Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...strongest speech since the Inauguration. He put the U.S. squarely in favor of the unification of Europe, addressing widespread pressure to lower the Continent's political as well as military tensions: "The time is right. Let Europe be whole and free." Turning specifically to the changing shape of some East bloc nations, Bush argued that their "passion for freedom cannot be denied forever. There cannot be a common European home until all within are free to move from room to room." But, he said, "let the Soviets know that our goal is not to undermine their legitimate security interests...
...seamy Mississippi River city of East St. Louis, Ill., the grim local joke is that the crime rate is finally starting to level off because there's not much left to steal. Block after city block is boarded up or burned out. Many buildings have been reduced to rubble as thieves cart away everything of value: bricks, aluminum siding, copper wire, even heavy cast-iron manhole covers from the potholed streets to be sold for scrap. The housing authority complains that aluminum downspouts are swiped from its buildings within hours of installation. Trash-strewn vacant lots along the river stand...
Time was when East St. Louis enjoyed a modicum of blue-collar prosperity. In the '40s and early '50s it ranked second only to Chicago as a national rail and stockyard center. But almost all its industry has left, driven out by high crime rates and property taxes. Thousands of jobs have gone with the factories, leaving the city a pocket of nearly hopeless poverty in the generally economically well-off St. Louis metropolitan area, and quite possibly the worst-off urban center in America...
...financial stress worsened dramatically in April last year when city assets were temporarily frozen after East St. Louis failed to begin payment on a $3.4 million judgment arising from the beating of one local jail inmate by another in 1984. The city is now beset with dozens of lawsuits. Firemen have sued successfully to collect three years of back uniform allowances, only to be told that the award left no money in the till to pay their salaries. A bill making its way through the state legislature will erase the deficit in the current budget and finally...
...payments to its trash contractor, and remains sporadic at best. Residents routinely dump garbage in vacant lots or abandoned buildings. As fast as buildings are boarded up to stop looting and dumping, thieves steal the plywood. Bob's Board-Up Service in St. Louis no longer accepts jobs in East St. Louis because customers there don't pay their bills...