Word: pers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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William Parish is bullish on energy -- literally. Ten months ago, the former California real estate lawyer opened the first commercial plant designed to produce electricity by burning cattle dung. Situated near El Centro, Calif., the Mesquite Lake Resource Recovery Project generates 17.5 MW per hr. -- enough to power 15,000 homes -- and sells most of it under a 30-year contract to Southern California Edison...
...federally sponsored A Nation at Risk report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in U.S. schools, average combined scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) have risen only slightly, from 893 to 904. Despite a 46% jump in the average amount that local, state and federal governments spend per pupil, the percentage of high school students who graduate has actually dropped, from 73.3% to 71.1%. "We are standing still," Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos said in May, as he unveiled a report showing a tenacious lack of progress in public education...
...plans over the next five years. One reason: giant, multi-year spending commitments in the early 1980s are still rolling through the budgets like a giant bow wave, pushing aside other priorities. One of the biggest is the Northrop B-2, which is now expected to cost $530 million per plane, making it the most expensive weapons system in history. Eliminating the plane would create huge savings, but the effect would be felt across the U.S., as 126 contractors in 46 states have a stake in the project...
...Corp. found that litigation often does not yield the jackpots that the public imagines. Rand found that airlines and other defendants paid victims' families less than half their average "economic loss," the value of what the deceased would have earned in a normal lifetime. Jury verdicts averaged $599,000 per victim. Still, the odds are good enough and the stakes high enough to ensure that lawyers will continue to litigate these cases avidly. As insurer Magee puts it, "This whole business has come to take on a lottery mentality. If someone gets hurt this week, then they rush to court...
...1970s, blacks disproportionately bore the brunt of the decline of smokestack America. Since then, not only has there been a widening gap between black and white unemployment rates, but the real incomes of some categories of low-skill black workers have plummeted 20% as well. Small wonder that blacks' per capita income was 57% of whites' in 1984, the same percentage as in 1971. So much for the Reagan-era vision of Morning in America...