I was pleasantly surprised and gratified to see the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sue the State of New Jersey for fraudulently misrepresenting its financial health because of its failure to report on the status of its pension funding.  According to the SEC, New Jersey had 79 separate bond offerings between 2001 and 2007, representing over $20 billion in tax-exempt bonds, on which it made false and misleading disclosures to investors and prospective investors.

I would hope this is a first step to getting government finances in order.  Like many people with discretionary assets, my wife and I own tax- exempt bonds.  We are deeply concerned about whether we are getting accurate and complete information about the state of finances in Connecticut, and in the few other states in which we have government bonds.

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As the son of a mother who, mercifully died suddenly as a result of an automobile accident when she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and a father who deteriorated over an 15-month period, all of which was spent in a rehabilitation center and a nursing home after he broke his hip at age 82, I have thought a lot about end-of-life issues.

As a result, I was gratified to see an incredibly incisive and thoughtful article on this subject by Dr. Atul Guwande of Harvard Medical School in the August 2, 2010, issue of The New Yorker. The subject of end-of-life care for individuals with terminal illnesses or diseases is not a new one, but Guwande brings new insight to it.

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Daniel Henninger wrote a significant an Op-Ed piece in The Wall Street Journal on July 22 entitled “The Liberal’s Dilemma.” The “dilemma” of which Henninger speaks is the conflict between the broad agenda many liberals, virtually all Democrats, have in place to improve the well-being of broad swaths of the U.S. population and the narrow, but disproportionate demands of public sector employees’ unions, active and powerful private sector unions like SEIU and the narrow, but powerful and well-organized political classes that contribute a sizable chunk of campaign financing for the Democratic party.

The problem those who want to produce broad societal change face is that, to the extent they honor and defend the retirement benefit obligations and other huge financial benefits demanded by the unions and the political classes, the funds available for the much broader agenda drop well below critical mass.  In fact, it is fair to say that, absent a major pullback from these long-term retirement benefit obligations, almost no money will be available for the or below broader agenda.

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