A Tough Legislative Year for the Aggies . Good News in Texas Prisons . Progressive Assault on the Austin City Council .. INSIDE and the True Story of the Observer vs. the Air Force .. THE TEXAS 13S January 16, 1981 A Journal of Free Voices ERVER 75 This woman prayed for her 10 children, picked up a Bible, and robbed a bank. They want to give her 20 years. • Two things in Dallas We've looked hi are certain: low, from bird c Drew Pearson's hands fish market, but we've and taxes. We'll talk found it: about the latter. Better The Best Newspaper you should watch the in Texas. former. Advance/Rod Davis Gird Up By the time many of you receive this issue, the 67th session of the Texas Legislature will have convened. Be upon us. Afflict us, etc. By many accounts, if you thought the last session was a rotten one, you ain't seen nothin' yet. If we live in a body politic, then in 1979 the legislature sliced us up the middle. In 1981 it's going to pull out our entrails inch by inch. Then ask for a cremation fee. In preparing for a new legislature, reporters often read over accounts of previous sessions. It's depressing business. Each January there are warnings that the lobbyists for oil, or doctors, or banks, or The University of Texas, or realtors, or whatever, are going to ram through some egregious measures. By June, PUBLISHER, RONNIE DUGGER the accounts report that such measures have, indeed, been °The Texas Obsen,er Publishing Co., 1981 rammed through, give or take one or two pyrrhic victories from the loyal and limited opposition. The bastards always win. Vol. 73, No. 1 January 16, 1981 Learn it here first: nothing has changed this time around but the names. And not even all of them. In fact, the one name that didn't change is the biggest reason the session promises to be abysmal: House Speaker Billy Clayton. Having managed to squirm away from accepting what only a high-paid lawyer could convince a jury is not a $5,000 bribe, Clayton re-staked his claim to lead the House for a fourth term. It's fitting, of course — if LAYOUT: Beth Epstein, STAFF ASSISTANT: Susan the blind can lead the blind, the crooks can lead the crooks — CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: cin,‘Chandier but another Clayton term means another session of government Davidson, John Henry Faulk, Bill Helmer, Jack Hopper, Molly Ivins, Laur- of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Not just rich, mind you, ence Jolidon, Maury Maverick Jr., Greg Moses, Kaye Northcott, Janie but rich and mean. People of power in Texas more or less Paleschic, Dick J, Reavis. Laura Richardson, Paul Sweeney, Lawrence Walsh, Alfred Watkins always have assumed they were put here to get their own way, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS: Keith Dannemiller, Roy Ham- and they do. Clayton and his dons are going to insure that one ric, Hans-Peter Otto, Alan Pogue, Bob Clare, Russell Lee mo' time. The loan shark lobby is already salivating at a chance CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Berke Breathed, Jeff Danziger, Ben Sar to get further dispensation to raise interest rates and put the bite gent, Mark Stinson, Gail Woods on consumer-creditors; tax "reformists" are lined up to protect the haves against the have-nots; the great West Texas water A journal of free voices importation scam will be resurrected; sundry other bills for nar- We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we row interests will sail through carefully selected committees. find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to Meanwhile, certain repressive measures such as Gov. Clem- human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the ents' crime package seem almost unstoppable. And what foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to ought to be one of this agricultural state's top priorities, a bill to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human allow collective bargaining by farmworkers, is dead at the post. spirit: Viva Poland. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them we do not necessar- What will happen in the Senate isn't quite so clear. It's almost ily imply that we agree with them because this is a journal offree voices. impossible to predict how the 31-member club will perform without its two defeated lions, Bill Mobre and Babe Schwartz. Leadership may at last fall to Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby, now with as much seniority as anyone else. The pernicious influence of Clements will be a continual fac- The Texas Observer tor. Puffed up by Texas' landslide for Reagan, Gov. Bill and his (ISSN 0040-4519) wealthy Dallas buddies are already exerting muscle on legis- Editorial and Business Office lators, more of whom are GOP allies than ever before. Besides, 600 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701 Clements and Clayton are eye-to-eye in everything except party (512) 477-0746 affiliation. It was the governor who met with Clayton on elec- tion night and, in Nixon/Kissinger style, prayed with him. Publisher's Office P.O, Box 6570, San Antonio, Texas 78209 The point of this is to inform Our Loyal Readers that things (512) 828-1044 after 4 p.m. are just as bad in Austin this year as in Washington. Pro- Published by Texas Observer Publishing Co., biweekly except for a three-week inter val between issues twice a year, in January and July; 25 issues per year Second-class gressives are going to have to work harder than ever just to postage paid at Austin, Texas. keep from losing ground, and don't believe anything else you Single copy (current or back issue) 750 prepaid. One year $18; two years, $34; three read or hear. Capitol reporters these days seem caught up with years, $49. One year rate for flill-time students, $12. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. the need to say how smart the governor is and how victimized Microfilmed by MCA, 1620 Hawkins Avenue, Box 10. Sanford, N.C. 27330. poor ol' Billy is and what a shame it is all this is about to happen POSTMASTER: Send form 3579 to 600 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701, again. Well, it is a shame. But it's more than that. It's a crime. 7440°V` 144V? Start thinking like a victim. 0 Cover Photo: Temple Junior College 2 JANUARY 18, 1981 The Bank Job Temple On the morning of Oct. 15, 1980, Emma Stewart decided she had to do something or blow her brains out. Sew- age was bubbling up through the shower drain in her $50-a-month rent house and water from bad plumbing was gushing P h under the crawl space. She was tired of ot that. She was tired of the rats. She was o s tired of getting her electricity from an ex- : T tension cord plugged into a neighbor's em house. She had ten children, three pl grandchildren and a husband who'd e J taken off. She stood five-foot-four and uni weighed 180 pounds and she was 42 or C years old. Emma Stewart put on a red oll and blue skirt, blue sweater and red e sandals. She had no car so, looking ge something like an American flag, she Emma Stewart walked to the People's National Bank at Belton. She arrived at 10 a.m., holding a deposit pouch in her hand and a bible in same as suicide." A Belton police officer and no repairs were made on the plumb- her purse. quickly caught SteWart. ("After all," she ing or other broken fixtures. A few days "In the name of Jesus, put some later recalled, "how fast can a chubby before she robbed the bank, Stewart re- money in this," she told a teller, and grandmother run?") calls, "My daughter was sick with a hot passed forward the pouch. The teller put She spent the next 21 days in jail. She fever and I didn't have any way to take some packets of bills in the pouch and is scheduled to go on trial in Temple for her to a doctor, so I was down by her bed Stewart said, "God bless. you." Then she robbery and theft Jan. 14, defended by a praying. I looked up and there were four walked out of the bank. court-appointed lawyer and facing pros- huge, long-tailed rats walking along the She headed to a nearby creek — only a ecution by a politically ambitious district cabinets with the food." few blocks from the bank and the police attorney who fully appreciates the ability Emma Stewart believes her troubles station — and put the money under a of local bankers to enhance a career. She stem from two problems. The first was rock. may go to prison for 20 years. abandonment by her husband in Madi- She started to walk home. She didn't son County six years ago, which left her make it. Her description was by then with ten children to support. Then their flooding the bands of police radios, and A Personal Ledger house burned down and the family before long a Texas Ranger arrested her. Emma Stewart, born in Madison moved into a trailer.