Numbers

Third Rail (Expression)

How It's Used

“Well, OK, but here's some advice for Deion and his agent, Jason Chayut: Apologize to the fans for playing the reprehensible 'I've Got To Feed My Family' card, and do so immediately.

“Use of that line is touching the third rail in player/fan relations. Branch may very well have been underpaid to some degree in the context of quality wide receivers, but according to Our Man Borges, he would have made $1,405,000 this coming season. I'll take a wild guess and assume Branch did not grow up with maids and European vacations, which means that $1,405,000 should constitute a whole lot of money to him, more than enough to feed him and his three children, plus any assorted relatives for whom he is financially responsible.”

"Yet lobbyists trying to modify the obscure section found that they could get no traction in Congress or with the Treasury.

"'It's really been the third rail of tax policy to touch 382,' said Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute."

"One thing that might have saved Icelandic capitalism was joining the euro. Appealing to national pride, Mr. Oddsson long resisted moves to join the European Union and adopt the common currency. Perhaps most crucially, joining the EU would have meant bureaucrats in Brussels would then regulate Iceland's use of its fishing stocks—a political third rail in Iceland.

"In the October TV interview, Mr. Oddsson was unbowed in his views of the euro. 'If we were tied to the euro, for instance, we would just have to succumb to the laws of Germany and France,' he said."

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