78-06-B4

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Nit Picking

Transcript The President must have been pretty good at that old kid trick of trying to rub his head with one hand while patting his tummy with the other. He still says he's going to reorganize the bureaucracy and streamline government but he's issued an executive order that no one is to be fired or demoted. He should have a talk with his assistant Secretary of H.E.W. Eileen Shanahan who has only been in government one year . A liberal and former reporter with the New York Times, Ms. Shanahan has been disillusioned somewhat. She says--QUOTE--"While there are many highly competent, dedicated civil servants, the percentage of civil servants who are not earning what the taxpayers are paying them is almost as high as any figure you ever heard from any right winger. There is a very substantial number of people on the civil service rolls who are literally billing the taxpayers." --UNQUOTE-- Thank you Ms, Shanahan. Who knows, maybe her second year of public service will bring an awareness of why the nation's capital is as expensive a city as any in the world - probably because of its proximity to a-1 that federal loot. The Comprehensive Employment Training Act known as C.E.T.A. which supposedly spends billions of dollars helping the unemployed manages to spill a little on the pot-holed streets of Washington, D.C. The Washington Star has printed the result of some investigative reporting and we learn that nearly half of the staff of the city council are paid out of CETA funds. This means of course that taxpayers nationwide are helping support the city government of Washington. That's not all. The CETA Funds are providing some juicy plums of nepotism. A councilwoman's son is on salary as a staffer at $17,000. The Star also notes that the wife of a dentist who is the major supporter of the council chairman has an $11,000-a-year job. Washington's per capita cost for providing municipal services is the highest in the land, higher even than New York City's. Now that Ms. Shanahan has learned about life in government maybe she'll look into some of the foolishness H.E.W. commits under Title IX of the Education amendments of 1972. The Oak Ridge Tennessee Schools have, for example, been ordered to see that varsity cheerleaders cheer equally for boys and girls teams. Boston State College is on the carpet because the busy guideline writers at H.E.W. have discovered that the corridors where trophies and pictures of athletic heroes and title winning teams are displayed does not give equal space and publicity to women's athletics. Columnist George Will summed all this up with this warning. --QUOTE--"Government cannot make a fool of itself day after day wallowing in trivialities, in community after community without diminishing its ability to deal with matters that are not trivial."--UNQUOTE-- This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-06-B4 Production Date 04/03/1978 Book/Page Online PDF Audio Youtube? No
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