I will stay very focused on my responsibilities as Secretary of Commerce and the economy’s doing well. I mean, you asked about some of the challenges that we have or what is going on in the world and you know I, I’m pleased to report that the economy is doing extremely well.
The emphasis has been on rights, not responsibilities. When it comes to piecing together the fragments of broken lives, we have tended to place the entire burden on the state and its agencies.
The responsibilities which are imposed by rank and privilege and good fortune can… become very onerous indeed.
My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.
People are used to juggling multiple jobs and multiple responsibilities and multiple things on the home front, and sometimes you get a day off to read, and you just want a book that feels complete and that you can get through it on a rainy day on the couch.
Government works less efficiently when it begins to grow out of control and takes on more and more of the responsibilities that belong to the citizens.
One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting, and for what purpose, and which are not.
The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.
If you have a life which is adrenaline-charged all week long because you’re a powerful CEO, or you have responsibilities and you’re committed to the people you look after, it’s very difficult on weekends to sit around the garden. So you probably look for something which gives you the same sort of adrenaline buzz.
