Word: straightforwardness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...equating the mayor with King is as bogus as comparing Donaldson to Bull Connor. The straightforward moral choices that Birmingham faced in King's day are not a reliable guide to sorting out the ambiguities posed by the Arrington affair. Back then, racist bombing attacks were so common that the city's best black neighborhood was nicknamed "Dynamite Hill." Parks, schools and buses were segregated, and most blacks were denied the vote. Today every legal vestige of Jim Crow has disappeared from the city, and Arrington sits in the mayor's office. The racial battleground is no longer black...
...women who sit on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission had a simple, straightforward assignment: determine which of two competing bidders, Japan's Sumitomo Corp. or Idaho's Morrison Knudsen, would do the best job manufacturing rail cars for the county's new transit system. In mid-December the commission voted 7 to 4 to award $122 million to Sumitomo for the job. But that was before President Bush made his ill-starred trip to Tokyo to wrest trade concessions from the Japanese and a shrill chorus shouting "Buy America" began to drown out all others on the L.A. commission...
...straightforward as that -- a recorded message greeting passengers when they called the Pan American World Airways reservation desk last Wednesday. After 64 years, the aviation pioneer was grounded for good. The airline's five unions had just agreed to $43 million in concessions, but that was not enough. Pan Am was counting on Delta Airlines for an additional $25 million. But Delta, which had come up with $115 million to keep Pan Am flying in recent weeks in exchange for 45% of the company, refused to pay any more. Desperate, Pan Am's lawyers and bankers scrambled fruitlessly for fresh...
...recently published book Chain Reaction, authors Thomas and Mary Edsall write that race "is no longer a straightforward, morally unambiguous force in American politics." Instead, the Edsalls contend, considerations of race permeate voter attitudes toward such issues as taxation, equal opportunity, public safety and moral values. Racism alone, they say, fails to explain why large numbers of white, formerly Democratic voters have defected to the G.O.P. Worse yet, from the Democratic standpoint, blasting the defectors as bigots instead of exploring the complicated reasons for their disaffection only angers them. "Democratic liberals' reliance on charges of racism guarantees political defeat...
...Thompson, director of the Assembly Office of Research in Sacramento, describes as "a little house in the suburbs with a barbecue and -- if you make it -- a swimming pool." But these days, from Chico in the north to Chula Vista in the south, Californians are anxiously debating whether that straightforward dream can be attained or should even be pursued...