78-11-A6
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1978
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Paperwork[edit]
Transcript[edit]It's been a little while at least since I last let go at government paperwork, so maybe you won't mind if I have another go at it. I'll be right back. The federal government goes to press more often than the New York Times. The United States Printing Office spews forth about 600 documents per day. Now, I'm not talking about forms or questionnaires. These are truly documents, supposedly designed to inform the citizenry and by so doing make our lives richer and fuller. O.S.H.A. for example, on a given day comes up with a booklet called "Safety with Beef Cattle." It contains gems such as, "Hazards are one of the main causes of accidents." I think I'm correct in saying it's also the manual that informs the farmer he should keep his eyes on the ground when walking about the farm because here and there there might be a slippery substance which if he steps in it, could cause a nasty fall. But to get back to the total number of such documents. In 1976 alone, there were 150,000 printed. There are several depositories in the country. At one, the Main Library of the University of Iowa, it takes one full-time employee just to open and sort the 14 boxes that arrive each day. Then nine other employees take over to catalog and put the documents on the shelves. According to a University of Iowa source, the index is practically useless as a means of finding any particular subject matter. On this subject of government paper, the National Review Bulletin not too long ago posed an interesting problem. Suppose you're a gasoline service station operator. It's the busy season and you're running from the pumps to the repair rack and back again and suppose the day's mail brings you a bulky envelope from the Department of Energy. You open the envelope and find a detailed questionnaire, entitled "Retail Motor Fuel Service Station Survey" and you are informed that under public law 93-275 you're compelled to fill out the questionnaire. You wade into it trying to follow instructions like this: "Suppose the full service pump selling price for leaded regular gasoline is 62.8 cents per gallon on the first day of the month. Suppose on the 10th of the month the prices raised to 64.9 cents per gallon and on the 25th of the month it is reduced to 61.9 cents per gallon. In order to provide the required data, you should list the accumulator readings on the full service leaded regular gasoline pump when the station opens on the first day the 10th day and the 25th day of the month and when the station closes on the last day of the month." About eight thousand of the fifteen thousand service station operators took one look and threw the whole packet away. They had been selected by the new energy agency as guinea pigs in a survey but they weren't about to play once they'd struggled through the printed material. Now what did the Department of Energy do? Well, believe it or not, it sent its fuel survey questionnaire to the seventh grade class of the Ellicott City Middle School in Maryland for re-vision and criticism. With all its 20,000 employees, the department thought maybe seventh graders could rewrite the thing and make it understandable. My own hunch is the kids threw it away, to prove they had the same good common sense those service station operators had. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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