The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 2, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 12, 1989 Page: 2 of 24
twenty four pages : ill. ; page 19 x 13 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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Texas will become the No. 2 state in population by the turn of the
century. That’s the prediction of the Kipiinger Report [Texas Letter]
just issued. Texas will be second only to California, supplanting New
York as the No. 3 state.
Kipiinger people say Texas will have a population of 19,982,000
people by the year 2000, an increase of 19.7 percent over the current
decade. US population will rise by only 11.11 percent. That means
that Texas will outgrow the rest of the country in the next decade.
The Texas Department of Commerce reports that Texas population
increased by 18 percent in the first seven years of the 1980s...to
nearly 16.8 million in 1987...and according to Kiplinger’s estimates,
we’ll add another three million before the end of the century.
Not all of Texas shared in that population growth, however.
Hemphill County, which boomed in the late 70’s and early 80's, lost a
bunch in the middle of the decade when the oil and gas industry hit
the skids. Hemphill County was one of the five biggest losers...down
23 percent from its peak...but still bigger in population than it was
before the boom started.
All indicators are that we’ve bottomed out, however, and are
starting to grow again slowly. If the state population grows by 18
percent in the next decade, chances are good that some of that will
spill over into the under-populated Panhandle. We’ve got room to
grow.
***
•«r
The best money can buy?
HE AVERAGE AMERICAN doesn’t take
A home $135,000 a year, or anything close to it.
The average American, of course, doesn’t get
elected to Congress, but a lot of the people who do
are not a lot above average in ability, or character,
or intelligence unfortunately, and a 50 percent
increase in salary isn’t going to make them so,
either.
That pay raise which the members of Congress
are about to get by default...by the simple process
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION
-.AWARD WINNER
c?Ae (Canadian
RECORD
USPS 087-960
Box 898, Canadian [Hemphill] Texas 79014
BEN EZZELL Editor
NANCY EZZELL........................Editor
LAURIE BROWN Advertising Manager
Entered as second class matter December 20,
1945 at the Post Office at Canadian, Texas, under
the act of March 3,1879. Published each Thursday
afternoon at Canadian, Texas, by Ben R. and Nan-
cy M. Ezzell. POSTMASTER: Send address
changes to THE CANADIAN RECORD, Box 898,
Canadian, TX 79014.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
$20/Year in Hemphill and adjoining counties
$25/Year elsewhere
of not voting against it...may seem monumental to
the average American, but it is really fairly
insignificant as a percentage of the federal deficit
which is already, truly, monumental. It isn’t going
to make or break the country.
But at a time when our federal lawmakers are
facing severe budget and deficit problems, it flies
in the face of reason. It sends all the wrong signals.
At a time when Congress is seriously consider-
ing deep cuts in appropriations for such items as
medical care for the elderly, housing for the
homeless, and food stamps for the truly needy,
fattening the paychecks of top federal officials,
judges, and Congressmen with a 50 percent salary
boost seems unconscionable.
It makes it appear that the congressional pay
raise of two years ago, a mere $12,000 a year
increase, was just testing the water, and when it
created only a few ripples and no waves, made it
seem safe to take the big plunge now.
If the members of Congress were doing the
efficient job of managing the nation’s affairs which
they should be doing, a pay raise of corporate
proportions might be justified. When private
corporations achieve financial stability and show
profits, top management reaps the rewards in the
form of bigger paychecks, and that’s expected. But
businesses which are failing don't produce pay
raises for management, and a government which is
operating as deeply in the red as ours is shouldn’t
give pay raises to its management either.
If the members of Congress want pay raises, let
them earn it by demonstrating the management
skills which would justify it. And in the meantime,
if they don’t want to work for the salaries the
public offices provide, let them get out and go to
work in the private sector...as taxpayers. There
appears to be no shortage of applicants for the jobs
to which they’ve been elected.
Maybe we Americans deserve the best Congress
money can buy, but we haven’t been getting it,
and increasing the salaries of the same public
employees who have been botching the job at
$90,000 a year isn’t likely to improve their
performance.
The Wolf Creek Philosopher, in the Perryton Herald, a homespun
Texas writer who publishes a weekly feature under various pen
names in a number of Texas newspapers, notes that not only are
Congressmen asking for a pay raise, but Federal judges will also get
the $135,000 annual salary instead of the $89,500 pittance they now
receive when the new “automatic” Congressional pay scales go into
effect next month.
’’Supporting the judges,” the Philosopher comments, “a big-time
columnist argues that compared to what lawyers in the private sector
make, judges are ridiculously underpaid. Another way of looking at it
is that compared to what judges make, lawyers in the private sector
are ridiculously overpaid!”
***
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower contracted a
severe case of “hoof and mouth” disease in a late December brush
with the livestock industry, when he joined the European Community
in opposing production of beef cattle treated with growth hormones.
Hightower criticized the U.S. government decision to retaliate
against the European Community decision to ban imports of
American beef, declaring it “a health issue, not a trade issue.”
Hightower has been roundly lambasted by Texas and Southwestern
Cattle Raisers and by the Texas Farm Bureau for what the TSCRA
president calls ”his uneducated and uninformed statements that do
not reflect scientific fact”. Farm Bureau President S.M. True
demands Hightower’s resignation.
Hightower, who has been sending up trial balloons for months to
test the air for a possible race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by
Republican Phil Gramm, countered the demands by announcing
Saturday that he will run for re-election to his Commissioner of
Agriculture post next year. Looks like everybody is warming up for a
fight.
If Jim Hightower really thinks Texas beef is being poisoned by
growth hormones, he may resort to eating crow before the next
election.
RLESSED ARE THEY who have nothing to
#say...and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
James Russell Lowell.
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Ezzell, Ben & Ezzell, Nancy. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 2, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 12, 1989, newspaper, January 12, 1989; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth520961/m1/2/: accessed July 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hemphill County Library.