Word: tusked
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bringing Them Home To that end, Tusk says he wants to shrink government, curb central authority, "radically" deregulate, and cut taxes. The first priority, says Michal Boni, Tusk's chief economic adviser, is to discourage early retirement; nearly three in four Poles stop work by the time they are 55, more than anywhere else in Europe. By increasing pay and promoting retraining, says Boni, Poland could save up to $13 billion in premature retirement benefits over the next 12 years. To lure younger Polish talent home, the government also wants to lower barriers to starting a business, and provide better...
...Tusk has never been out for the quick fix. Raised in Gdansk as a member of the tiny Kashubian ethnic minority, he joined the anticommunist Solidarity movement in the 1970s while studying history at university. He was later forced by the authorities to work as a house-painter because of his dissident activities. Tusk shared with Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders an antipathy to the government that he says was self-evident: "Communism was something so hideous that you had to be an exceptional conformist or a fool not to see the evil around...
...Tusk and a group of other Solidarity intellectuals began publishing an underground monthly pamphlet featuring the writings of the liberal economist Friedrich Hayek and essays on private property. Their heroes were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "We had to wait many, many years for our way of thinking to be accepted in Poland," Tusk says. "But now it has been. And we are ready...
...place better exemplifies Poland A - Tusk's Poland - than the western university town of Wroclaw, which voted overwhelmingly for him. Poland's fourth largest city, situated on the Oder River close to the German border, was neglected under communism, its Gothic architecture blackened by coal dust and its shop shelves bare. Nowadays, the elegant old market square in the city center, once the site of a few scruffy museums, is lined with designer shops, sushi bars and restaurants. Companies from LG Philips (LCD screens) to Google (service support) have poured $5 billion into the local economy in the past five...
...only one version of Poland. Many of the 40% of Poles who still live in smaller towns take a different view. In the village of Radecznica, nestled in rolling hills near the Ukrainian border, some 45% of the 6,500 inhabitants voted for the PIS in the last election; Tusk's party got only 10%. The region is poor: Radecznica's sole employer is a state mental institution. The town lacks paved roads and even a sewage system. Mayor Gabryel Gabka, 58, has applied for European Union money to build one. "But even if we get it, there...