Word: equalizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Never before has there been anything quite like the exhaustive commercial referendum, known as "equal access" balloting, in which consumers select the company to carry their long-distance phone calls whenever they dial 1 plus an area code. In sheer numbers, the vote that was drawing near an end may mark the largest election in U.S. history. Yet the selection was being carried on in such higgledy-piggledy fashion that many consumers were probably unaware that any contest was taking place...
...Equal access was intended to change that. On behalf of the long-distance carriers, the regional Bells mailed ballots to customers formerly in the old Bell System, giving them an average of 30 days to mark and return them. Depending on the services contending in any area, customers may have been faced with more than a dozen carrier names on some ballots. As equipment capable of handling such functions was installed at local telephone offices, retailers in each area would be given equal access to the dial-1 system -- hence the balloting's informal name. By the Sept. 1 deadline...
...major irony of the telephone balloting is that resolving the equal- access issue is liable to make business even rougher for AT&T's competitors. | That is because of the fees called access charges that carriers pay to the Baby Bells, whose equipment connects consumer phones to a long- distance carrier. For AT&T's rivals, these fees are rising fast, and will probably grow even faster to pay for the new equal-access connection. In many cases, access fees have jumped from about 10% of long-distance retailer revenues two years ago to more than 50% today. Moreover...
...meanwhile, began hearings on Judge Antonin Scalia's nomination to Rehnquist's seat on the Supreme Court. Unlike Rehnquist, Scalia, 50, attempted to charm his questioners with good humor. But the Senators were less than delighted. After he repeatedly sidestepped questions on abortion, freedom of information, affirmative action and equal protection, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden interjected, "Who are you, Judge Scalia? Let yourself go, because it's been pretty boring thus far." Scalia refused to take up the challenge. "I have no agenda," he said...
...that modern culture has placed artificial barriers between man and the natural world. Like many who confront this idea, he can be nostalgic in his definitions. The hunter- gatherers of the ice age, for example, are idealized as the beneficiaries of a golden period. Animals were considered edible but equal; protein was plentiful, and work hours fewer than they would ever be when Homo sapiens organized into agricultural communities...