Soon only numbers close to the Parliament or government buildings could be reached reliably. “I can give you Paris, London or New York,” apologised the operator at the four-star Metechi Palace Hotel, whose satellite service runs via a private generator, “but I’m afraid not Tbilisi. Electricity was leaking away from the central Caucasus as fuel deliveries to the power stations dried up. Life in what was the former Soviet Union’s richest regional capital has made an extraordinary shift backwards. For the third winter in a row Georgia, holiday resort of the USSR, heartland of wine, theatre and film, is almost completely without power.The phone, that most sensitive barometer to the shrinking amperage, had its wail quickly replaced by a bubbling, burping noise, then more often than not, silence. “It’s an omen,” remarked Dan Jenkinsk, manager of Tbilisi’s first, and so far only, American hotel “A bad one Soon the Middle Ages will be back.
And they’re saying this winter will be worse than last – if that’s possible.”
His prediction has proved startlingly accurate. Phone-users began receiving a haunting, oscillating lament through the earpiece; calls increasingly failed to connect. A MONTH ago the dialling tone in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, made an ominous change in tune Without warning it started to “wail”. Channelling welfare recipients into the workforce – the idea behind Mr Clinton’s proposals – is one thing. Ripping a hole in the social safety net so big that five million children end up either on the streets or in orphanages, is another.(Photograph omitted). In the House it may well pass easily but Republicans in the Senate are less keen. The public, though wanting change, may balk at so extreme a prescription.
The discontented, many of them black, who should be rallying to defend welfare, generally do not vote.“The result,” Galbraith wrote, “is government that is accommodated not to reality or common need but to the beliefs of the contented, who are now the majority of those who vote”.Even so, the prospects for the Gingrich bill are unclear. Galbraith observed that the majority of those who actually vote in elections are enjoying broadly comfortable lives. Thus, there will be resistance in the voting booths to anything that might impinge on that comfort – including demands for taxes to fund welfare. “Nothing could be worse for children than the current system.”Mr Rector believes that as the US illegitimacy rate rises – roughly one in three children are born out of wedlock – so pressure for welfare reform will grow.Republican strategists can also put their trust in what J.K Galbraith termed “the culture of contentment”.