Last week, the ethically challenged Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a temporary leave of absence from his position as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee until the ethics committee finishes its investigation of him.

Given the number of Rangel’s alleged missteps, that could be awhile.

The former chairman, who led the committee responsible for writing all of the nation’s tax laws, faces accusations regarding his fund-raising, his failure to pay federal taxes on rental income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic and his use of four rent-stabilized apartments provided by a Manhattan real estate developer. The House ethics committee already has admonished Rangel for accepting corporate-sponsored trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.

Rangel gave up one of the New York apartments, which he was illegally using as a campaign office. And, after initially denying that he had omitted any income from his rental property on his federal tax returns, the congressman eventually admitted that he had failed to report approximately $75,000 in income from the property. At least he had a good excuse. “Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,” he explained. He also blamed his wife, saying she was supposed to have been managing the property.

But the man who claimed to have five different primary residences simultaneously (in addition to the four New York apartments, he claimed a homestead tax exemption for a house in Washington, D.C. from 1995 to 2000) has never been shy about saying other people should pay more in taxes. When he proposed paying for healthcare reforms with a 5.4-percentage point income tax surcharge on those earning more than $1 million, he called it “the moral thing to do.”

Hypocrisy is never a good thing, but it’s particularly bad when it comes from someone with substantial power over the nation’s tax code. While the government has the power to punish tax evaders, most people never get audited, making the system ultimately reliant on the willingness of Americans to voluntarily pay what the law demands. When those at the top sidestep their duties, they threaten the integrity of the entire system.

Rangel has insisted that his step away from power is only temporary. When asked whether he would still run for reelection in his upper Manhattan district, Rangel told reporters that there was “no way that I can foresee anything” that would stop him from running.

In spite of the congressman’s assurances, I believe it is unlikely that he will ever wield a committee gavel again. Few in Congress are likely to stand beside the unpopular former chairman if he attempts to resume his perch. In any case, Rangel will turn 80 in July, and he may well discover a reason not to run again. Just the night before he handed in his resignation, he declared that he had no intention of stepping aside.

Rangel will be replaced by Rep. Sander M. Levin, a liberal Michigan Democrat. By seniority, Levin was second in line for the post, but the more senior Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has his own history with the ethics committee. Stark asked that his name be withdrawn from consideration and applauded Levin’s appointment. “It’s the best thing for the country, the Congress and the committee under the circumstances,” Stark said.

I don’t think I am going to like Levin’s ideas on tax policy any better than I liked Rangel’s, but that is beside the point. Rangel’s presence was a threat to the tax system itself. If you want to see what happens to a country whose citizens are cavalier about paying taxes, take a look at Greece. The farther Rangel is kept from power, the better.

A smartly dressed young woman walked into our Fort Lauderdale office a couple of weeks ago, unannounced, and handed her resumé and cover letter to Melinda Beckmann, our newest associate.

“Dear Hiring Manager,” she wrote, “I am very interested in applying for the career at your Corporation. My education and experience has previously added value to Fortune 500 corporations.”

Her education, according to her resumé, includes a recent M.B.A. in International Business from the University of Miami and an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Florida. She wrote that she is seeking “a full-time position to help develop customer satisfaction and trust” and that she is “offering outstanding customer service skills, computer proficiency, and leadership experience to help obtain [she meant to say ‘attain’] corporate objectives.” Her resumé says she is currently working as a “Health & Life Insurance Broker” after having worked at several major banks after college and while getting her M.B.A.

Our office is on the 16th floor of a 24-story building. As I left for a meeting a few moments later I encountered the young woman near the elevator bank, briefcase in hand, waiting for her ride to the 17th floor, where I presume she left another copy of her resumé behind nearly every unlocked door.

Somewhere out there, even in this weak economy and terrible job market, is an executive or entrepreneur who could help this young woman get her career off to a good start. Our job-seeker has shown that she has the energy and determination to work her way through business school. She has demonstrated that she can work in the corporate environment of a major bank, yet is entrepreneurial enough to sell insurance. She has the poise and self-assurance to walk into a strange office and announce that she is available for hire, and the grit to do it over and over again in a 24-story office tower.

But her chances of finding the job that can give her the one big break she needs are not very good, and it appears to me that she is mainly to blame.

Strike one: She does not seem to know what she really wants to do. Her M.B.A. specialty was international business, but her resumé and cover letter make no other mention of international work. She says nothing about having studied abroad or having learned any foreign languages. Her international focus at school looks like mere window-dressing intended to attract interest from multinational companies. If she wants to work at a multinational enterprise, why was she in my office looking for a job?

Strike two: She did not make any effort to learn about my company, or to address her comments to me or the other executives here who do our hiring. Though we do not seek M.B.A.s for entry-level jobs, we do hire finance graduates and we have two who came from the same University of Florida program that our job-seeker attended. She could have learned this on our website. She also would have learned that our people practice financial planning across a broad range of disciplines, including investment planning, income taxes, estate taxes and other estate planning, and insurance, among others. Some of our job-seeker’s work experience is relevant to what we do. But she did not bother to learn anything about us or to tailor her cover letter to explain why the skills she offers might match the skills we need. Everything she writes is about her; none of it is about how she might be able to help us. She is not telling her target audience what it wants to know.

Strike three: Her form-letter materials are dreadfully careless. Her cover letter’s very first sentence, which refers to “…the career at your Corporation” rather than “…a career at your firm” includes a grammatical error, a misused capital letter, and a factual mistake – our business is not a corporation at all.

Add it all up, and our superficially polished job-seeker presents herself merely as a warm body in search of a job, which is likely to end with her obtaining a job that merely requires a warm body.

Rewarding careers seldom begin with such a match.

Last week, Larry Elkin commented here about the report by the Pew Center on the States that revealed a $1 trillion funding gap between what states have promised in retirement benefits to public employees and what they have actually set aside to meet those obligations.

The report made it clear that the situation is bad, but I believe this situation is actually even worse.

When states calculate the portion of their pension promises that are funded, they do not simply compare the amount they have at present with the anticipated costs of the future payments. Instead, they make an investment return assumption, so that a dollar saved today can cover more than a dollar’s worth of payments in the future.

Since states invest in stocks and bonds, instead of stuffing their billions under the mattress, it is reasonable for them to assume that they will earn some level of return. But the rates of return that states project for themselves are often unrealistic.

In an act of hypocrisy, governments, which regulate pension plans of private industries so that they cannot deceive pension stakeholders with overly optimistic benefits projections, are not opposed to using a little creative accounting of their own.

A recent article by Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C, reported that, if New Jersey used assumptions similar to what private companies use, its pension funds would be considered to be only 38 percent funded. New Jersey, assuming an 8.25 percent annual rate of return, reports that its pension promises are 73 percent funded. With the revised projections, New Jersey’s unfunded liability for its pension plans increases from $32 billion to $145 billion.

New Jersey is not the only government to manipulate its finances to make the future look rosier. European countries such as Greece, Portugal, and France have skillfully massaged their numbers to meet European Monetary Union fiscal requirements. The Wall Street Journal reported that European countries “have a rich history of exotic maneuvers aimed at meeting the euro zone’s fiscal ceilings.”

This “aggressive bookkeeping,” as the Wall Street Journal termed it, makes budgets look better in the short term, but it does nothing to address long-term problems. In fact, by masking economic realities, the massaged numbers may prevent policy makers from taking the actions necessary to make real improvements, rather than merely aesthetic ones.

One public pension system is beginning to address this funding fallacy. According to the WSJ, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), which manages over $200 billion making it the largest public pension in the U.S., recently discussed reducing its assumed rate of return from 7.75 percent to 6.0 percent. A rate reduction of that magnitude for a $200 billion pension fund would reduce expected portfolio growth by $64 billion over 10 years, assuming all gains are reinvested during that period.

While California’s annualized return over the past 20 fiscal years is slightly higher than the 7.75 percent target, analysts are doubtful about whether the pension fund can continue to count on such impressive earnings. Laurence Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock Inc. and an advisor to Calpers, told pension board members last July, “You’ll be lucky to get 6 percent on your portfolios, maybe 5 percent.”

The rate reduction would mean that contributions from the state, from employees, or from both would have to go up to compensate for the decline in projected investment gains. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed requiring state employees to contribute an additional 5 percent for their retirement costs. Under the governor’s plan, the state would also increase its contribution, to at least $4.5 billion in the next fiscal year.

New Jersey is taking a baby step in the right direction. At the end of February the Senate unanimously approved three bills to cap the amount that retiring employees can receive from unused sick days, bar part-time workers from enrolling in the state pension system, and require local and county employees to contribute to their health plans. Republican Gov. Chris Christie called the bills “a good start.” But, unless New Jersey faces up to the true extent of its problems, the reform measures are unlikely to go far enough.

The longer that action is delayed by false assurances of security, the worse problems will become. It’s time to pull back the curtain on public employees’ pension plans so that employees expecting pensions, investors purchasing municipal bonds, taxpayers, voters, and policymakers can make realistic predictions about the future and take appropriate action.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused a right “to a speedy and public trial” and to “the assistance of counsel.” But for many defendants, a trial is never really an option.

While statistics vary by jurisdiction, the Department of Justice reports that about 95% of all convictions in the United States result from a guilty plea. More than 80 percent of defendants are unable to afford their own lawyers, and court-appointed lawyers, buried under unmanageable caseloads, often push defendants into plea bargains to avoid time-consuming trials.

A 34-year-old who, through a plea bargain, received a six and a half year prison sentence for a first-time drug offense committed while he was in college told Color Lines Magazine in 2004, “You don’t really have a choice but to cop a plea. The feds start getting pissed if you start talking about a lawyer or trial. You are going to jail. And the prosecutors make you understand that. You might as well go for as little time as possible.” He said that his defense attorney was the one who pressured him to accept the deal.

In many cases a plea bargain is appropriate. If a defendant is likely to be convicted anyway, he has every reason to try to reach an agreement that gives him the lightest sentence possible. But when legal representation amounts to little more than drive-by lawyering, in which an overworked and undertrained defense attorney never provides the option of a vigorous defense, then the constitutional right to counsel becomes a sham. The results are a deck stacked against poor defendants, enormous collateral damage to families, and overcrowded jails populated by inmates who should not be there.

For the first time in a decade, the Justice Department recently sponsored a conference to address what Attorney General Eric Holder called the “crisis” afflicting poor defendants.

In conjunction with the conference, the Justice Department rolled out plans for a new Access to Justice initiative. The program, to be led by Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, will investigate ways to ensure that the promises of the Sixth Amendment are not forgotten when defendants lack the resources to pay for their own defense. Tribe began his work this week.

The effort is long overdue. The fact that the Justice Department failed to hold a conference on the issue for 10 years is an indictment of the highly politicized and ineffective Justice Department that the administration of President George W. Bush operated during most of that time.

On one point, however, the attorney general’s definition of justice is still unfairly skewed. Holder told conference attendees that they should not be surprised to see the nation’s top prosecutor leading an effort to improve representation of defendants because, “Although they may stand on different sides of an argument, different sides of a courtroom, the prosecution and defense can and must share the same objective: Not victory, but justice.”

It is true that a prosecutor’s job is to seek justice, not merely to earn convictions, but a defense lawyer’s job is to defend, and nothing else. Even when he believes the person he is defending is guilty, he still is bound to do his utmost to protect that person.

The 18th century thinker Samuel Johnson was once asked what he thought about the propriety of a lawyer supporting a cause he knows to be bad. Johnson replied, “Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it…. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it: and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right.”

When prosecutors, police or juries don’t do their jobs properly, the defense lawyer who vigorously argues his case may end up helping a guilty person avoid punishment. That is a price we pay for the assurance that our own rights will be respected if we ever stand accused.

The law demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt before anyone is deprived of life or liberty. People who can afford their own lawyers will always enjoy such protection, but those who are stuck with drive-by lawyering seldom do. Professor Tribe’s task is to make the system work for everyone the way it is supposed to work. I hope he succeeds.

In late 2006 some schoolchildren in Turin, Italy, filmed themselves bullying an autistic classmate. They then uploaded the clip to Google Video.

No one at Google knew these children. No one at the company saw the video before it was posted. When Google was notified of the video’s existence, it immediately took it down and worked with the police to identify who had uploaded it. But last month, four Google executives were tried in absentia on criminal charges stemming from the video.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s chief privacy counsel, David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer, and George Reyes, a former chief financial officer, were found guilty by a Milan court of violating Italy’s privacy code. The fourth executive was acquitted.

The trial was just one battle in an ongoing fight between Google and the Italian government. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his allies in Parliament are trying to pass legislation that would require anyone who regularly uploads videos to the Internet to obtain a license from the Ministry of Communications, a move that would threaten the Italian business of Google’s YouTube. Separately – but not entirely separately – Italy’s only major private television network, Mediaset, is suing Google over copyright violations for network material that users have uploaded to YouTube. Mediaset just happens to be owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi.

Italy argues that platforms that host user-generated content should be responsible for policing that content. For some sites with limited interactivity, this might be feasible. For example, I consider it to be my responsibility to ensure that no libelous comments are posted to this blog. But YouTube, which was acquired by Google in 2006, has millions of user-created videos, making it impossible for employees to review each one.

In a response to the trial posted on Google’s blog, Matt Sucherman, vice president and deputy general counsel, wrote, “If…sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them – every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video – then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.”

The United States has an interest in preventing this from happening, partly because of our commitment to the principle of free expression, and partly because rulings like that of the Italian court create an open season on American businesses and their employees.

While the U.S. routinely advocates Internet freedom in places like China, Russia and Iran, it tends not to say much about how allied countries regulate information. Those countries do not always share our ideas of how much freedom is appropriate. In Britain, for example, the media are only permitted to report on certain preliminary judicial proceedings in a highly circumscribed way, revealing only the most basic details. Britain’s Official Secrets Act also allows the Attorney General to issue gag orders on the press with regards to sensitive information. In 2005, then-Attorney General Lord Goldsmith threatened newspapers with prosecution if they published the contents of a leaked transcript of a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush.

The treatment of British journalists (and other residents) and British businesses is Britain’s business, of course. But it would be highly problematic if, for example, Britain tried to prosecute The Washington Post and its U.S.-based executives over a story published in its U.S.-based newspaper and on its Web site.

In the “Pentagon Papers” case of New York Times Co. v. United States, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that, in order to impose any prior restraint on publication in this country, the government must be able to prove that the publication would cause “grave and irreparable” damage. This means that neither Britain’s restrictions on everyday criminal court reporting nor, in many cases, its application of the Official Secrets Act would be upheld in an American court.

We need to stand for the principle that speech is not a crime. When someone’s privacy is violated, the appropriate response is a civil suit, not criminal prosecution. The advent of the digital age makes it increasingly necessary for us to address our allies’ more subtle limitations on freedom of speech. As content becomes less bounded by geography, restrictions in one country have greater repercussions in other countries.

The United States also must consider that, in large part because of our freedoms, this country is the media capital of the world. Unchallenged, actions like that of the Italian court and government could put American media companies in jeopardy.

To protect our businesses and our citizens, we need to modernize the rules governing international trade to cover the trade in information. Such modernization should limit the damages that foreign courts can award in suits against nonresident businesses and individuals. If a Google server in the U.S. hosts a video from somebody in Italy, the amount of damages Google owes should be based on the volume of Google’s business in Italy, rather than its worldwide revenue. If Google has $1 million in sales in Italy, an Italian court should not be able to award $1 billion in damages against the company.

Without this protection, foreign courts and governments have a license to prey on large American (and other) companies. If a claim is much larger than a company’s business in the jurisdiction where the claim arises, that claim should be adjudicated in the courts of the company’s home country and under the home country’s rules

Too often, American corporations are left to fend for themselves against sovereign governments. It’s an unfair fight for even the largest companies. If we want to remain home base for large international businesses, Washington is going to have to come to their defense when they need it.

Almost no one believed it would happen, but here we are: For the first time since 1915, the United States has no federal estate tax.

Congressional action nine years ago created the potential for this situation, and congressional inaction last year made it happen. At the 44th annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, which I recently attended, many of the planners present were worried about their jobs. Not us. The failure of Congress to act before the estate tax was repealed for this year creates as much confusion, opportunity and planning work as the tax itself did.

Because Congress before the end of 2009 did not address the “sunset” provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), the estate tax and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax were allowed to lapse for this year. Next year, unless legislation changes things, the provisions of EGTRRA will expire and we will return to the transfer tax laws (generally, estate, gift and GST taxes) of pre-2002.

So in 2011, the rules would revert to a $1 million applicable exclusion for the gift and estate taxes, and a higher 55 percent tax rate, compared with the $3.5 million estate tax exemption and the 45 percent rate of 2009. The applicable exclusion is the sum of lifetime transfers plus assets passing at death that an individual can transfer without being subject to estate tax. The following table summarizes the transfer tax situation.

What does this mean for high-net-worth families? Currently, not much. This is because no one knows whether Congress will impose a tax this year retroactive to Jan. 1, effectively keeping the transfer tax laws consistent with those of last year. If lawmakers did pass such a tax, would it withstand a constitutional challenge? The answer is unknowable. This article will not discuss the myriad “what-ifs” of potential gift and estate tax legislation, but instead will focus on ways to deal with the uncertainty and to take advantage of the possible tax holiday.

The massive uncertainty created by Congress’s inaction has many planners and their clients paralyzed by confusion. For the most part, this is fine, because unless an individual is in poor health and likely to pass away before the end of the year, this temporary situation will have little impact. By Jan. 1, 2011, we will know what the estate tax looks like. For young and healthy clients, a “wait-and-see” approach is adequate, if not ideal.

However, there are some important actions clients and their advisors should take now. Even though most people were aware of the sunset provisions of EGTRRA, few built language into their estate-planning documents, including wills and trusts, to account for a situation in which there would be no estate tax. Therefore, planners and individuals should look at those documents to ensure that in the event of an untimely passing in 2010, assets won’t be disposed of in a way contrary to the individual’s intent.

An example of this can be found in the use of formula clauses included in many wills. Such language may read, “My executor is to fund the Mr. Smith Family Trust with the largest value that can pass free of federal estate tax by reason of the applicable exclusion amount” with the remainder going to the spouse outright. In 2010, the term “applicable exclusion amount” does not exist in the tax code. Therefore, in this scenario, the Mr. Smith Family Trust would receive no assets and all assets would pass to the surviving spouse.

The reverse could also occur. The language funding the trust might read, “…fund the Mr. Smith Family Trust with the maximum amount that can pass free of federal estate tax.” In this scenario, all the assets could pass into the trust without estate tax, leaving the surviving spouse out in the cold. If your spouse’s will currently says this, you may want to start being really nice to your kids.

A solution to the formula clause problem used by many practitioners is to add a simple codicil, or amendment, to the will stating something to the effect of “If the federal estate tax is not in effect at my death, then I intend all provisions of this Will to be given the same force and effect as if I had died in 2009, and to be interpreted under the law as it existed in 2009.” It is up to the executor, the trustees and the courts to decide how the dispositive provisions of the will are to be read. Such a codicil will clarify the decedent’s intent.

Another way to protect against one class of beneficiaries being completely excluded upon a 2010 death is the use of qualified disclaimers. The Internal Revenue Service provides that if a beneficiary takes no possession or use of the inherited property, he or she can disclaim the right to own it. When a beneficiary executes a qualified disclaimer within nine months of the decedent’s date of death, the assets pass to the contingent beneficiary. In the first example, where the surviving spouse inherits all of the assets and the children get nothing, the spouse could disclaim an amount that would then pass to the family trust. This strategy may not work for everyone, though, because among the requirements of a qualified disclaimer is that the beneficiary have no say in directing where the disclaimed assets go. The executor or trustee must look to the provisions of the governing document.

So far, this is a pretty cautionary picture of the estate-planning environment in 2010. However, whenever there are drastic changes, there is also opportunity. For clients looking to transfer wealth to younger generations, the possibility of making gifts in 2010 is enticing. Such gifts may be taxed at the current 35 percent rate, rather than the 45 percent many expect in future legislation or the 55 percent that will kick in next year without further legislative developments. Only individuals who are not risk-averse should use this strategy, because, as mentioned above, Congress could impose a retroactive tax this year. Only those willing to accept a 45 percent tax, should one be enacted, should make gifts now to capitalize on the current lower rate.

Quite possibly the largest opportunity presented in this last year of the Bush-era legislation is the absence of a GST tax in 2010. Previously, gifts made to individuals two or more generations below the donor, or more than 37.5 years younger for unrelated individuals, were not only subject to the regular gift tax, but also to the GST tax. Such gifts are called “direct skips.” The GST lifetime exemption was $3.5 million in 2009, allowing donors to make such gifts up to that amount without paying any tax in cash. In 2010, for this one year, none of these issues exists, and this could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for wealthy donors to make gifts to their grandkids free of generation-skipping tax.

This strategy is also quite risky. The same issue as with planning for the gift tax arises. If Congress retroactively reinstates the GST, generation-skipping gifts made with the intent of being tax-free could now be taxed at whatever GST rate is enacted. However, there may be more opportunities to protect against this risk this year. One planning technique to prevent the unintentional triggering of a GST tax would be to make gifts to a trust for the benefit of grandchildren, and include a provision that the amount of the gift is however much can pass free of GST tax. In the event the GST is reinstated, there would be no gift.

All of the strategies described above are highly complex and subject to far more technical tax issues than can be fully explored here. Any changes to existing documents or creation of new plans should be overseen by an experienced estate planner.

The failure of Congress to act before the end of 2009 created a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. However, rather than giving in to paralysis, advisors and their clients should view the change as a reminder to ensure that their plans properly address the environment. The changes in the law also present opportunities to reap significant tax savings with prudent planning.

Advocates for individuals with intellectual disabilities will gather in Daly City, Calif., today to “spread the word to end the word.”

The r-word, that is. The campaign, organized by the Special Olympics and Best Buddies International, encourages people to pledge to stop using the word “retarded” in a derogatory sense. The group’s website encourages supporters to “help eliminate the use of the R-word in everyday speech.”

The effort gained national attention when The Wall Street Journal reported in January that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used the term “f-ing retarded” last summer after liberal activists proposed a series of commercials that would attack moderate Democrats. Emanuel clearly intended his use of the word “retarded” to be derogatory.

Until recently, I thought the term “retarded” was a medically incorrect description of someone who is developmentally disabled. My daughter, who is a mental health worker, corrected me. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association contains criteria for a diagnosis of “mental retardation.” The version currently in use, the DSM-IV, bases the diagnosis on IQ scores and overall functioning. The draft proposal for the next version of the manual, the DSM-5, has a new set of criteria and changes the name of the condition from “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability,” which is deemed to be a more accurate description.

Until the new version is released, however, it will continue to be medically correct, if somewhat dated, to refer to people “with an IQ of approximately 70 or below” who have “deficits or impairments in present adaptive functioning” as mentally retarded. This is not necessarily derogatory. Nor is it derogatory to use the r-word while discussing a campaign to end the thoughtless use of the r-word. So why am I calling it the r-word?

Many adjectives are derogatory in some contexts but not in others. Here are some whose derogatory connotation has varied wildly: Liberal. Jew. Nazi. Dwarf. (Walt Disney did not title his film “Snow White and the Seven Little People.”) Fat. Fundamentalist. Negro.

We can even string these adjectives together to come up with something like a fat, fundamentalist, liberal Negro Jewish Nazi dwarf. If anything ought to be obnoxious, this should be, right? Have I offended you? Would you be less offended if I substituted the description “ecclesiastically ultra-conservative, politically progressive Semitic National Socialist of African heritage who is short and has a high body mass index?”

Most words are offensive when they are used, not to denote a certain group of people, but to imply that those people have negative characteristics and that a reasonable person ought to be offended by being associated with them. When Emanuel called the liberal activists’ proposal “f-ing retarded,” he intended to insult them. In doing so, he implied that mentally retarded people characteristically have bad ideas and that some ideas are so bad that only a mentally retarded person could be expected to have them. Neither statement is true, and both are highly offensive.

Kirsten Seckler, a spokeswoman for the Special Olympics, told ABC News, “We aren’t trying to ban a word, but the pejorative in casual use – especially used by kids in schools and in the classroom – is isolating and it hurts.” A similar effort seeks to prevent people from using the word gay to mean bad or stupid while still promoting its use as a term for those who are attracted to others of the same sex. (Correct: “My teacher is gay. I met his boyfriend at graduation.” Incorrect: “My teacher is gay. He just gave us homework over winter break.”) Switching to new, more politically correct terms each time a word appears in the vernacular with a derogatory meaning will simply lead to a constant updating of the language, without addressing the prejudices that make the words offensive in the first place.

Of course, there are some words that have no meaning other than one that is demeaning. Their use is therefore offensive in all contexts other than in discussions about the words themselves and in direct quotations. This is the case, for example, with the n-word. I would use the word here if I thought any readers would not recognize which word I am discussing. Since I don’t believe this is the case, I see no reason to hurt anyone by spelling it out.

I’m not sure we really must refer to “the r-word” to campaign against the casually hurtful use of the word “retarded.” But, so long as pledge-takers pay attention to the whole message, the “spread the word to end the word” campaign sounds like a good idea to me.

I am pretty sure Rahm Emanuel is not so quick to call something or someone he dislikes “retarded” anymore. He probably even has a t-shirt commemorating today’s “spread the word” event.

Employees of state and local governments across America labor for (usually) fairly modest salaries, but they have the security of knowing that their employers guarantee them generous pension, health care and other retirement benefits.

They ought to feel quite a bit less secure. A recent report by The Pew Center on the States found a $1 trillion gap between what states have promised and what they have actually set aside to pay for those commitments. At the end of fiscal 2008, the promised benefits nationwide added up to $3.35 trillion, but the amount in states’ coffers totaled only $2.35 trillion.

By making promises now without actually setting aside the money, politicians curry favor with employees without having to tax today’s voters. Better benefits allow states to attract high-quality talent without having to pay more for it upfront. In an earlier report on the condition of pension funds, released in 2007, The Pew Center on the States noted, “In some states, retiree benefits have been vulnerable to a buy-now, pay-later mentality. In bad budget times, retirement benefits become easy substitutes for salary increases.”

The present report reveals that most states are indeed putting off their bills. In 2008 only Florida, New York, Washington and Wisconsin had enough money reserved to fully fund their pension systems. Illinois, in the worst shape, had only 54 percent of the necessary assets on hand.

In total, the states’ pension promises are 84 percent funded. While this is better than the 80 percent funding level that experts consider a prudent minimum, states are not doing what they need to do now to close that gap before the obligations come due. During the past five years, 21 states made contributions that averaged less than 90 percent of what their actuaries estimated they needed to set aside.

The situation is worse when it comes to non-pension benefits, like retiree health care. The report noted that, rather than putting aside money for current workers to whom they have promised benefits, “states continue to fund retiree health care and other non-pension benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis – paying medical costs or premiums as they are incurred by current retirees.”

Because of this attitude, the states have on hand only about 5 percent of the money they need to provide the non-pension benefits they have promised. All but two have less than half of the money they will need. Only Alaska, Arizona, Maine and North Dakota made the annual contributions recommended by their actuaries in 2008.

By postponing payments, states increase the overall cost of their programs. In the 2007 report, The Pew Center on the States estimated that Massachusetts could save $5.7 billion in retiree health and other non-pension benefits by making actuarially required contributions each year, since “the interest the state is likely to earn when it invests more money over the long term can be applied to paying down the bill.”

Another problem with failing to adequately fund pension and other benefit funds now is that it creates the possibility that the promised benefits may ultimately be reduced. I am a firm believer in the principle that the impossible never happens. If governments do not have enough money set aside to fulfill their promises, the day will eventually come when they will have to turn to lenders or taxpayers to make up the shortfall. Neither may be able or willing to meet those demands. If the states and localities can’t get the money, they can’t make the payouts. So they won’t.

This is just one more in a growing list of promises made to today’s workers that may not be kept. Medicare, Social Security and many private company pensions are all woefully underfinanced. Health care costs continue to rise. And, as baby boomers age and life expectancies lengthen, the ratio of retirees to workers will increase in the future. The Social Security Administration has projected that by 2030 20 percent of Americans will be over 65. The current system in which retirees are supported by the workers of today is unsustainable.

The alternative is to set aside now the money that will go toward future benefits for today’s workers. But that would mean taxing today’s voters. So politicians will probably continue to buy now and pay later.

China’s economic growth may hit 9 percent this year, but Guan Jian, profiled recently by the Los Angeles Times, is not feeling the benefits of his country’s rapidly expanding economy.

Guan, 24, is a member of China’s “Ant Tribe.” Given their nickname by a recent book documenting their struggles, China’s estimated 3 million “ants” are young adults who have college degrees but remain unemployed or underemployed. Guan and his cohorts live in cramped quarters on the fringes of the capital and other major cities, cooking on hot plates and using communal bathrooms. Some lack heat and hot water.

Facing a lack of educated workers, in 1996 China began expanding university enrollment, giving more students access to the education required for professional jobs. In 1999 the country committed to increasing undergraduate enrollment by 30 percent each year. As a result, enrollment quintupled between 1999 and 2008. Last year about 6.1 million students were handed diplomas.

But after graduation day, reality hits. As the government amped up enrollment, it did little to ensure that the graduates would find suitable jobs waiting for them. Guan, who studied broadcast journalism, applied for a job at a television station after he graduated. Thousands of others also applied for the same two slots. While Guan made it to the final six, he was not offered a job.

Even those graduates who succeed in finding employment must accept severely depressed salaries. Reuters recently reported that, according to some workers, companies in Beijing and other large cities have cut monthly salaries for professional positions by 50 to 100 percent as a result of the labor surplus, which would mean some workers are taking unpaid internships rather than paying jobs. Many young graduates earn as little as 2,000 yuan – less than $300 – a month, the news agency reported.

While China’s strong overall economic statistics obscure the plight of this segment of the population, the problems of the “ants” represent a serious obstacle to the country’s push forward. China is building its economy on the foundation of its exports, at the expense of developing its domestic demand. The country sells a lot, but does not consume a lot. In 2008, trade accounted for 57 percent of China’s gross domestic product.

This focus on producing goods for export means there are many jobs in manufacturing, but few opportunities for the college educated, who are more likely to work in service-related jobs. This problem is self-perpetuating. Those who have the education to become part of the middle class are unable to find jobs that would allow them to contribute to domestic demand by buying the things middle-class consumers want to have.

By encouraging domestic demand, China can give its graduates the opportunity to achieve their full potential while they engage in work that delivers a higher standard of living to the whole country. China’s new graduates have the education, skills and ambition that can further China’s progress, but only if they are given the opportunity to use their talents.

If China does not act to solve the graduate unemployment problem, social unrest may take root among the overeducated and underemployed. Lian Si, a sociologist who spent two years researching the graduates, said, “They represent the pain and confusion of a whole generation. When all their anger and grievances reach a critical point, a special event could trigger a large-scale mass movement.”

Guan, however, seems resigned rather than angry about his difficult circumstances. Speaking of his room in a prefabricated metal structure attached to his landlord’s roof, the young would-be broadcaster said that, while it is “inconvenient” that his quarters don’t include a bathroom, “Chinese people are used to small spaces. My friends say my room is cozy.”

After many months of short-term stints and joblessness, Guan finally got a call from a state television channel. The channel could only offer an internship, paying just a few hundred dollars a month, but Guan said, “I’ll have to see if I can make it work.”

In 2007, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change surprised scientists when it declared in its seminal report on global warming that certain huge Himalayan glaciers might melt away completely by 2035.

“It’s physically impossible to kill the ice that fast,” Jeffrey Kargel, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies glaciers, told The Washington Post.

A recent letter to the editor in the journal Science noted that the glaciers actually are expected to last about 300 years longer, until 2350. When the U.N. panel reported the incorrect figure, it cited a report by an activist group, rather than the original research in which the number had appeared. The contributors to the U.N. report dutifully copied what the activists had mistyped.

The unearthing of this mistake, along with several others, has raised doubts about the overall quality of the IPCC report.

The report won the panel a Nobel Peace Prize, which it shared with Al Gore, and delivered the message that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” The document helped bring about a shift in public opinion as people began to see global warming as an established fact rather than a subject of debate.

But this definitive report was also something of a patchwork, stitched together with plenty of opportunities for errors to work their way in through the seams. Thousands of scientists across the globe volunteered to work on the report, evaluating tens of thousands of academic documents and translating them into plain English for policymakers and the public. It is not surprising that a few facts got distorted along the way.

Over the past year, several e-mails have also surfaced showing that some prominent climate scientists may have tried to prevent skeptics from publishing data and conclusions contrary to the general consensus on global warming.

Together, the errors and the e-mails remind us that scientific research is produced by human beings, and, as such, can never be perfect. The studies that shape our understanding of the world can be marred by carelessness, by personal rivalries and agendas, and by our limited ability to predict the future, especially the distant future.

As computer simulations become more advanced, we are tempted to believe that we can use science and mathematics to make accurate predictions of the world’s condition decades or even hundreds of years from now. But we are not clairvoyant. Our models are the products of hundreds of assumptions, any of which could be flawed, and many of which undoubtedly are.

We need to remember this margin of error when we consider how to respond to threats like climate change. We have no choice but to make important decisions based on imperfect and incomplete information, but we should not bet our children’s and grandchildren’s future on predictions that are much more error-prone than most people think.

There is no doubt the world’s climate is changing. It has always been changing, which is why the middle latitudes have repeatedly swung from glacial cold to tropical warmth and back. It is very likely that human activity has had some impact on climate change in recent decades and that it will continue to influence the climate system in the future. We cannot change the chemical and physical composition of the atmosphere, such as by altering the concentrations of particles and gases, without changing the way the atmosphere responds to its daily dose of solar energy. That is assured by the laws of physics.

But it is a leap – a big leap – to go from these statements of fact, to an assumption that we can predict future climate changes with precision and certainty. It is an even bigger leap to try to anticipate the physical, economic and human consequences of those future climate changes. Yet we are being asked to make enormous financial and social investments that only make sense if we believe the most dire of the global warming predictions.

Last week, with fanfare, President Obama endorsed the construction of two new nuclear power reactors in Georgia, to be supported by more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees. This put him on the same page as congressional Republicans who support construction of dozens of new reactors across the country. One of the key selling points is that the plants will produce electricity without adding to the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas burden.

But 65 years into the nuclear age, the United States still has no place to permanently store radioactive waste that can remain highly toxic for thousands of years. The Obama administration has rejected the longstanding plan to bury the waste deep underground at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but has offered no substitute. The instant the proposed new reactors are loaded with atomic fuel, they will become part of the nation’s unsolved, unbudgeted, very-long-term waste problem.

Unless we know how we are going to store atomic waste and what it will cost, we cannot make a rational trade-off between those costs and the anticipated benefits of fighting global warming. Yet the president argues that we know enough about global warming to warrant immediate action, and that we have enough time to deal with nuclear waste to justify forging ahead. This approach is scientifically arrogant, economically reckless and grossly indifferent to the health and safety of many generations that will follow ours.

We accomplish nothing by shouting at one another over whether the global climate is changing, whether humans are responsible and what we ought to do about it. Today’s predictions are likely to prove to be neither as accurate as their backers claim nor as unfounded as critics think. For now, they are the best forecasts we have. The sensible approach is to consider them carefully, understand their limitations, and make decisions that are least likely to come back to haunt us. An unnecessary wind farm is not going to kill anyone in the next 1,000 years, but the waste from an unnecessary nuclear plant just might.

We owe it to ourselves, to our children and to our descendants many generations from now to get the hubris out of the climate debate.