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填空题. SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are four passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. PASSAGE ONE (1) Motherhood and apple pie are still fine, but the thing many Americans relish most these days is owning their own home. Two in three homes are owned by their occupants, and the lowest mortgage rates in three decades keep the numbers rising. But this does not suit everybody. (2) There have long been cities, such as San Francisco and Boston, which lure in so many members of the ever-growing middle class that poorer people get priced out of the housing market. Now the problem is national. According to a report by Harvard University, house prices have been jumping ahead of incomes in most of America's big cities. Eight of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas have seen prices rise by nearly a third in real terms since 1997. The national rate for mortgage foreclosures is at a 30-year high, with Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi and Utah to the fore. (3) The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines "affordable housing" as a home which costs less than 30% of a family's income, in either rent or a monthly mortgage. When households pay more than 30% they tend to skimp on other necessities, such as health care. Janet Smith, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois, reckons that 38% of all the renters in the Chicago area—more than 180,000 households—are in this squeeze. So are nearly a quarter of the area's home-owners. These are not just the familiar poor. A lot of teachers and nurses are struggling. (4) Some people blame the housing burden in part for other social ills—everything from children doing badly at school to traffic-jammed roads. Unless the housing problem is addressed, claims Julia Stasch at the MacArthur Foundation, America will waste money on other social programs. (5) No doubt the housing boom is unsustainable, and prices will eventually adjust themselves to incomes. But that will take time. So affordable housing has become a political issue. Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston has championed it at the Conference of Mayors, which he currently heads (but his solution is apparently to bring back rent controls, which in the end is no solution). California's voters have just approved a $2.1 billion bond issue to subsidize the provision of cheaper homes. (6) Such schemes usually involve cities requisitioning land—often run-down areas where factories or public-housing developments once stood—and handing it over to housing associations or public trusts which, because they get the land cheap, can build homes and rent them out at below-market rates. The trouble is that demand generally swamps supply: in cities like Washington DC, there have been complaints of Soviet-length waiting lists. The obvious way to mop up some of the demand—more high-rise, high-density apartment blocks—is opposed by people who own houses nearby; many neighborhoods have zoning laws to prevent this. (7) Another problem is that few countries offer such generous tax breaks to home-owners as America does. The Chicago area's population has increased by 11% since 1990, according to Ms. Smith; but the number of rented homes has dropped by 3%. Jim Houlihan, the Cook County assessor, successfully pushed for lower taxes on rented property. Unfortunately, most of the city's new jobs are in its northern suburbs, which are protected by zoning laws; most of its cheaper housing is in the south. If people live a long way from their work, business suffers, the transport system creaks, and the environment (think of those car fumes) takes a beating. (8) An organization called Metropolis 2020 estimates that the Chicago area will need another 352,000 homes by 2020. But many neighborhoods are suspicious of anything labeled "affordable housing", often assuming that it means public housing (which they rightly or wrongly associate with racial minorities, drugs, gangs and violence). It is true that cheap housing projects do tend to be built in poorer areas. One of the biggest in the country is a $1.6 billion scheme in Chicago: the city is knocking down some of its nastiest public-housing projects, including the notorious Cabrini Green. But the 25,000 new units it is building in their place are divided between public housing, subsidized homes and market-rate ones. (9) Some people argue that the federal government should step in—by creating a National Housing Trust Fund to help build cheaper homes; by altering the tax system; by making the Federal Housing Association more efficient. But HUD's boss, Mel Martinez, has told the mayors that "the solution will not come out of Washington". He wants the private sector and non-profit organizations to take the lead. (10) In the end, it may be true that the only answer is to allow the building, or renovation, of a lot more cheap housing. But many middle-class voters do not want that in their communities. "Most Americans don't think there's a housing problem," says Nicolas Retsinas of Harvard. Most homeowners are still happy with rising prices. Affluent baby-boomers will probably ignore the problem until their children decide that it is cheaper to stay with mum and dad than pay a fortune for their own homes. And by then the property market will doubtless have crashed. PASSAGE TWO (1) Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs. And so it is, say the president and his supporters. The trouble is that there's one glaring exception to their claims: the oil and natural gas industries. The administration is biased against them—a bias that makes no sense on either economic or energy grounds. Almost everyone loves to hate the world's Exxons, but promoting domestic drilling is simply common sense. (2) Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States still has huge oil and natural gas resources. The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off-limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today's "proven" US reserves. The US Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3. 65 billion barrels, more than 20 times a 1995 estimate. And there's upward of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado. If only 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that would be triple Saudi Arabia's proven reserves. (3) None of these sources, of course, will quickly provide oil or natural gas. Projects can take 10 to 15 years. The OCS reserve estimates are just that. Oil and gas must still be located—a costly and chancy process. Extracting oil from shale (in effect, a rock) requires heating the shale and poses major environmental problems. Its economic viability remains uncertain. But any added oil could ultimately diminish dependence on imports, now almost 60 percent of US consumption, while exploration and development would immediately boost high-wage jobs (geologists, petroleum, engineers, roustabouts). (4) Though straightforward, this logic mostly eludes the Obama administration, which is fixated on "green jobs" and wind and solar energy. Championing "clean": fuels has become a political set piece. On Earth Day (April 22), the President visited an Iowa factory that builds towers for wind turbines. "We can remain the world's leading importer of oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of clean energy", he said. (5) The President is lauded as a great educator; in this case, he provided much miseducation. He implied that there's a choice between promoting renewables and relying on oil. Actually, the two are mostly disconnected. Wind and solar mainly produce electricity. Most of our oil goes for transportation (cars, trucks, planes); almost none—about 1.5 percent—generates electricity. Expanding wind and solar won't displace much oil; someday, electric cars may change this. (6) For now, reducing oil imports requires using less or producing more. Obama has attended to the first with higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. But his administration is undermining the second. At the Interior Department, which oversees public lands and the OCS, Secretary Ken Salazar has taken steps that dampen development: canceling 77 leases in Utah because they were too close to national parks; extending a comment period for OCS exploration to evaluate possible environmental effects; and signaling more caution toward shale for similar reasons. (7) Any one of these alone might seem a reasonable review of inherited policies, and it's true that Salazar has maintained a regular schedule of oil and gas leases. Still. The anti-oil bias seems unmistakable. Conceivably, Salazar may reinstate administratively many restrictions on OCS drilling that Congress lifted last year. Meanwhile, he's promoting wind and solar by announcing new procedures for locating them on public lands, including the OCS. "We are," he says, "setting the department on a new path"—emphasizing renewables. (8) It may disappoint. In 2007, wind and solar generated less than 1 percent of US electricity. Even a tenfold expansion will leave their contribution small. By contrast, oil and natural gas now provide two-thirds of Americans' energy. They will dominate consumption for decades. Any added oil produced here will mostly reduce imports: extra natural gas will mostly displace coal in electricity generation. Neither threatens any anti-global warming program that Congress might adopt. (9) Encouraging more US production would also aid economic recovery, because the promise of "green jobs" is wildly exaggerated. Consider: In 2008, the oil and gas industries employed 1.8 million people. Jobs in the solar and wind industries are reckoned (by their trade associations) to be 35,000 and 85,000, respectively. Now do the arithmetic: A 5 percent rise in oil jobs (90,000) approaches a doubling for wind and solar (120,000). Modest movements, up or down, in oil will swamp "green" jobs. (10) Improved production techniques (example: drilling in deeper waters) have increased America's recoverable oil and natural gas. Tile resistance to tapping these resources is mostly political. To many environmentalists, expanding fossil fuel production is a cardinal sin. The Obama administration often echoes this reflexive hostility. The resulting policies aim more to satisfy popular prejudice—through photo ops and sound bites—than national needs. PASSAGE THREE (1) Almost one-fifth of the Food and Drug Administration scientist surveyed two years ago as part of an official review said they had been pressured to recommend approval of a new drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality. (2) The survey of almost 400 scientists also found that a majority had significant doubts about the adequacy of federal programs to monitor prescription drugs once they are on the market, and that more than a third were not particularly confident of the agency's ability to assess the safety of a drug. (3) The results of the survey, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general, appear to support some portions of the controversial Senate testimony last month by FDA safety officer David J. Graham. The 20-year agency veteran told senators that the FDA was unable to keep some unsafe drugs off the market, and that scientists who dissented about drug safety and effectiveness were sometimes pressured and intimidated. (4) Graham's testimony, at a hearing into the sudden withdrawal from the market of the arthritis drug Vioxx, put a spotlight on the FDA's safety and management record. Top FDA officials later criticized Graham's testimony as inaccurate and unscientific, but the survey results indicate that some other agency scientists share similar views. (5) "I think this provides evidence that among the reviewing scientists at FDA, their experiences mirror the testimony I gave before Congress," Graham said yesterday. "It also shows the unfortunate experience of many mirrors what happened to me when I tried to bring safety issues to my managers and the American public." (6) The complete survey will be made public today by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, two public interest groups that received the documents through the Freedom of Information Act process. The Washington Post obtained a copy yesterday. (7) When the inspector general's report on the effectiveness of the FDA's drug review process was released in March 2003, administration officials focused on the conclusion that FDA reviewers and drug sponsors "have confidence in the decisions FDA makes." The report also highlighted the agency's effectiveness in reducing the time it takes to review a new drug approval. (8) The survey was conducted as part of the inspector general's inquiry, but only parts of it were included in the report. The dissenting voices of some FDA scientists were not generally represented in the study, by former inspector general Janet Rehnquist. (9) In a statement, the FDA said yesterday that the study showed that overall, "FDA medical reviewers found their work at the agency to be rewarding—a result consistent with many other quality of workplace surveys conducted throughout the government which have shown that FDA workers are proud of the agency and the service it provides to the American people." (10) While the final inspector general's report emphasizes the agency's successes, the survey, conducted at the FDA's request, found underlying concern and discord. For instance, 36 percent of scientists said they were only somewhat confident, or not confident at all, in the FDA's decisions regarding drug safety. When it came to drug effectiveness, 22 percent of scientists said they were only somewhat confident, or not confident at all, in the agency's decisions. (11) As described in the report, drug manufacturers reported significantly greater confidence in both categories. (12) Some of the most dramatic Senate testimony that Graham delivered involved what he described as efforts by FDA supervisors to silence him and pressure him to limit his criticism of the safety of some drugs. In the survey, 63 of 360 respondents—18 percent—said they had been "pressured to approve or recommend approval for a [new drug application] despite reservations about the safety, efficacy, or quality of the drug." (13) Similarly, 21 percent of survey respondents said the work environment at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research either allowed little dissent or stifled scientific dissent entirely. (14) Steven K. Galson, acting director of the center, has acknowledged some problems regarding safety reviews and the handling of internal scientific dissent at his agency but has described them as limited. Nonetheless, the agency last month asked the congressionally chartered Institute of Medicine to look into the FDA's system for assessing drug safety. (15) The FDA drug reviewers were also highly skeptical of the agency's ability to monitor the safety of prescription drugs once they are on the market. In all, 6 percent said they were "completely confident," 28 percent said they were "mostly confident," 47 percent said they were "somewhat confident" and 19 percent said they were "not confident at all." (16) Rehnquist's report found that some FDA reviewers believed that the speeded-up process for reviewing drugs required by Congress was causing morale problems among overworked scientists. More than half of respondents said they did not think there was sufficient time to conduct an in-depth, science-based review in the six months required for drugs given "priority" status. (17) Graham, who participated in the inspector general survey, said he had never seen the complete survey results before. The findings are consistent with a 2001 study conducted by Public Citizen's Health Research Group. PASSAGE FOUR (1) For many liberals, this is not just a loss but a time of mourning. They no longer have the consolation of regarding Bush as a usurper (though conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines are already making the rounds). He is the first presidential election winner since 1988 to get a majority of the popular vote. This time, there's no disputing his mandate. (2) Why did Bush win despite a number of strikes against him—above all, the incompetent waging of a controversial war? One likely reason is that John Kerry was not a particularly appealing candidate. According to the CNN exit poll of more than 13,000 voters, close to two-thirds of those who voted for Kerry said that they were voting primarily not for him but against Bush. The attacks on Kerry's character and his record undoubtedly played a part; but there were attacks on both sides, even if, ultimately, the ones against Kerry proved more effective. (3) Some of the reaction to the election results, both abroad and among American liberals, brings to mind an acerbic comment by the German playwright Bertolt Brechta: "The government has decided to dissolve the people, and to appoint another one." Many pundits and activists obviously feel that we ought to elect another populace, the current one being too stupid or too bigoted. "Reach out to these voters? Yeah. Then boil your hand till it's sterilized," a Kerry volunteer jeered in Salon. com. (4) The ugliness in this campaign has been not just between the candidates but between their supporters as well. To listen to some conservatives, Kerry voters are a bunch of latte-sipping, America-bashing, amoral elitists. Meanwhile, all too many supposedly tolerant liberals fear and despise Bush voters as a mob of dumb, racist, Bible-thumping rednecks. (5) As a libertarian conservative, I'm not particularly happy about the fact that people who want to use the law and public policy to promote their moral and religious values currently have so much power in the Republican Party. (Of course, liberals tend to be oblivious to the ways in which they are willing to use the law and public policy to foist their own version of morality on others.) But the caricature of Bush voters as ignorant religious fanatics is just that, a caricature. The CNN exit poll found that only about 8 percent of the voters regard religious faith as the most important quality in a presidential candidate. (Not surprisingly, these voters went overwhelmingly for Bush.) While Bush voters are more likely to attend church regularly, 47 percent of occasional churchgoers and 36 percent of those who never attend religious services backed the President as well. As for educational levels, 52 percent of Americans with a college diploma voted for Bush. Even among those with at least some postgraduate education, Bush captured 44 percent of the vote. (6) President Bush has been accused of pursuing divisive policies. But let's face it, promoting crude stereotypes of slightly more than half the electorate is not exactly the way to promote understanding. (7) In addition to the presidential vote, the big news from this election has been the vote by referendum in 11 states to ban same-sex marriage. The measure was approved even in Oregon, where its passage was uncertain and where gay rights activists invested a great deal of money and energy into defeating it. (8) It would be, I think, a grave mistake to conclude from this vote that most Americans hate gays. In recent polls, upward of 80 percent believe gays and lesbians should be protected from discrimination in the workplace. No less important, about half of those who oppose same-sex marriage support civil unions for gays. Altogether, more than 60 percent of Americans support some legal recognition of gay and lesbian partnerships—either marriage or civil unions. Yet in eight states, the newly approved marriage amendments outlaw even civil unions. These bans were hitched to the prohibitions on same-sex marriage even in states whose constitutions specify that ballot initiatives can only deal with a single issue—and are worded so vaguely that it would take a crystal ball to figure out exactly what legal protections they would prohibit. They deserve to be tossed out by the Courts. (9) A final thought on the election results. Democracy is great; but in a divided culture democracy means that roughly half the people will live under a government they did not elect. That's one good reason to limit the federal government's intervention in our lives and to give more of the decision-making power to local governments, private institutions, and individuals.1. According to Janet Smith, families paying less than 30 percent of their income amount to ______ of all the renters in Chicago.(PASSAGE ONE)