78-11-B1
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Miscellaneous
TranscriptIt's time for another one of those desk cleaning days, so here's a collection of disconnected items you might have missed in your daily reading. I'll be right back. I think most of us were surprised at how little uproar we heard from the topmost levels of organized labor when their so-called labor reform bill was killed by a Senate filibuster. It's possible that in labor's topmost echelons, they've been reading the polls. The measure labor designated as number one on its hit list and which had White House support would have made it easier for unions to organize non-union shops, easier for recruiters to operate on business premises and would have speeded up union representation elections. Pollster Caddell's most recent sounding found that Americans by better than seven to one do not want those very things. Even more telling were other polls taken among union members themselves, showing that the hierarchy of organized labor is completely out of step with its rank and file who think the union leaders have too much power now. This paragraph has to do with federal regulations. It's a breakdown on their cost, almost five billion dollars for government's cost in running the forty-one regulatory agencies. Ninety-six billion dollars spent by business but paid by us in the price of things we buy to comply with regulations. Thirty-two billion dollars for the paperwork required by Washington and two billion dollars in loss of productivity by employees who have to spend all or part of their time dealing with the regulators. All in all it totals 134.8 billion. Now that's too big a figure for anyone to comprehend, so look at it this way. It's about six hundred and twelve dollars a year for every man, woman, child and baby in our land. The administration is still determined to normalize relations with the Communist tyrants of Hanoi. World Bank President Robert McNamara isn't waiting, however. World Bank funds will provide a huge loan, largely of our money, to Hanoi for repair of irrigation dikes destroyed by our bombers in raids Robert McNamara authorized when he was Defense Secretary. This next little tidbit comes in directly by way of a Time correspondent in the Middle East. A Soviet K.G.B. agent happily confided to him that all the cloak and dagger operations the Soviet Union and the United States have conducted against each other, none benefited the K.G.B. as much as the campaign in our country to discredit the C.I.A. The K.G.B. agent said, "In our wildest scenarios we could never have anticipated such a plus for our side. It's the kind of gift all espionage men dream about. Today our boys have it a lot easier and we didn't have to lift a finger. You did all our work for us." Well you can't say we aren't going all out for detente. By the way, there's going to be a B-1 Bomber after all. Well, almost. The Soviet Union has decided to develop a nuclear bomber. According to testimony given the Senate Armed Services Committee by the Defense Intelligence Agency and it looks very much like the B-1 we're not going to make. It'll be in operation before 1985. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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