The man I succeeded in public office liked to say, “Figures lie and liars figure.”  I won’t speak about liars but figures can be slippery. After 8 years of grappling with a county budget, I gained a healthy understanding that numbers have a plasticity.  Many assumptions are bu

My activities on the internet have expanded to a degree that I require 3 email addresses, not counting messaging on Facebook.  Initially, I hoped different addresses would make storing my correspondence easier to find later.  My experience has proved the opposite. Of course, I shoul

While I’ve been thrashing around for a transgender pronoun, it appears the transgenders have solved the problem.  The preferred word is they. (Brain Nonbinary,” by Virginia Heffernan, Wired, March 2019, pgs. 11-13.)  Writer Virginia Heffernan posits they is appropriate because i

Sometimes, the good old days were just that: good. Doctors made home visits — a blessing when the weather was frightful and you had a temperature of 102.  In the good old days, when the thermometer hit triple digits, a kid like me could grab shards from the back of an ice truck

In the 1950’s, during the height of the cold war, the United States had an active civil defense corps, volunteers young and old who protected the nation’s borders without a wall.  As a teenager, I joined the air defense program.  Twice a week, I drove to a hilltop in southern Ca

Manners or morals?  That’s the question Brits are struggling with as the argument about leaving the European Union comes to a boil.  With the March 29 deadline for departure looming, many in England seem to have lost their cool.  It’s damn the torpedoes, among upper crust and f

The future of Roe v. Wade, a woman’s right to an abortion, in most people’s minds, is hanging by a thread. A recent Supreme Court ruling on a Louisiana law, one that severely restricted abortion clinics, was decided on a 5-4 split. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the more libera

 No doubt about it, a star is born.  Recently, during a Congressional hearing, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez “played a game,” with leaders of agencies that serve as government watchdogs.  Common Cause was among them.  The topic was about elected officials and the numb

If  voters are to understand the Democratic debates in the next election, they will need to understand a “new economics” that is beloved by the political left: Modern Monetary Theory, affectionately known as MMT.  I think of it as Money Magic Trick. And it isn’t new.  The the

Like healthcare, homelessness is one of the intractable problems facing our society and it keeps growing.  Local governments have the desire to solve the problem and, to some degree, they have the finances.  What they don’t have is the trust of the client population, people who ha