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  3. The state of Hawaii turns 50 this year. People there should be happy. But it’s hard. The economy is really bad. The housing

The state of Hawaii turns 50 this year. People there should be happy. But it’s hard. The economy is really bad. The housing

admin2010-11-02  71
问题      The state of Hawaii turns 50 this year. People there should be happy. But it’s hard.
     The economy is really bad. The housing market and construction industry are in deep slumps. Tourism has been hammered by the recession and swine flu. Unemployment is double what it was a year ago. To close a $688 million budget gap, the governor announced the most drastic holiday program in the country. She’s closing state offices three days a month, for two years. Aloha Fri day, where people go to work in aloha shirts and muumuus, is going to be Holiday Friday, where they stay home in pajamas and look for jobs on the Internet.
     And now, a communist dictator supposedly wants to blow up Hawaii. A Japanese newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, reported this week that North Korea planned to launch a ballistic missile in Hawaii’s direction around the Fourth of July.
     You can take the threat for what it’s worth. Hawaii isn’t panicking. But then, while no one wants to think of extinction, the word is far less abstract in Hawaii than in other places. The islands have seen the disappearance of the Hawaiian kingdom, the killing of its people and the extinction of its language. Today, Hawaii is the world’s hottest hot spot for threatened and endangered species. As the only island state, it’s the only one that faces an existential threat from global warming and rising oceans.
     For years, financially squeezed Hawaii residents have been leaving in droves, setting up colonies in places they can afford, like the moonscapes of the Las Vegas suburbs. They’re exiles from paradise. Many people assume Hawaiian music is sweet and happy. Actually, much of it is solemn and melancholy. To hear Bla Pahinui sing his version of "Waimanalo Blues"—"the beaches they sell, to build their hotels," is to glimpse the depths of the Hawaiian sense of loss.
     Visitors go to Hawaii to get happy and tan, and they carry home with them vast measures of good will, peacefulness and memories of joy. Maybe it’s time to give some of that back to the suffering 50th state. How? Maybe by telling your representatives in Congress to support the A kaka Bill, to give Native Hawaiians a measure of lost sovereignty, and right some old injustices.
     There’s a great July Fourth parade in Kailua, on Oahu’s windward side. It’s normally followed by fireworks, but they were canceled this year: too expensive. Since 1948, people have sat on the warm sands of Kailua Beach, oohing and aahing as fireworks burst over black water. Now they can’t, in their state’s golden anniversary year. Could anything be sadder than that?  
What is the governor’s purpose in closing state offices three days a month?
选项 A、To let the staff have time for job-seeking.
B、To stimulate the slumping market.
C、To cut expenditure on the payroll.
D、To relieve the staff of the heavy workload.
答案C
解析 根据第5句开头的不定式结构To close a $688 million budget gap可以推断夏威夷一个月内有三天关闭州办事处的目的是为了“省钱”以免再扩大预算缺口，选项C与“省钱”的意思最为相近，故为答案。
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