The war in Iraq has been very, very expensive - partly because the Administration tried to keep the apparent costs down. But the benefits have been elusive at best - partly because the ostensible reasons for going war were unconnected with reality - no weapons of mass destruction, no connections with 9/11.

Policies seemed almost deliberately designed to suppress new enterprise and job creation. How many Americans will start a business if the interest rates are 150 percent?

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.

There is a clear and strong link between the economy's present woes and the Iraq war. The war was at least one of the factors contributing to rising oil prices - which meant Americans were spending money on imported oil, rather than on things that would stimulate the american economy. Hiring Nepalese contractors in Iraq, moreover, doesn't stimulate the American economy in the way that building a school in America would do - and obviously doesn't have the long term benefits.

Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he told the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would take on the political and economic establishment, that he would stand up for working people, that he understood the pain that families all across this country were experiencing. Well, sadly, it was just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes, nothing more than that.