Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS The wisdom of Big dig Brother III II In 1775 a harassed New England merchant complained com coma I Men of war cutters cullers marines with their bayonets fixed judges of the admiralty collectors comptrollers searchers tide lIde waiters alters land waiters walters with a whole catalogue of pimps arc sent hither not to protect our trade but to distress it Such a state of aHa affairs Irs was obviously intolerable so we threw out King Kin George and his swarms of officers And now Well Pity the poor Navaho Indian who was ordered by the government to Install a way two-way intercom in his though he works it alone lies lie's as perplexed as the Portland employer who was told that 15 percent of his two secretaries and one bookkeeper must be of minority extraction Fifteen percent of three people I ITHEN THEN THERES THERE'S the small businessman who was fined for having too many fire ex ex- ex That's right too many In Chicago they confiscated a batch of rubber squeeze squeaking too loudly The head of a meat packing operation recalls being ordered by one federal agency to put an opening in a conveyor line and being ordered to close it by another f federal deral agency We have been told by various federal agencies he says to provide smooth and rough I floors in the same area salt and andI I not salt the same area paint I and not paint the same area and so on THOSE ARE AHE just the petty frustrations Get into the excesses excesses ex ex- ex of the environmental protection movement and you make the big time The snail darter darter- 00 a small fish has stalled a million dam In Tennessee The Furbish a useless weed blocks a million hydroelectric project in Maine The soft shelled clam dam has halted a 2 billion nuclear power plant In New Hampshire And a 35 billion fired coal power plant in Utah was sacrificed on the altar of the black footed black fooled feret and the kangaroo rat DOESN'T IT boggle your mind four major energy facilities being held up for petty reasons while the President reminds us of the energy crisis So far no one in the bureaucracy has tried to make his horse a I expect it soon I had a letter leller the other day from a writer who asked me to explain the contradictions of the government He said I understand understand un un- un there is a move to legalize marijuana while at the same time they are outlawing saccharin I This bizarre behavior is certainly reminiscent of the eccentricities of history's mad kings and emperors And yet it with occurs increasing right frequency here in the democratic middle class USA Estimates of the total consumer consumer consumer con con- sumer cost of government red tape vary widely But the educated guesses usually run between and 2000 a year for each and every man woman and child in the country Who I would like to knowis know is protecting the consumer from this In the words of Bert Lance director of the Presidents President's Office of Management and Budget We talk about wages and prices being the causes of inflation But the most serious perpetrator of oC all if government itself |