78-10-A1
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Government[edit]
Transcript[edit]Not long ago a friend sent me a clipping from the Pasadena STAR-NEWS. That is the Rose Parade Pasadena in California. It seems that Pasadena couldn't qualify as a distressed area eligible for the President's urban program to help distressed areas. Now that hardly qualifies as news to make one lift an eyebrow and say "how come?". To be eligible, an area must meet three of four criteria: It must have an unemployment rate above the national average; a five-year growth rate of employment below the national average; a five-year growth rate of population below the national average; and its five-year absolute change in per capita income must be below the national average. Pasadena is a stable area and what is usually termed a wealthy community so it isn't surprising that it didn't meet the so-called "need" requirements for an Uncle Sam handout. It was the cities that did qualify that raised a few eyebrows in California. San Marino, La Canada, Flintridge and Bradbury are all on the eligible list. It's true these cities aren't filled with industries and they probably have quite a few people who aren't working at regular jobs. But that's because they are the kind of communities where a lot of people don't need jobs. As a matter of fact, a pretty good percentage of the people in those communities are better off than the federal government if you compare their credit ratings. I doubt they'll be rushing to Washington for a handout. Meanwhile, business in the nation's capital goes on as usual. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, summed up his agency this way: "If you combined the budgets of all 50 states the total would be $50 billion shy of matching HEW's budget". This one agency of our government has the third largest budget in the world, topped only by the budgets of the U.S. itself and the Soviet Union. Now that we're all past the income tax date you might be interested to know that the world's most confusing document is the Internal Revenue Service's official manual. It has 38,000 pages in 12 volumes. That's bad enough, but they continue to make changes every month to such an extent that the IRS librarian can't keep pace with the indexing. One I.R.S. agent who needs the manual in his work (which involves criminal tax investigations) became so fed up he went out and bought a commercial copy. When tax time came and he listed the cost of his purchase as a tax deduction~-the manual being an essential tool in his work as an I.R.S. agent--his boss, the I.R.S., refused to allow it. In closing, the Treasury department proposed making tax regulations more simple. They said, "A regulation which would otherwise be eligible for consideration as a significant regulation, may, nonetheless, with secretarial approval, be determined not to be a significant regulation." Doesn't that make you feel better? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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