Word: jerseyed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...share a widespread suspicion that the government is not sufficiently frugal. In a recent study by Florida TaxWatch, a nonprofit taxpayers group based in Tallahassee, the average respondent believed the government wastes a third of every dollar it spends. Says Reed Gidez, 28, who moved to Tampa from New Jersey a year ago: "I would be willing to pay more taxes if state leaders could convince me that they were actually going to do something with the money." For the leaders of the fourth largest state in the nation, that will remain a challenge for years to come...
...richest markets in the consumer electronics business. Last week Sony said it will begin selling VHS players, in addition to Beta models, later this year. Inevitable as the move may have been, it was tantamount to Denver Broncos Quarterback John Elway walking onto the field wearing a Cleveland Browns jersey...
While the most dramatic slow-growth rebellions have occurred in California, similar if less intense movements are emerging across the country. Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin last week called on the legislature to enact a statewide growth-management plan to provide Vermont with "greater control over our destiny." In New Jersey a statewide commission has been appointed to draft a similar plan by 1989. Last fall three pro-growth members of the board of supervisors of Fairfax County, Va., a Washington suburb, were ousted by proponents of slow growth...
Danger still lurks: the Mafia commission put out a $500,000 contract on Pistone's life, forcing him and his long-suffering family to live under an assumed name somewhere in New Jersey. Pistone, who left the FBI in 1986, is no longer protected by the agency but carries a .38-cal. pistol at all times. The Mob has reason to rage at the former agent: his daring double life was instrumental in gaining more than 100 federal convictions of organized-crime members. He was a key witness in the "pizza connection" case involving Sicilian heroin importers, as well...
Incredibly, Pistone lived in this fashion for five years without once stepping out of character. That was possible, he says, because he simply remained himself, an Italian American who had grown up in New Jersey around neighborhoods where mobsters lived. He had a sense of their behavior and values. "I knew how to act natural so no alarms would go off," he says. So natural, in fact, that as a Mob hanger-on, he got close to Mafia Soldier Lefty Ruggiero, a neurotic worrier, chronically short of cash, who became Pistone's mentor in check-cashing scams and drug...