Word: draconian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clouds on surface temperatures -- limits the ability to predict the greenhouse effect. "It's possible that Washington will see 96 days of temperatures over 100 degrees F in the year 2010," he says, "but it's also possible that the U.S. will be economically impoverished because it unilaterally imposed draconian measures in anticipation of a greenhouse warming that never arrived...
According to Mas-Colell, progress will not be achieved on affirmative action with strident rhetoric or draconian penalties, but through quiet, behind-the-scenes maneuvering...
...sentenced Oct. 24, he is likely to spend time behind bars. Potter had earlier meted out a tough eight years in prison and a $200,000 fine to former Bakker aide Richard Dortch, even though Dortch testified for the prosecution. Two other staffers who provided evidence drew draconian prison terms for tax evasion...
...compromise. President Mikhail Gorbachev, who supported the emergency-powers proposal, had * opened the session with an emotional address, telling the legislature that work stoppages are "holding our reforms by the throat." What followed was an often fiery, unprecedented debate as politicians clashed over the need for such draconian measures. At one point, Gorbachev yelled at the unruly Deputies, "We're not in a stadium! We're in the Supreme Soviet...
Such punishments can sometimes be draconian. Gas-pump owner Oscar Porcelli, for example, faces the prospect of losing his string of New York gas stations for a RICO conviction stemming from sales-tax evasion. "He made a mistake, but not a mistake that should warrant shooting him with a cannon," says his attorney, Vivian Shevitz...