Word: specter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just as troublesome to travelers is the specter of the Internal Revenue Service going after frequent-flyer programs. The IRS is studying the possibility of taxing free airline tickets as income. While a ruling is not expected before next year, passengers who have stashed away substantial mileage are understandably concerned and may use their bonuses soon. The airlines, on the other hand, have a reason to welcome IRS intervention. If imposing taxes on the bonuses cuts down on their use, then the frequent-flyer plans would no longer be such a dire threat to the carriers' bottom lines...
...required to continue business would be lacking. Byrd retaliated by ordering the sergeant at arms to corral any Republicans he could find. While Packwood took his arrest with good humor, he complained, "We work on comity around here. You can't do business on brute force." Republican Arlen Specter of Pennyslvania charged excitedly that the seizure of Senators "smacks of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia...
What the movie folks have noticed is a grim specter haunting all of yuppiedom. No matter how furiously they pedal their Exercycles, no matter how earnestly they chomp through their radicchio or how desperately they try to drown their anxieties in wine coolers, the yups cannot escape this terrible fact: procreation is the enemy of recreation. Not to mention carefree getting and spending. Recently we have seen one mini-hit (Baby Boom) and one maxi-hit (3 Men and a Baby) offering implausibly sentimental reassurances that there is life after surrogate parenthood. Now comes that prolific chronicler of youthful crises...
...precautions can control another specter that hangs over the city. It is the arch of clouds created by the dread Chinook wind that sweeps out of the west each winter at speeds up to 72 m.p.h. The winds can raise the temperature by 18 degrees in the time it takes to grill an Alberta-bred New York strip steak. The Chinook could turn venues in the mountains into piles of slush. Snowmaking machines are already churning away, building stockpiles in case...
...presence of nuclear weapons has suppressed military confrontations between the superpowers by raising the specter of atomic armageddon. Nuclear weapons are also cheaper, and create less of an economic burden than conventional weapons do--as Eisenhower knew when he implemented his New Look strategy. Most of all, nuclear weapons have forced belligerent superpowers to the negotiating table, as was evidenced after the Cuban Missile Crisis and again with the INF treaty. Eventually, nuclear weapons may produce a decrease in military expenditures if a treaty reducing conventional forces in central Europe is reached...