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Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS The wisdom off Big Brother By Kicluiril I.. Li-slu r. President CIuiihImt of Commerce of (lie United Suites The "Wall Street Journal" recently described a letter one of its reporters had received from a Michigan Lawyer relating his experience with an existing federal energy program. It seems the individual wanted to know if his client could obtain a grant from a $10-million fund operated by ERDA, the Energy Research and Development Administration. Ad-ministration. Sorry, replied ERDA, only $1 million was left; the other $9 million had been all used up for "administrative expenses." ex-penses." Of course that was only one tiny program. Just imagine how much more 'administration" we can buy if Congress passes the Administration's proposals for more than $200 billion in new energy taxes. THE TAXMAN TAKKTH. AM) TAkKTH AND TAKETII... The Tax Foundation recently reported that the medium income of our typical American family will reach $18,467 in 1979, up 66 percent from 1972. That seemed like good news, until I heard the rest. During the same period, prices rose more rapidly up 75 percent, but taxes really went through the roof. Federal income taxes rose 82 percent, Social Security taxes 142 percent, while state and local taxes climbed fastest of all. They are now four times as high as a decade ago. Perhaps that explains why there are now 78.9 million persons working in the private economy, but 81.6 receiving government payments of one kind or another. If we want to be taxed less, we've got to stop asking for more. NO SWEAT, OIK I'KIN TING I'H ESS CAIN TAKE CARE OK THAT Did you know the Treasury Department Depart-ment makes double payments on more than 100,000 checks a year, and generally general-ly makes no attempt to recover the money? In fact, some $73 million has been erroneously paid out during the last three years alone. The typical case: An intended recipient reci-pient notifies the Treasury his or her check never arrived, or was lost. If the department can verify the check has not been cashed, it sends out a second check But then it does not stop payment pay-ment on the original check which it claims it cannot legally do. The result is both checks get cashed, often by deliberate fraud. Wouldn't it be nice if you could write as many checks as you wanted... without ever having to worry about having enough money to back them up? WATCH WHAT THEY D() , NOT W HAT THEY SAY ' 'f - One of the least reported storie America is the failure of governmen do as good a job in any given situa as private industry. :;" Take energy conservation, s'i, 1972, business and industry has vjj'ji tarily reduced their energy consm' tion by 16.8 percent. But the fed, government, the nation's largest sir, ', energy consumer, has failed to curb . own energy use. And guess who has ' ! worst record of all? A House Gov-;; ment Operations Committee ret : recently blasted the Energy Depi ment for its "abysmal record insav;; energy." The department ranks sea in energy consumption, 12th in en s conservation. V:'s Oh well, no one's perfect. Aftetj Big Brother does have the responsjj ty of running our lives. We should'-, pect he'll waste a little energy, j THEY CALL IT lMSSANCTIONING GENDKr! SPECIFIC TERMINOLOGY"! That's what the Department Health, Education and Welfare el 2 one of its favorite activities spend your tax dollars so its paper push can dream-up terms like "dairy p, ducts deliverer" as a substitute fori old sexist bugaboo milkman. f Just thought you might like to krl . |