Word: direness
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...with such lofty mandates - and powerful offices - their failures can be equally crucial, helping to shield the worst excesses of powerful government bureaucracies. And almost 30 years since its landmark creation, many critics say the IG system has never been in more dire need of reform as it is under the Bush Administration. An unusually high number of Bush IGs, such as Janet Rehnquist at Health and Human Services, have been forced to resign under a cloud as a result of bipartisan pressure, often because of bald incompetence or gross interference with the IG mission. At the same time...
...latest declaration of martial law in Pakistan appears to perpetuate the same cycle of military rule interspersed by short spasms of ineffectual and corrupt democracy, a cycle that Pakistanis are exasperated with. But this time the situation is more dire for the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million people. This time Islamic militants are better placed than ever to rush in and fill the vacuum...
Comparatively speaking, the health-care situation in Massachusetts wasn't all that dire when Romney took office: the state's percentage of uninsured among its nonelderly (13.2%) was smaller than the national average (17.8%), and it had a better safety net, thanks to a $1.1�billion fund the commonwealth had established to reimburse hospitals and health centers that provided medically necessary care to people who couldn't pay for it. But with a third of the state budget going toward health care, the sheer inefficiency of treating the sore throats of the uninsured in emergency rooms didn...
...members of our university community are not empowered to push for change or illuminate Harvard’s flaws because they serve only in a nominal or advisory capacity. While there is much that Harvard does well, most students, faculty, and administrators can agree that University governance is in dire need of revision. A relationship based on trust is difficult to formalize, but an improved University structure would bring about expanded communication, collaboration, and mutual honesty...
...desperation. Each of Valentine’s six sections explores a different manifestation of the theme of beauty in darkness. In the third part, “Strange Lights,” Valentine presents a series of poems written from the viewpoint of a patient in a hospital. The dire circumstance is made peaceful by gentle, imaginative language. For example, in “Hopsital: far from home,” phrases such as “cinnamon slipper” and “winter fields like covers” give the poem a warm and dreamy tone, which...