Viewpoint
The Battalion Wednesday
Texas A&M University August 2, 1978
Smoke dope? Not my
. BY DONALD E. MULLENS
United Press International
Asking a state governor if he knows of
iny pot smokers or cocaine sniffers on his
taff is like asking him if he has stopped
>eating his wife.
In state after state, the mere mention of
i&rcotics triggers the “who, us?” syn-
Irome — complete with the viewing-
vith-alarm at such goings on, followed by
he pointing-with-pride that they don’t
jxist.
Booze is still the king catalyst of socializ
ing, according to a UPI survey of state
Capitols on narcotics use.
ANY POT SMOKING seems to he well
iway from official duties. Cocaine? Not a
trace.
Most governors’ staffs are loaded with
men and women in their twenties and
mid-thirties, many of them liberals on so-
Commentary
cial issues. If any of them smoke pot or
sniff cocaine they weren’t crazy enough to
commit professional suicide by admitting
it.
In Illinois, an aide to Gov. James R.
Thompson said she knew of no drug use,
but, “of course, I don’t doubt individuals,
just as in all walks of life, try some drugs,
especially pot — haven’t you?
And from Oregon, where nobody on
Gov. Bob Strand’s staff even smokes ciga
rettes, came the comment: “Cdcaine is
either too expensive or too chic for people
in the boonies.
The survey was generated by the recent
resignation of Dr. Peter Bourne, Presi
dent Carter’s adviser on drug abuse, after
he wrote a prescription for a powerful
sedative using a phony name for the pa
tient.
He later said he knew of White House
staff members who had smoked marijuana
and sniffed cocaine.
STATE LEADERS INSISTED that
President Carter s problems are his alone.
and that no one on their staffs has ever
been caught, arrested or prosecuted for
drug use.
Some officials greeted the questions
with humor or incredulity.
Said Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan:
“H ow do you react to something that isn’t
happening? It might be an Eastern dis
ease.
Commented one of O’Callaghan’s staff
members: “All we do is — and drink.
Jim Gilchrist, press secretary for Ten
nessee Gov. Ray Blanton, said, “This is
just not a marijuana and cocaine crowd and
like they say in the song ‘Okie from Mus
kogee:’ White lightnin’s still the biggest
thrill of all.”
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Milton Shapp s
legislative secretary, William B.
McLaughlin, was offended at such a ques
tion.
“I think the governor’s executive staff
would be willing to participate in a survey
on marijuana use if UPI management and
its employees participated in the same
survey and published the results of both
polls,” he said.
The reaction generally was that anyone
caught faced immediate dismissal.
“IF STATE EMPLOYEES have to be
told to quit breaking the law they
shouldn’t be working for the state, said an
aide to Nebraska Gov. J. James Exon.
However, in Washington State, Gov.
Dixy Lee Ray said if she caught any of her
staff using drugs “I would certainly require
that they go immediately for. treatment
and I woidd suspend them.
Even in Madison, Wis., where there is
only a maximum fine of $25 for possession
of small amounts of marijuana, none of
Gov. Martin J. Schreiber’s staff has been
singled out as a user.
In Kentucky, Gov. Julian Carroll’s press
secretary Gary Auxier said he didn’t know
of any instances of usage, but added:
“That s not saying unequivocally it does or
doesn’t happen, Imt I don’t know. Nobody
has ever been busted on the governor’s
staff.
In California, where Gov. Edmund G.
Brown Jr. denied ever using marijuana
after the issue came up during his guber
natorial campaign, the answer was the
same: no knowledge of such activity.
MANY STATE GOVERNORS and
their staffs keep their public image so
straight-laced as to be almost Victorian.
For example, Florida Gov. Reubin
Askew has been described as a non
drinking, non-smoking man whose idea of
a good time is drinking apple juice at a
church social.
Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe doesn't serve
liquor at public receptions and New York
Gov. Hugh Carey doesn’t like his staff to
smoke cigarettes.
Asked about marijuana and cocaine, an
aide to Wyoming Gov. Ed Herschler
commented: “Hell, he doesn’t even know
what it is.
Some replies to the smoking and sniffing
survey:
— Utah: “The governor’s office is clean.
although we do have a coffee maker and a
coke machine — maybe you better make
that a pop machine.
— Iowa: "Most of the people on the
governor’s staff don t even drink.
— Ohio: “The governor doesn’t even to
lerate his staffdrinking while on duty.
— Indiana: “All the pupils of our eyes
are the right size.
-— Hawaii: “We re squeaky clean.
— Missouri: "The governor’s people are
the straightest arrows this side of Robin
Hood’s quiver.
— Virginia: "Hell, no!
And in Georgia, Gov. George Busbee,
who succeeded Jimmy Carter in 1975,
said, "I don’t know of any, holdovers or
new people. Carter or Busbee people, that
are using drugs.
Commented a veteran statehouse re
porter: “When Carter was governor, we
never knew Jody (Powell) or Hamilton
(Jordan) to use anything you couldn’t spit
down the front of somebody s shirt.
Texas klan is alive and well
By K. MACK SISK
United Press International
SAN ANTONIO — It wasn’t widely
known that Gene West was a member of
the Ku Klux Klan when he tried to get
elected to the Texas Railroad Commission
and the state legislature.
But since his latest defeat at the polls, in
the May Democratic primary in State
House District 57-H, West has come out
of the closet and announced that he had
been a klansman for nine years and cur
rently is the Texas kleagle of the Invisible
Knights of the KKK.
West said the Invisible Knights have
gone public, so to speak, and will confine
their actions to legal means, mainly by
exercising rights of assembly and free
speech.
“As long as I am the kleagle, the Klan
will not burn any crosses or tar and feather
anybody,” West said, while maintaining
that there still are some folks around who
need to be tarred and feathered — and
hanged for that matter.
West said Texas klansmen in recent
months have gone to Tupelo, Miss., for a
rally to counter a black protest about al
leged police brutality, met this month in
Decatur, Ga., and were in Midland last
week as “observers” in an investigation of
the death of Larry Lozano, who
Mexican-American groups contend was
killed by police in violation of his civil
rights.
The Invisible Knights, West said, is the
largest of three klan groups and is not af
filiated with another KKK outfit headquar
tered in Vidor.
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“Nah,” West replied when asked if it
were widely known that he was a klansman
when he ran for the Democratic nomina
tion in Rep. Don Cartwright’s district.
“We were trying to keep everything
quiet until we got situated, then we could
come out public. We met in private at
Denham Springs, La., and all the officers
of the organization voted to go public.
“It has changed a little bit. They don’t
get out there and tar and feather them
anymore — which, by God, some of them
needs it, you know what I mean? I’d like to
see the old hanging tree come back down
here at the courthouse.
Asked how many San Antonio klansmen
there are. West said, “1 d never tell you
that,” but he claims the Invisible Knights
number more than two million na
tionwide.
He said the KKK was a vigilante group
in the old days and did not limit its disci
pline to blacks. It tarred and feathered
white people when they did not live up to
the klan s expectations, he said.
“The klan has turned its cheek a little
bit. They’re not after these Negroes or
anything like that like they used to be, he
said. “They’re going after these politicians.
I mean they’re not ‘going after them.
They’re watching them to see what kind of
bills are being drawn up and which ones
are not being drawn up — whether it s
going to hurt the white people or not.
West said his klan movement was a
“backlash on this discrimination thing,
and his group was “highly fed up with this
police brutality thing” and “all you hear is
minorities, minorities, minorities.
Another big gripe of the klansmen, he
said, was interracial marriage.
“There’s a bunch of Negroes right here
in town that calls their selves the
Deacons,” West said. “They don’t believe
in it (intermarriage) either. I can get out
here and say I don’t like a Negro and that
makes me a racist. But a damn Mexican-
American, Mexican or Negro can get out
here and say honkeys, this, that and the
other; that they’re going to kill the hon
keys. Doesn’t that make them a racist?
“I ain’t ashamed of letting nobody know
I belong to the klan.”
GOP waiting to pick Carter’s bones
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The leaders of the
Republican Party met last month in the
Star Wars setting of Detroit’s Renaissance
Center to look into the future. For a lot of
them, it looked good.
With the Democratic president’s opin
ion poll approval ratings way down; with
the Democratic-controlled Congress un
able or unwilling to march in step with
anyone; with lots of campaign money com
ing in for what looks like an attractive crop
Washington Window
of Republican candidates this fall; and with
pundits talking about the public turning
toward the right, the GOP elders would
seem to have reason for at least cautious
optimism.
Republicans traditionally are hard-
headed folk, and very few of them are pre
dicting a top to bottom return to power for
the GOP soon. National chairman Bill
Brock, for example, has a six-year plan to
achieve majority status and openly con
cedes that 1978 is not likely to be a big
year for the GOP in Senate contests.
At the same time, some flamboyant talk
was heard during the meetings in Detroit.
For example, Lynn Lowe, the Arkansas
Republican chairman and the long-odds
GOP candidate for governor, told the na
tional executive committee he expects to
win. And if that wasn’t enough to rattle the
teacups, Brock himself said it was entirely
possible for Art Fletcher to win the
mayor’s seat in Washington, D.C.
Brave talk for public consumption is
cheap in underdog politics, but there is a
professionalism at the national committee
level that usually cuts down wishful
windjamming. So it is worth notice that
the two contests Lowe and Brock were
talking about would involve upsets so
breath-taking as to suggest the Republi
cans have discovered the political equiva
lent of nuclear weaponry.
Brock apparently does believe that. He
thinks the tax cut issue is going to be the
Republican atomic bomb.
After what he concedes was quite a job
of selling orthodox GOP economists on the
idea of deficit financing, Brock has put all
of the GOP’s 1978 campaign chips on the
Kemp-Roth and Steiger tax reduction
schemes. Both would keep a lot of money
in taxpayers’ — for which read voters’ —
pockets, and Brock believes that will be
the key to GOP resurgence this fall.
There is in all this a potential catch, de
scribed at the Detroit meeting by Califor
nia GOP chairman Mike Montgomery and
state Senate Republican leader Paul
Priolo. Reporting on the Proposition 13
phenomenon in their state, both men said
the danger all Republicans should guard
against in tax cut politics is Democrats
stealing the issue. That, they said, is what
Democratic Gov. Edmund Brown Jf. is
trying and apparently having some success
with in California.
It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing
has happened. It wasn’t many years ago
that Republicans thought they had the
issue to ride to victory in law and order.
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The flap over whose
likeness should adorn the proposed new
dollar coin has tended to obscure a more
vital question, namely: Will it play in
Peoria?
Sad to say, the Treasury Department’s
recent record in currency design does not
inspire confidence in that regard.
There was, to cite one notable flop, the
new Eisenhower metal dollar. That coin,
in terms of circulation, has been a real tur
key.
Then someone decided the country
needed a new $2 bill. Which, if possible,
has been an even bigger bomb than the
Eisenhower dollar.
Now someone has decided that what we
actually needed was a new dollar coin that
would be less bulky than the cartwheel. A
lawnmower wheel, you might call it. Or
maybe a skateboard wheel.
Anyway, it would be only slighter larger
than a quarter and, as proposed by the
Treasury Department, would have had
Miss Liberty on one side and an eagle on
the other.
But at Senate hearings this week it ap
peared sentiment had shifted to the design
After a period of panic, a number of Dem
ocrats realized that they did not have to
concede the issue to the opposition, and in
the memorable phrase of one observer
“pinned on the sheriffs badge for the
duration of the campaign.
favored by women’s groups — i.e.,
supplanting Miss Liberty with the stern
visage of Susan B. Anthony, the well-
known suffragette.
What was not apparent at the hearing
was any assuring evidence that the coin
would gain wide public acceptance either
way. Which surely is the crucial point.
After two straight duds, the Treasury
can ill afford to lay another egg.
One problem may be that coin de
signers are much too “heads oriented.
The Lighter Side
After all, when you flip a coin there’s a 50
percent chance it will come up “tails.
Yet that side of the coin customarily gets
short shrift.
If “heads of the new coin is to be dedi
cated to one of the pioneers of women’s
equality, I say this would be a fitting time
to give “tails” equal prominence.
How about a coin with Ms. Anthony’s
face on one side and the famed World War
II pinup of Betty Grable on the other?
That would make it popular with male
chauvinists as well as women’s libbers,
thus avoiding the risk of another fiasco.
Heads, tails on new coins
Top of the News
Campus
Art show to open
“Eleven Artists, an art show in the MSC galley features the paint
ings and sculptures of 11 Texas artists. The exhibit is open 10 a.m. to
6 p.m. daily through August 26. 'flu- show is being sponsored by the
MSC Arts Committee and the M(x)dy Gallery in Houston, where the
artists normally display their works.
State
Farmworkers to continue protest
Members of the Texas Farmworkers Union, almost midway
through a second week of protesting for collective bargaining rights,
Tuesday huddled on the steps of the Capitol in Austin to escape the
rain hut still vowed to stay until the end of the special session. About
10 of the protesting farmworkers nestled in a corner, reading news
papers. The group has staged a vigil since July 24 and has lived solely
on water and juices since last Wednesday. Some of the protesters
were displaying weary, tilt'd faces but all said they would continue
the hunger strike.
Crawford questioned
American businessman F. Jay Crawford was questioned for five J
hours by Soviet authorities about alleged currency violations and
ordered to return Wednesday for more questioning at Moscow’s
LeFortovo prison. Crawford, 37, of Mobile, Ala., said
encountered no direct hostility in the session Monday, although au
thorities refused to allow a U.S. Embassy official to sit in on the
interrogation.
Senate to vote on posts
Senators will make crucial decisions today on patronage preroga
tives with their votes on Gov. Dolph Briscoe’s controversial appoint
ments of two men to powerful state posts. The Senate Nominations
Committee in Austin voted Tuesday to forward the appointments of
Hugh C. Yantis and Dorsey Hardeman to the full Senate, which is
required by the constitution to approve or reject all appointments.
Sen. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, has announced in advance he will
invoke senatorial courtesy Wednesday to block Yantis’ confirmation
to the $38,600-a-year job as chairman of the State Insurance Board.
Sky lab astronauts named
Veteran scientist-astronaut Owen K. Garriott and rookie Robert A.
Parker have been selected for the first Spacelab flight in the early
1980s, a Johnson Space Center spokesman announced Tuesday in
Houston. Spacelab is one of the early missions scheduled for the
space shuttle. The lab will ride into space in the shuttle’s 60-by-15-
foot cargo bay. Garriott flew on the second Skylab mission for 56 days
in 1973. Parker has not flown in space but has worked in ground
control and communications during Apollo and Skylab missions.
Four arrested in skirmish
Four men were arrested Tuesday in a skirmish between San
Antonio police and 15 supporters of a wildcat garbagemen s strike
who were trying to set up tents on the City Hall lawn. Those
arrested included Chris Gutierrez, vice president of the San Antonio
Refuse Collectors Association, and Mario Cantu, an activist rest
aurant owner who grappled with former Mexico President Luis
Echeverria during Echeverria s visit to San Antonio two years ago.
World
Slowdown snarls air traffic
Thousands of would-be vacationers Tuesday sprawled on airport
floors instead of Mediterranean beaches, hoping for an end to a six-
day slowdown by French air traffic controllers that has snarled Euro
pean flights. Britain was one of the hardest hit areas, with airports
reporting flight delays of up to two days to popular Spanish resorts.
Delays of 24 hours were common.
Artillery fire renewed
Israeli-backed Christian rightist militiamen unleashed fresh artil
lery fire early Tuesday to bar the Lebanese army from reaching its
headquarters near the southern border with Israel. A Beirut news
paper said Israel was behind the militia resistance. An army com
munique late Monday had said Israel actually was doing the shelling,
but on-scene reports said it was the militias inside Lebanon.
Christina Onassis married
Christina Onassis Tuesday married an out-of-work Russian in an
assembly-line ceremony and left her privileged life behind her to
become plain Mrs. Sergei Kauzov, resident of Moscow. She im
mediately confronted the frustrations of everyday folk when her hus
band had trouble starting the car waiting to take them home. It was
the third marriage for Christina, 27, one of the world’s wealthiest
women, and the second for Sergei Kauzov, 37. The couple was mar
ried in a 10-minute ceremony at a Moscow state wedding palace.
Weather
Mostly cloudy today and tomorrow with thundershow
ers for today and Thursday. High today in the mid-80s
and low in the low 70s. High tomorrow in the upper 80s.
South wind at 15 mph. Probability of rain today 40% and
50% tomorrow.
The Battalion
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