Word: thankless
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Secretary of State is more thankless than glamorous; in some ways, the Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone. In an era when Twitter haiku-messaging rules, diplomacy moves at the speed, and requires the nuanced complexity, of literature. Power has drifted from State to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, especially in wartime. Only a few of Clinton's recent predecessors have distinguished themselves. Henry Kissinger, a National Security Adviser who belatedly became Secretary of State, was Richard Nixon's schizophrenic alter ego; George Shultz...
...right man for one of the most thankless jobs in America. Bing inherited a budget deficit of at least $275 million, an unemployment rate of about 29% and a city government that barely functions. His turnaround strategy hinges not on personal warmth but on two key arguments: First, Detroit must reduce the size of its 42 government agencies to be proportionate to a city with a shrinking population and smaller coffers. That, in turn, means potentially reducing the city's job rolls from 13,200 to about 12,000 by the end of 2009 - a risky proposition in a region...
Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who had the thankless job of figuring out how to compensate victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, is now hard at work - as a "special master" appointed by the Treasury Secretary - figuring out how to compensate employees of corporations bailed out by taxpayers since last fall. The House and Senate are crafting legislation that includes "say on pay" shareholder votes on executive-comp packages and (in the House version) calls for regulators to vet incentive pay at financial firms on an ongoing basis. The Securities and Exchange Commission is for the first time attempting...
...understanding, not just between the U.S. and Venezuela but the New World and Europe," where the Simon Bolivar will travel next week. Even if these kids can't change the political understanding between the U.S. and Chávez - and who would want to saddle them with such a thankless task? - it's more than enough that they're changing our understanding of classical music...
Stephen Bosworth, the diplomat President Barack Obama appointed to the thankless task of trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear-weapons program, got quite a reception when he arrived on his first official visit to Seoul this week. The North Korean government in Pyongyang shut down the last military communication line between the two countries on the divided peninsula, temporarily halted all transit to and from a special industrial zone just north of the border and declared that if the U.S. or Japan should try to shoot down a long-range missile the North is expected...