Editing 79-11-B8 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Getting out of California into the other 49 states, I frequently am asked how
California has fared under our famous (or notorious, depending on how you look at it)
Proposition 13.

You'll remember loud voices warned that every disaster short of California sliding
into the Pacific Ocean would follow passage of 13. Now FORTUNE magazine has turned its
considerable reporting ability to that question and provides the answer.

The several billion dollar reduction in property taxes has resulted in a 14 percent
increase in personal income in California. Consumer spending and retail sales rose by
that same percent and while 17,000 government workers were laid off and 100,000 quit or
retired, 532,000 new jobs were created in private business and industry. Government
received an additional billion dollars in business and sales taxes alone, and the state
ended the fiscal year with a $3 billion surplus. So much for the great California
disaster.

This next item is not so happy but it does have to do with California. Yosemite
National Park has been described as one of the few spots in the world that completely
lives up to its advance billions for sheer beauty.

Recently I received a letter from an old friend who backpacks into the high Sierra
and therefore is a true environmentalist with real love for the beauty of this earth. He
had just completed a four-day hike in Yosemite Park, from Tuolomne Meadows to Glen Aulin.

He wrote that he was appalled at the condition of the lodgepole pines. Needles are
turning brown not only in the high country, but on the Yosemite valley floor as well.
These trees have been attacked by an insect known as the Lodge Pole Needle Miner. If an
effort isn't made to save those forests, the trees will die and much of the beauty of
Yosemite will be gone.

There is a spray that will control those insects, but so far the forestry people
are dragging their feet while the needles turn brown and fall from the trees. The
environmentalists, vocal and well organized, are opposed to the spraying of the trees.
The foresters, apparently, are intimidated.

One last item has to do with national defense and our all-volunteer army. It seems
the army is having trouble recruiting young men who can read. This is an expensive problem
because the inability to read requires longer training. It is a serious problem for another
reason. The army is about to introduce an entire generation of new, sophisticated military
hardware that will require study by these men who can't read.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that drop-outs and illiterates are being
recruited--listen to this. The all-volunteer army has the highest percentage of high school
graduates of any army in the history of our nation. Our problem isn't the army--it's our
schools.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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