Word: contend
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...candidate jumps into the fray. In the race for county commissioner in Lawrence, Kans., Agnes T. Frog, a frog, won 27.4% of the votes in a valiant effort to unseat In- cumbent Nancy Hiebert. Agnes was a write-in candidate sponsored by opponents of a proposed highway that, they contend, would threaten the habitat of the northern crawfish frog. Despite the loss, Agnes' spokesman, John Simmons, a herpetologist (one who studies amphibians), was practically jumping up and down at her showing: "Agnes leapt into the contest with all four feet. The frognosis was good when we took a tad poll...
When the drift was first spotted in the early 1980s, it stirred only academic interest. But this year, as more economists and politicians began to take note of it, the seemingly slight squiggle on the demographic chart has sparked a fervent debate. The great American middle class, the provocateurs contend, is no longer so great. It is shrinking steadily, goes the theory, and shedding its members into the economic extremes of wealth and poverty. "There has been a thinning of the middle class," says David Bloom, an associate professor of economics at Harvard. "As society becomes more polarized...
...economists who highlight this phenomenon tend to be liberals; many of them blame the Reagan Administration for failing to help Middle Americans adapt to the postindustrial age. Millions of citizens, they contend, have lost their middle-class jobs in aging industries like autos and steel and have plunged into the minimum-wage realm of floor mopping and hamburger flipping. By failing to halt the middle-class shrinkage, the argument goes, the U.S. could allow itself to become a two-tiered society of rich and poor. Declares M.I.T. Economics Professor Lester Thurow: "Wherever one looks, one now finds rising inequality...
...Poindexter at first implied that it was Reagan who in effect brought the summit to an end by picking up his papers and walking out; later the White House amended that to say that Gorbachev reached for his briefcase before Reagan stood up in response. Poindexter, Shultz and others contend that they went to Reykjavik fully prepared for anything that might come up. Yet they admit, almost in the same breath, that they were surprised to find themselves in a detailed negotiation touched off by Gorbachev's unexpectedly sweeping arms-reduction proposals...
...strategic weapons have eliminated only ballistic missiles or bombers and cruise missiles too? In either case, should the deal be revived, how would the Administration defend the U.S. and its allies against an overwhelming Soviet superiority in conventional arms without a nuclear deterrent? Shorter range, how can the Administration contend at the same time that it needs Star Wars to bring the Soviets back to the summit and + that it will never consent to bargaining away...