Word: mud
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...contradiction within presidential democracy. The religious reverence due a national figurehead and focus of patriotic allegiance is incompatible with the critical scrutiny due to a country's most powerful policymaker. One either concedes. "After all, he's the President," or one feels as if he has thrown mud on the flag. Perhaps it is not too late to consider a switch to parliamentary democracy, which is based on the principle that he who reigns should not govern...
...next day was more of the same -more delays, more downpours, another frustrating postponement. Fans meandered about in the mud, bored and, in some cases, broke. The drivers passed the time tossing Frisbees in Gasoline Alley, starting impromptu soccer games and playing gin rummy...
Even more significant, $158 million of the funds have been designated for preserving Venice's lagoon and its surrounding marshland. These mud flats act as giant sponges which soak up high tide waters that flood the sinking city with deplorable frequency. In 1971, for instance, Venice's streets were inundated about 200 times...
Trouble is, Marghera is partly built on the mud flats, and the city earmarked another 10,000 acres of adjacent marshlands for new factories. By banning any further municipal intrusion into the marshes-including proposed landfill projects in Mestre-the new law will severely limit the growth of both cities. Indeed, Marghera's importance is bound to wane-probably with adverse economic effect on Venice. "If you take away the industrial sector," warns Critic Vladimiro Dorigo, "it means killing the whole place...
...built to control the dangerous high tides. Stretching across the three natural openings between Venice's lagoon and the Adriatic, the locks would open to let ships reach Marghera and would close to prevent Venice from being swamped in tidal water. That would allow further building on the mud flats-if the state decides to spend some $80 million on the locks...