In the late afternoon of yesterday I watched a thick marine layer just offshore on the Monterey Bay. Quite a few sailboats slipped out of the small-craft harbor and scooted along in a wonderfully carefree dance on the edge of the head wind. From my perspective, two miles inland from Capitola-By-The-Sea, the marine covering is not very thick this morning. I would guess that before noon it will have completely burned off, and I will see the unwrapping of another October day of golden sky.

I see this morning that the viability of Social Security payments to retired people is back in the news. I am sure I will hear of it the rest of my life, perhaps even be made to feel guilty for growing old. Most, like me, expect that after 40 years of payments into the system we will get our money back in our old age. Is the social contract we live by now broken? People who paid into Social Security for years are being threatened. What else should we expect? Maybe expect our grandchildren to pay for the bail-outs to Wall Street billionaires?

Honesty from our government leaders is way too much to expect. How can we understand or prepare for a future if we are not given accurate information? I have mistrusted the government since Vietnam. Now I have even less trust. The phenomena occurring in DC is not functioning the way of a government "of, by, and for the people". Money and power continue to cave away human and spiritual values. If we had been told years ago by the caretakers of our Social Security that we would be seeing trouble with it in our old age, we might have had time to recover. Now 58 million of us are being threatened and intimidated by our leaders.

The government is giving up its responsibility for communicating to us what is real and what we can do about it. This huge $17 trillion national debt--how we got to it and what forces brought it upon us--is worthy of our understanding. That destructive force is not done working on us. It grows daily and threatens more aspects of our life. Will it completely crush us?

I hate politics and always have. Most of us do. We much prefer tuning into some pretty songs on our music player or Smart Phone, and letting society as we know it run its natural course without our participation. Retirement years should be lived that way! I feel like I have very little power to effect anything, except a flimsy vote that some court will overthrow if they don't like my opinion.

In the clash between money interests and citizens' interests, money always wins. Rather than tell us how broke we really are as a nation, our leaders seem more interested in giving away the rest of the store, or pilfering from it for themselves. Actually, I am surprised that there is anything left worth stealing.