Word: grafts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Robert Wagner, Democrat-Liberal, was elected mayor in 1953 and re-elected in 1957, both times under the sponsorship of the Democratic organization bosses he is now attacking. His first term was plodding; his second has been studded with proliferating scandals: inadequate or nonexistent school maintenance, graft in the real estate bureau, profiteering in slum-clearance projects, conflict of interest in the city council, extortion in the police department, bribe taking in the controller's office and by inspectors of departments that supervise buildings, markets, water supply, gas and electricity. Trying to hold onto the support of reform Democrats...
...Quadros has burst on the world like Brazil itself-temperamental, bristling with independence, bursting with ambition, haunted by poverty, fighting to learn, greedy for greatness. Quadros cries that Brazil is a great power, if not today, then tomorrow. He shouts that he is leading a revolution, a revolt against graft and governmental inefficiency, against social and economic backwardness, against nagging Latin American feelings of inferiority before the world. "This rebellion is invincible," says Quadros. "It is a state of mind, a collective spirit, a fact of life that has already filled the nation's conscience and that...
...Them Watch." All at once his pent-up rages and frustrations seemed to burst out. Like a banty rooster, Quadros flew at the graft-feathered machine of São Paulo's Governor Adhemar de Barros. Quadros raced around the city listening to citizens' protests and holding rallies, a rumpled, stubble-chinned reformer who sucked oranges on the platform and waved a caged...
...punched him in the mouth while he was speaking against a giveaway bill. Amid the uproar, the speaker ordered the galleries cleared. "No! No!" shouted Quadros, blood streaming from his lips. "Let the people stay! Let them watch!" By 1950, firmly established as the little citizen at war with graft, a Chaplin with a cause, Quadros won the most votes of all 900 candidates for the state assembly...
...familiar pay cuts and graft investigations poured from Quadros' desk along with some sharp measures to free Brazil's inflation-tied economy. He virtually eliminated the government-rigged exchange rates that subsidized imports of oil, wheat and paper-a painful reform long advised by the International Monetary Fund. He welcomed foreign capital with open arms, gave Western Union a contract (over nationalist protests) to set up a new communications system for Brazil, gave Ford the go-ahead for a new tractor plant, while turning down a Czech tractor deal. He spent, too, with caution. When a state governor...