Ward on Words

In America, we learn early in school about the great work accomplished by our Founding Fathers - the work of carving out a democracy in America. In the 18th century, we broke away from the British monarchy and forged a new country in an unspoiled, nearly empty continent. A few forward thinking and brave men created a vibrant democracy, where liberty and the pursuit of happiness were guaranteed by the one (white) man/one vote principle (which evolved over the years to add minorities and women to the roster of the enfranchised.) Now, in the 21st century, it is being suggested that vibrant the democracy we read about in our schoolbooks has been overturned by an oligarchy. One of the definitions the Merriam Webster dictionary offers for oligarchy is "a government in which a small group exercises control for selfish or corrupt reasons." The May issue of The Atlantic carries a story called "The Coup" by Simon Johnson that defines our government in such terms. Si...

My father was a lawyer; for a great many years I assumed I would become a lawyer; for whatever reason, when it came time to apply to law school, I had decided against being a lawyer. Thus I became a writer instead of a lawyer. But even writers need lawyers sometimes. And when I had some questions about some potential copyright/trademark issues, I asked - you guessed it - a lawyer. The information supplied by the lawyer, in response to my questions, made me decide against pursuing the trademark/copyright issues at this particular point in time. So imagine my surprise when I was billed nearly $300 by the lawyer for the act of answering my questions about a potential trademark job. I had no idea that asking the questions needed to figure out if I needed a lawyer could cost so much. Today, I find humor in Shakespeare. ;-)

Jake DeSantis, an EVP at AIG, sent an email to AIG's CEO that somehow got routed to the NY Times op-ed page. And thus we all learned today that Jake has quit his post over at AIG, angry that his boss, CEO Ed Liddy, did not speak up loudly enough before Congress for Jake and his bonus-deserving colleagues. I appreciate his perspective. He cogently sums up the rage so many are feeling at the way AIG did business. He worked hard for his money and can't understand where it all went. But he seems unable to understand that most Americans feel the same way - the retirees, the college students, the people whose hard-earned money has - POOF - vanished into the black hole on Wall Street. Unlike the firms propped up by Washington, the people on "Main Street" have no one handing them $750,000 in federally funded bonuses. So I'll bet that his very public resignation letter will not spark a ton of sympathy outside of Wall Street. And the kicker - he doesn't ev...

"Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet. I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care." Thus begins Jonathon Krakauer's best seller, Into Thin Air . The thrill of achieving a lifetime goal - to stand on the rooftop of the world – is dramatically diminished by the overwhelming fatigue and lack of oxygen one finds at such a height. Sometimes I think that Washington, D.C. is like Everest. People arrive there and soon find themselves disoriented, out of touch, talking the nonsense that comes from the oxygen depr...

Execs at "too-big-too-fail" AIG got fat bonuses this week, despite the fact that their company has in reality failed and would be out of business were it not for a massive infusion of federal (tax) money. And people on Wall Street and in Washington seem caught off-guard by the populist outrage spawned by these bonuses. The legal obligation claimed by Tim Geithner to use tax dollars to pay large sums of money to failed execs has apparently enraged large numbers of people who live outside of NY and the Beltway. They simply do not understand why, at a time when the economy is in the toilet and millions of people have lost their jobs, the people who played a role in the collapse of the economy are being rewarded with millions of dollars in bonuses. And it is puzzling. We keep hearing that bonuses for performance are an integral part of how Wall Street does business. These struggling firms need to pay large sums of money to "the best and brightest" in order to re...

He was dead. He was worse than dead. He was ruined. Ruined by greed, by ego, by lust. I'm referring to former Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace after it was revealed he invested thousands of dollars on an industry - prostitution - that he had sought to shut down. And now he's back - bringing us a message from the dead about the scandal known as AIG. In an op-ed piece appearing in Slate, Spitzer warns that the $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG execs is not what we should be protesting right now. His issue is with the fact that the recipients of TARP funded AIG payouts are the same banks who've capitalized nicely from TARP investments - the investments made by the government to protect those firms from the fact that AIG would not be able to make such payments. It is a circular flow of money that is at first confusing. But if true, we've sent out nearly a trillion dollars so that firms like Goldman Sachs could get twice the money out of thei...

Big noise from Chicago - the biggest big-shouldered building in the city is undergoing a name change. That's right - the Sears Tower will now be called the Willis Tower, named for the London-based insurance company that is taking over much of the space. With three towers named in honor of insurance companies (Aon, John Hancock and Willis), the hog-butcher to the world apparently has found its new millennial niche as an insurance broker. The Sears Tower has been an icon in the city since it opened its doors in 1973. At that time, it was the World's Tallest Building - a fitting home for one of the world's largest retailers. It gave us something to brag about in those years of drought among our sports teams. We may not have had world champions in our midst, but we had the biggest damn building in the world. For the last decade or so, the Sears Tower has had to be content to be known as the tallest building in North America. Asia went crazy in the '90s and trie...

Abe Lincoln's watch had a secret message - so said Jonathon Dillon, the immigrant watchmaker who claimed to have left it. He was working on the watch when Fort Sumter was attacked, the event that began the long, bloody Civil War. According to a story in the Washington Post, Dillon told his family that he etched his name, the date of the attack and a message on the inside of the timepiece. Years later, in 1906 - forty years after he inscribed the message - Dillon told a NY Times reporter specifically what the message was: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try." The watch was donated by the Lincoln family to the Smithsonian, where it is occasionally put on exhibit but is generally considered to be a "minor artifact." The family of the watchmaker recently uncovered evidence that the family legend may indeed be fact; the Smithsonian decided to find out for sure. Yesterday, the watch was opened...a...

Will the sorry saga of the rot in Illinois never end? Impeached former governor Rod Blagojevich apparently has been given a six figure book deal to tell us just how he picked Roland Burris to represent Illinois in the Senate. I'm sure it's a safe bet that there will be poetry alongside of that political analysis - as Rod knows, we need more Kipling quoted in America! According to the Tribune , Blago's babblings will also include a visit to the "dark side of politics." And we all thought that Blago's helmet-head was just a bad hairdo! Apparently it's Darth Vader's mask all askew on top of Blago's big head.