Word: public
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...board) because of its "extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics" on global warming, as Nike put it in a letter. The Chamber has spent $17 million on the health-care debate, more than any other organization, but may end up losing its fight to keep any form of public option from ending up in the final legislation. And last week, the Chamber was the victim of an elaborate media hoax, when activists put out a fake press release and held a phony news conference announcing the Chamber's supposed shift in its controversial climate change stance...
Many observers think the Chamber, in so zealously opposing so much of the Democrats' agenda, may be its own worst enemy. Peter Darbee, PG&E's CEO, applauds Donohue's effort to rehabilitate the American public's faith in free enterprise in the wake of the past year's troubles." But he added, "I'm struck by the irony that, as we try to restore public trust in business on the one hand, on the other the Chamber's behavior on the climate issue only reinforces stereotypes that erode that very same confidence...
What to make of it all? With e-books poised to take off, the case raises thorny questions. Will the deal benefit the public along with authors and publishers, while providing only minimal profit to Google? Or will it chart the course for future digital publishing and nudge Google ahead of rivals in the infancy of an emerging and potentially lucrative business? It is suspense worthy of a legal thriller - and Scott Turow is among the settlement's supporters...
...there's also a sentiment that many members of France's political class may wind up discredited if too many old corruption cases are dredged up now. Earlier this week, several public figures - including former Interior Minister and Chirac confidant Charles Pasqua and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of former President François Mitterrand - were convicted of illegally supplying arms to Angolan rebels in the 1990s. In responding to his guilty verdict and one-year prison sentence, Pasqua said that many former and current members of government knew about the arms sales, as well as several other illegal schemes...
...France at the charges? Part of the reason may be that other illegal political funding schemes were commonplace in France from the 1970s to the early 1990s when a series of laws were passed to crack down on the practice. The French also tend to be more scornful of public officials who use corruption to enrich themselves personally, which Chirac isn't accused of doing in this case...