistered hand and c'4.* :bs S1:41 s Cle upper torso covered with electrocution or burn marks. 4411°Ait DFp Who were the subjects? Did Gerstner really obtain of --. J "fresh human skin" from a surgical clinic, and • CIA( 7. where did the clinic get it? Leipzig University was 144%2.. '.41.4,1,r the center of a Nazi extermination program in- `tor volving feeble-minded children, and human specimens were stored in the university's ehkitt, pathology department. 2;.:14e,,- • Gerstner conducted other studies that Bf (.4 raise equally disturbing questions, espe- `IAJace

cially considering his admission in Pa- 0 /9 perclip records that he used humans as P.,— " Z)itte p p r 444.. wp.th FEBRUARY 28, 1997 '-•Sr`,/ 01 •4. 0 • 002..04.41 't I *Z.q °1241114t) „,. 3 1? 1?,, 40Av

ON, DELAY! Attentive National Public The company also hired one of Suharto's plans to name a building on campus after Radio listeners know why many regard daughters. Bre-X jumped on the nepotism Jim Bob Moffett, the CEO of New Or- U.S. ,House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, bandwagon by hiring one of Suharto's leans-based Freeport-McMoRan. The Sugar Land Republican, as the consum- sons—at a reported sum of $1 million a naming came at the suggestion of U.T. mate political butcher. In a February 5 in- month—and Barrick and Bre-X were Chancellor William Cunningham, who, at terview with NPR's "All Things Consid- thought to have made a deal with the time the building was named, was sit- ered" host Linda Wertheimer, DeLay Suharto' s government. ting on Freeport's board. assailed President Clinton for playing par- But Freeport's flamboyant CEO, Jim But just a few blocks away from Jim tisan politics. Clinton, he said, "talks about Bob Moffett, was quietly working in the Bob Hall, the State Legislature (meeting [being] bipartisan. But he wants the Re- background. Already mining the massive in the plain old "Capitol," which at press publicans to be `bi' while he's running Grasberg deposit on the western side of time had not yet been named after any big around being partisan. And we have ex- Papua New Guinea, which contains some companies or their CEOs) will soon get a tended our hand time and time again to 38 million ounces of gold, Freeport chance to restrict corporate kickbacks at have it bit off by this president." wanted a slice of Busang, which contains state schools. Austin Representative Glen Throughout the in- an estimated 70 million ounces of gold. Maxey has filed HB 510, which would terview, DeLay was At $350 per ounce, the gold at Busang is prohibit officials at state-supported uni- the one with the sharp worth at least $25 billion. versities from taking donations from a teeth. He told Werth- Freeport has long had close ties to person or company if a university official eimer that •he op- Suharto's regime. And on February 17, "at any time within the preceding year has posed Clinton's State Freeport and Bre-X announced that they had a substantial interest in the business of the Union call for are to be partners in the Busang deal. Ac- entity." The bill could also prevent uni- standards in public cording to Reuters, the mining venture versity officials who have business ties to schools. "It' s . . .not • Tom DeLay will be "45 percent owned by Bre-X, 30 big donors from naming campus build- the function of Washington, D.C. to tell percent by two Indonesian companies and ings after those donors. Sugar Land, Texas how to run its school their partners, 10 percent by the Republic During a February 11 House Higher system." Asked what he thought about of Indonesia and 15 percent by Freeport- Education Committee meeting, U.T. Sys- Clinton's proposal to have campaign fi- McMoRan Copper and Gold." Bre-X said tem officials expressed concern over nance reform passed by July 4, DeLay re- Freeport, which will operate the mine, Maxey's bill. They argued that the bill sponded: "I don't think it's going to hap- would provide approximately $400 mil- could thwart the system's ability to raise pen mainly because we're not interested in lion, or 25 percent of the money needed to private funds, which they claim is now what the President is doing." build a mining complex at the Busang essential due to the state's dwindling DeLay did allow that he wasn't entirely site. Reuters also reported that Freeport, support. Board of Regents member Low- opposed to Clinton's proposal for giving through Chase Manhattan bank, will pro- ell Leberman argued that HB 510 is su- tax breaks to college students' families. vide up to $1.2 billion in additional fund- perfluous because the System already has But, like any steadfast Republican, he ing for the project. "all the tools necessary" to check con- added: "I don't want it instead of a $500- Congressional investigators are look- flicts of interest in naming university fa- per-child tax credit or capital gains tax re- ing at several companies operating in In- cilities. For example, he said that any duction or real across-the-board simplifi- donesia for potential violations of the building name must be approved by the cation of the tax code." Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which Board of Regents and that officials must prohibits American companies from pay- disclose their financial interests. But CORRUPTION CONTENDER. In the mad ing bribes to foreign officials. In 1995, Leberman neglected to mention why scramble for the world's richest gold de- Transparency International and the Uni- these checks and balances didn't stop the posit, New Orleans-based Freeport-Mc- versity of Goettingen released a ranking egregious conflict of interest involving ' MoRan Copper & Gold has apparently of the world's most corrupt countries. In- the Moffett building. won. When Bre-X Minerals, a small Cal- donesia was ranked number one by a wide gary-based company, found the gigantic margin. Last year it fell to number 10, but VAL VERDE, STILL GOING. State officials Busang deposit on the island of Borneo in it appears to be staging a comeback with are still making noise about the Del Rio 1995, some of the world's biggest gold this deal. The Busang mining contract military voting case ("Uncovering the Val companies began lobbying Suharto's cor- was widely seen as a contest to see who Verde Vote," February 14). Texas Secre- rupt Indonesian regime for the right to be- could provide the most lucrative deal for tary of State Tony Garza has written to come Bre-X's partner. Barrick Gold of Suharto and his cronies. Freeport appar- Attorney General Dan Morales to com- Toronto used two members of their advi- ently won. plain that the federal judge's ruling, sory board, Canadian prime minister which kept two Val Verde incumbents in Brian Mulroney and former President JIM BOB UNIVERSITY. The University of office pending the outcome of the election George Bush, to curry favor with Suharto. Texas is proceeding with controversial challenge, contradicts state election law.

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Austin attorney Jennifer Harbury) and Garza maintains that the candidates who director of admissions at A&M. "But they U.S. citizen Michael Devine. The SOA is won in November, including Ku Klux sense something has changed and it ain't funded by taxpayers at a rate of $18.4 Klan veteran Murry Kachel, should hold good, and so they say, 'Why try?'" office until the court declares the final Meanwhile in the Capitol, the subject million a year. The congressional momentum is grow- winners. And Val Verde County GOP of a recent Texas Civil Rights Coalition ing after recent revelations about the Chairman Randy Sheppard has sent let- press conference veered quickly from SOA' s involvement in teaching torture ters to state Republican party members Equal Employment Opportunity lan- techniques, substantiated recently by the soliciting contributions to the candidates' guage in the appropriations bills to the re- Department of Defense release of Span- legal defense fund. cent opinion from Attorney General Dan ish-language training manuals used at the Democratic Representative Debra Morales mandating a broad interpretation SOA. The manuals advocated executions, Danburg, head of the House Elections of Hopwood. Several Democratic law- physical abuse, false imprisonment, an Committee, has named a special panel of makers said they would not approve two Democrats and one Republican to funding for universities whose policies the use of truth serum. Activists are being asked to call or consider the case, in hopes of achieving caused the number of minority students write their Representative and urge him "peace and tranquility." to decrease. To much applause, Repre- or her to support HR 611, which would Meanwhile in Washington, Demo- sentative Al Edwards (D-Houston) cratic Senator Robert Kerrey has ex- warned: "We're going to be looking at close the SOA. The full text of HR 611 and other infor- pressed an interest in the story—look for that appropriations bill, Mr. University of mation about the School of the Americas Kerrey, a Vietnam vet, to counter Phil Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and all and SOA Watch can be found at Gramm's framing of the case as an assault the rest of you." www.derechos.org/soaw/ or send email on the rights of military personnel. NO MORE ASSASSINS. As we went to to [email protected]. DAMNED IF YOU DO. Black and Hispanic press, Massachusetts Democrat Joseph DUMP ON TRIAL AND IN CONCERT. undergraduate applications to University Kennedy was joining Austin's Lloyd Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund and of Texas are down 52 percent, according Doggett in an Austin benefit hosted by other citizens' groups will stage a mock to admissions officials, while the number State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and the trial March 1 at the Capitol, charging ,• of white applicants has dropped 32 per- Guatemala Action Governor Bush and the Texas Natural Re- cent. Those figures are based on the Network of Austin sources Conservation Commission 10,000 applications received before (GANA). (TNRCC) with gross ineptitude in the February 1 (the original deadline, which Kennedy has matter of the proposed radioactive waste has been extended to March reintroduced leg- dump at Sierra Blanca. Proceedings begin 1). Richard Romo, a islation to close at 4 p.m., with testimony from a Mexican vice provost for U.T., the U.S. Army public official, a law professor, environ- didn't hesitate in ex- School of the mental activists, and private citizens. plaining why: "We know Americas (SOA). Then at 6 p.m. the jury will render judg- the reason for this sharp The school, dubbed ment on the questions: "Is the State of drop—because we've the "School of Assas- Texas guilty of environmental racism and been having an in- sins" by its critics, was is the TNRCC unfit to manage Texas' crease [in minority established fifty years natural resources?" applications in past ago in Panama under the Don't expect deliberations to take too years]—is Hop- guise of promoting stabil- long. But you can mull it over some more wood," Romo told the ity in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1986, the SOA that evening at La Zona Rosa's "Dump Austin - American Aid '97"—a benefit concert for the de- Statesman, referring to was relocated to Fort Ben- fense fund featuring eight Austin bands. the U.S. Court of Ap- ning, Georgia. It has graduated peals decision that struck 7 some of this hemisphere's most RAPOPORTS HONORED. Congrats to down race-based admissions policies at flagrant human rights abusers including: supporters, Bernard and the U.T. Law School. "Nothing else can Manuel Noriega, the ex-Panamanian longtime Observer Audre Rapoport, winners of the first an- explain it." president in U.S. prison for drug charges; nual John Henry Faulk Award for Civic - At Texas A&M, applications from Roberto D'Aubuisson, instigator of the Virtue, given by the Freedom of Informa- black students have declined by 15 per- assassination of Archbishop Oscar tion Foundation of Texas. The foundation cent, five times the decline in white stu- Romero of El Salvador; and Colonel Julio will honor the Rapoports at a special dents' applications. "If you go out and talk Alpfrez, the Guatemalan officer paid by March 22 dinner in Austin; it has also to individual students, they don't know the CIA and linked to the torture and mur- named its annual conference after them. what Hopwood is," said Gary Engelgau, der of Efrain Barnaca (husband of former ❑ 9\f,VOcttni

ti "Doctors," continued from page 15 ing SAM dining hall conversation: ■ Walter Schreiber, a notorious Nazi general, worked at SAM charge of the group and closely supervised its work. During the in 1951—even though he was a wanted war criminal. In response war, he'd been a colonel in the Luftwaffe and head of the Luft- to public protest, Air Force officers facilitated his emigration waffe's medical institute in Berlin. Today, the library at Brooks Air to Argentina. Force Base is named after him. ■ Konrad Schaefer was a doctor in Strughold's Berlin institute, Many of the Germans at SAM had Nazi pasts, and Strughold who was tried at Nuremberg for conducting seawater experiments himself was suspected of being involved in experiments at Dachau. on Gypsies at Dachau. After he was acquitted, he worked at SAM He escaped prosecution only by dying. In 1974 he was identified as until he returned to Germany in 1952. one of thirty-seven war crimes suspects under investigation by the ■ Ulrich Luft, a physiologist at Strughold's institute; published ar- U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. And at the time of his ticles which describe several high-altitude experiments he con- death in 1986, the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit was in- ducted on human subjects, including one in which a man was vestigating his wartime activity, according to government sources. locked in an airtight chamber under conditions simulating altitudes The curricula vitae of other scientists must have made interest- up to 29,500 feet.

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0, the Justice Dep..tmertlk hunting unit was forced to drop its case against Waffen SS officer Tscherim file was " Soobzokov, long rumored to be a CIA kv* employee. Documents—ostensibly show- repeated inquiries, I was 1nfeirt04, at the ing Soobzokov had disclosed what he was file had reappeared—but that Iii wor ertirne to stop my evi e charged with concealing—miraculously it because it had been packed for shipment from being discussed at the hearing. Min- appeared in the CIA's files and Soc,b- to the National Archives. utes into my testimony, the cormnittee's zokov's possession. My attorney, Elaine English, immedi- chairman cut me off. ately filed FOIA requests with both the The Palm Beach Post, ■ In 19%, the CIA intervened to weaken Stanley's home- Advisory Committee staff and the Depart- town newspaper, tenaciously pursued this the War Crimes Disclosure Act, spon- ment of Defense. I eventually obtained sored by Representative Carolyn Maloney coverup and reported that, "Within an hour the records—which are deposited in the of that hearing, the chief lawyer for the De- of New York, which would have made U.S. Holocaust Museum's library. U.S. intelligence files on Nazi war crimi- fense Department faxed a letter to the chair- But now I see the DOD has re-classi- nals available to the public. man of the House Judiciary Committee, fied the Gerstner and Strughold files, ac- dropping objections to Johnston's bill." My own experiences reporting on "Op- cording to the committee's final report Stanley's attorney, Richard Kupfur, eration Paperclip" over the past decade (page B41). said he believes the DOD wanted to avoid have not always been agreeable. I re- I had similar problems in 1984, after I a full-scale investigation of the Nazi con- ceived death threats, was stalked, and learned that Hoffmann and a dozen other nection to the Edgewood experiments. wiretapped. My research was impeded by Paperclip scientists had been employed at Undoubtedly, that's the motive behind the government agencies, followers of Lyn- the Army's primary chemical warfare coverup of Gerstner's Nazi past and his don LaRouche, and others. Files were hid- base at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland— involvement in the radiation tests.—L.H. den or deliberately detroyed. In one in- where more than 7,000 soldiers were used

18 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 In San Antonio, Luft studied the effect of rapid decompression on men in space flight. In 1954 he was named director of physiol- ogy at the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Re- If you believe... search in Albuquerque, where numerous radiation studies were conducted for the Atomic Energy Commission. He died in 1991. ...as we do, in the absolute necessity of a progressive, Shortly after Gerstner arrived at SAM, he began work on radia- independent journalism for Texas, we ask you to tion hazards to pilots and astronauts. Little was known about how help us sustain the Observer's present, and plan for radiation affected humans, but with space travel just around the corner, the Paperclip scientists at SAM were ahead of their Ameri- its future. can colleagues in this specialty. In 1951, the Air Force, in association with the University of We believe that there are thousands of disenchanted Texas Medical School, funded whole-body radiation experiments Texans who long for a voice like the Observer, but at M.D. Anderson Hospital. Patients at the hospital were used as who simply don't know where to find it. Help them subjects, even though "human experimentation" had been prohib- find us; help us find them. ited by the military. But as one Air Force officer rationalized at the time, sick patients can't be considered "normal people." Please take the time to spread the word to your Over five years, 263 cancer patients were used as subjects in the acquaintances. If you don't want to sell the Observer experiments. Many of these patients were indigent African Ameri- to them, let us. Simply send us a list of one—or cans, and references to "language barriers" suggest that others spoke only Spanish. There was a wide range of both age and diagnosis— two, or five—friends (and their addresses), and from a five-year-old-boy with leukemia to a 75-year-old man with we'll send them a free sample copy of the Observer, skin cancer, according to Advisory Committee records. along with an invitation to subscribe. While the patients were looking for a cure, the Air Force was after information about the number of flights a pilot of a nuclear- The Observer is Texas' only Journal of Free Voices. powered aircraft might take without being injured by exposure to You've known it for some time. radiation. The military also wanted to determine how exposure to radiation affected people's mental and physical capabilities, so the Please, pass it on. cancer patients were subjected to mental and psychomotor tests be- fore and after being doused with radiation. During experiments patients sat slumped directly in front of the Molly lvins and Jim Hightower x-ray beam and dosages ranged from 15 to 200 rad. After half the I,n 1. 996 PCB and dioxin reports dosage was administered, the patient was turned around and ex- James Galbraith on economics posed to the other half-dose. After-effects included nausea, vomit- Freeport and Shell ing and loss of appetite. In one case, a twenty-five-year old man we gave Eighner, Kellman on the arts lost seven pounds in two days, due to vomiting and complete loss of appetite. There's no evidence that patients gave their consent or ou a Memorial for Ralph Yarborough were fully informed about the Air Force's motive for the tests. Y Communities in action across Texas M.D. Anderson officials told the Advisory Committee in 1994 that The demise of radio rightist Roily. James they couldn't identify the patients used in experiments. But gener- this. The fight for the future of West Texas ally, after 1953, patients had signed forms authorizing radiation therapy, according to M.D. Anderson correspondence. Tell The battle over affirmative action When the experiments ended in 1956, Gerstner moved to Oak Reporting from Las Americas Ridge, Tennessee. At the Oak Ridge Associated Universities he de- your Redistricting and Texas courts veloped training programs for the medical use of radio nuclides. The real Larry King, live He died in 1984. Analytical election reporting Herbert Gerstner is just one example of our government's Cold friends. War belief that the end justifies the means. President Clinton's Ad- Dagoberto Gilb on life and letters visory Committee had a responsibility to confront the ghosts of that Naomi Shihab Nye and Texas poets era and set the historical record straight. But the moral standard at Rod Davis on the future of Texas writers Nuremberg somehow didn't apply to the German scientists re- The Alliance for Democracy cruited after the war—nor to the Americans who overlooked their Victor Morales as Quixote... crimes and tolerated their methods. ❑ TIIX AS Linda Hunt is a Washington, D.C. writer and author of Secret server Agenda: The U.S. Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paper- The Texas Observer • 307 W. 7th St • Austin, TX 78701 • (512) 477-0746 clip, published in 1991 by St. Martin's Press.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 19 FEBRUARY 28, 1997 Ad courtesy of BERNARD RAPOPORT AmericanAmerican Income T Insurance Company ,ife Chairman of the Board and EXECUTIVE OFFICES: P.O. BOX 208, WACO, TEXAS 76703, 817-772-3050 Chief Executive Officer AS THE MINDLESS CANNIBALISM GOES ON CAN CIVILITY BE RESTORED? BY JIM WRIGHT

t's a sad time in Washington, when it should be joyful. A politics of pling ordeal, but at what cost to the institution, the country, and the personal disparagement hangs like an angry cloud over tomorrow's well-being of my family? Iinauguration. Republicans plot ugly things for the President. Ethical My resignation, as I pointed out at the time, was an effort to save improprieties dog House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Democrats and Re- the House from the kind of painful experience to which I see it and the publicans hurl vicious imprecations at one another. The public busi- nation now being subjected. This is not to make the judgment that I ness suffers. was right in resigning and that Gingrich is wrong in clinging desper- It shouldn't be this way. For decades it wasn't. Even when the White ately to the Speaker's chair. We are two entirely different kinds of House and Congress were controlled by different political parties, a people. He is answerable to his conscience, as i am to mine. spirit of amity prevailed. Both sides yielded to cooperation, respected In my case, I did not want to be Speaker unless I could be an ef- agreements. Neither questioned the other's honor. Debate aimed at fective Speaker and a positive example to the institution and the destroying arguments, not personal reputation. country. Being Speaker was not essential to my self-respect. Being Ten years ago this month, I became speaker of the House. The Iran- responsible was, and is. contra scandal had just come to light. A secret cabal in the White Although I was certain I had violated no House rules, and was not House had broken laws and hastily shredded documents before even accused of breaking any law or of misrepresenting facts, it be- Congress could reconvene and subpoena them. came clear to me that resigning was the honorable course. I had been President Ronald Reagan, meeting with the Democratic leaders, made a focal point of a major controversy that was polarizing and swore that he was unaware of the blatant illegalities. Senate Majority paralyzing Congress, distracting it from the business to which it Leader Robert Byrd and I accepted his word. We wanted no rerun of should have been addressing its undivided energies. So, as I an- Watergate, no personal humiliation of the President. There was im- nounced on May 31, 1989, I decided to step aside so Congress could portant public work to be done. It wouldn't be served by a dozen com- get on with its work. mittees vying with sensational allegations for media attention and It turns out that I was mistaken to believe my doing so would Reagan's scalp. bring an end to what I saw as a season of "mindless cannibalism" Byrd and I insisted on one joint set of hearings. We each appointed and would shock the House into restoring an atmosphere of civility. our most authoritative members. Republican leaders did the same. Perhaps I was foolish to expect that Right or wrong, that's what 1 The blue-ribbon panel set a time frame, proceeded expeditiously with hoped for. public hearings, got the facts out on the table and announced its find- Can civility be restored to our political process? I don't know. So ings. By decision of the co-chairman, Lt. Colonel Oliver North, who co- many hateful things have been said, and there is such a cry for ordinated the illicit effort, was induced to testify by a grant of immu- vengeance. Even more than this, the independent judgment of legis- nity. This judgment by Rep. Lee Hamilton and Sen. Dan Inouye drew lators has been crudely corrupted by the incessant demands for criticism, but neither Byrd nor I interfered. We were out to exculpate money in the political process. Constantly begging for contributions, the sin, not to stone the sinner. as lawmakers are increasingly reduced to doing, is demeaning. These nonpartisan hearings let the business of Congress proceed. Last year, Gingrich spent $5.2 million on his re-election to the We adopted an ambitious agenda. Congress rose in public esteem. House. Several others spent almost that much. Fund raising and the Rep. Newt Gingrich and other GOP stalwarts began attacking clamor for contributions lies at the heart of the most serious com- me personally, accusing me of various rules infractions. I re- plaints against the White House and the Congressional leadership. quested an ethics committee investigation, confident that I'd be Gingrich is accused of diverting charitable gifts to political use, Clinton quickly exonerated. A year later I'd paid $500,000 in legal fees and of accepting donations from foreigners and rewarding blue-chip con- was broke. Congress was bogging down, mired in the high-level tributors with vanity invitations to spend the night in the White House. controversy. Things will not improve until we see serious, thorough-going In May 1989, I resigned as Speaker. Some journalists have specu- and enforceable campaign finance reform. That must be the gene- lated that some House Democrats encouraged me to step down. This sis of any credible claim to renew America's political honor and re- is incorrect. The decision was mine alone. Democratic colleagues were store its standards of decency. Absent action on that front, any- uniformly supportive in every conversation I had with them. Even a few thing else is pretense. Republican members came by to assure me of their support. There is little doubt that I could have remained Speaker if I had desired to put This editorial originally appeared in the January 19, 1997 Fort myself and the House through a bitter, divisive, expensive and crip- Worth Star-Telegram.

20 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 FEATURE ► Gasoline Morality? Not a Chance. BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Its the old familiar problem,. You're driving along the interstate and you have to pull off some time in the next twenty miles for gas. Each exit advertises a couple of oil companies. Is there one, you ask your- self just marginally less vicious than the others? Is there a moral choice to be made here, or are they all equally bad? Here a traveler's' advisory. EXXON finery. Dan Quayle's Competitiveness Council intervened on Start with the ones you wouldn't dream of patronizing. Exxon's behalf and squashed the puny fine. Exxon is the biggest and one of the foulest, its lineage stretching Exxon has repeatedly falsified advertising claims on its high oc- directly back to the old bandit, John D. Rockefeller. He spawned tane fuels and has been ordered by the Federal Trade Commission Exxon, formerly Standard Oil of New Jersey; Chevron, formerly to send letters to its credit card holders retracting the claims. The Standard Oil of California; Mobil, for- company was convicted in 1992 of defrauding the Defense Depart- merly Standard Oil of New York; and ment when it falsified records in order to help its oil additives qual- Amoco, formerly Standard Oil of Indi- ify for military contracts. Exxon agreed to pay $3.8 million in fines. ana. Standard Oil of New Jersey was the It's a dangerous company to work for. In a four year period, from core of the Rockefeller oil empire. 1988 to 1992, OSHA issued forty-one citations against Exxon that Exxon is the world's largest oil com- it termed serious and willful violations of safety rules. pany and the second largest company in Exxon is making huge investments in developing nations. One the world, after General Motors, with particularly ugly project is in eastern Venezuela, where Exxon has more than $150 billion in annual sales. In joined with PDVSA, the Venezuelan national oil company, to de- its treatment of the environment, of its velop a $3 billion natural gas reserve deep in the rainforest. workers, and customers, Exxon operates as if it was immune from any regulatory TEXACO constraint. Most notoriously, in 1989 its Here's the Texaco sign. But you may not tanker the Exxon Valdez discharged 11 million gallons of crude oil want to stop there either. In a recent edition into Prince William Sound, after running aground on Bligh Reef. of Counterpunch, we described the com- Perhaps the company's most brazen effrontery in the affair was its pany's illegal shipments to Mussolini and attempt to manipulate a federal jury to avoid paying $5 billion in Hitler. Texaco's racist attitude to its minor- punitive damages to Alaska's fishing industry. ity employees forced the company to settle Exxon's air pollution record from its refineries is the worst in the a class action suit for a record $176 million. business, with thousands of citations. Moreover, it refuses to dis- The company is deeply involved in Indone- close the toxic chemicals used at its refineries outside the U.S., and sia and Siberia, and was one of the big at many sites inside the country. In cheerleaders of the Gulf War because 60 percent of its refinery out- fact, in 1992, the EPA tried to put depended on Saudi and Kuwaiti crude oil. fine Exxon $110,000 for not Texaco's enormous 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara channel off reporting the release of the California coastline did have the incidental effect of suspending toxic chemicals at its Bay- new leasing and explorations off the California coast, and of prompt- town, Texas re- ing Congressional investigations of the entire oil industry. The com- pany's supposedly cleaner fuels have caused health problems.

SHELL Texaco is now merging its U.S. refining and sales with Shell, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the world's second largest oil company. The most recent blot on Shell's copybook was its successful urging of the Nigerian gov- ernment to deal summarily with Ken

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 21 WHEN SIX FORMER EMPLOYEES OF THE ALYESKA PIPELINE SERVICES COMPANY ACCUSED THE COMPANY OF MISMANAGEMENT AND ILLEGAL DUMPING, THEY WERE HARASSED, INTIMIDATED AND FIRED.

Saro-Wiwa, who was inconveniencing Shell by organizing poisonous methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) in blood samples of protests against the company's operations in the Ogoni tribal lands Anchorage residents, who complain of persistent headaches and along the Niger River and in the Niger's delta. The Nigerian gov- nausea. Maybe that Arco sign is not so welcoming after all. ernment promptly arrested Saro-Wiwa and his fellow activists, and hanged them six months later. CHEVRON Not only did Shell conspicu- Now comes Chevron, from the old Rockefeller stable. It's deep ously refuse to join the interna- into Indonesia, sharing global operations with Texaco in a com- tional campaign to save Saro- pany called Caltex. Among its more notorious international oper- Wiwa and the eight other ations was close association with the apartheid government in activists (nineteen more are South Africa, where it remained active throughout the interna- still in death cells), but the tional boycott. Chevron led the entry of oil drillers into Papua company has been forced to New Guinea, where Caltex's security forces murderously sup- admit that it armed death pressed indigenous protestors. squads operating in the Ogoni Inside the U.S., Chevron has a particularly appalling record of oil region. At the end of October, spills and toxic releases. In October of 1994 it was hit with the 1996, the London Observer reported that "in 1990 the mobile po- largest fine—$17 million—ever issued under the Toxic Substances lice, whose nickname in Nigeria is the Kill and Go Mob, killed fif- Control Act, for fabricating data on the presence of toxic com- teen in the village of Umuechem, where Shell installations were pounds in its detergent gasoline. Chevron called it "merely a paper- being attacked by villagers angry at the pollution." Subsequently a work oversight." Chevron has also repeatedly run afoul of the. Clean company spokesman admitted that the company had bought arms Water Act, by dumping waste into wetlands, estuaries, and the Pa- for police guarding Shell's oil rigs in the' Ogoni region. cific Ocean. In 1986 its refinery at El Segundo, California, faced Shell haS a particularly awful poison rap sheet. It is one of the 888 citations for violations of the Act, resulting in a fine of $1.5 mil- world's leading producers of pesticides. It co-ran operations at the lion. In 1992, the company was forced to plead guilty on sixty-five Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where nerve gas was produced for the counts of violating the Act at its Platform Grace drilling rig in the Army and pesticides for the agriculture industry. One of the pesti- Pacific. Chevron coughed up $6.5 cides concocted there was dibromochloropropane (DBCP), the use million in fines and. $1.5 million in of which was banned in the U.S. because it caused sterility in farm- civil penalties. The company's workers. Undeterred, Shell exported large amounts of DBCP to Richland refinery is the largest Costa Rica and Honduras, where more than 13,000 workers later water user in the parched area on the claimed that contact with the chemical had rendered them sterile. east San Francisco Bay. Chevron owns hundreds of leases ARCO to drill for oil along the Rocky Next, glowing in the distance, is the friendly Arco sign, emblem of Mountain front from Yellowstone the Atlantic Richfield Company. Here we meet one of the big de- National Park in Wyoming to spoilers of the Alaskan tundra, where 66 percent of Arco's domes- Glacier Park in northern Montana. tic reserves are located. It was in 1968 that Arco tapped the largest In order to protect these leases, oil deposit in North America, on Alaska's North Slope. The com- Chevron has invested heavily in pany' s treatment of the fragile tundra has been awful, with toxic Wise Use anti-environmental cam- wastes dumped into 200 unlined pits dug into the tundra wetlands. paigns in the western states. Arco has been responsible for numerous spills along the Trans- Alaska pipeline. When six former employees of the Alyeska BRITISH PETROLEUM Pipeline Services Company (the company that runs the pipeline By now the needle on your instrument panel is close to E for and is co-owned by Arco, BP, and Exxon) accused the company of Empty. Here's BP in the middle distance. Like Arco, British mismanagement and illegal dumping, they were harassed, intimi- Petroleum is in Alaska, where its holdings yield more than half dated and fired. After a judge ruled the employees to be whistle- the company's annual output of crude oil. In November 1994, blowers protected by federal law, they were offered their jobs back BP reached a $1.4 billion settlement for unpaid taxes on its and substantial financial settlements. Arco's chemical plant in North Slope oil, dating back to 1978. Its environmental record Channelview, Texas, exploded in 1990, killing seventeen workers. in Alaska is as bad as Arco's. In the Lower 48, BP's had big OSHA later cited the company for 347 safety code violations at the violations too. For example, at a Pennsylvania refinery it in- plant. Arco settled the matter by paying a $3.5 million fine. curred numerous citations for violating laws on the dumping of Arco was one of the first companies to introduce reformulated hazardous wastes, finally settling claims for $2.3 million. BP's gasoline, which has caused chronic health problems in areas where record in Latin American' rain forests, where it's engaged in it is widely used, such as Alaska. The EPA has found high levels of mining and drilling operations, has been widely and deservedly

22 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 excoriated. The company has full-page ads led the corporate counterattack in the early 1980s. worked with the Colombian mil- Today Mobil exploits depletion allowances and accelerated depre- itary in order to ensure unim- ciation loopholes to pay fewer taxes, so you can pay more. Last peded access 'to 5 trillion cubic year Mobil gained over $2 billion in corporate welfare through this feet of natural gas reserves the scheme. In addition, Mobil has bilked the treasury out of at least company has leases on. BP re- $200 million in unpaid royalties on oil drilled from public lands cently went through a particu- and off-shore reserves. Mobil's PAC doles out about a million dol- larly brutal downsizing, dumping lars a year to keep things flowing in their favor. 23 percent of its workers. Somewhere recently you read that Amoco might be the gas sta- tion to patronize. The company has pulled out of Burma. Maybe KEEP DRIVING... you missed the testy crack of Texaco's CEP, who confided to Ted By now you're getting desperate. Koppel that in matters of racial sensitivity, "we're just the tip of the Conoco? Somewhere you read this was the place to go because the iceberg. Wait till they look at Amoco." In fact, when you look at company has bought double-hulled tankers to lessen risks of spills. Amoco, you find that among its highest paid employees there are Check first with the indigenous people of Ecuador, who will tell you no women or minorities. Everyone remembers the Exxon Valdez, the story of what happens before the oil is loaded on those virtuous but who recalls the Amoco Cadiz, which spewed 120,000 tons of tankers. These days Conoco is owned by DuPont. Enough said. crude oil off the Sunoco? The Sun Company initiated the "cash-for-clunkers" French coast—six program, as a way of diverting attention from the infinitely more times more than baneful nitrous oxides spewing from refineries and power plants. In Exxon's charitable fact, the Sun Company was hit in 1994 with the largest fine—$1.4 bequest to Prince million—ever handed down for violations of nitrous oxide emission William Sound. laws. Anyone pondering whether to stop at Sunoco should drive Your car is be- across eastern Wyoming and have the altogether chastening experi- ginning to sputter, ence of viewing the Sun Company's stripmines outside Gillette. just as the "76" sign looms into view, emblem of Unocal. So, are The Sun Company has no female or black corporate officers. None. you going to take on board gasoline from a company which joy- This is the company from which the Pew Charitable Trusts—largest fully hailed the fanatic Taliban regime's takeover of Kabul as funder of mainstream environmentalism—sprang. likely to bring a firm hand to Afghanistan? A firm hand is craved Here comes the fragrance of the past, in the form of the Phillips by Unocal, because the company plans to run a pipeline through 66 sign: the memory of Route 66. In the 1940s the Oklahoma- the afflicted nation, from Turkmenistan to the sea. Unocal is also based company was actually run by a Cherokee Indian, William the major player in Burma, where it is part of a consortium plan- Keeler, aka Tsula Westa Nehi. Keeler helped Phillips make a lot of ning to exploit a natural gas field. To ease transportation of the money by drilling on native lands, a practice the company has zest- gas, the Burmese junta has conscripted prisoners to build a rail- fully engaged in ever since. (Keeler, however, was the first, and to way. Its operations in the states are no better. In 1994, Unocal was date only, minority officer of the company). Phillips stepped ea- convicted on three criminal charges for failing to report massive gerly into Indonesia not long leaks of phenol and other toxic chemicals at its Guadeloupe oil 'after Suharto and the generals field in California. The company paid a $5.5 million fine and faces were assisted by the CIA in perhaps as much as $50 million in civil damages. Unocal has the identifying and killing upward lowest number of women and minorities in management of any of a million people suspected of major oil company. being communists or sympa- thizers of the PKI. Since 1989, ace it, there's no "good" oil company, and ethanol won't the company has been drilling come to the moral rescue, if you've studied the recent career in the Timor Gap, off the coast Fof Archer-Daniels-Midland. You'd better base your pur- of East Timor. On its board is chasing decision on essentially whimsical criteria, perhaps judging Lawrence Eagleburger, who the dispensing facility by standards of physical security and the na- was Kissinger's aide and under- ture of its bathrooms. The danger of making "moral" corporate secretary of state in 1975, when his boss and President Ford visited choices was nicely exhibited by the Council on Economic Priori- Jakarta—three days before the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. ties, whose social profiles of the oil companies the organization Phillips, which maintains hefty military contracts, was one of the kindly faxed to us. At the turn of this year the Council, amid much companies that sold base chemicals to the Iraqis for manufacture of fanfare, took one particular oil company off its no-no list, on the chemical weapons. grounds that the company had shown evidence of a social con- A stop at Mobil? It was another Rockefeller company, as Stan- science. The company? Texaco. ❑ dard Oil of New York. Some companies invest in butchering in- digenous people. With its sponsorship of Masterpiece Theater, Jeffrey St. Clair is a freelance writer based in Oregon. Mobil has butchered entire cultures. Its Op-Eds and steady flow of

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 23 •

MOLLY IN/INS Boy Howdy for the Dow! Berkeley, California Gosh, wow the Dow Jones industrial average soared above 7000 points last week Golly, that's' really something, isn't it? Even to the 80 percent of Americans who don't own any stock Even to Americans affected by the fact that 93 percent of all the entitlement reductions made by the last Congress are in programs that help poor people in our nation. eanwhile, the Doug Jones av- some of the migrant workers are illegals country." It's simple: The poor pay more. erage—the one that covers the from Mexico—who, as it happens, also pay The February 14 issue of the Observer con- rest of us (as in "How's ol' U.S. taxes but are of course ineligible for tains a handy bar chart provided by the M Doug doin' ?")—is showing any form of aid, so we don't have to worry Texas Center for Public Policy Priorities, some downward indicators. about them. giving the details (see also today's "Dia- Imagine how proud I was to find Texas Of course, not everyone is so silly as to logue," page 3). The poorest fifth of Texans state Representative Mike Krusee, Republi- have made migrant farm work their chosen now pay 13.8 percent of their income in can of Round Rock, bound and determined field of endeavor. Some of us even become state and local taxes, while the richest fifth to cut food stamps to jobless adults who re- stockbrokers, a far cleverer thing to do pay 6.3 percent. Shrub's proposal to cut ceive them only because they live in parts when the Dow Jones is on its way to property taxes, on which our public schools of Texas where the unemployment rate is at 10,000. But the Dow Jones has a peculiar depend, by $1 billion merely shifts the tax least 20 percent above the national average. way of making just about anyone into burden even more dramatically to the folks Got to encourage those loafers to get out Doug Jones, Average Guy. with the least money. Nice work, Shrub. there and look for a job, y'know. You may have noticed the recent merger I know we're all happy for Dow Jones Then there's the charming move by State announcement between Dean Witter—the with this big 7,000 landmark. Wake me up Representative Burt Solomons, Republican sponsor of those heartwarming ads about when someone with power in this country of Carrollton, to make anyone who receives how they do financial planning "one cus- does something that helps Doug Jones, welfare pee in a cup. Solomon wants drug tomer at a time" so we can all retire to our would you? ❑ testing and criminal background checks on dream ranches or send our kids to col- anyone so unfortunate as to wind up unem- lege—and another Wall Street biggie, Molly Ivins, a former Observer editor, is ployed, although doing so would cost mil- Morgan Stanley. Now, this is not expected a columnist for the Fort Worth Star- lions of dollars in an already shrunken pub- to result in widespread layoffs, but some Telegram. lic assistance budget. On the other hand, it have said it could be the beginning of a se- would be good for plastic-cup stock. ries of Wall Street mergers that will result

Hey, we Texans live in a state that pro- in downsizing. gebVs. •‘ ‘ 164 Sea vides $188 a month for a family of three hot-1# Horse with no work; we've got to give these peo- hen, we have the GM-Hughes/ • ple some incentive to get off welfare. Noth- Raytheon defense merger, which is • Inn •0 ing like $188 a month for a family of three T not only a job-killer but also has that 0 Kitchenettes — Cable TV to destroy your work ethic. eye-popping tax loophole attached to it. ir Heated Pool And what manner of citizens might we be GM nets $9.5 billion in cash and stocks on ?* beside the Gulf of Mexico fie talking about? Well, according to a story in this one and pays zero taxes! Banc One is $ On Mustan,f; Island The New York Times last week, farm work- taking over First USA, and Hilton is trying •II Available for private parties1 .,10 ers who swing between Texas and Florida to take over ITT. Have you considered the Odii• Unique European Charm are having an unusually rough time this steadier job security in migrant farm work? & A tmospheres Then, there is the truly noteworthy effort 115 year because the freeze in Florida last 1 month destroyed the winter vegetable crop. to make life a little more unfair being AFFORDABLE RATES Jai, There's so little work that the migrants pushed by Texas' only governor, Shrub Pets Welcome 147 can't get gas money to go north looking for Bush. Governor Shrub himself described 1423 11th Street I work, and now they're starting to get our state tax system as "inherently unequal OlPort- Aransas, TX 78373 S and unfair" and then promptly proposed 0 evicted and/or have their utilities cut off. S Call (512) 749-5221 j I wouldn't want to generalize about the making it worse. for Reservations 0 Citizens for Tax Justice in Washington, .../0 work ethic of migrants, but I never heard op!" anyone claim that theirs is easy work—es- D.C., already says that Texas has "one of pecially anyone who's ever tried it. True, the ten most regressive tax systems in the -140 41,- Ili■■■■•■■• '40

24 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 JIM HIGHTOWER Jargon of Tyranny All kinds of "doublespeak" words have been coined by greedheaded corporate executives trying to cover up the fact that they are dumping middle-class workers by the millions: "downsizing," "decruit- ing," and "negative hiring" are just a few examples. aving discarded so many valuable cals on Food? A Panel of Experts Finds Lit- those little fried balls of cornmeal served employees, though, has hurt cor- tle Danger." Before you stop shopping for with catfish? These tasty bites were first porate performance, so the hon- organic food, you might want to take a made by cooks on overnight hunting chos are now bringing in millions deeper look into the issue than either The trips—they tossed them to the hound-dogs Hof new workers to replace them—workers New York Times or these experts did. to hush up their yelping. who are paid less, get few if any benefits, You'll find that this particular panel of Top executives of America's biggest cor- and have no long term future with the com- scientists looked only at studies involving porations have become hushpuppy special- pany. Instead of calling these folks what the cancer-causing impacts of one chemical ists, cooking up goodies to hush up their they are—corporate .serfs—the jargoneers at a time, rather than considering the real own Boards of Directors. A board is sup- have come up with more doublespeak: life situation, in which our families are ex- posed to be a hard-nosed watchdog, yelping "Contingency workers." posed to a toxic stew of hundreds of syn- whenever management gets out of line. But Sounds impressive—until you realize thetic chemicals in our dinner. It's this mix too many boards have become executive that it simply means the worker's job is that is so deadly, and we consume it tiny bit lapdogs, way too pampered to bark at— contingent on the daily mood of the big by tiny bit, day after day. Also, the so-called much less bite—the hand that feeds them. boss, who can dump them without reason or experts looked only at adult exposure, fail- And these board members are fed a recourse: adios, chump. ing to consider that our babies and children much richer dough than cornmeal. In a sur- Already, about a fourth of the jobs in our are far more vulnerable to these poisons in vey of America's largest 200 industrial country are filled by temporary and part- their diet. Nor did they acknowledge that firms, Forbes magazine found they were time employees, doing everything from sec- thousands of the pesticides have not even paying their directors an average of $700 retarial work to airplane maintenance, bank- been tested for their long term health im- an hour for their "watchdog" role. That'll ing to engineering. Some 30 million of us pacts, and that government testing methods make a mighty big hushpuppy, won't it? now wander from job to job, hoping there'll do not even identify more than half of the At IBM, board members are paid be another one after being punted from the chemical residues found on our food. $91,000 a year; $132,000 at GE...and all last one. Among major corporations, 70 per- Why such sloppy work? One reason is that the way up to $274,000 at Compaq Com- cent now use contingency workers, and the the panel was as contaminated with chemi- puter. Just for a few day's work. Plus, 70 number is growing dramatically as top exec- cals as our food supply. Three of its members percent of the companies pay lavish pen- utives realize, "Hey, we can hire these had direct ties to such industry front groups as sions, many worth up to $100,000 a year. throwaway employees and take no responsi- the Sound Science Coalition and the Food And it's not uncommon for directors to get bility for their well-being." Safety Council—their names might seem in- free medical and dental coverage...for life! Seventy-five percent of contingency nocent, but these groups are financed by the And if that's not enough to keep a board workers make less than $16,000 a year—al- very companies profiting from putting more member fat and sleepy, companies also toss most a poverty wage. Only 39 percent get chemicals in our food. Likewise, people who out other tasty tidbits. For example, Gen- any paid vacation, only 8 percent get health presented "evidence" to the panel hailed from eral Motors' directors get a new Cadillac coverage, only 4 percent get life insurance, Monsanto and other industry groups. And if every three months, and United Airlines only 3 percent get sick-pay and only 2 per- this isn't enough to taint the process, there is provides unlimited first-class travel for its cent get a retirement plan. the added fact that the panel's study was sub- directors and their spouses. What we are experiencing here is an on- stantially funded by Nabisco Foods and the Aside from these paychecks, pensions going war against the middle class, a war in American Industrial Health Council. and perks being an obvious conflict of inter- which a few privileged executives and in- Remember the old adage: "He who pays est for directors, every dollar spent on them vestors are profiting at the expense of the the piper calls the tune." And even when is treated as a tax-deductible cost of business rest of us, destroying the American notion The Nevi) York Times claims that poisons for the corporation, meaning you and I sub- that we are a united nation. are safe...always read between the lies. sidize this corporate extravagance. Now (See "How many deaths for a dollar?" that's really something to howl about. ❑ THE PESTICIDE PIPER NAS reports on pesticides: Spring 1996.) Jim Hightower is a former Observer editor A recent New York Times headline blared and Texas Agriculture Commissioner. His some comforting news...comforting to the CORPORATE LAPDOGS nationwide radio show broadcasts daily pesticide industry, that is. It read: "Chemi- You've eaten hushpuppies, haven't you— from Austin, Texas.

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 25 •

JAMES GALBRAITH The Art of the Low-Ball? The Clinton administration has issued its 1997 economic forecast If the projections are righ4 the next two years will see a miserable two percent economic , growth rate in each. Unemployment is expected to rise slightly. This means no more gains in real wages, no more improvement in living standards. The expansion isnY over. But if this forecast is righ4 it isn't going to do working Americans any more good ne cannot, I suppose, blame Clin- few years. That would finally enable them Board—the conservative Lawrence Lind- ton for taking a bleak view. His to start handing out tax cuts once again, or sey and the moderate Janet Yellen, have administration doesn't control the even, to think about new spending pro- departed, leaving two vacancies to fill. We economy. It doesn't even control grams. Until then, everyone who thinks hear calls to replace them with bankers—as the0 people who make the policies that do. this way, Democrat and Republican, must if banking interests didn't already effec- Alan Greenspan operates on his own, and sit tight, keep quiet, think small—and hope tively control twelve of the nineteen seats Clinton long ago adopted a policy of sup- that nothing goes wrong. on the Federal Reserve's policymaking porting whatever Greenspan decides. Better Unfortunately, two things are quite Open Market Committee. If Clinton bows under such conditions to assume the worst likely to go wrong. The first is a recession to such pressures, he may be rewarded with from the beginning. rising rates, a slowing economy, and the Budget politics also dictated pessimism. TWO THINGS ARE QUITE LIKELY TO GO path to budget balance could be wrecked. Had the forecast been • more optimistic, WRONG. THE FIRST IS A RECESSION Can this economy be saved from the Clinton would have had a faster, easier AND THE SECOND IS A RISE IN INTER- low-ball forecasters and growth-slowing route to budget balance. The budget, ac- EST RATES. EITHER COULD BLOW THE budget balancers? Lower interest rates, if cordingly, could have been less restrictive BUDGET TO BITS. he could get them, are Clinton's best hope. than it is. There might have been a larger in- Lower interest rates could buy a little re- vestment program, more human services and the second is a rise in interest rates. Ei- cession insurance. They might produce a and even more generous tax cuts, and still a ther could blow the budget to bits. faster-than-expected growth rate and a path to balance by 2002. The most serious recession threat comes stronger-than-expected budget. There is no The catch is, Clinton would then have from the tight budget policy of budget bal- technical reason why the economy cannot had to propose a more ambitious policy ancers themselves. The Administration grow at three percent or better—as it did in package. That would have set up political foresees no economic downturn at any time 1994 and again last year. That would grad- failure, on two grounds. First, Republicans between now and 2002. But no recession ually reduce unemployment below five would have screamed blue murder about the has ever been put in an official forecast. An percent, most probably without raising in- forecast, claiming it was a liberal gimmick uninterrupted expansion from 1991 through flation. That is the only way to give average to justify an easy budget. Second, they 2002 would be longer than any on record. It Americans a little bit of improvement in would have beaten the proposals, as they could happen, but it isn't very likely. living standards in the years just ahead, and have the votes to do. Rising interest rates are the second big it is surely the best way to approach budget The politics of the balanced budget budget risk. Secretary Rubin testified last balance without slashing Medicare or amendment probably also played a role. week that a balanced budget would keep messing with Social Security. With Clinton now declared in opposition to rates low, but he knows this isn't so. The To have a chance of getting that much, this mischief, opponents have a fighting Federal Reserve controls rates, and forces Clinton needs to be very careful about who chance of beating it in Congress. But to do behind the Fed continue to itch for a rate he puts on the Federal Reserve Board. so, they have to concede the case for a bal- hike. The reasons are not mysterious: More than anything else that the President anced budget, and then argue that we can higher interest rates produce higher profits actually controls—which isn't much these get there without amending the Constitu- for bankers, while turmoil in the bond mar- days—those next two appointments could tion. A rosy scenario would have damaged ket produces profits for traders. So we are determine whether he gets through his term that political argument, for no clear gain. always hearing from these quarters about with an acceptable economy and with bud- In the upshot, both parties are now hope- phantom inflation threats, wage pressures, get balance in reach. If he messes up, he lessly committed to actually achieving bud- stock market bubbles, and other nonsensi- might have to live with his own miserable get balance by 2002. No serious economist cal excuses for raising interest rates. economic forecast. Or worse. ❑ thinks there is any magic to this, but I can Lately, the Federal Reserve has been ig- see why politicians feel differently. If they noring the higher-interest lobby. That's James K Galbraith teaches economics succeed, perhaps they hope to find budding been good, but it could change. Two of the at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public surpluses in the federal accounts within a better economists on the Federal Reserve Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin.

26 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997 BOOKS & THE CULTURE

Winston Sam in Mid-Song "Pink seashells—they easy, It comes to him in pieces they in the shallow water, like a poem. but the brown ones, they deep, Fingers on the keyboard they for the best divers, wait... like me, Winston." For what? His gold He's listening bicuspid glints like a ring to something he's about to hear. when he grins. It can't be hurried. Between us Each time gleam shells like armadillos he tries to rush it into sound, or rainbow tornadoes of bone. it comes out wrong. "I dive myself for all these Still shell. listening, he walks away, I wash them every one distracts himself by humming myself Rock, assumes the song I dive. will happen when he least I sell. expects it. You want good shell, see Winston:' And it does. One size too tight, his shirt- Back front screams at the buttonholes. to the piano... When he squats, his underwear His fingers flex droops through a slit in the seam until cadenzas draw them of his shorts scissored from old to the right keys. trousers at the knees. The melody I See him becomes a stream cascading younger by twenty years, over rocks. a boy after his first dive, The rocks can't stop it. hawking starfish and grinning ivory. The stream keeps surging over banks Then, twenty years ahead, it's just discovering. too old to dive, toothless, It sings selling green sunhats as it goes, and what it sings woven from belts of palm. is turning into notes and words Only that gold biter will not stop right now, right now, right now glistening like wealth itself SAMUEL HAZO amid this paradise of tourists, orchids, shanties and the hoarding, hiding sea that swills the beach like mopwater.

amuel Hazo lives in Pittsburgh, where he teaches at monwealth of Pennsylvania by Governor Robert Casey. Duquesne University and directs the International Poetry Both these poems employ a keen sense of observation and atten- S Forum, for decades one of the most active poetry series in the tion to other people's motions and voices, whether spoken or sung. United States. His most recent books are The Past Won't Stay Be- The "song" element has long permeated Hazo's melodious works. hind You (poetry), Stills (fiction), and The Rest is Prose (essays). He memorizes his own poems immediately upon writing them and He has written two plays, Solos and Until I'm Not Here Anymore!; gives poetry readings entirely from memory. the latter became a film for PBS. He has also published works of —Naomi Shihab Nye translation. In 1993 he was named the first State Poet of the Corn-

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 27 He Was There Red Not Read in Hollywood BY STEVEN G. KELLMAN INSIDE OUT: Hungary, he resigned from the party in A Memoir Of The Blacklist. 1956. But, though he admits to willful By Walter Bernstein. blindness about Stalinist hypocrisies and Alfred A. Knopf. atrocities, he refuses to repudiate his egali- 292 pages. $24.00. tarian beliefs: "I had left the Party but not the idea of socialism, the possibility that riters occupy a there could be a system not based on in- distinctive posi- equality and exploitation." During the tion in the movie delirium of the Cold War, when mere ac- business: quaintance with someone leftist sufficed to supine. One of destroy a career, Bernstein's outspoken ad- the hoariest vocacy of Marxist principles, his byline in jokes in Holly- New Masses, and his participation in So- wood is about viet-American friendship projects earned the ambitious young actress so ingenuous him a listing in Red Channels, a roster of that she sleeps with the writer. Walter 151 names banned from the entertainment A Walter Bernstein Marion Ettlinger Bernstein, a staff writer for The New industry. Though he recognized the naiveté Yorker before turning his hand to screen- pages of Inside Out recall antic military ex- of his reverence for Moscow, Bernstein re- plays (The Magnificent Seven, The Molly periences in the Middle East and Italy, fused to salvage his own career by inform- Maguires, The Train), faced sleepless where the European theater's uniformed ing on others. nights after learning, in 1950, that he was bureaucracy created a theater of the absurd. Bernstein was present during the infancy being blacklisted. Inside Out demonstrates Plucky, lucky and insubordinate, he defied of television and the infantilization of Bernstein's mastery of the verbal craft, blunt orders by slipping into occupied Yu- American politics, by Joseph McCarthy while it documents his experiences before goslavia and obtaining the first interview and other adult impersonators. He worked and during eleven years of screenwriting with Marshal Tito, leader of the Balkan an- closely with socially conscious directors purdah. For more than a decade, during tifascist forces. such as Sidney Lumet and Martin Ritt. which "un-Americanism" was vaguely de- After the war, Bernstein wrote speeches fined and zealously hunted down, Bern- for the presidential campaign of Henry stein's moot classification as a dangerous Wallace, the standard-bearer of the Progres- subversive restricted his literary employ- sive Party, whom he describes as "a hand- ment within the United States. some, distant man, at home with humanity Though it begins at the moment his but not necessarily with people." Bernstein agent announces that scripts signed by is palpably more gregarious, and he relished Walter Bernstein are no longer marketable, the camaraderie he found by joining the Inside Out circles back to recount the au- Communist Party. By his account, meetings Gay thor's life before he was colored unaccept- of his group were comic encounters with ably Red. After an unpromising boyhood in similarly feckless intellectuals whose most but not Brooklyn where his two principal passions daring escapade was an aborted attempt to were the Dodgers and movies, Bernstein establish a progressive post of the American developed political passions during six Legion. For all its dogmatism and duplicity, Narrow wayward months in France. He made his Bernstein convinced himself that the party mark at Dartmouth when, as a critic for the best exemplified the democratic ideals for Pick up your FREE copy college newspaper, he panned Lost Hori- which he had donned an American uniform: at over 200 locations zon as escapist, though in order to meet "The Communists had led the antifascist in Austin & Houston. deadlines he always wrote about films be- fight. They had led the fight against racism For further information call fore he could see them. Bernstein spent and colonialism. They had dared and sacri- 512.476.0576 or World War II on the staff of the Army ficed the most." 713.521.5822 newspaper Yank, and some of the liveliest Disillusioned by the Soviet invasion of

28 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 13, 1996

pkamnosr,••■•,,, Though cynical about the Hollywood cul- others forbidden for political reasons from Inside Out is a print-based You Are There ture, he exults in the collaborative process making a movie: he did not have to show up for a scoundrel time in American life. HoW- of creating stories for a camera: "I loved on the set. Bernstein describes how he sus- ever, it concludes triumphantly, in 1975, on being inside a studio, watching how a film tained his career, and his income, by sub- the set of The Front, the movie overtly writ- was made, the craft that went into it, the mitting material under a false name, ten by Bernstein and starring Woody Allen teamwork among the makers, the unstated through a series of unlikely surrogates will- as a man who pretends to be the creator of pride in their work." Banished from that ing to pretend that they actually wrote his screenplays written by a blacklisted author. world by ideological inquisitors who delib- script. One, fond of dangling from danger- This zestful book features finely etched pro- erately targeted an industry that was most ous window ledges, eventually gave up the files of Elia Kazan, Rocky Graziano, Zero visible and vulnerable, Bernstein was pre- job because passing off Bernstein's work as Mostel, Irwin Shaw and Bette Davis and a vented from writing openly for movies or hers threatened her fragile ego; another be- wrenching account of the benefit concert— TV. Intent on intimidation, FBI agents pe- cause the quality of the scripts offended his for the leftist Civil Rights Congress—by riodically accosted him, interrogated his exalted sense of self. Bernstein finds irony Paul Robeson in Peekskill, New York, that friends, and inspected his garbage. in the sly contributions he was able to make was violently disrupted by a police-pro- Yet despite government harassment and to the TV series You Are There: "In that moted riot. Inside Out is signed, proudly, by economic hardship, Bernstein endured his shameful time of McCarthyite terror, of Walter Bernstein. ❑ ordeal more successfully than other black- know-nothing attempts to deform and defile list victims, casualties of depression, exile, history, to kill any kind of dissent, we were Steven G. Kellman is the Ashbel Smith prison and suicide. As a screenwriter, he able to do shows about civil liberties, civil Professor of Comparative Literature at the had an advantage over actors, directors and rights, artistic freedom, the Bill of Rights." University of Texas at San Antonio.

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and other analyses. 901 Rio Grande, ORGANIZATIONS CLASSIFIED RATES: Minimum ten words. One time, 50 cents per word; three times, 45 cents per word; six times, 40 cents per word; 12 times, 35 cents per Austin, TX, 78701. (512) 476-6986. WORK for single-payer National Health word; 25 times, 30 cents per word. Telephone and box numbers count as two HOUSEBUYERS, The Consumer's Care. Join GRAY PANTHERS, intergen- words, abbreviations and zip codes as one. Payment must accompany order for Agent. Specialists in representing erational advocates against ageism and all classified ads. Deadline is three weeks before cover date. Address orders and central Austin residential buyers. for progressive policies promoting so- inquiries to Advertising Director, The Texas Observer, 307 West 7th, Austin, TX (800) 315-2565. cial and economic justice. $20 individ- 78701. (512) 477-0746. ual; $35 family. 3710 Cedar, Austin, TX WORLDWISE DESIGN, award- 78705. (512) 458-3738. contact Save America's Forests, 4 POLITICAL DATA NEWSLETTER gives winning graphic design studio. 'For Library Court SE, Washington, D.C. valuable insights. Ideal for activist lib- creative, effective and professional de- TEXAS AIDS NETWORK — dedicated 20003. (202) 544-9219. eral voters! Special emphasis on signs for your educational and promo- to improving HIV/AIDS policy and Congress. Left/liberal commentary. tional materials, call (512) 445-5748. funding in Texas. Individual member- CENTRAL TEXAS CHAPTER of the ACLU Two free issues upon request. Contact ship $25, P.O. Box 2395, Austin, TX invites you to our noon Forum, the last USA Political Research: 2304 Herring, DIGITAL ARTS CONSULTING—Sys- 78768. (512) 447-8887. Friday of every month, at Furr's Waco, TX 76708. (817) 752-0935. tems and training for community ser- Cafeteria Banquet Room in Northcross [email protected] . vice and cultural heritage organiza- REVOLTED BY EXECUTIONS? Mall, Austin. For information call Join the Amnesty International Cam- tions. Presentations for Internet, (512) 459-5829. EMPLOYMENT paign Against the Death Penalty. CD-ROM and video. Multimedia Call: (214) 361-4935. LIBERTARIAN PARTY — Liberal on learning, digital exhibitions and vir- personal freedoms, but conservative in ENVIRONMENTAL COMPANY. Expe- tual museum tours. (800) 591-6200. riencing huge growth. Offices across WORK FOR OPEN, responsible gov- economics? (800) 682-1776, or in (972) 524-8548. http://www.d-a- the country. Looking for good people. ernment in Texas. Join Common Dallas (214) 558-1776. c.com . Cause/Texas, 1615 Guadalupe, #204, Call Joe, (214) 307-7472. E-mail: Austin, TX 78701. (512) 474-2374. NATIONAL WRITERS UNION. We give [email protected]. TAOS SKIING AND MORE. Little Tree working writers a fighting chance. http://www.ccsi.com/–comcause. LABOR NOTES seeks staff member for Bed & Breakfast. Authentic adobe Collective bargaining. Grievance pro- hacienda near the slopes. See home TEXAS TENANTS' UNION. Member- organizing worker delegations and cedures. Health insurance. Journalists, page URL http://taoswebb.com/ ship $10/six months, $18/year, $30 or authors, poets, commercial writers. conferences, grant writing, writing for hotel/littletree/. (505) 776-8467. more/sponsor. Receive handbook on Forming locals in Houston, Austin, and Labor Notes, union outreach. Experi- tenants' rights, newsletter, and more. ence: Spanish/English, cross-border Dallas. Noelle McAfee, (512) 450- FOR SALE 5405 East Grand, Dallas, TX 75223. 0705; Paul Jennings, (713) 861-7416. organizing, grant writing, computer (214) 823-2733. E-mail: [email protected]. aptitude. Résumé to Martha Gruelle, ACT NOW—$899 swimming pool. Labor Notes, 7435 Michigan Ave, De- Warehouse forced to dispose of new, END LOGGING OF ANCIENT PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. Join the troit, MI 48210; fax (313) 842-0227. FORESTS and roadless areas, stop Texas Civil Rights Project, 2212 E. huge, 20'x32' o.d. pool, complete with sun deck, fencing, hi-rate filter, clearcutting of our National Forests. MLK, Austin, TX 78702. $25/year. SERVICES Join the nationwide campaign to pro- Volunteers also needed. Contact Jim pump ladders, vac, and warranty, etc. tect and restore America's wild and Harrington or Carlotta Vann, (512) MARY NELL MATHIS, CPA, 20 years Financing. Call now. (800) 546-7665, natural forests. For a free brochure 474-5073. experience in tax, litigation support, 24 Hrs. Don't Delay!

FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 29

tirc••■■■*--s, AFTERWORD ► Surfin' with the Virgin BY BARBARA BELEJACK Are you stuck in that mid-winter slump? Stressed out? Maxed out on plastic? Or have you been troubled by something more serious, something closer to a deep existential crisis brought on by The Awful Rowing Towards the End of the Millennium? ave you ever thought Guadalupe's final appearance on Decem- Unfortunately there are no links to about joining that ber 12, 1531, for example, is rendered here RELat on Interlupe, but there is a link to growing legion of cy- as the day "when she got stamped at the the Cyber Basilica of Guadalupe (200.23. bernauts discovered by miraculous clothes of Juan Diego." 74.12/basilica/basilica/htm), where you Time and "Looking for Botched translations aside, Interlupe is can light a virtual candle, pray the rosary Jesus Online"? or Urn- strictly for traditionalists. Post-modern and listen to Ave Maria or Pachelbel's banda (www.sul. guadalupanistas a la Ana Castillo—the Chi- Canon—provided you possess all the ap- com.bd-umbanda/inde cana feminist writer and editor of Goddess propriate technology. For a no-nonsense x.htm), Santeria (www.seanet.com/-efun- of the Americas/La Diosa de las Americas, chronology of the Guadalupan Tradition, Hmoyiwa/welcome.html), the Kabbalah a recently published collection of essays consult the site maintained by Guadalajara (www.kabbalahcentres.com), or any number guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows at the University (mexico.udg.mx/tradiciones/ of destinations both mystical and marvelous? Centro de Estudios Guadalupanos—won't guadalupe). And before leaving cy- Well, search no more. Here in the land of find much of interest here. Those searching berspace, check what is without a doubt the milagros, where reality is always virtual if grandest guadalupan site of all, "Our Lady not necessarily virtuous, we know just what YOU CAN LIGHT A VIRTUAL CANDLE, of Guadalupe" (ng.netgate.net/-norberto/ you need. You need a little divine interven- PRAY THE ROSARY AND LISTEN TO AVE materdei.html), which you can experience tion, a veritable message from heaven that MARIA OR PACHELBEL'S CANON in Spanish, French or English. The "nor- goes by the trade name of Interlupe, one of PROVIDED YOU POSSESS ALL THE berto" in question is Monsignor Norberto several cybernetic homes of Mexico's unof-- APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY. Rivera Carrera, Archbishop of the Diocese ficial patroness. of Mexico and a prominent member of the According to Church tradition, the dark- for the latest update on the inner-circle turf winning team in last year's ecclesiastical skinned Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian battles between the Archbishop of the Dio- turf battles. Following the Abbot's depar- named Juan Diego in 1531 at the hillside of cese of Mexico City and the Abbot of the ture, Church authorities announced that Tepeyac, the same spot where the Aztecs Basilica of Guadalupe (who finally stepped there will be no more Abbots at the Basil- had worshipped Tonantzfn, the mother of down last year in the wake of revelations ica; on the web page Rivera is listed as the gods. Today the most visited shrine in the that he had been quoted in several maga- Church's "official custodian of the Image Western Hemisphere is the Basilica of zines as doubting the existence of a certain of Guadalupe." And in a nod toward ordi- Guadalupe, located at the bottom of the hill Juan Diego) are certain to be disappointed, nary reality, the site is dedicated to "the of Tepeyac. But why jostle with the un- although Interlupe welcomes comments millions of poor men, women and children godly mix of the devout, the curious, and and questions. You might try sending yours that each year visit Her Basilica." Most of the devious that make up real life in Mexico to Homero Hernandez, the young architect them will never see this page, nor any other City? Now you can follow Juan Diego's and computer wizard responsible for one on the Internet, but they will always be progress on the road to sainthood, keep up launching the site. on-line with Her in their hearts. with the latest in Guadalupan research, and So, there you have it. Plug in, turn on, make a virtual pilgrimage in the comfort of f you're looking for answers to theolog- boot up. Send the prayer. Click. Clear the your own home, thanks to Interlupe ical questions of a more outwardly po- form. Click. Count your blessings and join (spin.com.mx/-msalazar/lupe-s.html); /litical nature, consider the Revista Lati- those who have recently asked: "May I which was unveiled with great ceremony noamericana de Teologla (RELat) at meet my soulmate and live happily ever last November at Mexico City's Centro de uca.ni/koinonia/relat/relat.htm, where you after;" or "Please pray for my personal fi- Estudios Guadalupanos. will find articles with titles such as "Fol- nances," and "...on behalf of those who Should you prefer to read about miracles lowing Jesus under the Neoliberal Regime govern Mexico, forgive our sins, and de- en ingles, rather than milagros en espariol, in Latin America," and "Liberation Theol- liver us from all evil." try spin.com.mx/-msalazar/lupe-e.html . Be ogy and Chiapas," not to mention a Span- Amen. forewarned, however, that occasionally, ish translation of a Noam Chomsky article things do get lost in translation, even when about the latter-day Anti-Christ, the Inter- Barbara Belejack lives in Mexico City, and we are dealing with the cybermiraculous. national Monetary Fund. knows cyber-sanctity when she surfs it.

30 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997

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FEBRUARY 28, 1997 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 31 THE BACK PAGE Municipal Waste lt With his red face and that orange blazer he wears on Orange County Day, he looks more like a Cheeto than a man." The House sartorial critic who compared Ron Lewis to a cheesy confection is gone but the Vidor Democrat is still here after twelve years settled into the role of a second-tier legislator doing the bidding of the highest bidder ast session developers wrote the all cities what he did to Austin. In the place . checks and Lewis delivered, car- of the graduated scale, allowing cities of rying a Freeport-McMoran Bar- 5,000 inhabitants one mile of ETJ, while Lton Creek development bill that cities with populations larger than 100,000 two-and-a-half-mile ETJ limit, which might freed the company's Hill Country subdivi- get five miles (to protect against fly-by- keep the Gulf States' plant out of the city sion from Austin's water-quality protection night developers, sub-standard septic sys- Lewis intends to give it over to. standards. And all Lewis had to do was tems, and other potential threats to munici- Lewis got his largest 1994 election cycle eliminate the extraterritorial jurisdiction pal water supplies and public health), contribution from Austin developer (ETJ) of a municipality 275 miles west of Lewis would give every city equal footing. Bradley—who also had his subdivision lib- his Southeast Texas district. Neither Houston nor Vidor will have more erated from Austin's environmental restric- "He never spoke to us," said a member of than two-and-one-half miles of jurisdiction tions. And Bradley lobbyist Bob Johnson the Travis County delegation. "There was beyond their city limits. So the Austin-only was, as they say in L.A., "there for" Ron just no dealing with him on that stuff. It was provision the developers' lobby devised Lewis with $1,000. Freeport-McMoran his deal and he was going to get it done." The last session (restricting any municipality lobbyist Stan Schlueter was also a $1,000 deal was done because Lewis was working "with a population of more than 450,000, guy, and Freeport's PAC added $600. for Freeport lobbyist Dick Brown and Hill that owns an electric utility, that has a char- After all Lewis did for Freeport-McMoran Country developer Gary Bradley. Barton ter provision allowing for limited purpose last session, FM CEO Jim Bob Moffett's Creek watershed developers are now exempt annexation, and that has annexed territory 1996 contribution of $750 seems almost nig- from Austin's water-quality protections. for a limited purpose") is no longer needed. gardly. (Four other $250 checks from New Lewis was also sponsor of a bill that House Bill 925 covers all. Orleans, Metairie, and Norco, Louisiana, would have restricted Texas Natural Re- "Instant colonias," said one city lobby- were recorded at the Ethics Commission on source Conservation Commission authority ist, referring to the unregulated subdivi- the same day as Moffett's.) And Freeport's to adopt any policy more stringent than fed- sions along the border. "Red flag subdivi- PAC provided only $1,500. Lobbyist Bob eral environmental law—which sounds rea- sions surrounding every city." And Johnson, who represents Bradley, con- sonable when described as an attempt to high-dollar developments north and west of tributed $1,000 to Lewis' $133,196 total. As make the state's environmental regs uniform Austin and San. Antonio will escape munic- did Bradley himself, along with Austin sub- with those of other states. But the oil, chem- ipal restrictions enacted to protect the Ed- division hustler Darrell Royal. ical, and hazardous-waste lobbyists who wards Aquifer. And if Tom Ferguson's investment theory backed the bill know that many EPA stan- Also hidden in the details is a scheme that of campaign finance has any validity, watch dards are only broad baseline guides to pro- would move a Gulf States' electric plant Lewis scramble for the tort reformers. His tect ecosystems as diverse as the fifty states away from the ETJ of Port Arthur, where largest single contributor this election cycle the federal government regulates. Individual the utility pays fees in lieu of taxation, and is Texans For Lawsuit Reform, whose states apply their own laws to protect their closer to Bridge City, which would like to $7,000 has probably made Lewis an inden- own environments. Even in the most anti- have the utility in its tax base. But even here tured servant of interests now dismantling the green session in memory, Lewis' bill failed. the numbers might not work. Lewis' bill in- state's civil justice system. If you have a

This session Lewis is determined to do to cludes an odd arithmetical alternative to his cause of action, file your suit now. ❑

32 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 1997