Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals to measure our progress toward a stable energy system. These are the goals that we set f… - Jimmy Carter

The sixth major need is for an open and efficient Government. Now I've done the best I could to open up the Presidency. I've talked publicly about foreign policy matters that were formerly considered too secret and too complicated for the ears of the American people. I've had frequent press conferences, and I've had direct encounters with people who don't normally get to work--get to talk to a President. When I leave here this morning, I'll go to one of the Los Angeles television stations and for an hour and a half, I will receive calls from people throughout this part of California asking me questions, unscreened, on any subject they choose. I feel that it's important for the American people to know what's going on. But I also feel it's important for a President to learn from the people of this country. And I want you to know what the options are and what the problems are and w hat the possibilities are in complicated matters like the control of the nuclear weapons, the resolution of problems in southern Africa, the Middle East, and also in domestic questions which I've discussed with you today. I want you to be a partner with me in making our Government be effective and efficient. There are many other ways that we can build more openness and responsiveness into our system of government. We can make the activities of government officials devote themselves exclusively to the public interest. I've asked the Congress to impose strict financial disclosure requirements for more than 13,000 top Federal Government executives. This will make it very difficult for high Government officials to have interests which conflict with those of the public. And we should insist on the same high standards for private institutions. That's why I proposed to Congress making foreign bribery by American companies and officials a crime.

Yes. I met Monday with the Secretary of Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Army, and the head of the Corps of Engineers. We have 9,000 high-risk dams in this country which are not Federal dams. These are nonfederal dams. We will commence very shortly an inspection of all those dams. My present intention is to distribute, within the next few days, certain guidelines to be worked out with individual States so that the Corps of Engineers personnel, perhaps assisted by some from the Department of Interior, would begin to inspect the dams that we consider of most danger, about 2,000 the first year. It costs about $7,500 per dam to inspect them, on the average. We've allotted $15 million for this purpose. In that process, we will train the State personnel who will continue the inspection process after this original inspection is made. We would then continue this for 2 or 3 additional years until all the 9,000 dams have been inspected. This program then would be taken over primarily by the States because the Federal Government has no direct responsibility for these nonfederal dams. In the meantime, of course, dams that have been built by and are controlled by the Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior are being inspected, I think adequately, by the personnel in those departments because they are Federal dams.

Nuclear weapons are an expression of one side of our human character. But there is another side. The same rocket technology that delivers nuclear warheads has also taken us peacefully into space. From that perspective, we see our Earth as it really is — a small and fragile and beautiful blue globe, the only home we have. We see no barriers of race or religion or country. We see the essential unity of our species and our planet; and with faith and common sense, that bright vision will ultimately prevail. Another major challenge, therefore, is to protect the quality of this world within which we live. The shadows that fail across the future are cast not only by the kinds of weapons we have built, but by the kind of world we will either nourish or neglect.