Word: racketeer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...alarm go off, in another lot off to the side. I pulled into my designated spot, and the gentleman whose home faced the spot where I parked came to the door and very abruptly made the statement 'Do we have to put up with this kind of racket every night?' The only thing I could say was 'That wasn't my car. I don't have an auto alarm...
With picturesque characters like Sorrowful the Bookmaker, Philly the Weeper and Harry the Horse, Damon Runyon made gambling a rollicking game. Americans bet $32 billion with bookies every year, and an additional $17 billion on legal lotteries. Gamblers will always gamble, the states often say when they enter the racket, just before they start advertising for more gamblers. Speaking of myths, legends and lies, the Government's famous plan to supplant Harry the Horse in the bookie business should never have been taken seriously. Harry has always given the customers something that Lotto and OTB never will. Credit...
...donate money to the Statue of Liberty, in wonder as it offered the platinum card (twice to a friend who was at the same time being dunned for late payments on his green card), and in awe as it offered baggage insurance against the possibility that your tennis racket would wind up in Acapulco more than six hours after you did. (A mere $4.75 a ticket buys you as much as $200 in protection against disasters such as this...
...depressing." However, many of the modern stars -- Jose Canseco ($15), Roger Clemens ($9) and Will Clark ($8) among them -- seem to see the same lobby kids at every hotel, and have come to look at all children as Fagin's agents in the burgeoning curios and collectibles racket...
...company and say I want to publish and will give them 50% of my profits. They say I can continue publishing if I hire five of their bureaucrats. I don't need them, and I have to pay them. But I can continue publishing. That's the new state racket, and it's corruption...