With Respect to Fallibility

Admitting and correcting our mistakes keeps us in our own good graces, as well as of those we love and care for. It returns us to the proximity of perfection. Part of the burden of leadership is that the circle of people to whom we bear responsibility for mistakes is wider. Leadership requires us to love and care for those within that circle, and to admit and correct our mistakes. Or else we do not deserve that mantle.

The White House presumes that its current occupant and advisors are infallible. It refuses to admit, much less accept responsibility for or correct any mistakes whatsoever. The buck is passed, the fall guy is a private, and private citizens pay the piper.

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Nonsense’n’nobrainer: Questions of Our Congressman

Congressman Sensenbrenner’s latest Annual Questionnaire has come again, prepared and mailed at taxpayer expense. It began with the assertion that “The 109th Congress is involved with many issues vital to you, your family and the nation.”

The King’s Rook Social Security Gambit (part 2)

In a previous column I described the intended purposes of the seventy-year-old Social Security system, and criticized the lavishly funded, ideologically and greed driven propaganda that willfully confuses the Social Security insurance program with the volatile, risky portion of an affluent investor’s portfolio. This column will highlight the nature of the crisis that threatens this vital program that insures almost all American workers and their families against consequences of loss of income when a worker dies, or becomes disabled or attains retirement age.

The Piratical Heirs of Ebenezer (part 1)

The advocates of privatization play fast and loose with language and the truth, in the pursuit of their goals. A case in point is Social Security. Privateers sneer at what they deride as a paltry ‘return on investment’. But they disregard and refuse to count the most important returns, while evaluating a critical insurance program as though it were an investment scheme.