Word: spares
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Traditionally, Congress and the Pentagon like to build showy weapons systems but tend to skimp on less glamorous things. The Administration has increased spending on maintenance, spare parts, fuel and other elements of combat "readiness" by only 7%. As a result, states the GAO report, only eight of the Navy's 14 aircraft carriers could put to sea within two months of the outbreak of war, and only 60% of its warplanes are combat ready...
...years, weapons makers have often charged the Navy-and the Army and the Air Force-exorbitant prices for even the simplest of spare parts. But goaded by horror stories in the press, the military has begun to crack down. The latest list of examples was announced last week by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman...
Lehman said such "ridiculous" examples of overpricing were "unusual," but announced that the Navy would review the pricing of each of the 2.1 million items in its spare-part inventory. He offered only mild condemnation of those who perpetrated the ripoffs: "We have not found any criminal intent, but the companies should have known the prices were unreasonable." He blamed the overpricing on "clericalization," which he said meant "no single person is responsible for it." The cure, he said, was more competition for contracts...
This would be wrong. Harvard students are free to make their own decisions about what they will do in their spare time. They should not fear any official disapproval of private decisions...
...fixing cinammon toast of something and I had to practically he on the counter to keep from going into a complete faint") such puppyish exaggeration is rare. Like Ann Beattie and Frederick Barthelme, she casts a cold and detached eye on her characters, and tends to write spare prose about her spare people. People, what's more, who are distanced from their emotions. We see them the outside, largely through dialogue and physical movements. Even when the story is told in the first person. Robison's method relies more on narration of events than reaction to them...