Recent years have brought minority-owned businesses in the United States unprecedented opportunities—as well as new and significant risks. Civil rights activists have long argued that one of the principal reasons why Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups have difficulty establishing themselves in business is that they lack access to the sizable orders and subcontracts that are generated by large companies. Now Congress, in apparent agreement, has required by law that businesses awarded federal contracts of more than ＄ 500,000 do their best to find minority subcontractors and record their efforts to do so on forms filed with the government. Indeed, some federal and local agencies have gone so far as to set specific percentage goals for apportioning parts of public works eon- tracts to minority enterprises.
Corporate response appears to have been substantial. According to figures collected in 1977, the total of corporate contracts with minority businesses rose
A. What federal agencies have set percentage goals for the use of minority-owned businesses in public works contracts
B. To which government agencies must businesses awarded federal contracts report their efforts to find minority subcontractors
C. What is one set of conditions under which a small business might find itself financially o- ver-extended
D. How many more minority-owned businesses were there in 1977 than in 1972
Text 4
Although, recent years have seen substantial reductions in noxious pollutants from individual motor vehicles, the number of such vehicles has been steadily increasing. Consequently, more than 100 cities in the U. S. still have levels of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and ozone that exceed legally established limits. There is a growing realization that the only effective way to achieve further reduction in vehicle emissions—short of a massive shift away from the private automobile—is to replace conventional diesel fuel and gasoline with cleaner-burning fuel such as compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, ethanol, or methanol.
All of these alternatives are carbon-based fuels whose molecules are smaller and simpler than those of gasoline. These molecules burn more cleanly than gasoline, in part because they have fewer, if any, carbon-carbon bonds, and the hydrocarbons they do emit are less likely to generate ozone. The combust
A. inaccurate because it ignores consumer's concerns
B. misguided because of its exclusively technological focus
C. flawed because of the assumption on which it is based
D. invalid because it reflects the personal bias of the critics
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