Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...newly elected Governor named Dukakis proclaimed that "much of what government has tried to do over the past 15 years has failed." The Dukakis remark was not an isolated comment. Rather, it reflected a widespread soul-searching, continuing to this day, over the failure of ambitious social programs to make much discernible headway against poverty. As Michael Barker, a leading Democratic economic analyst, says, "Not only is there no Democratic agenda, we've almost reached the point where there's no faith in even having an agenda...
...generational torch; neither Dukakis nor any of his rivals had been elected to major political office before 1974. The Democratic sweep in that post- Watergate year was a watershed, bringing to power a talented crop of young reformers -- including Dukakis -- who realized that old-fashioned liberalism was in trouble. Social issues such as busing and crime had eroded the party's blue-collar base, while middle-class voters saw the Democrats as wastrels throwing money at problems. This Democratic class of '74 talked the language of suburban voters concerned with high taxes, yet sympathetic to the party's identification with...
...loan clubs are descendants of communal arrangements that originated centuries ago. In many countries, groups of people have long pooled their cash to allow members to bury their dead or to celebrate marriages. Modern-day clubs retain much of that social flavor. In a 1981-83 study of 50 people in Mexican and Mexican-American tandas (turns), Carlos Velez-Ibanez, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, found that 17% cited family obligations such as weddings, baptisms and funerals as reasons for their participation. Each gathering of a keh, notes Sungsoo Kim, president of the Korean-American Small Business Center...
Such passages, the self-abasements of a clearly superior partner, make painful reading. But Wharton's love letters are stirring in other ways. She could discreetly hint at sexual arousal intensified by social constraint: "You can't come into the room without my feeling all over me a ripple of flame." Writhing under Fullerton's sporadic indifference, she could summon up reserves of anger and pride: "What you wish, apparently, is to take of my life the inmost & uttermost that a woman -- a woman like me -- can give, for an hour, now & then, when it suits you; & when the hour...
...edges or border on larger mysteries. You do not fade from this map; you are either there, firmly placed, or you fall off. Stelian fell off. Stelian was the older brother, who did first all the things that Michael rapidly did better. But Stelian was soft, gentle and more social, vulnerable. He was partly a boyhood role model for Michael and partly a competitor to be surpassed (as friends have been since Sandy Cohen's day). Their mother admits that the boys, though close and loving, were intense in their rivalry, and Michael, the younger, was the eventual winner...