A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear but not that thing.

I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression freedom of worship freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.

Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear but also Freedom from Want.

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

Franklin Roosevelt was very concerned about environmental issues.

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later he was succeeding a failed Republican president and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said probably because he himself didn't know.

It is really quite amazing that all of the folks supporting privatization from the president on down keep invoking the name of my grandfather Franklin Delano Roosevelt.