A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES NOVEMBER 22, 1996 • $1.75 THIS ISSUE

FEATURES The Populists Return to Texas by Karen Olsson One hundred years ago, the Farmers' Alliance took on the banks, from the Texas Hill Country. This month, their political heirs take aim at the corporations. Communities Fight Pollution (& SOME Win) by Carol S. Stall 7 An EPA-sponsored roundtable in San Antonio brings together community stakeholders on environmental action. Meanwhile, a small Texas town wins one round. How the Contras Invaded the U.S. by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight 10 The recent allegations about CIA involvement in the crack trade are not exactly news. VOLUME 88, NO. 23 There has long been ample evidence of the dirty hands of U.S. "assets" in Nicaragua. A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the Blind Justice Comes to the Polls by W. Burns Taylor 13 truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are ded- icated to the whole truth, to human values above all in- On November 5, a group of El Paso citizens exercised the right to a secret ballot terests, to the rights of human-kind as the foundation of for the very first time. Now they're hoping the State of Texas will see the light. democracy: we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. DEPARTMENTS BOOKS AND THE CULTURE Writers are responsible for their own work, but not 2 Inventing Whitewater 21 for anything they have not themselves written, and in Dialogue publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we Book Review by Jim Naureckas agree with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Editorial 3 Following the Money A Place of Connection 24 SINCE 1954 James Galbraith 14 Poetry by Sigman Byrd Founding Editor: Ronnie Dugger It's the Economy, Bill Gardner's Light in the Darkness 25 Publisher: Geoff Rips Book Review by James Sledd Managing Publisher: Rebecca Melancon Molly Ivins 16 Editor: Louis Dubose Looking Back, with Laughter History's Silver Screenings 27 Associate Editor: Michael King Book Review by Steven G. Kellman Production: Harrison Saunders Jim Hightower 17 Copy Editor: Mimi Bardagjy Ice Follies, Lippo-suction and Bad Gas AFTERWORD Poetry Editor: Naomi Shihab Nye 18 Songman Silenced: Walter Hyatt 29 Circulation Manager: Amanda Toering Las Americas Special Correspondent: Karen Olsson The Human Cost of Oil By Sidney Brammer Editorial Intern: Katy Adams Political Intelligence 32 Cover art by Kevin Kreneck 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. good gains in reading on the TAAS test. Contributing Photographers: Vic Hinterlang, Alan TRY COWTOWN BARBEQUE Pogue. Now just wait a minute, Paul Jennings One of this year's new efforts is the for- Contributing Artists: Michael Alexander, Eric Avery, ("The Smoked and the Sublime," October mulation of a Parents' Math Club, de- Tom Ballenger, Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth Epstein, Valerie Fowler, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, 11). I realize that Fort Worth is outside the signed to show parents how they may help Ben Sargent, Gail Woods. bounds of the Central Texas Barbecue Belt. their children at home, The expected out- Editorial Advisory Board: David Anderson, Austin; Elroy Bode, El Paso; Chandler Davidson, Houston; But I am telling you that any Texas Barbe- come is more students mastering the math Dave Denison, Arlington, Mass.; Bob Eckhardt, Austin; cue Hall of Fame that doesn't include An- portion of the TAAS test. Sissy Farenthold, Houston; John Kenneth Galbraith, Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; gelo's is like a Texas Music Hall of Fame The only error I detected in Mr. Rips' George Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Austin; that leaves out Delbert McClinton. Get article was in the spelling of my principal's Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio; Willie Morris, Jackson, Miss.; Kaye with it, Hoss: Cowtown is Heaven. name—it's Trousdale. Northcott, Fort Worth; James Presley, Texarkana; Bill Walker Annette L. Stone Susan Reid, Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; Fred Schmidt, Fredericksburg. [email protected] nstone @juno. corn Development Consultant: Frances Barton Business Manager: Cliff 0 lofson, I931-1995 TROUBLE WITH TROUSDALE? MAYBE CHER KNOWS... THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted, © 1996, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval I thoroughly enjoyed Geoff Rips' article "Politics is show business for ugly people." between issues in January and July (25 issues per year) by the Texas Democ- racy Foundation, a 50l(c)3 non-profit corporation, 307 West 7th Street, Austin, on Alliance Schools ("Alliances in Public Page 28 ("Fixing the Last Mess," Septem- Texas 78701. Telephone: (512) 477-0746. E-mail: [email protected]. World Wide Web DownHome page: http://wwvi.hyperweb.com/brobserver Schools," October 11), especially since I ber 13) attributes the quip to former Okla- Periodicals postage paid at Austin, Texas. SUBSCRIPTIONS: One year $32, two years $59, three years $84. Full-time teach at the El Paso middle school [Ysleta homa Attorney General Mike Turpen, students $18 per year. Back issues $3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University Micro- Middle School] involved in this statewide while page 32 claims it for Austin labor films Intl., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. effort to upgrade the learning experience lobbyist Don Dee Simpson. I say it must INDEXES: The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals; Texas Index and, for the years 1954 through 1981,The have been Congressman Sonny Bono. Texas Observer Index. for public school students. We worked POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, Steven G. Kellman 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. very hard last year, and the results were tremendous gains in math and writing, and San Antonio

2 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 8, 1996 EDITORIAL Where the Money Is "Big labor bosses" spent $300 million in their failed attempt to return the U.S. House to Demo- cratic control, said Haley Barbour during ABC's election wrapup. Never mind that the Republican Party's national chairman had to be corrected after a break; the actual amount was closer to $30 million nationwide. And forget that organized labor had returned to electoral politics after a long absence, only because AFL-CIO national President John Sweeney defeated Lane Kirkland. And forget that organized labor was far outspent by trade associations and corporate PACs. Barbour clearly understands the crude geography of the 1996 general election: this year money was the only prominent feature on the landscape of electoral politics. f big money absolutely dominated making sausage,' Pauken said at a press per House seat gained was $116,167. federal elections, you can be sure conference when asked who had directed Not every dollar was spent in October. Al- it played an even greater role in the PAC spending. "No one really likes to though 76/96 wrote its big checks at the end elections for state offices in Texas, look at it." of the campaign—a nationwide Republican where fundraising is even more But someone looked closely—sitting on tactic that encourages going negative late, wide open than it is in the putatively almost all of the 76/96 cash reserves until when opponents have no time to respond— regulated federal system. races could be easily handicapped, then tar- ART underwrote races early, providing can- "We held our own in races geting competitive races as the campaigns didates with startup money: $33,799 in where we weren't outspent twenty-to-one," wound down. Although the numbers for March, $65,884 in late spring and early sum- Texas Democratic Party Chairman Bill the final five days aren't in yet, 76/96's mer, $274,900 in early fall, and $243,896 in White told reporters the day after the elec- the final month of the campaign. To maintain tion. And, White added, there were no big TEXAS DEMOCRATS, WHO IN THE BEST late spending levels, three weeks before elec- Democratic names, like John Sharp or OF YEARS CAN'T GO CHECK-FOR- tion day ART even borrowed $100,000 from Garry Mauro, at the top of the ballot spend- CHECK WITH REPUBLICAN FUNDERS, Hartland Bank in Austin. ing money that would have also influenced WERE AT A SERIOUS DISADVANTAGE. down-ballot races. In presidential elections, epublican funding of House races is Texas is also a net exporter of cash. So total yearly campaign spending through even more impressive when exam- Texas Democrats, who in the best of years October 26 stands at $464,670. So the Rined in detail. Although there are can't go check-for-check with Republican $423,847 that poured into House elections 150 seats in the House, ninety representa- funders, were at a serious disadvantage. in October makes the PAC' s funding strat- tives were unopposed in the general elec- In almost every contested legislative egy easy to parse: raise early—spend late tion. So the Party's smart, pragmatic fun- race, Democratic candidates found them- (and big). And because Democrats control ders found it fairly easy to direct spending selves drowning in an ocean of Republican all the urban House seats and Republicans only toward races where Republican candi- money, in particular money strategically control all the suburban House seats, the dates were viable and in need of help. For spent by two Republican super-PACs: the PAC targets were rural and small-town example, no smart Republican money Associated Republicans of Texas Cam- Democratic incumbents and open seats, found its way into the District 50 race in paign Fund and the 76 in 96 Committee. with one exception: Ken Yarbrough's dis- Austin, where David "Breadman" Blakey Texas Democrats have no political action trict in north central Houston, which Re- challenged Democratic incumbent Glen committees with the fundraising and publicans failed to capture. (But not for Maxey. And the same was true in Dallas, spending potential these two PACs repre- lack of spending.) where Republican incumbent Will Hartnett sent. Seventy-six, of course, is the figure The 76/96 spending complemented the was challenged by Matthew Trotter. (Nei- that represents 50-percent-plus-one in the steadier and earlier funding candidates re- ther were funds exactly flowing uphill in the 150-member House. The Republican ceived from the Associated Republicans of direction of Hollis Cain, the Panhandle Party's failure to reach that goal (ambi- Texas, which spent $243,629 between Octo- rancher recruited to run against House tiously set by Republican state Chairman ber 1 and October 26. That Democrats only Speaker Pete Laney.) Tom Pauken) was not a failure of funding. lost four seats in the House (where most of Once such "uncontested two-candidate Pauken's pet PAC, 76 in 96, spent the combined 76/96 and ART October total races" were elimihated, Republican PAC $423,847 on Republican state House races of $667,476 was spent) has to be considered funders could focus on forty races that in the final thirty days of the campaign. something of a victory; based on 76/96 might have been in play. And 76/96 so "You've heard the saying that `it's like funding alone, the Republican Party's cost carefully screened its spending that by

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 3

• Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, at the close of the last legislative session Alan Pogue

October it directed its $423,847 into Farrar's campaign earlier, provided an ad- But Sue Palmer defeated Democratic in- twenty-one select House campaigns. For ditional $6,000 in October. cumbent Homer Dear, and Democrats in- Suzanna Gratia Hupp, the "right-to-carry ■ Democrat Robert Cook won an open seat clined toward partisan nostalgia might stop candidate" who witnessed the killing of her in LaGrange, although his Republican op- and consider that Dear, a retired middle- parents in the 1991 mass murder at Luby's ponent Chip Rayburn received $37,764 school principal who nodded and smiled his in Killeen, that focused funding meant from 76/96 in October alone. ART con- way through last session's House Public Ed- $52,208 in 76/96 money in October alone. tributed $6,000 in late money. ucation Committee marathon meetings, has (ART added $3,939 in the same period.) ■ One-term Democrat Alec Rhodes held lost the seat once held by former Demo- The only surprise in Hupp's victory over onto his seat, despite the $28,500 that Ken cratic Speaker Gib Lewis. Palmer, however, Dick Miller for an open Central Texas seat Fleuriet received from 76/96 in October. wasn't entirely a PAC creation. The presi- is that her margin wasn't larger. And Re- (ART, which had pumped Fleuriet's cam- dent of Lucky Lady Oil Company is an ex- publican Wayne Christian, who defeated paign earlier, added $2,500). ample of Republican fundraising potential Judy McDonald in an East Texas race for ■ Republican challenger Jim Hartley spent (and myth). Although she claims she won the House seat vacated by losing Senate $33,617 of 76 in 96's money in October— her race because she alone knocked on candidate Jerry Johnston, was so flush that in a futile attempt to unseat Rockdale in- 23,000 doors in her district, her shoe-leather he chartered an airplane to keep a "Chris- cumbent Dan Kubiak. campaign was made easier by her raising tian" tail banner above his district all day ■ And Bay City Democrat Tom Uher, $183,000, including a $60,000 personal on November 5. elected to the House in 1967, defeated loan. Homer Dear raised less than $70,000. Yet Democrats won some races where Donna Coleman, who in October received In Central Texas, Jim Keifer used Republicans PACs drastically altered $18,969 from 76/96 and $3,000 from ART. $31,000 provided by 76/96 and $7,000 the odds: ("They had so much money that they from ART in October to help defeat three- ■ Gatesville incumbent Allen Place bought [negative] ads on KIKK," Uher term Democrat John Cook. In Lubbock, squeaked by challenger Becky Farrar, who said, referring to a Houston country and Christian right homeschooler Carl Isett was assisted by $38,762 from 76/96 in Oc- western radio station 100 miles east of his used 76/96 and ART funding to win an tober. ART, which had invested heavily in district line.) open seat formerly held by moderate

4 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 Republican Bob Duncan. Isett also re- Bullock, known for his occasional 10 they are locked in a fifteen-fifteen tie ceived substantial support from the A+ "Come to Jesus" talks with members of the with Democrats. In the December 10 runoff PAC for Parental School Choice, which Senate, last week heard the altar call from to fill the Senate seat vacated by Democrat funds Christian right Republicans—and the other side of the communion rail. The John Montford of Lubbock, oddsmakers Democrats like Ron Wilson, who provide lieutenant governor, according to the Dal- give Republican state Representative Robert critical ethnic minority support for propos- las Morning News, said he sat in "stunned Duncan a slight advantage over David als like tax-funded vouchers for private silence" as four Republican Senate leaders Langston, a Democrat and former mayor of schools. The A+ fund itself received laid out their suggestions about how the Lubbock. And the strongest prospect to $100,000 from Arkansas' John Walton, Senate should operate. emerge as a candidate to replace East Texas one of the heirs to the WalMart/Sam's Club The senators wasted no time. Once it Senator Jim Turner, who will resign in Jan- fortune. (Isett will join Democrat-turned- was certain that East Texas Senator Drew uary to take his oath as member of the U.S. Republican Warren Chisum, who leads the Nixon had survived by some six hundred House, is Steve Ogden, a Republican repre- religious right chorus in plainsong intro- votes the challenge by Representative Jerry sentative from College Station. Ogden's duction of ideological amendments to all House district sits in the largest population legislation related to public school funding IN THE PAST, DISSING BULLOCK IN center of the larger Senate district, he is ar- or curriculum.) PUBLIC, PARTICULARLY BEFORE THE ticulate, well-known, and has easy access to ART and 76 in 96 are only two PACs. SENATE CONVENES, WAS CONSIDERED money from his professional base in oil and Money for legislative campaigns also in- BAD POLITICS-EVEN FOR THE STATE gas. If Ogden and Duncan win, a seventeen- cludes contributions from other party PACs, CHAIR OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. fourteen Senate advantage will reveal how trade associations, the far larger blocs of much Republican loyalty to Bullock has funding that candidates raised on their own. Johnston—Senators Buster Brown, of been based on gratitude—and how much Associated Republicans will be back Lake Jackson, Teel Bivins, of Amarillo, has been based on fear. after retiring its outstanding debt. And al- Bill Ratliff, of Mount Pleasant, and David And the Associated Republicans of though it was completely cashed out on Sibley, of Waco, paid a visit to Bullock. Texas made the Senate races happen, too, October 26, 76 in 96 now becomes 76 in (Bullock might now set aside The Prince, spending a total of $130,000 on four '98, then 80 in '00, and perhaps 100 in '02. and begin carefully reading King Lear.) races—although Randy Berry's hopeless Democratic Speaker Pete Laney is correct "I really did not appreciate it," Bullock race against Democrat Eliot Shapleigh for when he observes that Republicans spent said, arguing that he would not let partisan- an open seat in El Paso only got $8,000 several million dollars, yet failed to win the ship dictate committee appointments or the (apparently just enough to create an illu- twelve seats needed to provide them a ma- operation of the Senate. "We are not going sion of a contest). But Troy Fraser, who de- jority in the House. But these "big-business to let any political party control the Sen- feated Rick Rhodes and will replace nomi- bosses" have bottomless pockets. And ate," Bullock said, according to the Morn- nal Democrat Bill Sims, got $49,000; they're not going away. ing News. But such pronouncements don't incumbent Republican Drew Nixon, who sound as magnanimous now as they did spent the closing week of his campaign in LEAR ON CONGRESS AVENUE? when Democrats held a slight majority and Greece and was apparently written off by The 31-member Texas Senate has always important committee assignments for Re- big money, got $15,000; and Bob Reese, operated by its own collegial rules, which publicans like Brown and Ratliff were the who failed in a race against Dallas incum- are based on two simple deceptions. At the mechanism that made the two-thirds rule bent David Cain, was provided $47,500. beginning of the session, one bill, not in- work. Had ART taken the $118,000 spent in its tended for debate, is scheduled for floor de- At a press conference held the day after futile effort to defeat Travis County Dis- bate. It remains in place for the entire ses- the election, Republican Party Chair Tom trict Attorney Ronnie Earle, and put just sion; for any other bill to be considered Pauken said he expects that the operation half of it into Reece's campaign, David ahead of it requires a two-thirds vote. And of the Senate will be changing. And, noting Cain might today be looking at expanding the Lieutenant Governor is the most power- that Republicans won all statewide races, his law practice in January. ful member of the Senate—only because a Pauken even predicted that Bullock will Is campaign finance reform likely? Not simple majority, which ratifies Senate face a well-funded challenge when his term hardly! On the day after the election rules, allows it. ends in two years, and perhaps he should Pauken said he would agree to campaign fi- The majority, it seems, is about to consider retirement in 1998. In the past, nance reform—if it begins with curtailing change. And Bob Bullock—who has used dissing Bullock in public, particularly be- organized labor's influence. The system, major legislative concessions, key commit- fore the Senate convenes, was considered like the partisan election of state judges, is tee appointments, and at times even sup- bad politics—even for the state chair of the now working for Republicans. —L.D. port for Republican incumbents to appease Republican Party. a growing Republican Senate plurality— The past ended when Republicans real- might end up looking like the Neville ized that their seventeen-fourteen disadvan- Research for this article was provided by Chamberlain of Texas politics. tage in the Senate is history. Until December Observer editorial intern Katy Adams.

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 5 FEATURES ► The Alliance Convenes in Texas BY KAREN OLSSON sk members of the Alliance, the fledgling Populist mation, or make the mistake that the first Populists did by fusing." network that holds its founding convention this week- In Texas, the Alliance's existing chapters in Austin, San Anto- end (November 21-24), to define what kind of nio, El Paso, Dallas, and Waco have been meeting and preparing organization it is, and they tell the story of its for the convention. Like Dugger, local members are concerned inception: the Alliance formed in response to a about big corporations and the rightward drift of the Democratic "call to action" written by Observer founding Party. "There's a feeling that the Democratic Party has strayed editor Ronnie Dugger ("Real Populists Please from its basic core, and there's no difference between the parties... Stand Up," originally published in The Nation at the national level," says Bob Comeaux, a member of the San An- in August 1995 and reprinted in other publications, including this tonio chapter and longtime labor organizer. "Coming from orga- one). "We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its nized labor, I find it distressing that the Democratic Party takes paid hireling," that article began, and it went on to denounce money labor for granted." Comeaux would like to see the Alliance push for in politics, the lack of political representation for working people, shareholder resolutions that bar political contributions from corpor the widening gap between rich and poor, and corporate control of ations. Among Dallas Alliance members, "different people have the media. It's not exactly unusual for these issues to be raised in different concerns," says coordinator Lew King, but King himself The Nation; what was different about Dugger's piece was its urgent also names electoral reform as a priority. "Personally I would like tone and its closing call to readers, asking them to join him in to see campaign finance control. If we can't get some major reform organizing a "Citizens Alliance" that would stand up to the power we're not going to be able to do anything." of big corporations. Dugger himself has some far-reaching goals in mind. In the late Dugger received 1,700 initial responses, and in the past year 19th century the Supreme Court gave corporations the status of he's contacted potential Alliance members and given speeches "persons" under the 14th Amendment, and Dugger would like to around the country. A group met in Chicago last winter for a na- advance a constitutional amendment to rescind that status. He also tional planning meeting, local chapters have formed, and a main talks about guaranteeing the right to free speech in the workplace, office has been set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Alliance and redefining corporate charters. But he is quick to point out that now has 4,500 respondents in its database and forty-four local there are many actions that Alliance chapters might undertake, de- chapters across the country, suggesting that Dugger's article did pending on the will of the organization as a whole. strike a chord. It's now up to the convention and subsequent orga- This organizational will hasn't yet come into focus: to create a nizing efforts to turn the Alliance's collective sentiment into a grassroots movement out of a magazine article, the Alliance will concrete strategy. have to clarify how its agenda is to be set. It also must determine Without a specific plan of action as of yet, the Alliance has been what it means to organize a movement, as opposed to a political trying to articulate its mission, and members are preparing task party or a single-issue campaign. The 19th century Populists relied force reports on matters like the economy, health care, and cam- on mutual education: farmers organized meetings and sponsored paign finance reform, to be presented and revised at the convention. thousands of circuit lecturers, developing what historian Lawrence No one issue tops the bill; the task force recommendations will Goodwyn calls "collective self-confidence." According to several serve as components of the Alliance's broad opposition to corpo- members, the Alliance wants to do something similar. "It's prema- rate influence. "We are starting on the populist assumption that we ture to talk of solutions yet," says national coordinator Kati cannot get fundamental change through the system..." says Dug- Winchell, "At this point we're primarily concerned with educa- ger. "We're a movement, not a party, seeking to end corporate tion.... Our goal is keeping our focus on the corporate systemic domination of our lives." Unless progressives can unite and ad- problem." Members also see the Alliance as a network that might vance an agenda that favors the interests of the common person, co-sponsor the efforts of other progressive groups, or "help build "democracy is over," he says. "The experiment has failed." coalitions and provide support," as San Francisco Alliance member Dugger's are strong words, consciously echoing the rhetoric of Wade Hudson said. the 19th century Populist farmers (who educated themselves about Will the Alliance help unite progressives, or will it fade into the the monied powers-that-were and organized opposition to the Sub- crowd of small groups on the left? "Right now, people should just Treasury system, then fused with the William Jennings Bryan be where they're comfortable and do their darndest," says Jim Democrats in 1896 and disappeared), and consciously unconcilia- Hightower, who in 1990 tried to help spur a Texas Populist Al- tory—especially as far as the Democratic Party is concerned. liance into being (it failed, he says, for lack of grassroots support). Breaking with the party for good was what led Dugger to write his "We can worry down the road about some place where any and all call. "I'm not going to continue to be betrayed. I was in betrayal progressives can get together. This [Alliance] is tremendous mode for at least fifteen years," he says. And he insists that "pro- progress as far as I'm concerned." ❑ gressives have to come together; a movement culture has to con- tinue to exist. [It won't work]...if members peel off into a party for- Karen Olsson is an Observer special correspondent.

6 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 Communities Meet to Fight Pollution BY CAROL S. STALL One in four Americans lives within two miles of a "Superfund site a polluted area so toxic it has been designated for special clean-up action by the federal government. Unfortunately, many of the communities closest to such industrial waste sites—usually low-income neighborhoods, often populated by minorities—are the very communities least able to protect themselves.

oping to address this problem, last month in San Antonio the Environmental Pro- tection Agency's Na- tional Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) held the first in a series of national work- Hshops designed to empower low-income people and communities of color which have found themselves cornered by toxics. The Enforcement and Compliance Assur- ance Roundtable Meeting, held October 17-19, brought environmental justice stakeholders together to discuss the role of local communities in the enforcement of environmental laws and standards. Partici- pants included community organizations and individuals affected by pollution, as well as EPA, state agency and industry rep- resentatives—primarily from EPA's Re- gion Six (Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, • Harris County Landfil 1 Sample File photo New Mexico and Louisiana). The roundtable was co-hosted by the San Antonio local of the Complaints mainly focused on lack of consistent TNRCC oversight Southwest Public Worker's Union, and it began with a tour of San of pollution matters, and the apparent broad leeway allowed to in- Antonio area industrial and toxic sites. Conference sessions were dustry for environmental infractions. designed to inform citizens of their rights when faced with pollu- Ferris noted that the TNRCC had helped organize the confer- tion problems, and described methods of influencing the enforce- ence, but some participants questioned the TNRCC's real interest, ment and compliance process. Community groups also had the since only two agency representatives were in attendance. "Of opportunity to interact with agency and industry officials, and to course TNRCC helped plan make recommendations for further public participation. "COMMUNITIES OF COLOR AND it," said Neil Carman of the "This has never happened before—a three-day event with the LOW-INCOME GROUPS BEAR THE Austin Sierra Club. "They sole purpose of eliciting community views on how the system BURDEN OF ECONOMIC DEVELOP- get $80 million a year from should work," said Deeohn Ferris, Executive Director of the non- MENT [INCLUDING POLLUTION], the EPA. If the TNRCC is profit Washington Office on Environmental Justice, which helped BUT NOT THE BENEFITS." so concerned about envi- to organize the project. "Communities of color and low-income ronmental justice problems groups bear the burden of economic development [including pollu- in Texas communities, why weren't they out in force?" tion], but not the benefits," said Ferris (who also serves on Carol Marshall, one of the two TNRCC Environmental Equity NEJAC). Ferris believes that these groups have not had a sufficient representatives at the conference, said that since the roundtable was voice in regulation or clean-up of industry. held in Texas, more comments were directed at the home state During the course of the roundtable discussions, the Texas Natural agency. "But I don't think TNRCC received any more bashing than Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) received its share of another agency would, if it had been held in another state." criticism, primarily from representatives of Texas communities. Marshall works in the new TNRCC Office of Public Assistance

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 7 • Aeration Pond, Robstown Kurt Cobb

(OPA), created this year "to give citizens unprecedented access to erris said organizers had run into a few snags, especially agency permitting processes." As part of the initiative for public since EPA funding for some low-income travelers became outreach, TNRCC set up a toll-free number for citizens for Favailable only at the last moment. But she believes the meet- "straight answers on their permitting questions." "We're always ing was a "first in public participation," and she noted that EPA Re- interested in hearing about community's concerns," said Mar- gion Six had been chosen for good reason. "Texas has more Title VI shall. "We want people to know we're making efforts to address [environmental racism] complaints than anywhere else in the U.S." their concerns." But some Texas community groups said they did not have suffi- But Carman believes that despite its public relations initiatives, cient access to the conference. Bill Green, of Corpus Christi's People the TNRCC is in actuality reducing public input on air, water and Against Contaminated Environments (PACE), says he did not have solid-waste permits granted to polluting Texas industries. "Under the means to attend the roundtable, nor was he offered funding by [Governor] Bush," Carman said, "they've essentially pulled the EPA. "I would like to have gone," said Green. PACE is party to a plug on public participation in the permitting process." Title VI claim, filed with the EPA, against the TNRCC and the City of Corpus Christi. Green says a study done of his community, called

s of htin e faciht ing community now includes a huge pile ) won their first bat- of garbage, complete with resident vul- ofother erof nine, a n ‘wit tle this month, when Texas Natural Re- tures and a host of flies. The garbage her children and netotbors was marching source Conservation Commissioners blows into our yards, and the dust and the to protest a proposed Browning Ferris In overruled the reconimendation of an ad- smell... !" Freitag adds that her clothing dustries' (BFI) landfill for the N4artiriez ministrative law judge and denied BFI a often smells like garbage. "We're miser- community, just east of San Antonio. The permit to vertically expand a segment of able out here. We're sick." Residents say group's protest did not stop BFI from lo- the Martinez landfill. (According to testi- their health has been affected by the fa cating a massive dump for San Antonio's mony before the Commission, ninety-six cility, and cite respiratory and gastroin- garbage just yards from residents' homes. separate citizen complaints had previ- testinal ailments. In addition to the odors, Nor have the neighbors been able to curb ously been filed with TNRCC against the said Neil Carman of the Sierra Club, hid- the dump's subsequent lateral and vertical facility, but the state agency had never is- den dangers may lurk beneath the expansions throughout the years. sued a violation against BFI.) garbage mounds of the Tessman Road

8 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 INDUSTRY REPRESENTATIVES CHARGED THAT, RATHER THAN RESPONDING TO QUESTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, "TOO MUCH PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT" COULD LEAD TO "MISGUIDED ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS THAT CATER TO PERCEIVED THREATS RATHER THAN SUBSTANTIVE COMPLIANCE PROBLEMS." an "enterprise zone" but also known as Refinery Row, showed that 80 they benefited from the conference. "The meeting taught me my percent of those living near refineries are black, Hispanic and low-in- rights-4 always knew I could do something, but I didn't know come residents. what," said Sedonia Jackson, who lives in the area of Louisiana, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, known as "Cancer everend Roy Malveaux of Beaumont said his parishioners, Alley." Over the past few years community members have been mainly low-income blacks and Hispanics, are also trapped losing hair, suffering skin diseases, lung ailments, and other Rby industrial pollution. Malveaux said later that he had chronic health problems, which Jackson attributes to fumes and planned to attend the roundtable, but the death of one of his parish- particulates from nearby Cargill and Marathon Oil plants. (Ac- ioners delayed his departure. When he called the EPA concerning cording to Jackson, in response to the shower of white dust over the delay, he learned that the promised funding for his trip had not her community Cargill recently offered local people money to get materialized. Malveaux is a party to the PACE Title VI discrimina- their hair done. But her hair style is the least of Jackson's worries. tion claim against the TNRCC and Corpus Christi, and he said he "If our hair is white, what do you suppose our lungs look like?" wanted to express his views to TNRCC representatives. "The She said the neighborhood often looks like a snowstorm. "Even my TNRCC needs to have offices right where the people live, work cat is covered with white stuff.") with, and breathe these chemicals," Malveaux said. "It used to be sugar cane and corn fields around there. Nobody According to a Washington-based industry newsletter, the In- had these problems then," said Jackson, who has lived in the side EPA Weekly Report, industry representatives charged that, racially-mixed, low-income community since 1944: rather than responding to questions of environmental justice, "too At the San Antonio meeting, Jackson learned how to access the much public involvement" could lead to "misguided enforcement internet database listing of the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The actions that cater to perceived threats rather than substantive com- TRI (mandated by law in 1987) lists industrial air pollution re- pliance problems." leases for large industries. Using a community-center computer, Following the San Antonio roundtable, the October 25 issue of Jackson called up data on both Cargill and Marathon. "I found all the Weekly Report described a "fracas" on the industrial-site tour kinds of gasses and a lot of stuff, and right in my backdoor." Jack- as "one of the pitfalls of public involvement." The tour had visited son and her neighbors sent a certified letter to Cargill, requesting a a Martinez, Texas landfill owned by Browning Ferris Industries meeting. "They're coming to the table," she said. (BR) where, according to the newsletter, a small group of "People have to get involved, because the government needs protesters shouted down BFI representatives. Industry sources de- guidance on how to fulfill its obligations," said Deeohn Ferris. scribed the event as an "uprising," and "close to a melee." "The public has a right to be heard, and business and industry need But other tour members said the industry version was greatly ex- to act on that input." EPA and NEJAC plan a series of additional aggerated. "There was no 'fracas,'" said Chavel Lopez of the roundtables, to be held over the next several months. ❑ Southwest Public Worker's Union, who helped host the tour. "Peo- ple shouted and then they calmed down." (In early November, the Carol S. Stall is a freelance writer based in Austin. Research sup- TNRCC denied a permit to BFI to expand the landfill. See sidebar.) port for this article came from the Dougherty Foundation, and In the immediate aftermath of the roundtable, participants say travel support from the Foundation for a Compassionate Society.

' e take pride in making it appear Mg and attractive to anyone driving by." in a traditionally segregate' nally ‘6"'61/' Guerra also argued that the landfill is Daves. "They' ve been very effective." dence presented to them, and they put "extremely important to the people of But despite the rejection of the new per- people's health ahead of business and San Antonio." (BFI's CEO is William mit, Carman says that the neighbors' vic- ahead of the almighty dollar. They Ruckelshaus, formerly chief administra- tory may be short-lived. "This is a huge showed integrity." —C• S. tor of the EPA.) victory for citizens, but I'm afraid there's

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 9 How the Contras Invaded the U.S. BY DENNIS BERNSTEIN AND ROBERT KNIGHT Wanda Palacio watched the Hercules cargo plane roll to a stop on the tarmac of Barranquilla International Airport, located in the Andean foothills just off the azure waters of Colombia's northern coast. According to Palacio, the aircraft bore the markings of Southern Air Transport, a private airline once associated with retired Vietnam-era Air Force General Richard Secord, who would later purchase a security fence for the home of contra point man Lt. Col. Oliver North.

alacio was in Barranquilla that day to arrange a co- with first-hand evidence of officially sanctioned transfers of drugs for caine deal with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, at the covert policy objectives, and Barranquilla is but one of many trans- time Columbia's most ambitious druglord. As she shipment points in the hemisphere whose operations would be mir- watched two men in green uniforms remove two rored by the unloading of drugs from secret flights into private and green military trunks out of the plane and onto a military airfields for delivery into the cities and suburbs of America. truck, her host explained his operation: "Ochoa told me that the plane was a CIA plane and that he FORMER DEA AGENT BLOWS THE WHISTLE was exchanging guns fdr drugs." The crew, he said, Celerino Castillo III is a fifteen-year veteran of the Drug Enforce- were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from ment Administration who observed first-hand such an operation at thep CIA, landing at dusk. Sometimes they brought guns, sometimes Ilopango airport. There, drugs were smuggled through a military fa- they took U.S. products such as washing machines, gourmet food, cility under the direct control of the CIA and Lt. Col. Oliver North fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers, which they could during his heady days at the National Security Council. not get in Colombia. Each time, Ochoa said, they took back drugs." Castillo saw the light ten years ago, on January 14, 1986, the day In her 1986 sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Senate he met then-Vice President George Bush at a Guatemalan Embassy Subcommittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism, Palacio reception. The lead DEA agent in Central America tried to tell the acknowledged that she could not confirm the operation was being Vice President that "something funny" was going on at Ilopango. conducted by the CIA. But, she added, "Obviously, what I saw "But he just shook my hand, smiled and walked away from me," raised many questions about the source of the U.S. weapons which Castillo recently recalled. Later that same day, he says, Bush met I know Ochoa has obtained." with Oliver North and contra leader Adolfo Calero. That was not the only time such an exchange was witnessed by Castillo went on to gather evidence that was documented in a the Puerto Rican Palacio, a former airline employee whose cocaine February 14, 1989, memo to his Guatemala-based DEA supervisor. trafficking career spanned two years of her relationship with an He detailed how known traffickers with multiple DEA files used upper-class Colombian whose social circle included "people deeply Hangars Four and Five for drug smuggling, and obtained U.S. visas, involved in the drug trade." Concerned for the safety of her daugh- despite their background. According to Castillo, "the CIA owned one ter, she eventually volunteered to work with the FBI because, she hangar, and the National Security Council ran the other." said, "I was angry about what drugs were doing to the people I "There is no doubt that they were running large quantities of co- knew and to the United States government itself." caine into the U.S. to support the contras," Castillo said in a 1994 As an FBI operative, Palacio would later realize the extent of the interview with the authors. "We saw the cocaine and we saw boxes damage done to the United States government by the guns-for- full of money. We're talking about very large quantities of cocaine drugs exchanges that permeated the hemisphere during the early- and millions of dollars." According to Castillo, "my reports contain to mid-1980s. "To my great regret," she testified, "the Bureau has not only the names of traffickers, but their destinations, flight paths, told me that some of the people I identified as being involved in tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight." drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelli- Further evidence of the contra-cocaine connection supporting gence Agency." Castillo's accounts was obtained by the authors nearly ten years And according to Palacio' s deposition, it was not only the CIA ago, in the form of an internal document of the since-disbanded Se- that was involved with drug smugglers. Palacio stated to Senator lect House Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. In a syndi- Kerry that she spoke to the FBI about many individuals within the cated Newsday article on March 31, 1987, we revealed the contents U.S. government who were involved in illegal drug operations. of the eight-page June 25, 1986, memorandum that stated clearly "We have extensively discussed drug-related corruption in the that "a number of individuals who supported the contras and who United States including a regional director of U.S. customs, a fed- participated in contra activity in Texas, Louisiana, California and eral judge, air traffic controllers in the FAA, a regional director of Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, have immigration, and other government officials." suggested that cocaine is being smuggled in the U.S. through the Wanda Palacio is only one of scores of people to come forward same infrastructure which is procuring, storing and transporting

10 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 weapons, explosives, ammunition and mili- tary equipment for the contras from the United States."

SEND COCAINE, GUNS AND MONEY Drugs, weapons and money-laundering have always been tools of the trade for U.S. clandestine operations abroad. But never in United States history has the importation of cocaine risen so dramatically as it did dur- ing the Reagan Administration's clandes- tine war against the government of Nicaragua, spearheaded by the "contras," a group of right-wing expatriate rebels pieced together by the CIA. The window of opportunity for the CIA- brokered contra-drug alliance came in 1984, when Congress passed the Boland Amend- ment to the War Powers Act. This watershed legislation cut off direct intelligence and fi- nancial aid to the contras. But the Reagan Administration continued the clandestine war (which began with a 1981 Executive Order) through the auspices of the National • Then-Vice-President Bush with Celerino Castillo, 1986 U.S. embassy photo Security Council, which by a legal techni- cality was not considered an "intelligence" agency. Enter the contra leaders were allowed to smuggle over a ton of cocaine into Colonel, Oliver North, who directed NSC operations from the base- the United States. Those same contra leaders admitted under oath ment of the Executive Office Building. their association and affiliation with the CIA." Under North's stewardship, the $30 million in aid cut off by legal means was made up through covert means, namely, the sale THE NORTH CONNECTION of weapons to Iran and the exchange of CIA allies' drug profits for During his recent testimony, Blum also raised the issue of Oliver clandestine sanctions that allowed cocaine to be imported and sold North's notebooks, kept contemporaneously with his contra resup- up north. The cocaine was often shipped in the same planes that ply effort. Even after North's lawyers were allowed to expurgate flew weapons south to the contras. the notebooks, many of the pages made available to investigators The combination of contras and drug dealers was a marriage still contain numerous references to contra drug trafficking. For in- made in heaven, former Narcotics Committee counsel Jack Blum stance, on July 9, 1984, North wrote that he "went and talked to recalled during recent Congressional hearings. "There were facili- [contra leader Federico] Vaughn, [who] wanted to go to Bolivia to ties that were needed for running the war, clandestine air strips, pick up paste, wanted aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos." In another cowboy pilots who would fly junker airplanes, people who would notebook entry on July 12, 1985, North writes, "$14 million to fi- make arrangements for the clandestine movement of money. nance [arms] came from drugs." "Every one of those facilities was a perfect facility for someone in In a December 1986 interview with the authors, Jestis Garcia, a the drug business," Blum said. "So there were people who were con- Miami-based North network operative said, "It is common knowl- nected very directly to the CIA who had those facilities, and allowed edge here in Miami that this whole contra operation was paid for them to be used, and indeed, personally profited from their use." with cocaine... I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together Blum's dramatic charges are supported by a former high-level under one roof, weapons that I [later] helped ship to Costa Rica. " supervisory CIA officer. Alan Fiers, the former chief of the CIA A September 26, 1984, Miami police intelligence report stated Central American Task Force, stated in a sworn deposition to the that money supporting the illegal contra training effort in Florida Congressional Iran-Contra committees that "we knew everybody "comes from narcotics transactions." This memorandum, written around [Southern Front contra leader Eden] Pastora was involved in at a time when Attorney General Janet Reno was the chief state cocaine.... His staff and friends...were drug smugglers or involved prosecutor in Florida, has every page stamped "record furnished to in drug smuggling." George Kiszynski, FBI." According to Miami-based John Mattes, a former federal public The document also places John Hull and his Costa Rican ranch on defender and Iran-Contra investigator for John Kerry, "what we in- the contra supply map. According to the document, two Cuban- vestigated, which is on the record as part of the Kerry Committee American contra supporters "are associated with an American who Report, is evidence that narcotics traffickers associated with the owns a ranch in Costa Rica. The owner of the ranch is John Hull, and

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 11 THE EVIDENCE OF A CLANDESTINE PROGRAM THAT COUNTENANCED THE IMPORT OF DRUGS TO FURTHER POLITICAL AGENDAS IS OVERWHELMING, OFFICIALLY, ANECDOTALLY, AND STATISTICALLY.

the ranch has an airstrip. In October of 1983, a load of ammunition having supply increase even more than demand has." was onloaded on that airstrip that he owns." On March 16, 1987, Something happened during the contra period in the Americas, U.S. Customs seized a plane from a narcotics trafficker who was in- and the evidence of a clandestine program that countenanced the volved with the contras. On that plane they discovered the address import of drugs to further political agendas is overwhelming, offi- book of Robert Owen, Oliver North's eyes and ears in Central Amer- cially, anecdotally, and statistically. Today the CIA is rightfully ica. Owen, a former aide to Dan Quayle, met with Costa Rican-based being called on to answer the excellent questions raised by the re- CIA asset John Hull and Oliver North on many occasions. cent "Dark Alliance" investigative series in the San Jose Mercury In March of 1989, Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize News. winner Oscar Arias barred Oliver North, John Poindexter, Major But we would be foolish to believe the agency was alone in its General Richard Secord, former U.S. Ambassador Louis Tambs, operations, or that the consequences of a decade of covert drug- and former CIA Costa Rican Station Chief Jose Hernandez from enabling policy began or ends in the crack-infested neighborhoods entry into Costa Rica. of Los Angeles. An entire generation of Americans has been intro- Arias was acting on recommendations by a Costa Rican congres- duced to drug use, major elements of our government have been di- sional commission investigating drug trafficking. The Costa Rican in- verted from ethical and legal behavior, and it will likely take the vestigation was triggered by "the quantity and frequency of the ship- United States longer to recover from the crack connection than for ment of drugs that passed through" land and secret airstrips controlled Nicaragua to recover from the contra war. We have, in effect, over- by "southern front" CIA point man John Hull. Hull worked exten- thrown our own highest ideals. El sively with North in setting up the "Contra 7" front in Costa Rica. In his notebooks, North talked about "the necessity of giving A look at attempts to discredit the recent San Jose Mercury News Mr. Hull protection." According to the Costa Rican investigation, investigative series, which documents how contra leaders moved and supported by other North entries and Blum's testimony, more cocaine into Los Angeles, appears in the next issue, in Part II. than a half dozen drug pilots were provided by General Manuel Noriega, in response to requests from North. According to the Robert Knight was a founding producer, along with Dennis Bern- Costa Rican congressional commission, "these requests for contra stein, of the "Contragate/Undercurrents" investigative news pro- help were initiated by Col. North to Gen. Noriega. They opened a gram. Dennis Bernstein is the host-producer of a daily public radio gate so their henchmen could utilize Costa Rica for trafficking in news magazine in the San Francisco area. Knight and Bernstein arms and drugs." Hull would later be indicted by the Costa Rican won The Jesse Meriton White Award for International Reporting attorney general on drug trafficking charges, and ultimately smug- and the National Federation of Community Broadcasting award gled out of the country by a DEA agent. for the reporting on the Iran-Contra affair. According to North's notebooks, he met with Noriega twice dur- ing a time when the U.S. government had documented evidence that General Noriega was involved in the Columbian drug trade. ECHOES OF AN ERROR Join sister Helen Prejean, Testifying in the same room where the Kerry committee hearings were held a decade ago, Blum echoed Wanda Palacio's observa- author of tion—that law enforcement and other officials looked the other way when the CIA-backed contras were involved in drug operations. Dead Man Walking, "What is true is the policy makers absolutely closed their eyes to the criminal behavior of our allies and supporters in that war. The at the Texas Civil Fights Project's policymakers ignored their drug dealing, their stealing, and their human rights violations," said Blum. "The policy makers, and I sixth Annual bill of Ii hts Dinner. stress policy makers, allowed them to compensate themselves for helping us in that war, by remaining silent in the face of their im- propriety, and by quietly undercutting law enforcement and human rights agencies that might have caused them difficulty." Wednesday, December 11; 7:30 p.m. During the heyday of the CIA-contra-cocaine connection, be- Sheraton Hotel, Austin tween the passage and repeal of the Boland Amendment, in 1986, every market indicator of the cocaine glut in America went off- scale. As Palacio observed in 1986, "Three years ago [before for tickets or information, call Carlotta Vann or Boland], the price of cocaine was $50,000 per kilo. Today it is bandy Conrad at 512/474-4073 $20,000 and sometimes you can get it for $15,000 to $18,000. The market for the cocaine isn't smaller, so the lower price is a result of

12 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 • Blind Justice Comes to the Polls BY W. BURNS TAYLOR This past November 5, for the first time in Texas (and the U.S. and the world), voting booths in El Paso County were accessible to all voters—including the blind and visually impaired. The system, costing slightly more than $10,000 for the entire county, involved the use of a tape player in con- junction with a conventional portable voting machine. Taped instructions informed the voter which hole number corresponded to the names of the candidates listed on each page. The voter then counted down the requisite number of holes with the tip of the voting stylus, and punched his or her own bal- t may seem like a minor improvement in voting methods, challenged the security of such a system, insisting that security yet the change required a lengthy lawsuit under the precautions were not yet sophisticated enough to prevent fraud Americans with Disabilities Act—and a court decision still and tampering by hackers. under appeal by the Secretary of State. This case, presided over by Judge David Briones, had its mo- In September of 1994, I was one of seven El Pasoans who ments of humor. Judge Briones spoke from the high bench through filed suit in federal district court against the county of El a microphone, making his words sound a little like the voice of God Paso, both Republican and Democratic Parties, and against floating down from the rafters. Somewhat disoriented by the sound, the Secretary of State of Texas, for failure to provide Grant Downey, totally blind, stopped at one point and asked, accessibility to the polls for persons with disabilities. We charged "Where's the judge?" During my own testimony, I explained that that the County of El Paso and the State of Texas deny blind and vi- directing some one else to complete my ballot at the polls meant sually impaired citizens the right to cast a secret ballot, and that the having others nearby overhear my choices. The state's lawyer majority of polling places within the county are inaccessible to per- asked if I couldn't whisper to the person assisting me. sons in wheelchairs. "I usually ask a male friend to vote with me," I replied. "My In response to the suit, the El Paso media had a feeding frenzy. friends are the type of guys...who wouldn't take kindly to another Talk show callers vilified people with disabilities for filing a man whispering in their ears, if you get my drift." Even the judge "frivolous" law suit, which would burden the county tax payers laughed at that. with unnecessary expenses. The critics somehow failed to note that Despite the voting demonstrations, which made it clear that people with disabilities have been paying taxes for years for events more than one method was already available to make the polls ac- and facilities that are totally inaccessible to us: parks, art museums, cessible, lawyers for the state argued that what the plaintiffs were libraries, and even many government offices. asking would force a fundamental and prohibitively expensive On June 12, 1995, just minutes before the trial began, the change in the way all citizens voted, and that visually impaired in- County of El Paso and both political parties settled with the plain- dividuals should be content to have either election judges or family tiffs. County officials agreed to explore the feasibility of render- members vote for them. ing all polling places in the county accessible to the blind and vi- sually impaired. That left the secretary of state as the sole n November of 1995 (five months after the trial ended in U.S. defendant in the case. district court) Judge Briones ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. In During the three-day trial, witnesses with disabilities voiced ob- /his landmark decision, ringing with the eloquence of righteous- jections to the present system of having someone else, either a fam- ness, Judge Briones said: ily member or an election official, fill out their ballots for them. We In this day of low voter turnout and general apathy in the elec- described this method as both humiliating and demeaning. At the torate, simplifying access to the polls for a group of people with a polls, nearby voters often overhear our choices of candidates; even history of political activity is in the best interest of both the state absentee voting results in another person (whoever fills out the ab- and federal government. It is their right as citizens and is required sentee ballot) knowing how we vote. The plaintiffs insisted that for by the ADA.... a modest sum, the state could provide a modified system by which Although it will not be easy, Texas has an opportunity to lead the all blind and visually impaired citizens could vote unassisted. nation into a world of equality for the handicapped and the dis- Grant Downey, C.E.O. of the El Paso Lighthouse for the Blind, abled regarding the most cherished right and greatest responsibil- demonstrated to the court that a blind individual could operate a ity in any democracy. punch-card voting machine (the system currently in use in El Following Briones' decision, the secretary of state again failed to Paso County) if instructions were provided on cassette tape. An come to a settlement with the plaintiffs, so the judge began the rem- electronic method of voting, using a computer equipped with a edy phase of the case in January of this year. In June, he instructed voice modem and an ordinary touchtone telephone, was also demonstrated. But lawyers representing the Secretary of State See "Blind Justice," page 15

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 13 JAMES GALBRAITH Hoover or Roosevelt? Liberals and their ideas played no role in the presidential campaign just concluded. Dole ran as a

conservative. And Clinton 's victory can be explained almost entirely by his successful appeal to the Perot vote. Bob Dole ends up almost exactly the vote won by George Bush four years ago. But Clinton picks up what Ross lost—about half of Perot's 1992 vote. That is what made the difference between a squeaker and a landslide. hus the President returns on the Perot platform: balance the budget at all costs. That, plus partial priva- Ttization of Social Security (if they think they can get away with it), plus the negligible promises of the campaign, seem likely to constitute the returning administra- tion's economic program. If so, liberals will have no more role in the next four years than they do now. Yet, things may be about to change. There are new developments. The economy is showing signs of catching cold. Eco- nomic growth slowed sharply between the second and third quarters. Consumption dropped and inventories piled up—a bad omen. As The New York Times reported, the great profits boom of the 1990s appears to be over. Indeed, some companies who re- ported good earnings in the third quarter are already warning that the fourth will look bad. Bob Dole overstated the case; an actual recession probably remains some ways off. But Dole was correct all along in arguing that U.S. economic performance in this ex- A Bill Clinton Kirk Tuck pansion has been weak and remains fragile. If the recovery now expires, the assump- tive goals are diametrically opposed, ex- service employment—a jobs program. And tions behind a do-nothing economic policy cept as regards monetary policy. it will be necessary to restore the cuts in will collapse. Revenue estimates will fall. A policy aimed at sticking to budget bal- public welfare programs inflicted by the last There will be an enormous increase in pro- ance will require holding firm on welfare Congress. Tax cuts are also possible but jected future deficits, blasting the current block grants, even as states and localities are should be avoided, for, as we discovered budget plan apart. Soon enough, unemploy- swamped by rising caseload. It will require under Reagan, they generate a fantastic in- ment will start to rise, and the popular com- strictly refusing to get involved in job cre- crease in the purchases of imports, and are placency induced by five years of falling ation. It will require even sharper cuts in pres- inefficient creators of domestic jobs. unemployment will disappear. ent government spending, and perhaps new Suppose then, that the economy is head- At that moment, Clinton will face a crisis tax increases to plug the budget gap. Since ing down. Can the choice be avoided? The and a choice. He can be Hoover, or he can these measures would only deepen the slump, only way would be for the Federal Reserve be Roosevelt. He can focus on the budget, they wouldn't actually work in practice. They to cut interest rates, quickly and sharply. or he can take responsibility for the econ- would plug the budget gap in the govern- The Fed might usefully begin right now, at omy. It will no longer be possible to pretend ment's budget documents, not in real life. its next meeting on November 13. There is that curing unemployment and balancing A policy to restore growth and cut unem- plenty of room to cut. Short-term interest the budget are the same thing. Under those ployment would require sharply increased rates were at 3 percent from 1992 through circumstances, it will instead become clear public capital spending, mainly on cities early 1994; that is more than two points that the policies dictated by these alterna- and public housing. It would require public below current levels. The sooner they return

14 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 CLINTON MAY, JUST POSSIBLY, HAVE THE MENTAL AGILITY TO GRASP THE SITUATION BEFORE THE REPUBLICANS ONCE AGAIN RUN AWAY WITH THE AGENDA. to those values, the better. The lower inter- nonsense on which he campaigned. In this go back to sleep, and Clinton can look for- est rates go, the greater the chance that an respect he rather resembles the British ward to being remembered like, say, actual slump can be avoided. But the Fed- Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the Franklin Pierce. But if it doesn't, and I tend eral Reserve is always too cautious in the "Welsh witch," as John Maynard Keynes to think it won't, the political season just face of recession risks, and we cannot ex- once described him. And Lloyd George ahead could prove much more interesting pect that this winter will prove an excep- eventually emerged as the world's first com- than the one that just came to an end. ❑ tion. mitted Keynesian political leader. Clinton The real question may be whether Clin- may, just possibly, have the mental agility to James Galbraith is a professor in the LBJ ton, having steeped himself in the rhetoric grasp the situation before the Republicans School of Public Affairs at the University of of balanced budgets and having won the once again run away with the agenda. Texas at Austin. His articles are available election largely by winning the Perot vote, But can Clinton rid himself of the on-line at gopher://csfiColorado.EDU:70/ can now throw off this incubus and think unimaginative members of his economic I ilecon/authors/Galbraith.Jamie. for himself. He may need to start thinking team? Can he face down the tag-along in- quickly. The Republicans, in the late cam- vestment bankers, the pundits and other paign, actually had an economic program. hacks who make the balanced budget their ANDERSON & COMPANY It was a deplorable one to be sure, but it did totem? Can he discipline all those half-ed- COFFEE TEA SPICES speak to the condition of the economy and ucated Congresspeople who know only TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE to the need for stronger growth and higher that "let's balance the budget" sounds good AUSTIN, TEXAS .78731 employment. And the Republicans, as they at the fundraiser? Will he have the guts to 512-453-1533 did under Reagan, would have sacrificed rise to this occasion—perhaps the most Send me your list. budget balance to the objective of stronger dramatic thing that can happen to him now, growth. The Democrats had nothing at all. short of war? Name Under these circumstances, it is perhaps The economy may yet bounce back, in Street reassuring that Clinton himself is uncon- which case the contradictions will tend to City Zip strained by principled commitment to the resolve themselves. In that case, we can all

"Blind Justice," from page 13 throughout this nation. We fully expect to that any modicum we may regain is pre- win the appeal," said Harrington. "To de- cious to us. By necessity, we must often the secretary of state to proceed in three liberately discourage one segment of the allow others to be privy to some of the stages. First, he ordered the Secretary of population from voting is invidious to most intimate documents and details of State to approve no voting system that is not democratic ideals." our personal lives: our bills, our bank accessible to the blind and disabled by De- statements, our personal letters, tax cember 31, 1996. Secondly, the secretary of lthough most sighted people are records, etc. Trading on our emotions like state must issue written directives, guide- sympathetic with our cause and legal tender, we are forced to buy back our lines and instructions to all counties in the Acondemn the obstinacy of the sec- independence and privacy—one degree at state to render all current polling places ac- retary of state, many have also questioned a time—with cash, with favors, with com- cessible by December 31, 1998. The final us as to our motives for filing suit in the promises. And yet the independence and stage orders that all polling stations first place. Some argue that we should be autonomy of the individual lies at the very throughout the state be totally accessible to perfectly content to allow someone else to heart of the American psyche. the disabled by December 31, 1999. cast our ballots for us. Even many blind in- We see our victory in this case as a step James Harrington, head of the Texas dividuals believe that the voting-access toward removing one of the last vestiges of Civil Rights Project in Austin and lead case is a tempest in a teapot, and that there institutionalized paternalism of those well- council for the plaintiffs, announced in are many more important issues that we meaning sighted persons who say, "Don't July that Antonio Garza Jr., Secretary of should be pursuing. worry. Let me do that for you. It's much State, had appealed the judge's decision. Aside from the obvious fact that every easier that way." In response to that mind- Most likely, the appeal will be heard in the citizen in Texas is guaranteed the right to set we say, "Don't do it for us; help us find

5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Or- a secret ballot under the constitution, most a way to do it for ourselves." ❑ leans, at great expense to Texas taxpayers. of us see the issue as one of independence "The disabled community of El Paso versus dependency. Blind and visually On November 5, W. Burns Taylor, a writer should be proud of itself for filing a case impaired people have to relinquish so and teacher based in El Paso, cast his first that promises to affect voting standards much of our privacy and independence, secret ballot—in ten minutes flat.

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 15 MOLLY IVINS Laugh Before You Cry Those who are profoundly grateful for this presidential election would like to thank all concerned: from Steve Forbes to BobDole, from Dick Morris to President Clinton, from the Riady family of In- donesia to Archer Daniels Midland. Thank you, one and all. It has been a fabulous year. I believe I speak for the entire community of those who make a living by laughing at politics when I say that we are humbled by the material you have given us. et us start back in those glorious that Perot's support is stuck in the single against the vice chairman of Dole's finance days of yesteryear: 1995, when digits—often the middle one. committee. The daring and the foolish actu- Clinton was dead meat and House Dole contributed perhaps the funniest ally believe that Some Good Will Come Speaker Newt Gingrich bestrode line of the year, with his immortal observa- from all this. Cross your fingers, patriots, L tion that tobacco might not be addictive but and think Campaign Finance Reform. the political world like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, when the only question was which Re- that too much milk might be bad for us. As the days dwindled down to a precious publican would get the nomination and evict The check from the dairy lobby must have (?) few, the only question left was whether Clinton from the White House in a walk. been late that week. we were going to vote Newt back into power. The first indication we had that it would be Then, both candidates followed the The trouble with re-electing Newt is that an unusually festive year was when class risky strategy of blowing a hole in the de- we'll have to listen to him for another two warfare broke out in the Republican Party. bates by boring the public comatose. Clin- years. Newt suffers from what the shrinks Senator Phil Gramm announced to an aston- ton was so on-message that the whole call projection—he's always accusing other ished world that he is a "blue-collar Republi- country could do the litany, "Medicare, people of what he does himself. Which leads can." Long-time observers of PACman Phil Medicaid, education and the environ- to me to believe he is best described by his had to rush home and put cold compresses on ment." The vice presidential debate set a own favorite adjectives, the ones he uses so their heads. Then, My Boy Buchanan started new high for legal soporifics, and raised constantly that they are as familiar as that tearing up the pea patch, leading the peas- some serious questions about the War On bridge to the 21st century: "bizarre, sick, ants-with-pitchforks in a people's insurrec- Drugs. If Jack Kemp had been on downers pathetic, twisted and grotesque." ❑ tion, ranting against the rich, carrying on and Gore had been on speed, it would've about corporate greed. He won New Hamp- been a great debate. Legalize drugs ! Molly Ivins, a former Observer editor, is shire, and the entire Republican Party put a Next came a painful period, with Clinton a columnist for the Fort Worth Star- cold compress to its collective head. Rose-Gardening away while poor Dole sal- Telegram. Then, for a spell, President Steve Forbes lied forth in pursuit of the Theme of the wandered around the country doing his im- Week. Theme after theme did nothing for 44 Alb personation of a Chatty Cathy doll. Forbes his poll numbers. Finally, there was a great 164 Sea was the favored candidate of the charismat- public huddle in the Dole camp: Should he Horse ically challenged. Lamar Alexander proved play the character card or not? Gosh, the Inn that dead men do wear plaid. suspense was awful. In the end, to the as- The Elephant labored and labored and at tonishment of all, he played it, and played • Kitchenettes — Cable TV last brought forth...BobDole, an ancient it and played it. (That was the week he took Heated Pool grump but a good fighter. Political conven- to repeating everything three times.) "Lib- r beside the GrrlJ of Mexico if tions entered a new era with tear-jerker tele- eral, liberal, liberal." "Wake up, America." $ on Mustang Island : i 4.0 vision and the four-hankie convention. The "Where is the outrage?" 00A ilva i abl e l'or private part i es ic Pa k Democrats had more inspiring handicapped Meanwhile, Clinton had gone A Bridge Unique European Charm people, but the Republicans topped them Too Far in reaching out to the Asian-Amer- ) & Atmosphere with a rape victim. Vice President Al Gore ican community and gotten himself into an- AFFORDABLE RATES je ab, did the Macarena. other pickle over some smelly fund-raising. Pets Welcome 1E- Meanwhile, Clinton was slowly picking What's a Clinton campaign without pickles? 1423 11tH Street Of up steam by running on Family Values, a Smelly fund-raising was a bipartisan sport 04 Pc w 1 A ran sa s, TX 78373 - theme introduced to a grateful nation by this year; we had a wide range of smells, but i Dick Morris, the man who liked to play they were all awful. While Dole was bash- call (512) 749-5221 . doggie with his prostitute. Woof, woof! We ing the liberal media, the liberal media were for Reservations .10 couldn't get Colin Powell into the game or chasing Clinton's Indonesian connection Ross Perot out of it. Mark Russell observes and ignoring the record criminal fine levied :

16 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996

JIM HIGHTOWER

war veterans. The Ice Man Melteth Consider the 60,000-plus vets of 1991's "Desert Storm" operation. They came back wracked with mysterious pains, Here he comes again: Newt Gingrich, the corrupt, egomaniacal, memory loss, cancers and reproductive self-serving, blow-dried Twit who is the chief Republican problems. "Gulf War Syndrome," it's called, but the Pentagon callously keeps in Washington. claiming that whatever is ailing these e is so unpopular outside the Belt- loopholes in America's campaign finance people was not caused by anything that way, though, that the GOP kept laws. For example, it is flat against the law happened in the war. him locked away in the basement for foreign businesses and individuals to Tell that to the members of the 24th during the election season. But contribute money in U.S. elections. But Naval Mobile Construction Battalion. On it's almost impossible to keep a Twit down, there was President Clinton himself, at a the third day of the war, they were in Saudi and sure enough he's been popping up in Los Angeles fundraiser, as Mr. John Huang Arabia when something exploded in the air public lately, carrying an ice bucket. delivered a donkey-load of contributions above their camp. They say a yellow- Newt says that his ice bucket is the per- from several Asian corporations and exec- green, chemical cloud quickly settled over fect symbol of what the Republican utives. Isn't this illegal? them and, within minutes, many say, their Congress has achieved in the last two years. No, thanks to a loophole big enough to skin began to burn, their lips turned numb It seems that before he became Loud- ride a donkey or an elephant through. It and they could barely breathe. speaker of the House, bags of ice were rou- allows any foreign citizen who simply gets Battalion commanders rushed out to tinely delivered to every congressional of- a legal U.S. residence to play America's tell the troops not to worry, that what fice each morning, and by gollies, he has political money game, and it allows sub- they heard was just "a sonic boom." But stopped this waste of the taxpayers' money. sidiaries of foreign companies to play, too. the men knew better, for many of them He even lugged his ice bucket with him for Using this loophole, Mr. Huang alone soon came down with debilitating ailments the "Meet The Press" TV show, claiming to raised more than four million dollars for that they still have not been able to shake. Still, to this day, the Pentagon says it has have put the chill on this congressional perk the Democrats this year, bringing foreign found no evidence of unusual illnesses and saved taxpayers $400,000 a year. influence directly into our politics. Of course, Newt also increased spending Among those whom Mr. Huang brought among the troops of this battalion. But interviewed 152 vet- for his own office budget, by $600,000, so into the game is the Riady family of In- The New York Times erans who were there that morning, and he's not quite the budget slasher he claims donesia, which owns a far flung business to be, but let's look deeper into his ice empire called the Lippo Group. The Riady 114 of them suffer from Gulf War Syn- drome, including dozens who have been bucket. True, there are no more ice deliver- family and various Lippo executives have hospitalized repeatedly and are too sick to ies, but that doesn't mean there is no more put nearly half a million dollars into Clin- free ice for congressional offices. ton and the Democrats so far. hold jobs. One of the vets, Harold Edwards, says he Under Newt's big ice reform, instead of And, just like U.S. companies that feed the knows what happened because, when the getting deliveries, each lawmaker can send political machine, the Riadys have cashed in a staffer trooping to one of five distribution big time. The Wall Street Journal reports boom hit, he quickly broke out three chem- centers Newt has set up, where they can that as a result of trade promotion trips by ical-detection kits that are considered highly precise. Two of the three registered pick up ice twice a day and haul it back to Clinton and his former commerce secretary, mustard gas, a chemical weapon that the office. He doesn't tell us how much of Ron Brown, Lippo has signed more than a causes the very symptoms so many in the our tax money is wasted on high-paid billion dollars worth of trade deals in Asia 24th Battalion are suffering. Edwards im- staffers hauling ice, nor how much is with U.S. companies. Also in 1994, the Clin- mediately reported this to his superiors, but wasted making the ice and carrying it to the ton Administration won a fight to make it was told: "Nothing happened, forget it, five distribution centers. Here's another se- easier for foreign banks to operate in the U.S. cret he doesn't tell us: while most lawmak- Think how nice this is for the Riadys, who don't say anything." Time for the Pentagon to come clean and ers have actually quit taking the ice, Gin- own LippoBank in Los Angeles. stand up for the soldiers who stood up for grich himself continues to send staffers Anyone in the world can play America's down to fetch a bag for him on a daily basis. Phantasmagoric, Two-Party, Loop-di-loop America. ❑ Keep your eye on The Newt—he's a Political Money Game—put a couple of Jim Hightower is a former Observer editor slick little salamander. hundred thousand in, get a couple of billion back—step right up. and Texas Agriculture Commissioner. His RICH MAN'S LOTTO new nationwide radio show broadcasts daily from the Chat & Chew Cafe in Austin, They say bamboo can grow more than a POISONOUS LIES Texas, where he continues to preach the yard every day. War is hell, they say, but peacetime isn't The only things known to grow faster are exactly heavenly either—not for a lot of populist gospel.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 17 NOVEMBER 22, 1996

AY/,1011. LAS AMERICAS The Poisons of PEMEX BY. JOHN ROSS Platano y Cacao, Tabasco Ernesto Martinez planted himself in the middle of a lush field here and tried to visualize the disaster: "There was a house there, right next to the gas line. When the fireball hit, six people were turned into ashes. The rest of us ran, but we didn't all make it." The leathery farmer paused, remembering how he rushed to help a neighbor—and the man's flesh came off in strips in his hands. "To me," said Martinez, "depriving people of their life is a violation of their human rights...."

n February 16, 1995, tuary (Lloyd's Registry), called in by the regard for environmental blight. In Febru- a thirty-six-inch pipe- petro giant, revealed that the underground ary 1995, two weeks before the Platano y line—one of twenty- pipeline that exploded here in February Cacao blowout, PEMEX boosted produc- nine intersecting this 1995 had lost 50 percent of its thickness tion, with an eye towards quickly paying off tiny rancho in the due to external corrosion and internal wear $12.5 billion in U.S. bail-out funds ex- swampy, oil-rich, south- and tear. The pipeline had not been in- tended by the Clinton White House after the ern state of Tabasco— spected for twenty-seven years. The find- peso collapsed. One condition of the bail- blew sky-high, killing ing was later bolstered by Secretary of Nat- out is that all Mexican oil export revenues nine of Mr. Martinez's neighbors and ural Resources Julia Carabias, whose are to be deposited in the New York branch gravely0 injuring twenty-three more. agency is doing an environmental audit of of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, as col- In early September of this year, the gov- PEMEX. Preliminary findings, Carabias lateral against loan repayment. Mexico still ernment-sponsored National Human Rights told the daily Reforma, indicate that 80 per- owes about $3 billion on the bail-out. Commission (CNDH) issued a precedent- cent of PEMEX pipelines in Tabasco are World petroleum prices zoomed to $25 a setting report charging that Petroleos Mexi- similarly corroded. barrel in September, following renewed canos (PEMEX, the state-owned oil The state oil conglomerate's response to U.S. bombing of Iraq, giving PEMEX fur- monopoly) had violated the human rights of the human rights commission recommen- ther impetus to pump as much oil as fast as the residents of Platano y Cacao. The report dation has been typically cavalier. Denying it can. "This is all PEMEX is concerned was the first such recommendation the com- any culpability in the Platano y Cacao with," ,observes Father Goitia. "It is not mission has ever issued that links individual blast, PEMEX Exploration and Production concerned with human life." guarantees to environmental destruction. representative Silvano Salgado refused to "You see how green it is now?" Martinez accept the CNDH findings because, he he CNDH recommendations touch muses. "Nature is coming back. But the said, a human rights commission is "not upon other facets of PEMEX im- ground is poisoned with heavy metals. We qualified" to analyze such technical mat- T punity. Concluding that the loss of are farmers. When the land is violated, our ters. "The public needs to be educated life in Platano y Cacao was not "fortuitous" rights are violated. Our right to work, to about what environmental damage really (as claimed in a preliminary investigation by feed ourselves and our children, to protect is," said Salgado. "It doesn't have an envi- the federal attorney general's office that ab- their health." Tabasco has one of the high- ronmental consciousness, even at the solved PEMEX), the Commission in- est child leukemia rates in Mexico. "The household level, to decide whether or not structed state and federal authorities to open people here don't know when this will hap- the environment is being contaminated." a criminal probe of the deaths here—none pen again. PEMEX has violated our right to "This is not a ping-pong match—we has ever been undertaken. The CNDH also peace and tranquility." have done a serious study," responded ordered a study on the impact of acid rain The CNDH recommendation was issued CNDH ombudsman Jorge Madrazo, chal- (caused by PEMEX burn-off of highly sul- in response to a petition filed by the grass- lenging the government oil monopoly to a furous natural gas) on farmers' crops—the roots Tabasco human rights group, whose public debate. campesinos of Platano y Cacao seek com- initials are CODEHUTAB and whose pres- Because of its dominant role in the Mex- pensation payments dating back twenty ident is Francisco Goitia, Platano y Cacao's ican economy, PEMEX enjoys extraordi- years for damage to the two crops that give outspoken Jesuit priest. Mr. Martinez is the nary impunity. Although the mega-corpora- the hamlet its name. PEMEX maintains that CODEHUTAB secretary. tion has destroyed a broad swath of no scientific evidence exists which demon- The 148-page CNDH report cites southern Mexico, its pivotal position in a strates that acid rain damages food crops, al- PEMEX's own still-unreleased probe of the severely recession-damaged economy has though the state monopoly does recognize explosion. An investigation by a British ac- allowed it to increase pumping with little the damage it does to non-organic materials.

18 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 "WE OBSERVE WITH SADNESS THAT PEMEX IS EAGER TO EXTRACT AS MUCH OIL AS POSSIBLE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE."

The company replaces zinc roofs that have wheelchair, with nothing to eat. I bet if you cept "one cent more" of compensation been rusted out by the virulent precipitation. have an oil well in your country, they treat money, because "it only postpones the so- The Human Rights Commission's rec- you a lot better...." lution." "It is cheaper for PEMEX to pay ommendations—which were sent to out indemnizations than it is for them to Tabasco governor Roberto Madrazo, Attor- here are seventy-six producing oil shut down production and replace the ney General Antonio Lozano, and Carabias, fields in Tabasco. Pipelines, such as pipelines—this is all about money," in addition to Petroleos Mexicanos, are Tthe one that blew at Platanos y argues Father Goitia. PEMEX paid out merely advisory, and many commission Cacao, crawl through 5,044 hectares in the about $800 (U.S.) to survivors of those recommendations have been simply disre- state. Of 3,588 wells drilled, 1,013 are still killed at Platano y Cacao. "This shows," garded or only cosmetically addressed. putting out petroleum. Tabasco, with the said the priest, "how much they think a Nonetheless, despite its lack of legal largest land-based deposits in the nation, human life is worth." weight, the CNDH report is stimulating ac- produces 550,000 barrels daily. Goitia, a Spanish-born cleric influenced cusations of human rights abuses committed Hardly a week goes by in Tabasco that its by liberation theology, is constantly reviled by the oil giant throughout Tabasco. Near highways are not blockaded by campesinos in the Tabasco press for his outspoken the coast, at Lake Mecoacan, 70 percent of demanding compensation for PEMEX defense of human rights. In his view, the oyster production—about 10,000 tons—has depredations to their land. The protests, prevailing neo-liberal model is to blame for been destroyed because PEMEX canal dig- which date back to the early 1980s, have be- tragedies like the explosion here. Neo-lib- ging closed off lagoons to vitally-needed come so widespread that the government eralism has opened the region to increased Gulf of Mexico waters. "A man has a right tags it "an industry of reclamation," and resource exploitation, while wreaking to work, doesn't he? PEMEX violates our charges that farmers are trying to blackmail havoc on the environment and impoverish- basic human rights," argues Melesio Perez, the state into settling phony claims. "There ing his parishioners. "We observe with sad- who heads up the Democratic Fishermen's is no 'industry of reclamation,'" scoffs ness that PEMEX is eager to extract as Movement, a coalition of four cooperatives Father Goitia. "The farmers have suffered much oil as possible as quickly as possible representing some 500 families. real damages and they have all the right in without regard for human life," the white- "Before they started drilling here, the the world to demand compensation." bearded Goitia laments. "We are on oppo- corn used to fill up our attic," recalls Don Last February, 10,000 Chontal Indians, site sides. We defend human life. PEMEX Chepe Arias, a seventy-four-year-old organized by the left-center Party of the cares about production." campesino who farms a few acres border- Democratic Revolution, blocked sixty "As farmers, we are punished twice ing the Samaria Camp oil field. "Now the drilling sites for nearly two weeks to by neo-liberalism," says Martinez. "First cobs are so small that it's not worth even demand revision of 61,000 compensation the borders are opened to fruit from the planting a crop." At first glance, Samaria claims against PEMEX—only 3,000 have north, and then we can't compete because seems still to be a verdant paradise. A sec- since been validated. The .Chontals are the contamination has made our product ond look reveals dozens of rusting oil and threatening to resume the blockades, which unsaleable." gas lines snaking through the underbrush. were broken up by the Mexican military On a weekday afternoon, Father Goitia Flaring natural gas burn-offs illuminate the and Tabasco police. Over a hundred conducts Mass at Nuestra Seflora de Reme- jungle. The streams are filmed with oil. "I protesters were arrested and dozens were dios, the church that PEMEX rebuilt after a used to love papaya," complains Don bloodied during the sweep. previous explosion in 1986. Guitars twang Chepe' s wife, Maria de Rosario. "Now it When the farmers of Platano y Cacao, and a choir trills shrilly. At the conclusion gives me a stomach ache." together with representatives of seventy of the service, the faithful offer public "People have a right to eat, too," surrounding communities, marched along prayers to open PEMEX's heart. "We ask prompts Martinez. Ernesto Martinez re- state highways, stopping traffic to and that our deaths not be sterile ones, that they members how PEMEX came to Platano y from the nearby Cactus Petrochemical will be heard by the men in charge," prays Cacao in 1979: "First they drilled one hole Complex, they were set upon by combined a round woman in a faded apron. "PEMEX and then another. We're all small property army-police squads. "When you protest wants you to believe that the Church has no owners around here. They'd come and tell against human rights violations here, they right to intervene in these matters," Goitia you we're going to drill on your property violate your human rights," said Martinez preaches from the pulpit. "But the gospel

and here's what you're going to get for it. If wryly. gives us that right...." ❑ you complained, PEMEX took you to court Some militants, such as Raymundo and said you were damaging the whole na- Sauri of the local chapter of Oil Watch, an The peripatetic John Ross is currently in tion by not letting them drill. My friend, international group that monitors the northern California,ia, and reports regularly Constanino Vasconcelos, has an oil well on petroleum industry for environmental de- for the Observer from Mexico. his property, but he sits there all day in his struction, think that farmers should not ac-

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 19 A TRIBUTE T By Bernard Rapoport

am here because I want to be here. I want to be a way they never dreamed possible as a result of his panegyrist for this unusual human being, Joe Ja- extractive talents. Until his last breath, his commit- I mail by name. No, I wouldn't want Joe to be the ment to imposing the maximum sentence for acts of English teacher for my two grandchildren nor would injustice will continue without abatement. I want him to be in charge of their etiquette training. Forget about his brain—we will just take that for That is not his field because he chooses for it not granted. That is not what made him successful. to be. When it comes to his brainpower, his success These three attributes—integrity, passion and en- as a lawyer affirms incontrovertibly that he was ergy—combined to make him hated by those who blessed with more than his share. That's not why I sought to tread on lesser human beings and to love him. More than almost any person I know, he cause rejoicing among those who had a sense of understands that capitalism is the best economic fairness. system ever conceived by the mind of man because While Joe is not nearly as old, these words spo- it recognizes the greed instinct in all of us. Con- ken by Oliver Wendell Holmes on his ninetieth birth- comitantly, he also knows that democracy is the day bring Joe to mind: best political system ever conceived because it rec- In this symposium my part is only to sit in silence. ognizes the necessity of cooperativeness. So with To express one's feelings as the end draws near is his brilliance, he comprehends that it is only the in- too intimate a task. But I may mention one thought tegration of the two that will make possible a sus- that comes to me as listener-in. The riders'in a race taining society. He hates greed—a greed that pro- do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is duces the injustices that seek to destroy our society. a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. He has the most intense sense of outrage of injus- There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and tice of any person I know. You might say he almost to say to one's self: "The work is done." But just as fitfully employs every resource within him to com- one says that, the answer comes: "The race is over, bat it, to destroy it, to fight it and no one does it bet- but the work never is done while the power to work ter than he. remains." He is not one of these do-gooders. He knows the The canter that brings you to a standstill need not significance of Samuel Johnson's observation, be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still "They may talk like angels, but they act like men." live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in He never loses touch with reality. Although he has living. And so I end with a line from a Latin poet who made a lot of money, he doesn't count it or covet it. uttered the message more than fifteen hundred Yet, those who are perpetrating injustices had better years ago: "Death plucks my ears, and says, Live—I be aware that Joe Jamail will make them pay in a am coming."

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20 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Making Sense of Whitewater, or.. . Just Because The Times Wrote It, Doesn't Mean It's True BY JIM NAURECKAS FOOLS FOR SCANDAL: began appearing in March of 1992), their at- of-towner reported, but actually happened How the Media Invented Whitewater. tacks served to legitimize The New York some other way. Take Lyons' demolition By Gene Lyons. Times' version of Whitewater. Indeed, of an article that I read and took at face Franklin Square Press. since the Times' version of Whitewater was value when it came out: L.J. Davis' "The 224 pages. $9.95 (paper). rejected by "both sides" (meaning Lim- Name of Rose," published in the April 4, baugh' s far right and Clinton's near right), 1994 New Republic. Davis attempted to have to confess: I wanted to by the logic of centrism, the paper's account show how the Clintons' personal corrup- believe in "Whitewater." must be exactly right. It's one of the estab- tion fit into a larger web of Arkansas That name first came to national lishment's oldest tricks, but I fell for it. money politics. Davis reported, for exam- consciousness during the early Then I found Gene Lyons. He's a colum- ple, that Bill Clinton aided the Worthen days of the 1992 presidential nist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, National Bank by allowing state-chartered campaign, at a time when the and contributor to Harper's Magazine. He banks to open branches in more than one issues dominating political report- wrote a cold-water-tossing book called county, and by depositing state funds at ing were Bill Clinton's extramari- Worthen; in gratitude, Worthen steered its tal sex life, his ambivalent marijuana use, WHAT "THE CLINTON SCANDALS" business to Hillary's Rose Law Firm. and his Vietnam-era draft record. The story AMOUNT TO IS POSSIBLY THE MOST But as Lyons tells it, every link in this broken by The New York Times' Jeff POLITICALLY CHARGED CASE OF conspiracy is specious. Since Worthen has Gerth—about an Arkansas real-estate de- JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE IN a federal charter, it didn't need Clinton's velopment and its political entangle- RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY. help to go statewide; by law, Arkansas' ments—seemed to offer hope that journal- government apportions its funds among all ists might drift back to covering issues that Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented the major banks in the state, so Worthen as had an impact, at least tangentially, on pub- Whitewater. Lyons has a way with words, the state's largest bank automatically got lic policy. For those on the left, Gerth's so I'll let him explain what his book says: the biggest share; and Rose had been Whitewater story offered confirmation of Almost everything you may think you Worthen's chief counsel since before either our prejudices. Much as conservatives were know about Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Bill or Hillary was born. happy to match up Clinton's "immoral" so- presidential libido, and the couple's al- cial policies with his apparent personal legedly seamy business dealings back in yons does this same kind of decon- promiscuity, it seemed fitting' to us that darkest Arkansas—from Gennifer Flowers struction over and over throughout Clinton's unprincipled, pro-corporate poli- to the entire Whitewater affair—rests on Lthe book. His I-was-there gambit, tics would be reflected in a lack of ethics "facts" that are somewhere between highly bolstered by authentic Arkansan folk say- when it came to personal business dealings. dubious and demonstrably false. Far from ings and rabbit-hunting lore, does tend to Then, after the election, the attacks from being the result of muckraking reporting by leave readers a bit at the author's mercy: the right came—against Clinton, but also a vigorous and independent press, what chances are, they weren't there either. I do against The New York Times for its sup- "the Clinton scandals" amount to is possi- have reasons for trusting Lyons, however. posed closeness to Clinton. On February bly the most politically charged case of One is that the objects of his main attacks, 17, 1994, Rush Limbaugh had this to say journalistic malpractice in recent Ameri- the articles by The New York Times' Gerth about Whitewater: "I don't think The New can history. that set the template for what we now call York Times has run a story on this yet. I "Almost everything you may think you "Whitewater," are reprinted as an appendix mean, we haven't done a thorough search, know"—that's a pretty tall claim. But it's to Fools for Scandal. He also reprints but I—there has not been a big one, front- not hyperbole: Read the book and see if memos that were sent to Gerth by Beverly page story, that I can recall....If it were not you don't think, or at least wonder, if Bassett Schaffer, one of the main targets for us and the Wall Street Journal and the Whitewater isn't one of the biggest media (or victims) of Gerth's reporting, both be- American Spectator, this would be one of con jobs in U.S. history. fore and after his first story was published. the biggest and most well-kept secrets Lyons' main advantage is that he lives in Reading these two original sources, one going on in American politics." Arkansas. When out-of-town reporters can see that Lyons is fundamentally accu- Since Limbaugh and his ilk were obvi- write stories about the mysterious goings- rate in his description of what Gerth did ously out of their heads (for the record, on in Little Rock, Lyons can usually tell and didn't report. (In an hour-long conver- Gerth's front-page stories on Whitewater you that it didn't happen the way the out- sation, Gerth gave me no reason to doubt

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 21

♦ The Clintons at the Texas Republican Party's 1996 Convention Katy Adams the essential fairness of Lyons' harsh cri- time, suddenly began to make sense. One tate investment with a friend they knew tique, instead falling back on the weak de- of Lyons' sub-theses is that Whitewater from state government—a friend who fense that he never came out and said what stories—in The New York Times and in turned out to be manic-depressive. That his stories clearly implied.) other outlets that are heavily invested in friend, Jim McDougal, made a shambles of there being some there to Whitewater—are the development's finances and lost a lot of dditional supporting evidence for deliberately written in an obscure and con- money for the Clintons. After the Whitewa- Fools for Scandal can be found in voluted style, to suggest dire dealings ter project, McDougal made a hapless ven- The New York Times Book Review where none have actually occurred. Lyons ture into the savings-and-loan business, (August 4, 1996), in which former Times says the establishment media call to mind leading The New York Times—and the reporter Phil Gailey failed to cite a single the song about the wah-wah bird—"a many who followed the paper's lead—to factual error to sustain his bitter attack on mythical beast that flies in tighter and cluck at the conflict of interest, despite the the book. ("This is a nasty book...as it as- tighter concentric circles until vanishing illogic of expecting the Clintons to avoid a saults the integrity of the reporters who did into what the song calls 'the orifice of his conflict that wouldn't arise for another five the reporting," was the most Gailey could fundament,' then complains about his in- years. manage.) As there is something wrong in ability to see in the dark." Now, when I read about the conviction every book, this may simply reflect Gai- Lyons' straightforward narration of the of former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy ley' s laziness—but it also suggests that Whitewater events provides a sort of Tucker, I don't have to wonder, "What Lyons hasn't done a great deal of making Rosetta Stone that makes it possible to does he have to do with Whitewater things up out of whole cloth. translate into a coherent storyline the mys- again?" Thanks to Gene Lyons, I know that But the most compelling reason for me terious code found in daily newspaper arti- he was a business associate of the Clinton's to put faith in Lyons book is that after I cles. The basic story, as Lyons tells it, is Whitewater associates, and he was con- read it, Whitewater stories, for the first that the Clintons got involved in a real es- victed of an unrelated (and rather petty)

22 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 crime as a way of pressuring those associ- Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and "Work," from page 32 ates to. testify against the Clintons. If Bush administrations didn't seem to need you've ever wanted to speak knowledge- any incentive. Mostly, the media went along and accompany her to late-night sessions ably of such things, this is the book for you. with the xenophobic strategy that came out with her manicurist. The Congresswoman Inevitably, Lyons finds himself in the of the Dole bunker in the campaign's final reportedly billed one staff member $2,000 position of being a defense attorney for the days, emphasizing the fear of foreign puppet for damage to the undercarriage of her gold Clintons; he seems to fear that if the media masters. When real news wasn't appearing, Mercedes, which the staffer had used to do can land one good-sized trout, they can jus- the leading papers filled up space on page Johnson's errands; other former staffers say tify the whole fishing expedition. This may one with Scandal Helper: Why wasn't they were fired when, they believe, Johnson lead him to overstate his case at times; he Huang giving interviews? What has he got learned they were pregnant. (Johnson re- dismisses Paula Jones' sexual harassment to hide? Why was he visiting the White fused to be interviewed for the story.) charges in a footnote, for example, without House so often? (After running a front-page Less convincing is the Observer's mentioning that Jones appears to have headline on the many references to John claim—citing an aide to Congressman John given substantially the same stories to at Huang in the White House logs, The New Bryant—that Johnson is largely to blame least two other people immediately after York Times buried the news that at least for the recent Congressional redistricting by the alleged event occurred. But all in all, some of those visits were made by another the federal courts. That charge not only ig- Lyons makes a powerful case that most of John Huang—who worked for Al Gore.) nores neighboring districts gerrymandered the major scandals surrounding the Clin- It can't be emphasized enough that the to benefit white incumbents, it somehow tons have been trumped-up by a media es- entire concept of campaign finance is cor- forgets the nationwide, Republican cam- tablishment in cahoots with an assemblage rupt: that fund-raisers are engaged in sell- paign for so-called "color-blind" districting. of right-wing activists, journalists, and ing public policy to wealthy elites. But Rising to Johnson's defense, her current politicians. This will come as welcome when the press allows the case for cam- press secretary, Mike Greene, explained, news to those who love Bill Clinton, and paign finance reform to be made by Bob "She's a tough boss, but a good boss. I've those people should run out and buy this Dole—who built his Senate career on sell- worked for her almost two years now." His book and pick up extra copies to give to ing amendments to contributors, and whose next line: "They said it couldn't be done." their friends. finance committee vice chair was fined $6 million in October for laundering cam- LONE STAR GOLD RUSH? Never mind that ut what about people who don't paign money (with almost zero media at- there are no other gold mines within 300 love Bill? What of those who think tention)—the chances for serious changes miles; or that the last mine in the region shut B it's not possible to have too low an coming out of the controversy are nil. down more than fifty years ago. Davis Moun- opinion of a politician who would rush The capping irony is that Dole spent tains Mining, a Houston-based company, back to Arkansas to attend the killing of a many of the campaign's last moments at- plans to prospect for gold in Presidio County. brain-damaged black man, just to demon- tacking the "liberal" New York Times for So last month, the company paid the General strate his enthusiasm for that form of supposedly ignoring Clinton's ethical Land Office more than $14,000 for a lease human sacrifice we like to call capital pun- problems. The Times, in turn, can point to covering 3,706 acres north of Shafter. ishment? Or one who would throw a mil- its coverage as being entirely fair and neu- Frank Bonar, the owner of Houston- lion children into poverty, by his own ad- tral because "both sides"—the small frac- based Rocksaw Technology, a mining ministration's estimates, so he could tion of the spectrum ranging from Dole to equipment manufacturer and a partner in cement the anti-poor-mother vote? Clinton—object to it. the Davis Mountains project, says he does- I would say that for them, too, this is an If nothing else, Gene Lyons' book points n't know if there's gold in the area. "It just important book. While there are many valid up the spuriousness of such logic. He looks like a good geological structure," he reasons to hate Clinton and what he stands shows persuasively that the Times, far from said. "Now we have to see if it's mineral- for, it's important that he be hated for what being a fair and impartial investigator, ac- ized." Bonar said his geologists will start he actually stands for, and not for some tually uses "scandal" to advance its own drilling in the area next month. right-wing caricature. Opposition to Clinton political and institutional agendas. What- Domestic gold production has soared by mobilized around myths will lead nowhere. ever one thinks of Clinton, Fools for Scan- more than 1,000 percent since 1980. The Take the recent spate of "scandals" re- dal points to misuses of power in the media increase is largely due to the use of cyanide volving around Clinton's fund-raiser, John that make Whitewater look like—well, like heap-leaching technology, which made

Huang—whose main crime that distin- a two-bit real estate development. ❑ previously unprofitable ore grades worth- guishes him from all the other fund-raisers while. But the cyanide has also contamin- seems to be that he's an Indonesian Ameri- Jim Naureckas is the editor of EXTRA!, ated numerous fresh water sources. Bonar can. There've been a few stories wondering the bimonthly magazine of the national said if his company finds gold, he doesn't whether money raised from Indonesian media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Ac- want to use cyanide. "We try to get away companies didn't make Clinton soft on In- curacy in Reporting), 130 West 25th Street, from things that are environmentally un- donesian human rights abuses—though the New York, NY 10001. safe," Bonar said. Let's hope if he does find

gold, Bonar remembers that statement. ❑

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 23 BOOKS & THE CULTURE

Photograph of a Dictator I can't forget that look, almost the distance of another century now— truncheons and microphones buried behind the eyes, On Your Dial the dead staring eyes It's late. It's very late on the front page of The New York Times. under the frosty quilts of your bed. Son of a bootmaker, master of the Carpathians, You've woken from some dream of original sleep Nicolae Ceausescu who razed whole villages because and turned the radio on. you didn't like their looks. It whispers The sizzling bullet of fear garbled and auspicious news— burrows into your chest forever now. mudslides in Bangladesh, an assassination somewhere. Tell me, how should I think of you— Then a song. I who know nothing It's your favorite song, of the nostalgic imagination of tyranny? the drum solo from some sweaty band I look into your dead staring eyes, that must wear hearing aids by now. the miles of secret tunnels behind them And at this hour, you still feel unraveling, dispersed finally. I ponder like a child rattling the bars of its crib the funny wool hat they don't make in America— for mother's milk. Don't worry, how it rides up on your forehead mother's coming. one might say askew even, You lie there awash in the window's light Christmas Day 1989, beneath the giant, blinking radio masts, the front page of The New York Times. beneath the thrown sheets of freeways and neighborhoods with what few cars are left at this hour trying to find their way home. —SIGMAN BYRD

igman Byrd is a native Texan whose family has lived in poetry" (though the fact remains they may need it more than ever), Texas for more than 150 years. He currently lives in Austin. it is interesting to note that Byrd's poems both spring from S The recipient of a Dobie-Paisano writing fellowship, he has experiences with newspaper and radio. After so much news comes published poems in the Southwest Review, Ploughshares, and else- into us—where does it go? How do we carry "what we know" with- where, and has recently completed a book-length manuscript. out poetry to help link it and us to some deeper layer and place of At this time in reading history, when so many media-saturated connection? Byrd's poems help ask the questions. citizens might still say they "don't read poetry" or "don't like —Naomi Shihab Nye

24 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 BOOKS & THE CULTURE AVarmint Light in the Great Darkness Essays of a Rational Polymath in an Age of Irrationalism BY JAMES SLEDD

THE NIGHT IS LARGE: sion of a Feynman diagram" sounded dependent of the cultural process." I was Collected Essays 1938-1995. vaguely indecent. delighted that Gardner rarely if ever used By Martin Gardner. But the book is not forbidding, even to the buzzword discourse. In his index there St. Martins Press. the mathematically challenged for whom is no entry for either Foucault or Derrida. 586 pages. $29.95. all physics was always chaos theory. Gard- I found Gardner's politics and economics • ner's obvious enjoyment of his life and equally congenial. As contemptuous of ll he high point of an ordi- learning is infectious. Through most of a Marx as he is of Freud, Gardner calls him- nary person's education is century, he has somehow managed to keep self "a democratic socialist." Ridiculing some acquaintance with the unrestrained and irreverent intellectual Jack Kemp as a "supply-side goldbug," he greatness. The nadir is the vigor of the almost frighteningly gifted un- writes that "Our Republican-controlled confusion of greatness dergraduates at R.M. Hutchins' University Congress, having learned nothing from the with established medi- of Chicago, where Gardner (the son of a fate of supply-side Reaganomics, is now ocrity. Noam Chomsky Tulsa wild-catter) took his degree as a phi- struggling to move us even further back to is an intellectual. Every losophy major in 1936. The headnote and the days of Coolidge and Hoover." The riuniversity swarms with administrators. postscript with which he accompanies each Doleful would profit from his account of The great arc the people who just have reprinted essay provide needed context and failed economic prophecies and from his re- it—not many, but some. The rest of us are marks on the Laffer (Laughter?) curve. lucky if we can meet one of the few and so THERE IS NOW "SOME EVIDENCE," HE Gardner repeats a wisecrack attributed to raise our opinion of the human species by SAYS, THAT WHEN THE REAGANITES Bernard Shaw: "If all the world's seeing its highest capabilities. Since that LOWERED TAXES, THEY SECRETLY economists were stretched end to end... they privilege is rare, we compensate by reading ANTICIPATED A DEFICIT SO LARGE still would not reach a conclusion." what the few have written. Martin Gard- THAT IT "WOULD PERSUADE That judgment may be some consolation ner's book should be required reading for CONGRESS TO DISMANTLE WELFARE." to professorial elders in English, whose latter all members of English departments, espe- years have been somewhat darkened by the cially for those of the postmodern persua- a sense of Gardner's personal history. suspicion that their own departments have sion and for those very advanced feminists For summary indications of Gardner's established an unrivaled claim to be who make ineffectual war on science, ob- thought, readers might look first at the academia's zaniest, but not all of Gardner's jectivity, reason itself. The supposed blun- headnote to Part VI, "Philosophy." There economic ideas are comforting. There is ders of dead white males and living white Gardner explains that he has defended "re- now "some evidence," he says, that when the scientists are as nothing compared to the alism in the sense that the universe is mind- Reaganites lowered taxes, they secretly an- real blunders of irrationality-peddlers. independent, the correspondence theory of ticipated a deficit so large that it "would per- The Night Is Large collects essays origi- truth as opposed to pragmatic theory, a nat- suade Congress to dismantle welfare." On nally published from the '30s to the '90s. uralistic ethics as against extreme cultural the Jim Lehrer "Newshour" very recently They are grouped under the headings phys- relativism, and the right to make leaps of (I'm writing this in early October), a Har- ical science, social science, pseudoscience, faith concerning crucial questions on which vard economist suggested that Dole's pro- mathematics, the arts, philosophy, and reli- it is impossible not to make a decision." posed tax cut would next force the slashing gion—headings which testify to the aston- Oddly, a more extensive overview might be of Medicare and Social Security. I thought ishing range of Gardner's knowledge and the hoaxing denunciation of Gardner's the guru was hinting that such eventual interests. The title, however, reflects Gard- Ways of a Philosophical Scrivener, which slashing is Dole's real aim (or maybe the aim ner's modesty. It comes from Lord Dun- Gardner himself contributed to the New of those who pull Dole's string). As the Cen- sany: "A man is a small thing, and the night York Review of Books (December 8, 1983). tury of the Common Man fizzles out, the is very large and full of wonders." The Notable to me were his beliefs in "a com- War on the Common Man intensifies. mere list of illustrations in Gardner's book mon human nature," "free will and the I suspect that Martin Gardner could strengthens my willingness to admit the weird ability to act for good or evil," sci- never think of himself as great (though I limitations of human knowledge in general ence as a continuing approach to an impos- have come close to calling him so). Frankly and mine in particular. I had no idea what sible absolute certainty, and the grounding admitting his own limitations but never ad- "M.C. Escher's reptile tessellation" might of science and mathematics in the reality of vertising them immodestly, he repeatedly be, and to me, a "a two-trousers string ver- a mathematically structured universe "in- places himself among "ordinary folk."

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 25 Probably it's fair, and maybe not imperti- THE WORLDWIDE UPSURGE OF the skies" at the Second Coming. The nent, to say that he is a fascinated science- FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIONS IS A worldwide upsurge of fundamentalist reli- watcher capable of really understanding HARSH REMINDER THAT EARTH'S gions is a harsh reminder that earth's naked the scene he observes, rather a chronicler NAKED APES HAVE SUFFERED ENOR- apes have suffered enormously from their of scientific exploration than himself a MOUSLY FROM THEIR ASSORTMENT assortment of conflicting theisms. Belief in great explorer. "One of the greatest lessons gods or a god is not essential to human hap- OF CONFLICTING THEISMS. that can be learned from the history of sci- piness. Mencken's belly-laugh at the inex- ence," Gardner writes, "is...humility." If or twice a reader may feel that an essay re- haustible irrationality of animal rationale is that is true, then humanists should read the trieved from those files might better have a more effective consolation. A believer history of science. It was a local dean of been left there. In "Puzzles in Ulysses," we sensitive to the world's evils might well spit humanities who once brainlessly remarked, are informed that "Joyce was fascinated by in his omnipotent deity's face. Gratitude for "The scientists have know-how, but we hu- the fact that God, spelled backward, is "the universe, and our miraculous exis- manists have know-why." dog." William Empson shared that fascina- tence" is all very well for the comfortable. I My small objections to The Night Is tion, but neither Joyce nor Empson, to my personally would find "belief in God" not Large are two. Repeatedly Gardner speaks knowledge, played 4-2-3-1 with the four- "emotionally rewarding" but infuriating. of his "files," and he quotes "anonymous letter pronouns that and this. I remain grateful to Gardner (not God) for doggerel" from "an old scrapbook." Pok- My second objection, more personal but The Night is Large. Insatiable curiosity, vast ing around in such repositories, the gifted not so small, is to Gardner' s philosophical learning, clear answers to obscure questions, do find some treasures, but the book that theism, his variety of belief in God. It rests, the example of a full and happy life—how results from the poking will show traces of he acknowledges, only "on an emotional could one not be grateful to a polymath who its origin. Though Gardner is capable of turning of the will, and cannot be supported flaunts his affinity for L. Frank Baum, the delightful sentences ("Ronald Reagan be- by logic or science." By such an "argu- historian of the Land of Oz? ❑ lieves in astrology, the Second Coming, ment," lunatics might claim to be Jesus and supply-side economics"), occasionally Christ, and Pat Robertson might justify James Sledd is Professor Emeritus of his writing is distressingly casual, and once plans "to televise the Lord's appearance in English at the University of Texas at Austin.

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26 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Looking Backwards History with Lightning and Mirrors BY STEVEN G. KELLMAN

HISTORY BY HOLLYWOOD: The Use and Abuse of the American Past. By Robert Brent Toplin. University of Illinois Press. 268 pages. $34.95, $14.95 (paper).

WORKING STIFFS, UNION MAIDS, REDS, AND RIFFRAFF: An Organized Guide to Films About Labor. By Tom Zaniello. Cornell University Press. 288 pages. $39.95, $18.95 (paper).

"ike writing history with lightning. And it's all true," gushed Woodrow Wilson about The Birth of a Nation, which revises Reconstruction to cele- brate the Ku Klux Klan. A professional historian be- fore trading the verdant ivy of Princeton for the poison ivy of Washington, Wilson was not the last president to confuse cinema A Sally Field as Norma Rae with history. Repeated screenings of Patton encouraged Richard Nixon to invade Cam- plate. Academic rigor is not to be expected enrich producers as well as satisfy scholars. bodia. Ronald Reagan claimed to have from the studios that cast John Wayne as The most meticulous account of the Nixon been present at the liberation of Nazi death Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956), or presidency would be complete Watergate camps, though he spent World War II state- Jack Palance as Fidel Castro in Che! videotapes, but even devotees of Andy side, making combat movies. (1969). "If Parnell was as woozy a goof as Warhol's twenty-four-hour Empire would Hollywood has been writing history with Gable portrayed him in that picture," said be loath to sit for them. Popular historians lightning for most of its own history, usu- Carole Lombard, the star's own wife, about such as Barbara Tuchman and David Mc- ally with scant concern for accuracy. Not Clark Gable's performance in Parnell Cullough teach more people more about all costume dramas are as unintentionally (1937), "Ireland still wouldn't be free." the past than do all the footnotes in Ameri- loony as The Story of Mankind, Irwin Robert Brent Toplin passes on the can Historical Review. It is a fallacy fo- Allen's 1957 attempt to dramatize Hendrik woozy goofs to focus on recent films that mented by Gutenberg that printed texts Van Loon's airy chronicle with Peter Lorre attempt serious engagement with important necessarily render the textures of the past as Nero, Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc, Den- events in American history. Both a profes- more fully than do images and sounds. nis Hopper as Napoleon and Harpo Marx sor of history (University of North Car- Instead of either a survey or a theory, as, yes, Sir Isaac Newton; the project lacks olina—Wilmington), and a filmmaker History by Hollywood offers eight case a certain gravitas. But you don't need to be (PBS and the Disney Channel), Toplin rec- studies: Mississippi Burning (1988), JFK a member of the American Historical Asso- ognizes that commercial movies must nav- (1991), Sergeant York (1941), Missing ciation to note something amiss when igate a slender strait between recreation (1982), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Patton glimpsing a Greyhound bus in the back- and representation. They are the principal (1970), All the President's Men (1976) and ground of a Western landscape, a zipper on means for millions to learn about the past, Norma Rae (1979). Because Toplin chooses a kilt, a wristwatch on a pirate's hand, or a and, without condescending, Toplin re- to consider only American films about microphone boom above a' Roman breast- spects their need to entertain audiences and American history, we can merely wonder

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 27 what rich insights he might have brought to ment's covert actions in developing coun- campaigns. Among fall releases, Rob bear on The Return of Martin Guerre, The tries. Portrayal by Sergeant York of valiant Reiner's account of the Medgar Evers mur- Madness of King George or The Last Em- American intervention in Europe in World der in The Ghosts of Mississippi demon- peror. But each of his eight is an estimable War I contributed to a revulsion against strates that Mississippi Burning did not put work that garnered abundant popularity and isolationism on the eve of World War II. those ghosts to rest. The Crucible, Michael an Oscar nomination for picture of the year. Toplin explains how close vetting by the Collins, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and None is set earlier than World War I. While rustic sharpshooter himself kept Sergeant The War at Home are other new films that, Toplin might just as profitably have dis- York from being celluloid fluff and puff, anchored in a prior era, make claims be- cussed The Civil War, Fat Man and Little how Sally Field's actual prototype, Crystal yond being just a way to pass the time. Boy, Gettysburg, Glory, Heaven's Gate, Lee, kept Norma Rae from being faithful to Hoffa, Jefferson in Paris, The Long Walk details of the labor organizer's own check- orma Rae also stars in Working Home, Malcolm X, Born on the Fourth of ered life, and how Carl Bernstein and Bob Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and July, Quiz Show or Reds, among many oth- Woodward applied conflicting pressures on NRiffraff, as one of nine films that au- ers, what he has to say about the films he All the President's Men. The Patton family thor Tom Zaniello classifies as "must see." chose is sensible and trenchant. long resisted any screenplay about the trucu- The others are American Dream, The Grapes Even Shakespeare nodded, by stocking lent general, and the one . that Franklin of Wrath, Harlan County, U.S.A., Matewan, Julius Caesar with clocks, and it is a facile Schaffner eventually directed, at a time The Molly Maguires, On the Waterfront, A pastime to spot anachronistic gaffes in al- when public opinion was turning against Raisin in the Sun, Roger and Me and Salt of most any movie set in the past. Though support for the Vietnam War, is ambiguous the Earth. It is not that all of these are neces- Toplin praises Sergeant York for its fidelity enough to fascinate both doves and hawks. sarily better films than On the Waterfront, to fact and faults JFK for looseness with Beyond the considerable strengths of in- which is also discussed in the book, or Citi- the truth, he is most intent on understand- dividual chapters, History by Hollywood is zen Kane, which is not. On the Waterfront ing each work within its total context of weakened by a structure that is arbitrary portrays union corruption, and Zaniello's conception, production, marketing and re- and porous. Toplin assigns two films each book, a compendium of labor-related films, ception. He does not assume that the direc- to four categories: (1) mixing fact with fic- is a labor of love for the love of labor. tor is the sole auteur, and has much of tion; (2) shaping evidence to deliver spe- Hollywood, where Ronald Reagan and value to say (some of it gleaned from inter- cific conclusions; (3) suggesting messages Charlton Heston have served as union lead- views of his own) about what writers and for the present; (4) employing documentary ers, has not been especially supportive of producers also contribute to a movie. style to develop a Great Man perspective. workers' rights, on film or in the studio. Toplin explains how Mississippi Burn- However, almost any of the eight films But, by including foreign works (The ing came to depict the FBI as champion of could have been assigned to any of the Crime of Monsieur Lange, Kamaradschaft) the civil rights movement when in fact the (overlapping) categories. Although it is and independents (Daughters of the Dust, bureau was often its adversary. While profitable to discuss Bonnie and Clyde for Salesman), Zaniello compiles a riveting en- lamenting a "lost opportunity" to portray the way a 1930s story suggests messages cyclopedia of 150 films about riveters, min- the struggle for racial equality exactly as it for the 1960s, Toplin might also have em- ers, stevedores and other proletarians. Cri- occurred—with black people as principal phasized how Arthur Penn's Depression- teria for inclusion are that films be about

agents, of their own liberation—he traces era Robin Hood drama mixes fact with fic- labor unions; labor history; working-class the stages of development that the story un- tion or shapes evidence to elicit sympathy life with an emphasis on economics; politi- derwent, and he rehearses the spirited reac- for youthful underdogs. All the President's cal movements linked to organized labor; tions to the finished product. He insists that, Men and Norma Rae each do indeed inflate or the struggle between labor and capital. despite distortions of historical truth, sev- the role of individuals on the stage of his- Each entry offers useful information and eral of the movies he discusses served a tory, but so do Sergeant York and Patton. commentary. At the end of Paul Schrader's vital function, if only to stimulate healthy Toplin's unexceptionable premise is that Blue Collar (1978), after the union has speculation about what actually did take movies reflect the times in which they are been busted, a character named Smokey place. Though Oliver Stone's conjectures made at least as much as those they attempt declares: "Everything they do—the way about Kennedy's intention to withdraw to portray. The moment at which Ken they put the lifer against the new boy, the from Vietnam and about the role of the CIA Burns broadcast The Civil War, on the eve old against the young, the black against the and the Mafia in the presidential assassina- of a massive American military crusade white—is meant to keep us in our places." tion remain moot if not preposterous, JFK against Iraq, surely had something to do An upstart work of scholarship, Working did provoke public disclosure of classified with its appeal. But Toplin's premise ap- Stiffs deserves a place on the shelf of con- documents. Though official American plies as well to his own book. History by scientious movie viewers. 0 complicity in the abduction and murder in Hollywood is being published at a time of Chile of Charles Horman, a young idealist, acute sensitivity toward the responsibilities Steven G. Kellman is the Ashbel Smith has never been proven, Missing at least in- of "the media," when the accuracy and in- Professor of Comparative Literature at the duced audiences to think about our govern- fluence of movies is at issue in political University of Texas, San Antonio.

28 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 13, 1996 AFTERWORD If You Ever Miss Your Songman... Remembering Walter Hyatt BY SIDNEY BRAMMER • PHOTOS BY STEVE CLARK Goin' to New Orleans, Bid you boys a fond farewell, If you ever miss your songman, Write me at the White Azalea Hotel. Walter Hyatt, "Going To New Orleans"

een from afar, all airline disasters are the same: there is the litany of possible causes, lunatic fringe claims of • responsibility, grisly descriptions, the celebrated recovery of the "black box," and the inevitable roster of the dead. Within weeks, it's old news; a year later the National Transportation Safety Board issues a statement of find- ings—a blip on our internal radar screens. On May 11, Texans had a personal face put on one airline catastrophe, when ValuJet Flight 592 crashed into the Florida A Uncle Walt's Band, 1978 (Walter Hyatt, David Ball, Champ Hood) Everglades killing everyone aboard. One of "Big hair and high pants" at the Waterloo Ice House the passengers was a beloved Austin music defined that particular moment in this musician/songwriters from Spartanburg, legend named Walter Hyatt—the "Walt" of city's life. Its wistful appeal to "take me, South Carolina: Deschamps "Champ" an unforgettable, seminal Austin combo deliver me" to sunny skies and south sea Hood (lead guitar, fiddle), David Ball called Uncle Walt's Band. shores where "ladies stand naked in the (stand-up bass), and their avowed leader, Austin audiences of the 1970s remember pools," eased the burden of life's harsher Walter (rhythm guitar). Willis Alan Ram- Uncle Walt's Band, or UWB, as a musical realities—a burden many younger citizens sey had encouraged them to move from antidote to the drunken downside of progres- of the Velvet Rut (i.e. Austin) were not Nashville to the more free-wheeling sive country, the excesses of disco, the mind- entirely equipped to carry. Austin, where the band quickly settled in less metal of Mother Earth, and the rude go- at an easygoing Congress Avenue night- ings-on at Raul's. After Kent State, AFTER KENT STATE, WATERGATE, THE spot called The Waterloo Ice House. Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the Energy Cri- FALL OF SAIGON, THE ENERGY CRISIS, "They came here with their Carolina sis, and other late '60s fallout, Uncle Walt's AND OTHER LATE '60S FALLOUT, accents, their big hair, and their high pants, syncopated rhythms and languid melodies, in UNCLE WALT'S SYNCOPATED RHYTHMS and we all thought 'what a bunch of hicks!"' gorgeous three-part harmonies, were like an AND LANGUID MELODIES WERE LIKE recalls Marcia Ball (formerly Freda of the old timey physic for our exhausted selves. A PHYSIC FOR OUR EXHAUSTED SELVES. Firedogs). "Then they proceeded to blow With artists like Michael Murphy, our minds, one by one." Heidi Hyatt, Christopher Cross, Balcones Fault, Beto y At Hyatt's October 23 memorial concert Walter's widow, who worked at Waterloo los Fairlanes, Freda and the Firedogs, and at Austin's Paramount Theatre, Tish Hino- back then, remembers that "they were so hip Jimmy Buffett, UWB played music that josa fondly recalled how "Walter and his in their own way; everyone is kind of conspired to "take us away from all this." It band were so much of what I romanticized embarrassed now to remember how less was a time to go sailing on Lake Travis, about Austin back in the '70s." Jerry Jeff than hip they were compared to UWB." dance barefoot on the gravel, sip Cuba Walker recollected that "when I went to Within a couple of years, UWB had Libres in the velvety Austin dusk, and think Waterloo Ice House, had a scotch and soda become a legend in its own time. Waterloo about love as a personal goal—not a cul- and listened to Walter sing 'Ruby,' I knew owner (and memorial organizer) Steve Clark tural or political statement. everything would be all right." remembers turning a hundred people away And UWB's signature tune, "Aloha" UWB was three superlative young on a single night. The band's musicianship

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 29 \'•.''zk •

• Walter Hyatt (left) with David Ball at La Zona Rosa and eclectic sets made Waterloo a Mecca for s UWB came of age along with the bumps all over it") and silk-screened their audiences and musicians who wanted to lis- Austin music scene, the band cut a cover art on plain white cardboard album ten to music. "No one so much as sipped path into new venues and indepen- sleeves. Changing the character of the their beer while they played acoustic," said dent business strategies. "In a way, they Texas music industry forever, UWB in- Heidi. were trailblazers for what became accepted spired other musicians, from punks to jazz Austin songwriter and former Waterloo practice later," says Heidi Hyatt. "They de- men, to go into demo studios and make regular Kim Miller recalls thinking it was cided that you don't have to wait for a label their own concept albums to sell at gigs or "pretty remarkable that three such big tal- to sign you. When no one made their own on consignment. Airplay and interest from ents could actually play together in one records, UWB made one." At a North Car- major labels would often follow. • small group." Filmmaker Stephen Purvis, olina gospel studio, they pressed their first And for a small club band with no major whose new film, In The West, is dedicated record on recycled vinyl ("it had pops and label recording contract, UWB had a large to Hyatt and features his music, remembers when Willis Alan persuaded him to book Uncle Walt's Band at an SMU coffee house in 1972: "Willis called them 'musician's musicians.' Here were three guys that all had perfect pitch. And their songs were so good. They'd play old songs and songs of their own that seemed old. It was hard to tell where Cole Porter or Hoagy Carmichael left off and Walter Hyatt began." Uncle Walt's Band: "I always felt that Walter was going to The Girl on the Sunny Shore Sugar Hill—SH-10326 (CD/CASS) become one of the 'old masters,"' said Steve Clark. "Many better known musi- An American in Texas ReviSited Sugar Hill—SH-1034/5 (CD/CASS) cians looked to Walter as the master, and he was just a kid!" Walter Hyatt's Web Site: http.//songs.com/walter

30 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996 and dedicated group of followers. "They created a 'family atmosphere,'" says Kim Miller, "and that 'family' showed up again and again." Longtime fan Jane Blizzard (now a mother of two in Houston) remem- bers seeing UWB when she was a student in 1973. "A group from my dorm, all women, walked to Shakey's Pizza down on the drag [now the site of Antone's] to see UWB, sometimes twice a week. They made you feel like you belonged, like it was a little club that you were part of. You saw the same people over and over. It really made the isolation and anonymity of U.T. more bearable for us. It was also a safe haven for single women to enjoy live music, without having to fend off drunks." That devoted audience filled the Para- mount to capacity at Hyatt's memorial last month, competing for space with those who crowded in to hear an unsurpassed lineup of A Heidi, Taylor and Walter in a family portrait. talent paying tribute by playing Walter's "Walter really touched people." music. The eclectic gathering of musicians pened without UWB paving the way for and an older daughter—whose graduation suggested the breadth of Walter's song- funny-looking guys with "big hair" and from Randolph Macon College he was try- writing abilities and the scope of his twenty- broadly eclectic musical styles. Lovett's ing to make when he died. His widow has five-year influence on the music scene. efforts to make Hyatt's work more widely had to retain lawyers to represent her against "I realize now that none of us knew all known and appreciated have resulted in a the airline. At the memorial, though, there of him," said Marcia Ball. "Backstage November 19 posthumous re-release of was no mention of the air disaster. "I'm a lit- we're all in awe at who keeps showing up." Hyatt's 1990 MCA solo album, King Tears tle of the mind that we know nothing about "So many people I love here," Jimmie Dale (which Lovett produced). why things happen in life," said Heidi. "I Gilmore gushed. "Makes me realize I "He loved that saying 'I'm a legend in have a hard time getting angry." never got around to telling Walter how my own mind,"' said Heidi. "In Austin, But anger might be an appropriate re- much I loved him and his music." Ray everyone is very free about letting you sponse, at least as a prelude to action. The Benson of Asleep at the Wheel intoned that know that they love your work—but the results of the 1980s deregulation, decen- "in the last week Walter's chords and tralization, and the weakening of govern- words have been played in homes and tour "HE HAD A DEEPNESS AND SINCERITY ment oversight now appear in the safety buses all over this country." THAT PEOPLE WERE ACUTELY AWARE records of the discount companies like Hyatt was acknowledged again and OF. HE TRIED TO PUT THIS INTEGRITY ValuJet, which farmed out maintenance to again for his influence on fellow musi- INTO HIS LIFE...IT MAY SOUND LIKE A shoddy sub-contractors the FFA seemed cians. "UWB' s first album had a Professor LOFTY GOAL, BUT THAT WAS WALTER." incapable of monitoring. Low ticket prices Longhair song called 'In The Night.' I and a competitive marketplace seem to asked Walter what it was, and he pro- world beyond isn't. Walter was very inter- come at the expense of consumer safety. ceeded to educate me all about Professor nal, he didn't say how he felt about his lack Corporate greed, union weakness, bi- Longhair. At that moment, he essentially of national recognition...but he was confi- partisan politics and even the presidential handed me my career," said Marcia Ball. dent of his gift." campaign have played fast and loose with "He was a patron saint to so many budding Beyond his music, Walter Hyatt had our ailing airline industry. And many of musicians," said Kim Miller. "He felt that another gift: he was an honorable man in a the post-Vietnam generation, once any musician that would bother to come less-than-honorable industry. "Walter soothed by Walter Hyatt's restorative hear his music was worth listening to." really touched people," says his wife. "He music, continue to turn inward, allowing Lyle Lovett, perhaps Hyatt's most had a deepness and sincerity that people to flourish the conservative forces that ardent supporter in the industry, recalled, were acutely aware of. He tried to put this conspired to take a talent and goodness "The first time I saw UWB was here at the integrity into his life...it may sound like a like his away from us. ❑ Paramount Theatre in 1980. I didn't play lofty goal, but that was Walter." my guitar for a couple of weeks after that." Walter Hyatt died at forty-six, leaving be- Writer Sidney Brammer divides her time be- Clearly, a Lyle Lovett might not have hap- hind a ten-month-old baby girl, a young son, tween New York and South Austin.

NOVEMBER 22, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 31 JUDGE NOT. For anyone trying to .get and three on the Court of Criminal appeals. that is. In a scathing report on Johnson's elec.led to a Texas judicial seat, a good repu- Tom Luce, who chairs the state task management style, the Dallas Observer tation and plenty of endorseinents aren't as force on judicial reform, says its too early noted that fifty staffmernbers have resigned important as an R next to your name on to predict how this election's outcome will or been fired from her 18-person Capitol the ballot. "I don't think a Democrat, in the influence the task force's findings. Propo- Hill office in four years—a turnover rate next four years, IS going to have a snow- nents of reform will have to overcome the twice that of other 1992 1-louse freshmen ball's chance of beating, a Republican" in a opposition of certain Republicans, like from Texas.. Based on interviews with over statewide judicial race, said Frank Maloney, Governor George Bush, who prefer the sta- twenty current and former employees, the the respected incumbent Democrat who lost tus quo. B ut support for nonpartisan elec- Observer article paints Johnson as "a his Court of Criminal Appeals seat to Re- tions comes from both sides of the fence— meanspirited woman who chews up and publican District Judge Torn Price of Dallas and notably from Republican Supreme spits out employees with abandon." in the November '5 election. Speaking to the Court Chief Justice Thomas Phillips. "The Sources complained that Johnson requires 7'exas Laivyer, Maloney noted that weak longer we keep this system," lie says, "a lot all staff to stay at the office until she leaves voter turnout in the more 13enlocratic parts of good judges of both parties will lose," for the day, and that she makes the staffers of the state aided Republican candidates, serve as chauffeurs, clean her apartment, who won every contested statewide judicial our boss is Dallas seat, including four on the Supreme Court on .c.§.W0.11100 ..,-: rnlce Johnson;. ..',140.0401A\itIA • tAt ■ \A\, INAVM to u N '4,A\NAy ,pg444 Asoba*41668A , 448igUAIAA706r6,;:A■AA \I\ v*AVANO\,\t e

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32 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 22, 1996