Word: crime
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...corruption to go around, but not much narrative drive. Condon's Mafia greedsters now own 32% of what there is to own in the U.S., "only five points down on the Japanese." Old, frail, evil Don Corrado hits on the up-to- date notion of getting out of street crime and franchising it to black, Hispanic and Oriental gangs, thus achieving really big bucks and respectability. But instead of telling the story, Condon endlessly tells about it. Characters do not take on their own faces or voices, and when the lowbrow Partanna is made to say, "Ask not for whom...
Starting two full years before the election, Bird's well-organized opposition has raised $4.6 million so far, more than four times what her . supporters have gathered. The money has financed a flood of direct mail, but perhaps the most potent Bird-blasting weapon has been Crime Victims for Court Reform. Drawing on the savvy of Strategist Bill Roberts, a political consultant who co-managed Ronald Reagan's 1966 gubernatorial campaign, the group includes victims of crime and their families, in some cases the parents or spouses of murder victims. With the passion of bitter experience, they denounce Bird...
...allegation that the court is soft on crime, her backers claim it has sided with the prosecution 90% of the time. Then why has no execution yet taken place in California during her tenure? Bird blames the fuzzy language of the state's 1978 death-penalty initiative and argues that the California Supreme Court has been getting the wrinkles out of the law. Executions will be upheld more easily, she predicts, when trial courts begin applying the justices' guidelines in new cases. "The death penalty is alive and well in California," Bird insists...
Organized crime first began to flourish on a large scale during the Brezhnev years in what has come to be known as the "shadow economy." Underground businessmen, who amassed wealth by siphoning off funds from the state budget for lucrative private ventures, proved an easy target for blackmail by small- time thugs. After gangsters began to demand "protection" money, a deal was reportedly cut at a conference in the northern Caucasus in the mid-1970s, with the illegal millionaires agreeing to pay 10% of their income to the crime lords...
...many inner-city schools are less centers of learning than custodial institutions complete with wardens (principals) and guards (teachers) striving to control a mob of prisoners (students), some so preoccupied with the three Cs -- crack, crime and casual sex -- that they have no time for the three Rs. But the educational blight is not confined to underclass ghettos and barrios. Despite efforts to upgrade the math skills of U.S. students, a recent survey indicates that nearly half of American 17-year-olds cannot perform simple calculations that are normally learned in junior high school. Other surveys have documented equally dreary...