Editing 78-07-B7 (section)

=== Transcript ===
After being gone for three weeks my desk has blossomed with some
interesting little items. For openers we're indebted to National
Review. It seems that the school authorities in St. Petersburg, Florida
decided to test applicants for teaching jobs instead of just looking
at their diplomas. The test was pretty simple: they wanted to find out
if the applicants could read, write, add and subtract. Out of the first
15 tested, four flunked.

The New York City fire department has a minor problem to solve,
too. One of its retirees won a race up the stairs of the Empire State
Building in February. In April he entered the Boston Marathon--26
miles--and finished 133rd out of 4,600 entrants. The problem is,
he's retired on a nearly $12,000 a year pension for a back injury he
sustained several years ago. Department officials think maybe he's well
enough to return to active duty.

Meanwhile in Washington they are still trying to straighten out
bureaucracy's language problem. The Secretary of Transportation sent
out this memo: "Regulation means a statement of general or particular
applicability and future effect for publication in the Federal Register
and designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or
describing the organization, procedure, or practice requirements of the
initiating office of the department, except that if such statement 
implements a financial assistance program, it need not be published in
the Federal Register to come under this definition." Did you follow
that? Well, yo u'll be interested to know the Secretary sent it out
as a memo on how to write clear and simply regulations.

You know it could be that all Washington really needs is a good
plumber. The Bureau of Standards received a letter from a New York
plumber who wrote to tell them, "I find hydrochloric acid good for
cleaning out clogged drains."

The bureau wasted no time in telling him by mail that "The
efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable but the corrosive residue
is incompatible with metallic permanence."

The bureau got a fast reply. The plumber wrote: "So glad you
agree with me." To which the bureau responded: "We cannot assume
responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue with
hydrochloric acid and suggest you use an alternative."

The plumber replied with enthusiasm that he was tickled pink they
agreed with him. This time the bureau answered in the kind of language
that real people use. They simply wrote: "Don't use hydrochloric acid--
it eats the blankety blank out of the pipes." Of course they weren't
on radio so they used a shorter term than "blankety blank".

Just in closing--the President received a wire signed by some 40
popular musicians and singers including names familiar to those who
follow radical movements, telling him nuclear power is a grave threat
to life on this planet. Scientists they are not. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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