Word: ganges
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...poor. It is a lawless dystopia, plagued by rapacity and violence: "In eastern India, bauxite and iron-ore mining is destroying whole ecosystems, turning fertile land into desert," she writes in the introduction. And in an essay, about the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat: "Women were stripped, gang-raped; parents were bludgeoned to death in front of their children." The writing is extremely provocative - corporations are marauders, politicians are fascists who commit genocide - and yet it is always gorgeously wrought. Her pitch-perfect prose is the one thing that fans of her famous novel, The God of Small Things...
More startling is the misguided attempt to move past the violence and push for a bipartisan health-care bill: the misdeeds and misfires of the so-called “Gang of Six.” Although an effort at bipartisanship is both necessary and appropriate, the Gang of Six is less likely to craft consensus than hamstring effective reform...
...gang the center of debate? Contrary to conventional wisdom, there’s more agreement about health-care reform in Washington than disagreement. Four congressional committees have already agreed on core tenets: community ratings, expansion of Medicaid coverage, a health-care exchange, subsidies for low-income citizens, incentive for employers, and an end to underwriting on pre-existing conditions. Generally, more divisions have been bridged than broadened...
...hope of some is that these disinterested senators (mostly from rural Western states) can craft a bill that is both effective and bipartisan. But it won’t happen. The Gang of Six is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. The members are financially compromised, too far to the right of public opinion, and uncommitted to civil debate...
...gang has received disproportionate funds from the health-insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Most significantly, Democratic Senator Max Baucus has received $25 million in contributions from health-industry PACs since 1989, more than any Democrat. Republican Senator Mike Enzi has received a greater share of his campaign contributions from health- industry PACs than any other senator. Admittedly, insurance and pharmaceutical companies should have a place at the table. But they shouldn’t be sitting at the head. I doubt that six “co-opted” hired guns can follow the money trail to common ground...