"Jobs are a priority and the monument boundaries better serve that priority," Blumenthal said.
In the shadow of DuPont's sprawling monument to better living through chemistry will be a gleaming palace of pay-as-you-go.
It sits like a great ruin on a bluff above the Great Falls, a graffiti-spattered, poured concrete, Art Deco monument to better times in the Rodney Dangerfield of New Jersey cities.
"Those student-like jokes that he likes to play, like stepping in front of Angela Merkel from behind the monument, he better not do that," Mr. Romano said, referring to the German chancellor, whom Mr. Berlusconi is fond of teasing.
Soviet propaganda attempted to alter the symbolic meaning of the monument to better fit with Communist ideology, but it remained a symbol of national independence to the general public.
And now the cuts are drastically thinning the ranks of white-collar professionals, turning the once-bustling office towers of the companies into half-empty monuments to better days.
Ruler 1 is depicted on a couple of Early Classic monuments, the better preserved of which is an altar that dates to 514.
Or you could just drive past the golden arches in search of a better monument to your ideals.
But, overall, this venerable modern monument is looking better than it has done for a long time, and in some ways ever.
Otherwise it could turn into a vast, derelict Atlantis in the desert – no better monument, perhaps, to the west's invasion of a country that has been an enduring battleground over the past 30 years.
