Word: inertias
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...black and white, and neither color is believable. Castle can only have personal conflicts; in this world other moral dilemmas never become so knotty as to warrant thoughts of suicide, say, or perhaps genuine political outrage. Both extremes always strike Greene as a waste, and a kind of moral inertia sets in. It's not that life is all that valuable. It's just that neither trying to combat injustice nor doing yourself in is likely to solve anything either. This is another place where Catholicism comes in handy; Greene's characters always have to consider that there might...
State agencies in Michigan have exhibited remarkable bureaucratic inertia with the PBB crisis. Michigan officials tried to convince the public that the PBB problem was unimportant. Fred Fry, an assistant to the Michigan Speaker of the House, said "State officials issued press releases consistently underestimating the scope of the problem." Fry added that the FDA encouraged the state to conceal the problem...
Another reason for the inertia is the official bias in favor of war veterans, who now hold more than half of all federal jobs, and 65% of the highest paying ones. This preference dates back to 1865, when a grateful President Lincoln pressed for a law that would favor those who "have borne the battle." Veterans of any war are entitled to a crucial extra five points on the civil service exam. If disabled vets pass the test, they automatically go to the top of the hiring list no matter how many others have scored higher...
...have a growing body of support. Ready to defend it are the Chamber of Commerce, Common Cause and Ralph Nader's consumer constituency. The plan will surely be popular with the public, which has grown resentful of a bureaucracy that produces less while earning more money for itself. Inertia was perhaps tolerable when federal pay was not competitive with the private sector, but that is no longer the case. Secretaries, stenographers, keypunch operators and other clerical employees for the Government often earn more than similar workers in private industry. Average hourly wages for U.S. postal employees are one-third...
...affairs. Yet the good has far outweighed the bad. Half-assed answers are not necessarily better than no solution at all. Congressmen and the nation's economic elite their help in solving the biggest problems of the decade. Carter realizes this, and despite his efforts to resist the traditional inertia of national politics, he is getting pressure from all sides to be sensible, compromise and hold hands with the corrupt...