Word: reformer
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...season--is to halt a vote by hightailing it out of town and then evading the cops looking to drag you back. It's always a ratings grabber, like when some Republicans in the U.S. Senate locked themselves in their offices to quash a vote on a campaign-finance-reform bill in 1988, causing a sergeant at arms to carry Bob Packwood feetfirst to the Senate floor (after determining that Lowell Weicker was too heavy). The stunt pulled by Democrats in the Texas legislature last week was to avoid a vote on redistricting the state to create more Republican members...
...ways unprepared for the myriad, messy challenges of rebuilding Iraq. The Pentagon had expected the postwar transition in Iraq to be orderly and quick, without requiring a major, long-term commitment of U.S. forces and other resources. Washington, it now seems, spent too much time thinking about how to reform institutions and not enough time on how to provide people with basic security or infrastructure such as electrical grids, oil-refining equipment, hospitals and museums...
...vast restructuring of pay and benefits spearheaded by New York City investor Wilbur Ross. His International Steel Group (ISG) recently completed its third major acquisition in two years, buying most of the assets of bankrupt Bethlehem Steel. Ross warns of more wage pressure ahead: "If we don't reform our labor system very soon, we won't have a manufacturing sector to worry about." He is taking aim at work rules that prevent union steelworkers from performing as efficiently as foreign competitors or nonunion rivals at U.S. mini-mills...
...would be willing to strike out on their own if the economic situation made it possible. Our poor business figures have to do with the economic situation alone, not with questions that the handicrafts have to answer. What we need is a radical reduction of additional wage costs via reform of the pension and healthcare systems." Philipp may not get what he wants. Michael Sommer, head of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), is leading the opposition to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's plans to trim back state benefits and make it easier for employers to lay off workers...
...bank's bailout request may be something of a victory for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's much-maligned financial-services czar, Heizo Takenaka. A Harvard-trained economist, Takenaka took up his current post last fall, vowing to clean up the banking sector, but powerful politicians thwarted his initial reforms. Takenaka retreated, seemingly having made yet another false start in Japan's halfhearted reform attempts. But like The Matrix, he reloaded. Takenaka toned down his approach and last winter pushed through accounting reforms aimed at closing some of the banking industry's favorite loopholes for inflating their capital bases?which...