A.R. "Babe" Schwartz Interview, 20 January 2006, Part 3 of 3

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  • BS: and the only three people who are still alive, who were in the Senate or who were governor or lieutenant governor at that time, are myself, here, and Bill Patman over here and Doyle Willis over here. Doyle is ninety-four or five or six years old, lives in Fort Worth and I talk to him about once a month. Every other person on that panel has passed away since then except Charlie Snable, who was Secretary of the Senate and he lobbies here in Austin today. Our four children became mascots because this was my first legislative session and there's John Schwartz, who now writes for the New York Times in New York. This is Bobby Schwartz or Robert, who is a lawyer in Houston.
  • 00:01:02 - 2389 This is Richard, who is a lawyer in Houston with his own law firm, and here's Tommy who is a doctor in Sarasota, Florida. So, as we move down these panels, the next-the next page as my sons were-will be Jason Schwartz, who is the first son of Richard Schwartz and he was a-a page as well for one legislative session and you met him today, just before lunch, so, th-that's-that's history as we depict it here.
  • When we get to the next panel, I used the same picture in the second panel in '63 that I used in '61 and I had a lot of hair and it's the same.
  • When we get down to 1965 and I'm up top
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  • because in '65, I was president pro tem of the Senate and I was governor for a day in 1966, which you'll see way up there high where Senator Galloway and myself are both shown as being pro tem or presiding third in line in the Senate during the first called session in '59, for the 59th legislature. But, this picture, again-this picture of everybody who was there at that time. There's several other living members now in this picture because it's four years later than my original picture. Ralph Hall became a Congressman. Jack Hightower became a Congressman and a Supreme Court justice. J. P. Word is
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  • living here in Austin and a good friend. Jack Strong lives in Longview. Pete Snelson lives here in Austin and is a lobbyist. When you look through here, Murray (?), Murray Watson still lives in Mart, M A R T, Texas. And so as you look at all these fellows, you-you get-you get the idea of the history of this place and-and how long people's memories will run. Bill Patman still lives in Austin, Texas.
  • The-if we get-and as we get to the next legislative session, we come up on John Connally for the second time as governor and this is '67. The-you see that-you'll see that Patman,
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  • BS: there, is president pro tem, along with Ralph Hall. And then we've incorporated some new guys here. And in this picture, there's a-there's a number of these folks that are still alive and well and Barbara Jordan is there for the first time. Barbara became a member of the Senate by election during that interim. All these people that are here served in the Senate. We-we had our debates and we had our ups and downs, but of course, they'll all be remembering-each one of us remembers all of the better parts of that service rather than-depending upon those arguments and fights we had.
  • JS: (Inaudible)
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  • BS: Preston Smith, when Preston was governor and Ben was lieutenant governor, the members of this panel, I would say that you're down to about a fourth of these members who are still alive.
  • We'd pick up a lot of new people and most-the most famous probably is Charlie Wilson, about whom a book has been written called Wilson's War, about the Afghanistan, Russian War. And Charlie was involved to the extent that he provided a lot of money through the CIA to the Muhajeen who fought the Russians. And one of whom became quite famous; whose name is Osama Bin Laden. And Osama Bin Laden today has probably got more of Charlie Wilson's money than ever went to
  • 00:06:23 - 2389 fight the Russians. And we've had a lot of it come back to us in-in arms, which were purchased with that money. Charlie probably wouldn't be willing to admit it, but he has admitted publicly that he lives in fear that some of those shoulder weapons that were bought with the money he provided to the Muhajeen-if that's the correct pronunciation-in Afghanistan are still being used against the enemies of Osama Bin Laden. There are a few people in there who could-like Barbara Ostamalzi, who became
  • 00:06:59 - 2389 a Supreme Court Justice who are distinguished in their own right. Criss Cole, who was blinded in World War II and who became a juvenile judge in Houston, Texas, Harris County. After that fact, they're all fine people and more of them-more of them were good guys than bad guys...
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  • JS: Senator, let me ask you, what year did you first come to serve, and how did you feel showing up for work your first day?
  • BS: Well, I first came to the House in '55, first came to the Senate in '60, but 1961 was the legislative session in which I first served. My first session of the Senate, I was not too impressed with either the Senate or the senators, because, as I said, I was a-a young arrogant, minority Jewish member of the whole legislature, for that matter, and I was not well liked by my enemies and-and I didn't like them very much. So, there were tough times. It was very difficult to serve with people who you didn't respect in-in the first instance and who gave you no respect in return. So that was tough time.
  • By 1969, I had become friends with a-with a variety of these people who who were friendly and
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  • who were on the same side of the battleground that I was. By that time, when-when Mauzy arrived and Jordan arrived and I can pick a few others here and there, there's Ronald Bridges, Chet Brooks, Joe Christie, Criss Cole, I mean, the minority began-that-to carry some weight in the Senate. Before that it was a rock-ribbed, reactionary, right-wing, conservative organization. And when this-by the time we had this panel, we were beginning to come upon eight or ten liberal members, liberal or moderate and Red Berry, up there from San Antonio. The-so, that liberal or moderate minority came
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  • to be a controlling factor because of the rules, and once we got eleven votes in the Senate, we were making our own way and doing our own thing. And we were always a minority, but we-but we prevailed more often than we failed.
  • I mean, this next one here, we are-we are into Preston Smith's second session, I think, got a few more hands that
  • 00:09:49 - 2389 came on board that are friendly and-and liberal to moderate. And if I counted that board today, I think I would find more than the-more than the eleven that it took to control the minority, maybe getting to the fifteen or sixteen that would give us a majority when we needed it. It's interesting to note that Lindley Beckworth came back to the Senate after having been a Congressman and Lindley was an interesting fellow who answered all his mail i-in his own handwriting. He was from east Texas, his daughter-no, his son married Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby's daughter, finally. And
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  • one of their children, I think is named after Lindley. But the other newcomers, by that time, Barbara had been around a while and she went on to Congress after this picture was taken. Uh, good time Charlie-my friend Charlie Wilson's still there. My friend Charlie Herring, who is in this picture, I think has either reached his hundredth birthday or passed away last year. But that panel, again, you know, every time I look at these panels, why, they re-they reflect to me-they mean a lot historically and-and I remember each one of these people very fondly.
  • JS: Barbara was the second woman to come into the Senate after I served and now there are probably four or five women in the Senate. Sixteen or seventeen in the House.
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  • JS: Senator, let me ask you something.
  • BS: Sure.
  • JS: This is the first picture here where in parentheses it says, "Babe". Can you tell me about that?
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  • BS: I began to use my nickname about this time because it became a-a good political handle. More people were calling me Babe and-and I was less formal and probably I didn't even think about putting my nickname on the panel-I'm glad you noticed it-until sometime around this time. I had a bumper sticker about this time, that I began to use, that didn't have anything but Babe on it. It didn't have Babe for the Senate or Re-elect Babe to the Senate, it just had Babe. And people used to kid me about it and I told them, I said, if they don't know who I am-if they don't know who Babe is, I can't get
  • 00:12:25 - 2389 elected anyhow. But the nickname is a good vehicle-good handle for politicians if the nickname kind of fits the person.
  • You've been kind enough to mention that-not to mention that-that it was about this time I lost my hair, working into this 1973, why, I'd lost a lot of hair by then. And by then Dolph Briscoe was governor and Bill Hobby was lieutenant governor. All these people have come to pass being elected in good races and being pretty tough people. And I think by then, we had a fifteen or sixteen vote liberal to moderate members of the Senate and we really began to take off and-and accomplish things that we wanted to accomplish. We were beg-beginning to be committee chairmen and people that had to be dealt with on legislative issues. We got tougher and tougher. But this is beginning to be the better Senate than we had experienced in the
  • 00:13:59 - 2389 past. The majority of these members were really first class people and easy to work with, dedicated to their work, by and large, and it was a good time to serve. Getting over on the next side, I lost a little more hair, taken in a few good guys into the legislative process and began to add really just another woman Betty Anderhower of Fort Worth, who was a good member and sat on my left, just as good a-good a member as there ever was. And she was very conservative, married to a Dr. Andy Anderhower, who was a pathologist in Fort Worth, Texas. The rest of this crowd keeps coming along in different ways.
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  • They're-most of them are still around. Lloyd Doggett, up on the top row, is a member of Congress today, from Austin, Texas. In that picture, I'm trying to find some other possible members of Congress, but I think that-think I've run out of-run out of Congressmen here. Max Sherman was Dean of the LBJ School here in Austin, Texas, the University of Texas LBJ School. The-one of these other people beside Doggett-Ray Farabee became counsel to the chancellor of the University of Texas system. I mentioned that [Oscar] Mauzy became a-a Supreme Court Justice and over on Mauzy's left
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  • and up, is Bob Gammage, who at this time was running for governor. Bob Gammage became a Congressman, came back and became an Appellate Judge, a Supreme Court Judge and now is running for Congress. And he's been out of office for ten or fifteen years but he's got a good chance of doing that. This panel, again, from-picking up from 19 (break in recording). Majority from my standpoint, they were all dynamite people and again, we were in the majority by then and did very well and passed all the legislation we
  • 00:16:19 - 2389 wanted. And I'm very-very happy to say that going through history like this, as I look back on these folks, I'm thankful that they were there.
  • This is my last legislative session and the interesting thing about this session is that it brought Bill Clements in as governor. The Senate was staying pretty much the same. Roy Blake over here on the right has a son who's in his forties or fifties now, who's a House member, recently elected. Some of these people, again, have passed away and some are still living. The-the one I miss most is my friend Oscar Mauzy. Down here on the bottom, you can see that I
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  • finally lost all of my hair. All these good guys and-and-and the lady, of course, were friends. What you need to see most in this picture is my grandson, Jason Schwartz, who is now twenty-eight and is taking his Bar Exam next month. And that's Jason's childhood picture, of which he's quite proud. And it's too bad that I got beat in 1980 because his brother, Justin, never got his picture in a panel. Justin's the only-the only member of the group that didn't make the panel. I'd also like to note for people that you will notice if you look at these panels in sequence, as we have here to-that I smiled right up 'til about 1975, then I got grim. By '79, I
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  • BS: Yeah. See, back in those days, I ridiculed the fact that Bill Clements got elected as a Republican. My-my old story, my line was, I loved using it, we hadn't had a Republican governor for a hundred years and Bill Clements proved there was a reason for not having a Republican governor for a hundred years.
  • This panel depicts the first session in which I served. It was a regular session of 1961. Traditionally your children can be pages one time and have their picture in the panel as pages in the Texas Senate for that session. My children are shown from the first John Schwartz, Robert
  • 00:19:58 - 2389 Alan Schwartz, Richard Schwartz and Tommy Schwartz or Thomas Lee Schwartz. I always tell everybody that Tommy's name is Thomas Jefferson Robert E. Lee Schwartz, but it's not all that on his birth certificate. They were the four boys at that age and the twins are now fifty-two years old and forty-four, something like that and forty-two. I had a full head of hair. I was, you know, generally about the right age for the Senate. They were all older th-most of them were older than me at the time but Price Daniel was governor, Ben Barn-Ben Ramsey was lieutenant governor. And everybody in this panel but Doyle Willis at ninety-seven today and Bill Patman over there as a member lives
  • 00:20:58 - 2389 here in Austin as well. The three of us are-are still alive, everybody else is deceased. Charlie Snable, there in the middle is still alive but he was a young man even then and he was secretary of the Senate. That-that's the panel of Senators that I came to serve with and I can't say much about many of them, except that a few were very distinguished people and a few were very difficult people. You may be interested in the fact that Henry Gonzales was in the Senate when I came to the Senate. He went to Congress and stayed from that time until he died three or four years ago. He was chairman of the banking
  • 00:21:54 - 2389 committee in the Congress when he passed away and a very, very distinguished member from San Antonio. Fought the battles of segregation during the period that I was doing that in the House in '55 and '57. Henry fought the battle here in the Senate and he fought it with Chick Gazan, who was from Laredo, who was from Laredo and who also became a member of Congress.
  • JS: Senator, let me ask you one question: what do you think your-your children and your grandchildren have learned by watching you work as a public servant?
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  • BS: I think they've learned that you have a responsibility to participate in the affairs of government. I hope that they understand that means local government, state government, national government, on any level, and that all of us have some duty to contribute something to the society we live in, in addition to working for a living and being what we are. I mean, it might be enough to be a lawyer but it was never enough for me to just be a lawyer. And I know it's not enough for my children and I hope for my grandchildren to just do whatever they do to make a living. And I'd like them to contribute in some way
  • 00:23:24 - 2389 to the society they live in, and up 'til now, they're doing pretty good at it, although my first elected public official will probably come out of my grandchildren.
  • There's Johnny who is a writer for N-the New York Times, little noisy in here. Somebody coming down the stairs. There's John Schwartz, who writes for the New York Times. Here's Robert Schwartz, who is a lawyer in Houston. Richard Schwartz, a lawyer with a law firm in Houston and Thomas Lee Schwartz, a doctor, a physician in Florida, whose real name is Robert E. Le-Thomas (misc.)
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  • [Visit to Senate chamber]
  • BS: We should've rounded up some other members for you. Should've rounded up some live members for ya'll.(misc.)
  • BS: That's why I tell them (misc.)
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  • BS: My district ran from Chambers in Galveston County, all the way down to Corpus Christi at different time. And...(misc.)
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  • JS: Dallas.
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  • BS: Thank you.
  • JS: Thank you.(misc.) 00:26:12 - 2389
  • BS: Anyhow, I hope ya'll get to do it sometime, you get yourself elected, it-it's a good thing to do. I was just explaining to Jessica and Mike downstairs that what I hope my children or grandchildren will do someday is-is get elected to public office and render some service besides just making a living. Making a living's hard enough, but - but
  • 00:26:37 - 2389 there's a lot to be done and if you ever have an opportunity to do it on a local level or on state level or any other place, why, get in there-get in there and do it. I am a lawyer, graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1951. Have a grandchild who graduated a year ago and one that'll graduate in May, from the University of Texas Law School. I have two sons who practice law in Houston and one (inaudible) University of Texas Law School but who writes for the New York Times and has never wanted to practice law. And I've kind of-I've kind of leveled down on my family to be lawyers,
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  • one of-one of my sons, who can't read and write, is a doctor in Florida. So ya'll haven't heard that joke before? I always told him, if I could teach him to read and write, I'd send him to law school, but he turned out to be a pretty damn good doctor (misc.)
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  • BS: Well, I'm going down to show them my seat down there in the front of the Senate. As a matter of seniority, when you stay longer than anybody else, you outlive the devils, why, you get the front seat. So I had the front seat on the left and a fellow named Bill Moore had the front seat on the right. And we hated each other like the devil incarnate. And but it's-it's not really a-quite a good thing to have those kind of battles in politics, but they do develop and, you know, you develop friends and enemies and your-you make your best reputation through your enemies. The worse they are, the better you are. That's all I ever learned about politics. (misc.)
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  • BS: Yes, oh, you see all that light in there, the-the-those are beautiful. The-the chandeliers are outstanding, this whole décor is a restoration project of the capitol building where they replaced and-and re-refinished everything to its original grandeur. And that all was done about eight or ten years ago, after there had been a s-a fire here in the Senate. And so when they restored the capitol building inside, then they built the extension behind us that is underground. If you go down to E1 and walk through there, you'll walk out to what is the underground part of the capitol presently. And it was all
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  • dug-dug out of the-out of the-I guess it's limestone, dug out of the limestone behind the capitol about ten years ago. And now the offices of the House and Senate that are not in the capitol building are there in the underground. There's a cafeteria in the underground, offices, committee rooms and-and a lot of work space. (Inaudible)
  • 00:29:54 - 2389 BS: Yeah, you need to go. Where are you folks from?
  • JS: Thank you sir.
  • BS: Thank you.
  • JS: Austin.
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  • BS: Okay, what would you like to know about the Senate, Jessica? Every Senator has a seat on the floor. The lieutenant governor presides from ...(misc.)
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  • BS: Okay, every Senator has a seat on the Senate floor and a desk, of course. The lieutenant governor presides from the dais. And the parliamentarians sit next to the lieutenant governor, helping the lieutenant governor with issues of points of order and what have you. All the clerks and work-workers sit down here in these front desks. And the debate takes place here on the floor. There's a microphone within this socket and the member can use the microphone or not, depending upon whether he thinks he or she can be heard. In my time, we did not have microphones and it was always our position if the gallery couldn't hear you, you didn't need to be a member of the Senate. And we-we made big jokes about people that couldn't be heard, you know, they'd start talking or start saying something and all the smart alecs would start saying, you know, speak up.
  • JS: Well, how long did you sit in this seat and why don't you tell me about, like, some of the biggest battles over coastal legislation.
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  • BS: Well, I think the-the-the major battles over coastal legislation took place in committees, believe it or not. Very difficult to get a bill out of committee. If the lobby got organized and-and could operate enough pressure on members to prevent them from doing anything. But the legislations I passed over twenty-one years as a member of the Senate dealing with coastal issues, encompassed everything from littering, to speed limits, where-where driving was permitted, to the protection of freshwater inflows, to the bays and estuaries, the Open Beaches legislation that protected the rights of the public to their access, free ingress and egress, keeping the word free in the statute that others wanted to
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  • take out, protecting the wetland areas of the barrier island complex and the peninsulas, protecting sand dunes.
  • I remember the first time I tried to pass legislation to protect a sand dune, you know, it was-it was ridiculed. What-what a-what is a sand dune that's worth protecting? And I remember Bill Heatley from Paducah, out in West Texas, said look, I can send you all the sand you want, you know, I got lots of sand and you-you pay for the railroad cars and I'll send you the sand. Well, i-it-it's hard to convince people that a sand dune is a protection against washovers and protection against
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  • destruction of a variety of kinds in hurricanes. Those dunes are barrier to the wave action and-and assist in erosion control because the dunes wash out, they wash back into the shallow waters of the Gulf and then they wash back up on the shore and then the sand blows back into the dune area. So, there's a-there's a re-nourishment in and of itself, if you protect your dunes and if you have dunes.
  • And all this sounds pretty simple except that in the-in-the m-the most difficult thing we did was to try to pass enabling legislation for what became the Coastal Management Program. And that was a very
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  • complex system of laws and which would lead to rules, which the oil and gas people didn't like because it might interfere with their rape, robbery and pillaging of the lands and the-and the air and the water. So everything is related. It's a fight against pollution, it's a fight against improper takings of public property, it's a fight against the abuse of the land, which you have to live on and which has to support wildlife and has to support all of the ecology or the ecological system that leads to a healthy Gulf and a healthy barrier island or peninsula, healthy wet-wetlands, coastal areas, estuaries, bay systems, river
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  • systems and all that. And so I can't really put my hands on what was tough, what was not, but there was something, eight or ten pieces of legislation every session that related to all those issues.
  • JS: So, how much of your job would you say, was based on having to educate your peers?
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  • BS: Ninety percent of it. Ninety percent of passing legislation is being able to educate the committee that you have to persuade about the legislation if it's-if it's not just routine. And when you educate the committee, then you get a bill out of committee where there're seven members or nine members and you get out here on the floor and there are thirty-one members.
  • And you need twenty-one votes in the Senate in order to suspend the rules, in order to take up and consider a piece of legislation. So you really do have to-have to lean on those twenty-one people in a complex situation and get those
  • 00:36:03 - 2389 votes that you're able to-to talk folks into voting for. It-it's-it's not-it's not impossible, but it's difficult. This seat I occupied in my last two or three years because it took that long to gain the seniority which enabled me to have this seat. And when I had this seat, why I was a senior member of the Senate. Bill Moore sat on the other side, slightly senior to me. But basically when Bill got beat, why, I was the senior member of the Senate for a very short period. This seat belonged to Senator Aiken, who was in the Senate forty-two years and I moved into it when he passed away. What you need me to do?
  • JS: Could you stand up and sit down (inaudible)?
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  • BS: Oh, sure. (misc.)
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  • BS: It's interesting to note that from this chair, I had filibustered for two hours, ten hours, twenty hours at different times. On one occasion, Charlie Wilson and I conducted a joint filibuster for thirty-nine hours and could have broken the world's record at that time, which was forty hours and I actually quit on purpose because we didn't want to do that. One of our colleagues had held that record and Mike McCool from Dallas at the time, a really neat guy and neither one of us, who were playing around with this filibuster we were engaged in, don't even remember the issue, didn't think that we ought to do that to Mike McCool's record. Later the record was broken by Don Kennard from Fort
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  • Worth, who spoke forty-forty-one hours. And his seat was over there in the back and Don's a friend of mine, living here in Austin now and Buda really. The other consequence of that was that Bill Meier, who now is in the Guinness Book of Records for holding the longest filibuster record in Texas was a fake. He filibustered for less than thirty-nine hours and wanted to go to the restroom, which is not permitted if you're in a filibuster. You must stand and be in the area of your desk and you must not lean on your chair or do any of the things for which you could be removed from the floor on a point of order. Well, Bill Hobby let him go to the lady's room, which is through that corner door over there at something under thirty-nine hours and he went to the lady's room and then it was possible for him to filibuster another four hours and because that-and I consider that to be the-the biggest fraud on the Texas Senate in history because he made the Guinness Book of Records. He ought not to even be mentioned in the Senate Journal.
  • JS: What kinds of things did you talk about when you were filibustering?
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  • BS: We-we filibustered the city sales tax at one time, when it was first passed. The city sales tax is a-i-is a very important tax now by which cities-through which cities gain a lot of profit. But we, at that time, because it's a regressive tax, tax the poor more than the rich, believed that, in my old radical days and liberal days, that we had other taxes which were more important than to impose a new sales tax on the poor. We had a-Don Kennard, when he broke the record was filibustering against a bill having to do with Arlington, the University of Texas at Arlington. He wanted it to be a four-year college and it was a two-year college and he was going to kill the bill if he couldn't
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  • acquire the four-year college. So we had a filibuster in which we had a lot of fun and during one entire night, by asking questions and dealing with each other in the debate, we created a Hall of Fame at the University of Texas at Arlington, where we would put a wax bust or statue of the most famous people in Texas, particularly the most fraudulent. And so we created a bust for John Sharp and he-as head of the School of Finance, the University of Texas at Arlington. He had created the best fraud then. We created a bust for Billy Sol Estes, the manure king of the State of Texas in his era. We created a bust for our friend Woody from El Paso, who had been a Congressman and Woody had been a
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  • member of the legislature. And while he was running for Congress in a Congressman at-large position, statewide, the United States government determined that he hadn't filed any income taxes for twelve years. So we gave Bo-we gave Woody a place of honor. And that went on all night, we-I think we wound up with a hundred or more people of note for whom we created a bust and a school that they would-would be named in their honor if this university were so created. And that's what filibusters do. It was good
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  • humor. We kept their intention very well and in the final analysis, I think we lost, but we had a lot of fun. And there's been a lot written about those people whose school we created, but I don't remember all of them.
  • [B-roll]