HMPRESENTLY: Doing What You Say You’re Going to Do

Keep commitments. That was hammered home to me, as I was starting my career. Do what you say you’re going to do. Keep your promises.

Maybe that’s quaint — or, old-hat — these days.

Reading “The Corrupt Streets of Pagosa Springs” editorials in the Pagosa Daily Post, keeping promises was top-of-mind. When, for example, I read, in Part Five of the series, about the Pagosa Springs Town Manager and the Planning Director promising Bill Hudson “a legal opinion on the several LUDC (Land Use and Development Code) regulations that the River Rock Estates street plan seemed to violate.” Mr. Hudson notes, in the article, that he never received the opinion.

Speaking of honoring commitments…

In a 2014 interview, Donald Trump said he would release his tax returns, according to a story in Time Magazine. “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely,” said the man currently in the Oval Office. Well, it’s 2020, and that promise is still pending.

President Trump has also said “he’d invest $1 trillion in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure,” according to former Labor Secretary and columnist Robert Reich “He said he’d create tax-free dependent care savings accounts for younger and elderly dependents, and have the government match contributions low-income families put into their savings accounts…He promised to eliminate the federal deficit and bring down the debt… He said he’d drain the Washington swamp.”

Mr. Reich describes even more POTUS promises in his article.

“Your word is your bond,” I remember my dad saying when I was a kid. There were handshake agreements, in those days. Yeah, that may seem quaint, by today’s ‘standards’. But, wouldn’t it be good, right about now, to get back to some of that quaint, old-hat thinking?

Harvey Radin

Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.