Word: virginia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stands for sucker," jeered Alan Dixon of Illinois. Decrying Japan's conquest of "industry after industry," West Virginia's Robert Byrd said, "We have to send a message to our own wimpy diplomats that we're not going to take it lying down anymore." Despite such rhetoric in last week's floor debate, the Senate approved the joint U.S.-Japan FSX jet-fighter project, provided the President agrees to an accompanying resolution that would clip its wings slightly. The Byrd amendment requires that U.S.-based General Dynamics get 40% of the estimated $6 billion project, the portion that includes confidential...
...across the state a near miracle was happening. On that same day, West Virginia legislators completed a session unlike any other in the state's history. Democrats and Republicans pushed through a thick package of legislation that would trim the state's tangled bureaucracy, reorganize its disastrous finances and launch an ambitious program of educational reform. The measures were ramrodded into law by rookie Democratic Governor Gaston Caperton, 49, a man who is determined to upend the state's feckless political tradition and sell mountaineers something they haven't had in decades: hope...
Only a year ago, Caperton, an insurance executive and political novice, was known to a scant 3% of West Virginia's voters. Flanked by his wife Dee, Caperton lit out for the hollows in a van, spent $3.2 million of his own money and ran away with last November's election, upsetting powerful three-term Republican incumbent Arch Moore...
...inaugural address, Caperton stunned the legislature by calling it into emergency session, declaring West Virginia to be "in crisis." During his first three months he has managed to reduce the number of state offices and commissions from 150 to seven. Confronted by a $230 million deficit and a scandalous $280 million loss in state pension funds, he persuaded lawmakers to raise taxes on groceries and gasoline. He introduced an innovative health- cost-containment plan for state employees, arranged for payment of West Virginia's debts and put through his own radical restructuring of the state's education system, including larger...
Gorbachev does it again, catching the U.S. off guard with an arms-control proposal that could deepen the U.S.-West German split. -- Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley loses some of his Teflon. -- Rookie Governor Gaston Caperton gives West Virginia something new and strange -- hope. -- The annual Statistical Abstract paints a picture of American life by the numbers...