Word: alaine
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...there may be wisdom in Raffarin's go-slow strategy. In 1995, France's last conservative government provoked crippling month-long strikes with its steamroller approach to reform. The fury unleashed by that effort cost the rightist government of Prime Minister Alain Juppé its parliamentary majority in 1997 elections, won by a previously floundering coalition of leftist parties united under Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin. Aware of France's dimming economic outlook, Chirac and Raffarin are now opting for caution over collision?and have backed down when their measures have generated opposition. The tact is apparently working: approval ratings...
...stomach to go through with it. Last week, for example, after a junior minister provoked a storm by revealing job reductions planned for France's mammoth public school system, Education Minister Luc Ferry rushed to placate teachers' unions with assurances that only administrative posts would be cut. Budget Minister Alain Lambert and Economy Minister Francis Mer have similarly been at odds on fiscal policy. Their most notable mixup arose over possible tax cuts in 2003?a must if Chirac's extravagant campaign pledge to reduce taxes by 30% before 2007 is to be met, but a difficult task during...
...leaked its 2003 budget, which would reduce income taxes and employer-paid benefits but raise minimum wages and maintain the state's status as France's largest employer, providing one of every four jobs. "Raffarin previously flirted with reform, but that's changing with this budget," says political analyst Alain Duhamel. "On areas like decentralization, tax reduction and even modifying the 35-hour week, he is proving reformist. On the issues more likely to provoke explosion?reducing civil servants and public services, for starters?he's looking as unenthusiastic as his predecessors...
...relief. Hemingway made you feel like a lazy chump for missing out on the running of the bulls in Pamplona, but the new breed of travel books gives you the oxymoronic pleasure of being both over there and back here at the same time. As Alain de Botton puts it in The Art of Travel (Pantheon; 272 pages), "We may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there." As travel books go, The Art of Travel is on the unconventional side. It isn't about traveling anywhere...
...aficionados, nothing says summer like just-picked tomatoes. They're at their peak, and chefs are celebrating with menus designed to showcase the scarlet globes. Alain Ducasse at the Essex House in New York City serves an appetizer of roasted tomatoes in a tomato gelee topped by tomato tuilles. Melisse in Santa Monica, Calif., offers an eight-course tomato tasting menu, and several eateries bake yellow-tomato cupcakes. The heirloom tomatoes that chefs like, including purple brandywines, green striped zebras and fuzzy blues, are popping up at farmers' markets and gourmet food shops, and the seeds are big sell...