Word: barrelers
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...into antiphonal form: the lament of a hard-nosed cop will be answered by a raucous drag queen; the surreal anguish of Dan White (incarnated with creepy brilliance by John Spencer) will be followed by some wildly comic testimony that might have come from Carol Burnett's blooper barrel. Execution of Justice, directed by Oskar Eustis and Anthony Taccone, is a major work that seems to stand outside the perimeters of most Humana Festival plays. Yet its concerns are the same: to examine, with care and craft, the rending dynamics of American society. In life and art, these plays...
...funnier--as it is, it comes off worse than the stuff it makes fun of. A sci-fi movie has to display more interesting sets or else has to have some outdoor shots--there's really nothing here that you couldn't see by browsing through Crate and Barrel and then cruising through the video arcade next day. As it is, the atmosphere is boring and claustrophobic...
Quite simply, all the easy oil has already been pumped. Exploration costs per barrel now stand at about $15--which leaves little room for profit on a barrel of oil commanding a $29 world price. Last year the 20 largest oil companies in the U.S. found only 60 percent as much petroleum as they refined...
...common name for this kind of support for government contracts is "pork barrel." Congressmen routinely try to direct lucrative government business toward home state corporations. If they succeed, as many senior committee members do, they create jobs for constituents and prime a future pump of campaign funds. Common examples of this practice include dams and other water control projects; designation of national historic sites, with resulting tax breaks; and construction of federal office buildings. Just recently, Cambridge's own representative, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, came under fire for this last category by supporting the construction of a federal complex...
These domestic sources of "pork barrel" are small, though, compared to the huge dollar value of defense contracts. Since much of the current federal budget deals with the so-called "transfer payments," the Pentagon purchases by far the largest amount of goods and services of any government agency. Just to indicate the importance of last week's engine controversy, United Technologies received 47 percent of its profit last year from engine and spare part sales, the majority of which were to the military. Sen. Dodd estimated the cost to the taxpayer of this supplier change at $2 to $3 billion...