Word: patchwork
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...government, which represents other ethnic groups in addition to the Muslims, who make up 44% of the population, to accept partition of the country. The two mediators have designed an elaborate scheme for twisting Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces, to be ethnically apportioned among Muslims, Serbs and Croats. The patchwork blueprint can hardly be mapped, let alone offer a structure capable of standing up to the waves of hatred that flow through the real Bosnia. Rather than tamping down ethnic animosity, the design seems to guarantee perpetual quarreling; it would also hand the Serbs the fruits of their "ethnic cleansing...
Americans, by contrast, tinker endlessly with their patchwork of entitlement programs aimed largely at the poor. The failure to make a French-style commitment has much to do with the reverence Americans have for self-reliance. They cling to a new-frontier notion of rugged individualism, forgetting that those who actually braved the alien territories of the Wild West traveled in groups of families, not alone. Through the agrarian era into the modern one, Americans have continued to regard the nurturing of families as a personal issue rather than a public concern. "We have this notion," says research psychologist Arlene...
That evacuation prompted a local group called Project Freedom to construct a network dubbed the underground railroad to funnel gang members and their families to safety in cases where all else fails. Six former gang members and two families have been shuttled to safety through a patchwork of churches both in and out of the state. The relocations are coordinated with the Wichita police, who check for outstanding warrants. Project Freedom pays for the initial move, while local congregations agree to assume housing costs and arrange for jobs and education for as long as two years. "It's a stopgap...
...Governor by Health Secretary Louis Sullivan claimed the proposal was biased against the handicapped, violating the new Americans with Disabilities Act. The action not only undermined one state's initiative, it raised broader questions about whether the U.S. will ever muster the political courage required to replace today's patchwork medical-insurance systems with one that provides for all citizens...
Clinton made his address a patchwork of old and new ideas drawn from conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and even Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, who announced yesterday that he will not run for president. Clinton also asked former Perot supporters to back him in November...