Word: clearings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is normally a complex of reasons for the failure of a major piece of legislation to emerge from Congress, and sometimes it is simply that there is no clear national consensus behind it. But in these five instances, and others like them, the force that proved decisive in blocking passage this year arose out of a dramatic new development in Washington: the startling increase in the influence of special-interest lobbyists. Partly because of this influence, President Carter has encountered serious difficulty in getting legislation through Congress; partly because of this influence, Congress itself is becoming increasingly balky...
...their office letterheads to big mail campaigns, conveying the false impression that the pleas are endorsed by the Senate. A House subcommittee headed by New York Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal has discovered that hundreds of corporations have been deducting their grass-roots lobbying efforts as a business expense despite clear congressional and IRS declarations that they may not do so. A few lobbyists seem to be in an unreasonable rush to cash in on the money available in the business. Two former aides of Senator Ribicoff tried to start their lobbying careers by advertising their services to help Americans working abroad...
...Common Cause. "You don't have Ways and Means wired because you're a friend of Wilbur Mills." Or, more currently, Chairman Al Ullman, whose control over Ways and Means is greatly diminished. A decade ago, the A.F.L.-C.l.O.'s skilled lobbyist Andrew Biemiller would figure that any clear labor issue had roughly 180 votes for it and the same number against it. He and his aides had only to work on about 75 Congressmen, whom they rated as "leaners," for or against them or so uncertain as to be considered "wobblies," "shaky legs" or even "bed wetters." Now Biemiller...
There are two compelling reasons why volunteer work is, as California Governor Jerry Brown has said, "a necessity for a civilized society." First, as is becoming increasingly clear, there is and ought to be a finite limit to the ser vices that government can provide. California's Proposition 13 has proved that taxpayers are willing to cut services even cruelly and self-destructively to reduce their tax loads. If many necessary services are to be provided, volunteers must do the work-particularly in child care centers, nursing homes, libraries and alcohol abuse programs. One of the most persuasive practical...
...side of a highway expresses the "haunted" quality of America, its vast space and extremes--of hot and cold, of violence, exhaustion and pity. While Evans' photographs sometimes speak less forcefully than Franks', the message in the retrospective and in his book American Photographs is clear. As Trachtenberg concludes, "Each picture completes itself only in the complete work, which in turn reflects not only upon 'America' in a state of upheaval, but upon the art of representation itself...the theme is survival, and constructive seeing the means...