Word: clout
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...search for more domestic energy comes at a time when Saudi Arabia, the U.S.'s principal foreign supplier of crude, is once again showing its clout in world oil. That country last week paid an estimated $2 billion to buy the remaining 40% of Aramco, which produces the bulk of Saudi oil, from a consortium of four American oil producers, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Standard Oil of California. Americans will continue working for Aramco, but only in technical and managerial roles. The kingdom's Oil Minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, is also reported to have told British Foreign...
...sanity by explaining that failure is success, and otherwise fulfilling George Orwell's expectations. The revolutionary "vanguard" clearing the way for the dictatorship of the proletariat develops into a "New Class" of privileged party officials and bureaucrats. The system runs by what the Soviets call blat- influence, clout, corruption. A new minority rule sets in. If it is not the dark, satanic will of Stalin, it has little to do with workers' wishes either. Although members of the ruling elite may have come originally from proletarian families, that connection becomes more remote as the entrenchment proceeds. Amid scarcities...
Even if the Democratic coalition can be tugged back together, many of the party's basic elements are dwindling in numbers and clout. Union membership is declining, down from about a third of all nonfarm workers in the mid-'50s to less than a fourth today. Blue-collar workers are a shrinking minority of the work force (33%); white-collar workers have become an outright majority (51%). Fourteen of the 20 biggest U.S. cities, traditional Democratic strongholds, lost population during the 1970s, some drastically, as residents moved to the largely Republican suburbs. The cities that did gain in population tended...
Reporters like Wilkie and Bradley are part of an elite corps of journalists, drawn mostly from large newspapers, newsmagazines and the networks, who dominate coverage of such major national events as the conventions. The clout of their employers gives them access unheard of among most regional newspapers and television stations-and hence an influence that far transcends their numbers...
...with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "but he is an absolutely atrocious conductor. When someone can't conduct at all, of course the musicians are going to be bored." Frank Miller, principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony, defends unionization by recalling the way things were before the union had clout: "Every year, 30 or 40 people were fired for such things as inattentiveness to a particular note." Some musicians concede, however, that the modern union contract, which often guarantees 52 weeks of employment, creates a debilitating schedule. Says a New York Philharmonic string player: "If you're into...