Word: payoffs
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...first tapes were quickly reviewed by officials at the department's highest levels to see if the tactics used by the actor-agents in the field were proper. Moreover, each actual cash payoff was witnessed by a Justice Department attorney, who sat in an adjoining room and watched a closed-circuit TV monitor. In some instances, the attorney would telephone one of the agents serving the sheik, if the bribe suggestions were getting too bold. The agent picking up the telephone would be advised to ease the pitch...
...were other reasons for this deterioration in production per hour worked. Among them: the heavy burden of Government regulations, the entry of so many untrained first-time workers into the labor force, and the decline of research and development, in part because managers have concluded that inflation makes the payoff too distant, too uncertain. Turgid productivity, which aggravated inflation and contributed to the debauch of the dollar in world markets, is as serious as any problem that the nation faces as it enters the 1980s...
...plunderers of the environment, but he is having trouble fitting his "small is beautiful" philosophy to the realities of a $2.4 trillion economy. Brown convincingly argues that the nation's throw-away economy squanders scarce resources; yet he would vastly expand exploration of outer space even though the payoff is doubtful at best. He calls for a ban on new nuclear power plants and would give much more of a subsidy to solar power, though almost every study shows that over the next two decades solar can supply only a small fraction of the nation's energy needs...
Businessmen must share the opprobrium for stifling innovation. Says Donald Frey, chairman of Bell & Howell: "The biggest problem in the U.S. is not the lack of inventive capacity but the lack of businessmen willing to take the risk investments." The bottom-line obsession of many managers results in quick payoff investments to retool old products rather than expensive long-term spending to develop new ones. Though Texas Instruments this year will spend $155 million on research, Vice President George Heilmeier admits: "We have become conservative and spend less on basic research...
...Department of Education, moreover, is a political payoff from President Carter to the National Education Association (NEA), a group mostly concerned with primary and secondary education. It is no secret that Carter traded his influence for the NEA's first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate. For a man who came to Washington promising to trim down the federal bureaucracy, Carter hasn't done a very good job. We can only hope that the new department does not become a mouthpiece for the interest groups that rallied for its establishment--and that issues of post-secondary education are not buried...