It's not just that families can't buy a home or start a business without some savings tucked away.

Politicians are terrified of losing touch with folks back home but content to be clueless about governments failure to fix real problems.

Bush may be a strong leader in the war on terrorism, but on budget deficits he is missing-in-action.

Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see decline of empire.

Equality under the law is the slow triumph of hope over history.

If we don't change, millions of American families are just one medical emergency, or one layoff, away from financial disaster and bankruptcy.

First, the year 2004, the year past, the Comptroller General of the United States, David A. Walker, said that arguably it was the worst year in American fiscal history, clearly setting our Nation on an unsustainable path.