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The Best Notable Quotables of 1991:
The Linda
Ellerbee Awards
For Distinguished Reporting
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Wilson-Weicker Tax Hike
Advocacy Award |
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First
Place
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"American tax rates today are, relatively speaking, low. Repeat, low. About half the top rate in the rest of the industrialized world. Our sales taxes are equally low. Fact: the United States is a tax bargain, believe it or not. The difference, of course, is that in other countries, people see their tax money coming back to them to make life more agreeable and secure. In Western Europe, health care for everyone. In Scandinavia, day care centers for mothers and children. In Japan, modern, efficient cities that work."
-- NBC Nightly News anchor Garrick Utley on October 19, Taxpayers Action Day. |
Runners-up: |
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"Every Governor in America last year could have recited the Jim Florio rule of political survival: never mount an honest attack against a state deficit. The New Jersey Governor, who combined service cuts with the highest tax hike in the state's history, was all but tarred and feathered for his efforts. But now, with at least 29 states facing potential deficits, Florio's approach is beginning to seem almost prescient."
-- Time Associate Editor Priscilla Painton, March 4.
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"If you're going to raise a child who escapes this cycle [of poverty], you're going to have to start a little earlier. And that requires money -- M-O-N-E-Y. Read my lips. And it's something this nation still isn't ready to commit to...without the hard billions of dollars, lots of money which must come from you dear taxpayers, we're not going to do this."
-- Sam Donaldson on This Week with David Brinkley, June 23.
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Which Way Is It?
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First
Place |
U.S Raises Estimate of '92 Deficit
-- Washington Post, July 16
vs.
Budget Deficit Estimate Is Lowered
-- New York Times, same day
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Runners-up: |
Free Market Get Pope's Blessing
-- Washington Times, May 3
vs.
Papal Encyclical Urges Capitalism to Shed Injustices
-- New York Times, same day
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D'Amato Cleared After Senate Inquiry
-- Los Angeles Times, Augusts 3
vs.
Senate Ethics Panel Rebukes D'Amato
-- Boston Globe, same day
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Award for the Silliest Analysis
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First
Place |
"The earth is home, and all its refugees, its homeless, sometimes seem a sort of advance guard of apocalypse. They represent a principle of disintegration -- the fate of homelessness generalized to a planetary scale....The flesh is home: African nomads without houses decorate their faces and bodies instead. The skull is home. We fly in and out of it on mental errands. The highly developed spirit becomes a citizen of its own mobility, for home has been internalized and travels with the homeowner. Home, thus transformed: is freedom. Everywhere you hang your hat is home. Home is the bright light under the hat."
-- Time "Essay" by Senior Writer Lance Morrow, December 24, 1990.
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Runners-up:
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"Politicians led a victory parade of ga-ga worship, with people hugging tanks that have vacuumed billions from social programs. The Supreme Court ordered family planning centers to help keep women barefoot and pregnant by not telling poor women about abortion, while Congress refuses to appropriate enough funds to feed poor children. And the President says his big-deal domestic programs are highways and executions. Meanwhile, the S&L and banking fiascos flash around the country Willie Horton-style, raping not only women but men and children yet unborn."
-- USA Today "Inquiry" Editor Barbara Reynolds, June 14. |
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"Oh say, we've seen too much. The Star-Spangled Banner pushes like a cough through America's mouth and the twilight's last gleaming is just that, a sickly flash above our heads as we ride unsuspecting in the bellies of sleek trains, plop to our knees in churches, embracing truths that disgust us."
-- Boston Globe arts critic and "poet" Patricia Smith in The
Nation's "Patriotism" issue, July 15/22.
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Can Lawns Be Justified?
Awash in fertilizers and pesticides, they may be a hazard to
homeowners - and children, pets and neighbors
-- Time, June 3. |
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