Word: bucked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...great deal of evidence pointing to the corporations being interested in maintaining the apartheid system." He points out that when Black workers went on strike recently at General Motors and Ford factories, the management called in police to arrest the union leaders. "Where is this purported commitment to buck the system, to help the Blacks?" he asks Discounting improvements in material wealth for Blacks effected by some corporations, he says. "It doesn't matter what you pay us in wages. We want our freedom: we want to run our country...
...continued stalemate in itself could doom hopes for a prompt recovery from the deepening recession. Convinced that those huge deficits will keep interest rates high, businessmen are thus far unwilling to bet their buck on new investments and expanded production. Washington's waiting game, in short, carries risks that are not just political. -By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Neil MacNeil/Washington
Fine excuses all, but not passes of the buck. A true buck pass means not only that one shirks responsibility, but lays the blame on another person, preferably an innocent...
This is why buck passing among equals is a lesser form of the art. After Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Fleet, and Major General Short, commander of the Army's Hawaiian department, had a field day blaming each other and Washington for unpreparedness, but since all were culpable, there was no real art in the show. The same fandango is going on in Spain these days, with the generals on trial for treason frantic to pin last year's failed coup on each other. The buck may also be passed to superiors, as Nuremburg made...
Finally and fundamentally, you must be the kind of person capable of passing the buck in the first place. This is an art, after all. For Harry Truman, the buck stopped somewhere. For the true buck passer it never stops, but is constantly being turned over in his fingers, heads and tails, waiting for the moment of accusation when it may be gracefully flipped to a patsy. When a run-of-the-mill culprit says, "I did it because I was overtired," he implies that he is essentially a better person than his particular action indicates. But by adding...