Word: blight
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...Though some national commercials may be only at the threshold of pain, the local variety tests the steel of man's capacity to endure. A local "30-minute" news program consists of twelve minutes of news and weather and 18 minutes of commercial blight. The deluge of drivel is often highlighted by a car dealer's hypocritical, Bible-waving sign-off: "Gaw bless ya 'n' yore luvved...
...annual per capita income of only $1,167. Most of the country's 5,400,000 people-40% Indian, 50% mestizo and 10% white-live in abject poverty, either scratching out a living in the scabrous, rock-strewn Andes or drifting into the reeking slums that blight the cities like open sores. With the disarming candor and detachment of one who is stepping down from power-and is glad of it-Arosemena tells it like it is. "Infant mortality is high," he says. "The standard of living is low. The economy is in trouble as a result of exporting...
Then, as results came in from experimental plantings two years ago, the miracle proved highly vulnerable to such mundane enemies as bacteria, blight and insects. It required expensive nitrogen fertilization and often broke during milling. Many Asians, who prefer their rice sticky and manageable in the bowl, found IR8 too starchy and dry. Indonesians, in particular, complained because the stubby IR8 stalks had to be cut with a larger blade than could be concealed in the hand. That, they felt, offended their rice goddess...
...office reflected a quiet but forceful style developed during a 35-year political career. He drew up an emergency program for tornado relief, stopped all construction of state buildings to fight an estimated $170,500,000 revenue shortage, helped launch a campaign to fight crime, poverty and urban blight, and fashioned such cordial ties with the state senate that its Republican majority leader praised Shapiro's "practical, realistic way of handling things...
...Neanderthals agreed on Federal management of the economy, the goal of full employment, Medicare, formal legal equality for Negroes and, above all, economic growth." As a result, traditional American liberalism lost its innovative thrust, argues Harrington, and is unable to cope with the persisting problems of poverty, urban blight, inadequate education and racial hostility. To Harrington, nothing is more dangerous than the traditional American optimism that says, "However miserable the present may be, there is always hope for the future...