Word: draconian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there was some understandable tension when the two men sized each other up in January over coffee at their first face-to-face meeting. When Rattner outlined the draconian marching orders Geithner had given him to try to save General Motors and Chrysler, Bloom paused and laid down a marker. He saw the job as a potential capstone in a career spent championing labor interests during years of industrial restructuring. He understood that the situation called for tough medicine for autoworkers. But I also want you to know, Bloom said, that I've dedicated my life to preserving as many...
...Ph.D.s on staff) or for its numerous suppliers. If the military-industrial complex can design a long-range missile that travels into space and is guided by light from the stars, it has a good chance of developing new technologies that could help governments meet emission targets without making draconian cuts to energy usage. At least that's the hope. (See pictures of how climate change has affected Europe...
...argument has won little favor with human-rights groups. "In our view, Section 144 is a draconian colonial-era law that flies against the most basic principles of freedom of assembly," said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. "We have repeatedly called for it to be abolished. Any use of the law is by its nature oppressive. Last year the government won plaudits for allowing the same march by lawyers to proceed to Islamabad. It is disappointing that the Pakistani government feels the need to revert to an authoritarian tradition that is best left behind...
...1990s, retail advertising began to fall off because, the thinking went, modern businesses wanted broadsheet displays, not shrunken tabloid pages. Reporting talent - disgusted with the paper's draconian management - came and went. The Rocky cut back its statewide coverage and pretty much ignored Colorado's burgeoning Hispanic and newcomer populations. The paper also committed the ultimate sin in journalism: it was boring. What did Scripps do? Reduce subscription prices, mount a few lame marketing campaigns and change the paper's name to the Denver Rocky Mountain News...
...continue at the same pace much longer. California's prisons are so overcrowded and underfunded that a federal judge recently ruled that the state must release roughly a third of its 158,000 prisoners by 2012. The New York State legislature is close to scrapping the draconian Rockefeller drug laws that, by imposing mandatory sentences rather than rehab treatment, have kept many otherwise law-abiding drug users in prison for years. Other states, such as Michigan, New Jersey and North Carolina, are either releasing some prisoners who have served their minimum time or putting drug offenders in treatment programs instead...