Just another OPMS?
Dear Editor,
Why, exactly, are we supposed to trust the Uncles on Wall Street and the
Aunts at Enron to handle our pension and disability investments, instead of
good old Uncle Sam?
If the interest paid by the General Fund for the loan of our Social
Security dollars isn't high enough, let them raise it. After all, it's the
feds who set the basic interest rates that everyone else follows.
If the administration had a stellar record of managing the nation's assets,
keeping us in the black and the dollar strong, suggestions about how to
allocate our investments might make sense. But, one would have to be a
fool to take advice from the crew that has looted the Treasury, dropped
billions of dollars and thousands of bombs on the Persion Gulf and wasted
our National Guard in the desert.
Running a fraudulent electronic election, imposing new restrictions on our
inalienable right to travel, monitoring our bank accounts and, in general,
assaulting our civil liberties are not behaviors that we can put up with,
much less enable by accepting a national identification number.
It might be reassuring if this were just another OPMS (Other People's Money
Scheme). But everything taken together can only mean that our democracy is
under attack.
And yesterday I sent out the following:
Democrats don't seem to know how to talk to the press. Perhaps it's because they're basically honest. But, they don't seem to realize that every reporter's story needs an end that makes some prediction about what will happen next. The honest answer--that we don't know--doesn't serve us well.
Case in point. Almost every story on the recount in Ohio ends with the assertion that nobody expects the results to change anything or make any difference. This is obviously a true answer to the reporter's question. But it doesn't help our case because it leaves the reader with the question, "Then why are they doing it?"
Sometimes that question is even answered by a Republican making the observation that it's all a waste of money, time and effort.
Republicans never have that problem. They answer the question with wild speculation which contains the seeds of what they HOPE will be the result, having learned, no doubt, that, while the prediction may turn out to be wrong, it might also create the conditions which will make it right.
In any event, though we might be tempted to characterize such assertions about the future as lies. They are not. And ordinary mortals even know the difference. So the characterization of speculation as lies makes Democrats look bad.
Honesty is not the best policy when we're talking about the future. Not to mention that by focusing on somebody else's future, we often miss the bad things that were done in the present and past.