Word: patchwork
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Another perceived soft spot in the White House proposal: carmakers will get carbon credits for selling their most efficient vehicles into California and other states that had adopted separate standards before the Obama Administration moved to harmonize an expanding patchwork of state and federal rules. The proposed solution results in an arrangement whereby carmakers who had been prepared to meet California's tough impending state rules (just to be able to sell in California) will now earn bonus credits for doing just that. "The concern is carmakers will be getting extra credits for what they would have done anyway," says...
...refugee crisis comes as the Burmese military regime is tightening its grip on the country ahead of the nationwide election it has announced for next year. Since taking power in 1962, the exclusively ethnic Burman, or Burmese, junta has largely tamed an unruly patchwork of 100-plus ethnic groups, in part by signing cease-fire accords and granting certain minorities a modicum of regional autonomy. But with the upcoming election, ethnic groups with standing armies - such as the Kokang, the Kachin, the Karen and the Wa - have been given until October by the junta to refashion themselves as a centrally...
...beauty of the policy is that it's neither liberal nor conservative, just deeply pragmatic--the most American ideology of all. You do whatever works, throw ideas at the problem and see what sticks. Look at our history, and the not-quite-rational patchwork of minimal solutions has a decent track record. If Cash for Clunkers is really all it takes to get us up and moving again, that $3 billion will look like the smartest money Washington spent all year...
...needs—from restaurants, supermarkets, and karaoke bars, to medical, legal, insurance and real estate services—are readily available in one’s mother tongue. Major cities such as New York and Los Angeles are as much or more about a polyglot patchwork of such self-contained ethnic communities as they are about anything that could be called a dominant culture. Indeed, even whatever could loosely be called a “dominant culture” derived from white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, is like the croutons in a soup whose broth and flavor come from African...
...legislative language in meetings with White House health officials, including Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama's health-reform czar. The nurse-practitioners lobby is hoping such federal recognition of the central role the profession can play in a revamped health system will exert pressure on states to ease restrictions. A patchwork of state laws now dictates how much freedom nurse practitioners have, ranging from states like Alabama, where nurse practitioners can work only under the supervision of a physician, to Oregon, where nurse practitioners are permitted to run their own private practices...