Word: straitjacket
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...completely, since tight controls had failed to do it during World War II. Economists guessed that the U.S. would be doing well if the general price level rises only 10% a year during rearmament. The great danger was that in trying to do the impossible, the Government would so straitjacket the economy with controls that the battle for production would be lost...
Fortunately, their tracks were plain and some of them still quite fresh. When a $3 billion stockpile program was first established in 1946, a forceful bloc of Congressmen from the western metals states strapped it into a "Buy American" straitjacket, requiring that everything be purchased in the U.S. unless it was "inconsistent with the public interest" or "unreasonable" in price. It was silly, Harry Truman noted, to build up a stockpile by bringing the U.S.'s own underground reserves aboveground, and as he signed the act he invited the Munitions Board to buy abroad through the loopholes...
...Army is regimented," he said, "business is in a straitjacket . . . Government has usurped the decisions which formerly were made by individuals and regulated by economic laws . . . There has been an increasing tendency on the part of the Government to decide what is good and what is bad for all of us ... Government decides what is and what is not restraint of trade for business, but very carefully avoids deciding what is or what is not restraint of trade when applied to labor unions and other political blocs. "Do not think that the use of this power is only sought...
Just Hang On. When Brand began his experiment, he hid the straitjackets to keep other attendants from using them. Now, he says with a grin, he has forgotten where he hid them. There is also less need, he finds, for "chemical restraint" (sedative drugs). When a new patient arrives, often in a straitjacket, Brand has a technique: "I give them a good talking to. 'This is your home,' I tell them. 'It's up to you if you are going to have a new life.' Most of them really understand me. Not one has ever...
Back home after two years, he was elected checkweighman and disputes agent for his union. During the General Strike of 1926 he first showed his political mettle. In Tredegar the General Strike is still known as "Bevan's Siege." "They had the whole town in a straitjacket," recalls a Tredegar shopkeeper...