By Michael Kaufman

Say this about Barack Obama: He sure makes a great speech. If only his job consisted of making speeches he’d already be right up there with the all-time great presidents in American history. His moving remarks Wednesday night in Tucson struck just the right tone. Only the most ardent of Rush Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” (and some other unprintable-on-a-family-blog-site heads) would think otherwise.  So will someone please explain to me why someone as bright, articulate, and seemingly decent as President Obama keeps sending members of our armed forces to occupy, fight, kill (or be killed or maimed) in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Meanwhile, as I listened to the president’s plea for civility Wednesday night, my thoughts turned to people I know or have known whose political views differ greatly from my own. There was Karen Coolidge, president of the Young Republicans when I was a student at SUNY New Paltz.  Back then I was part of a group of socialist-minded students seeking authorization from the college administration to hold meetings on campus just like the Young Republicans and Young Democrats did. When the administration denied our request, Karen spoke out in favor of our right to meet and helped get the bureaucrats to reverse their decision. During our time together at New Paltz, Karen and I argued vehemently about the war in Vietnam, the Cold War and other divisive issues. I never once doubted her honesty, sincerity, or good intentions nor did she doubt mine. 

I thought about my childhood friend Paul Elis, who served in the Green Berets in Vietnam while I was protesting against the war and resisting the draft at home. Our friendship, strained as it was at the time, has endured.  

More recently, when I wrote about losing my job a couple of years ago one of the first people I heard from was Douglas Cunningham, a political conservative who had previously lost his own job at the Times Herald-Record.  I still have the email. “The family matters,” he wrote. “The job is just a job.”

That was the last of four bullet points labeled “practical thoughts.” It was followed by nine helpful tips on job searching. I still don’t like Doug’s politics. He worked for Nan Hayworth’s campaign in the last election against John Hall, targeted for special attention by the Republican National Committee (but not among those included in Sarah Palin’s infamous “bullseye” map). But I like Doug…..and we can converse with civility. The Record is much the worse without him….as it is without Beth Quinn, who used to argue collegially with him within its pages. 

I have spent parts of the last couple of days listening to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I wanted to hear what they had to say about the events in Tucson and particularly regarding the blunt and I believe truthful comments of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. Had they heard Keith Olbermann’s “special comment” on MSNBC wherein he apologized for any intemperate remarks of his own that might have been interpreted by a deranged person as suggestive of an act of violence? Would they too renounce or reconsider the use of inflammatory language? What did they think of the president’s speech?

When I listened to Hannity, he and his callers were railing against Sheriff Dupnik as if he had directly accused right-wing radio and television commentators like Hannity of causing last Saturday’s deadly rampage. No one….not Dupnik, not Olbermann, not anyone I know of, said any such thing. But Hannity and his callers spent their time gleefully recalling instances when Democrats, including the president, used language like “hand to hand combat” and “bullseye” to discuss their electoral or Congressional confrontations with Republicans. 

Rush was even more clueless. He began his program by telling a convoluted story he said he’d heard from a man who had been on a plane returning to the U.S. from abroad. The man heard the couple sitting behind him say that Rush had killed people in Arizona. “Can you believe that?” The man did not say anything to the people because he didn’t want to create a disturbance, but when he got up he glared at the couple to show his displeasure.

After that heartwarming story Rush began his program by making fun of Professor Carlos Gonzalez, the Native American who gave the invocation at the beginning of Wednesday’s memorial gathering in Tucson. Then he ridiculed Eric Holder, U.S. attorney general, and Janet Napolitano, director of homeland security, for reading from scripture. “That must have really alienated the Democrats’ base,” he laughed. He noted that there were no rabbis, priests or ministers included, and joked, inanely, “I wonder what the Muslim brothers thought.” He called the memorial a “pep rally” and suggested it had been delayed for a week (actually it was four days) so the president could tailor his speech to reflect public opinion polls and “they could print the t-shirts they gave out.” Click.

I’d had enough. The president is wrong about a lot of things, including the deadly occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, but he is right about the need for civility. I think Karen Coolidge, Paul Elis, and Doug Cunningham would agree.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

From Michael Sweeton, Warwick Town supervisor, to Mario Cuomo, our new state governor, to Barack Obama himself, elected officials across the country are taking aim at government workers and public school teachers as if they, their unions, and their pension plans are responsible for the current economic crisis. In a New Years eve reflection published in the weekly Warwick Advertiser, Sweeton noted that 2010 had been the most “challenging year” in recent memory. “A shrinking economy, stressed pension plans, and an uncertain future combined to affect us all,” said Sweeton.

Cuomo, upon taking office, immediately announced he would set an example by cutting his own salary by 5 percent….and freezing the salaries of state workers. As I read an editorial in the Times Herald-Record lauding the governor’s actions, I thought of the words of Anatole France: “The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Cuomo’s symbolic salary cut will have no impact on his lavish lifestyle. The salary freeze on state workers will hurt a lot of people.  As even the editorial writer admitted, these actions will have no impact on the state’s huge budget deficit.  Nevertheless, they said, they “set the right tone.”

President Obama has made similar noises about salary freezes and has thus far refused to speak out forthrightly against cuts in Social Security and other vital social programs, even as economic conditions force more Americans into joblessness and poverty. 

And fresh from their electoral victory in November, the Republicans who now control the House of Representatives are preparing to “return government back to the people”—in the words of new speaker John Boehner—by repealing health care reform, making permanent the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and loosening the recently enacted financial regulations aimed at protecting citizens from avaricious practices of financial institutions.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in 10 states intend to introduce bills that would make union dues optional for members, reports Steven Greenhill of The New York Times. Wisconsin’s governor wants to bar state workers from forming unions altogether. Ohio’s governor is launching the biggest assault on unions, says Greenhill, seeking to outlaw strikes by school teachers, prevent child care and home care workers from unionizing, and end a rule that non-union construction workers on public contracts be paid union-scale wages.

Just how much public support exists for the draconian measures advocated by corporate media outlets and local, state, and national politicians is debatable. According to a just-released 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, most Americans think the United States should raise taxes for the rich to balance the budget.  While Congressional Republicans are demanding spending cuts to curb the $1.3 trillion deficit, 61 percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the deficit, the poll showed. The next most popular way—chosen by 20 percent—was to cut defense spending.

Only four percent would cut the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly, and just three percent would cut the Social Security retirement program, the poll showed.  Asked which part of the world they would fix first, the largest proportion of respondents—36 percent –chose Washington, compared with 23 percent who picked the Middle East and 14 percent who chose Haiti.

The poll included a random sample of 1,067 adults across the U.S. from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus three percentage points, 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair said.

And in a fine column Jan. 5 in the Times Herald-Record, Meghan Murphy debunks the myth that public employees and their unions are to blame for the rising cost of government. She cites a study by the Center for Economic Policy and Research that found that government workers make four percent less than comparable private-sector workers. As for “those cushy benefits packages,” the report found “only a slight advantage for government workers, which balanced out the lower pay.”

And Murphy does not stop there.  After acknowledging that private-sector employees suffered losses during the recession, including wage freezes, furloughs, and closing of pension plans, she writes, “Does that mean we should scrape away the benefits that public workers retained through union contracts?

“Not if you think about a recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies. The report says corporations used the recession to squeeze private-sector workers, laying people off and cutting pay as profits increased.”

She also gives the lie to the hype that labor unions wield undue influence in Albany. “This election cycle, 8.5 percent of campaign donations came from unions, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. About 27 percent of donations came from businesses, and about 25 percent came from just 169 individuals. Among those top check-writers—two hedge fund managers, two real estate investors, and a for-profit chatter school leader.”

Think about those numbers next time you hear a local, state, or national politician (Democrat or Republican) or one of the millionaire blowhards on talk radio or Fox News, railing against “stressed pension plans” of government employees and school teachers.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Amazon.com thinks they know me but they don’t. Why else would they send me the following email:

“Dear Amazon.com Customer,
“Customers who have purchased or rated Mazeltov, Mis Amigos by Juan Calle & his Latin Lantzmen might like to know that Songs from the Depths of Hell is now available.  You can order yours for just $19.09 by following the link below. 

“Songs from the Depths of Hell, Kulisiewicz, Price:  $19.09” 

Yes, I ordered Mazeltov Mis Amigos a while back. It is a clever mix of Latin jazz music with traditional Yiddish songs like Mein Shtetele Belz (played as a pachanga) and Bei Mir Bist du Shein (played as a meringue). The album was recorded for Riverside records in 1961 and included some of the biggest names in 50s and 60s Latin music, conga-drum great Ray Barretto, timbales guru Wilie Rodriguez, and pianist Charlie Palmieri playing alongside African-American jazz greats Clark Terry, Doc Cheatham, Lou Oles, and Wendell Marshall.  “Juan” was actually John Cali, an Italian-American banjo picker best known for his work with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra and his solo banjo offerings. The only “lantzman” was Ed Powell, who sang in Yiddish on the date. 

I purchased the recently reissued CD for many reasons. I love jazz.  I love Latin music. I love Yiddish music. I love funny stuff. And the late Ray Barretto, who lived in Warwick, was one of my favorites.

When my daughter Sadie was little I took her to a free afternoon children’s concert he did in Newark. Barretto and his band played their hearts out for the kids as if it were a Saturday night on the main stage at the Newport Jazz Festival. They even played “Manteca” specially for us after I requested it.

I don’t like that Amazon tracks my purchases and sends me emails about items they think I may be interested in. It seems like an invasion of privacy.  (And you should see some of the emails they sent after I ordered two pamphlets by Karl Marx that I thought Sadie could use when she was taking economics in college!)

After I ordered a book by Steve Crist, editor of the Daily Racing Form, I got emails from Amazon telling me about every new book on horse racing. Since ordering a French press coffee maker I’ve been getting emails about every new kitchen product and gizmo imaginable.

But Songs from the Depths of Hell?

Here is the description: “Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a survivor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, is a voice of hope in the face of despair. The agony of the songs is intense, but the beauty of the musical expression helps to counter the suffering experienced by so many millions. Sung in German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish with English translations in the liner notes.” 

Hmmmmmmmm, sounds interesting…..very interesting.  I don’t know how they got there from Mazeltov Mis Amigos, damn their eyes, but they got me on this one. The email provides no more information before closing with “We hope you found this message to be useful” but  at the Amazon site I learned that the album was originally released in 1979 on Smithsonian Folkways. No titles are listed but the 15 songs can be downloaded for $8.99 or purchased on CD for $15.99.

I’ll think about it. I still think it is an invasion of privacy.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Vincent Ferri was in his car last Saturday listening to President Obama’s explanation of the tax bill he negotiated with the Republicans. Ferri, a Vietnam combat veteran and peace and social justice activist, was outraged by what he sees as “capitulation” to those “who would destroy Social Security and who were responsible for the recession that resulted from their unfunded wars, unfair NAFTA agreements, and the deregulation of the various financial institutions.”

“Many of the same people who put our economy in the toilet will be among the wealthiest Americans receiving a huge windfall tax break by Obama’s ‘compromise,’” says Ferri, adding that by putting forward this legislation Obama has become “the first president to allow a direct frontal attack on Social Security since it began. “The Republicans held the unemployment extension hostage in return for these two devastating concessions,” says Ferri. “For all of their moralizing and their claims of family and religious values, their actions speak of greed and indifference to those in need.

“Will those tax benefits bring new jobs? Will they prevent the further loss of jobs? Economists say NO. The wealthy won’t spend that money to create jobs, as demonstrated by the history of the Bush era. They will continue to build factories overseas  to put more Americans out of work or just continue to accumulate more wealth and power to increase the corporate stranglehold on our governmental institutions.”

Ferri, who lives in the Town of Wallkill, has called on his friends and fellow activists in the Orange County peace and social justice movements to join him in an “emergency demonstration” Saturday on the median strip at Middletown Galleria. 

“We cannot let those around us proceed with their Christmas shopping without facing the reality of what is about to happen,” he says. “So, let’s spend that money, but wait, can you find any products on the store shelves made in America, or will spending that tax relief money just increase the deficit in our balance of trade with the third world slave labor nations that now own most of America? Will spending that money put more Americans out of work?”

One who has responded to the call is the indefatigable Michael Sussman, lawyer and longtime activist for peace and social justice.  “The people are awfully quiet….a bit like sheep,” says Sussman, leader of the Orange County Democratic Alliance, in an email to friends and fellow activists. “Are we angry? Do we feel that the wealthy are being advantaged at a time when so many are struggling badly?”  If so, he appeals to readers to join him, Ferri and others “in the streets this weekend in our own county – making noise.”

Sussman recalls the antiwar demonstrations of 2002 “when we were out screaming that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and was NOT connected to 9/11 and that our country was on the brink of madness. We were right then and we are right now…extending these tax breaks is insane, simply insane.  

“Vincent Ferri is mad and has taken the lead. Let’s join him this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the entrance to the Galleria with signs galore and an energy and spirit to repel the elements.”  Yes, let’s.

END NOTE–If you haven’t seen or heard this recent speech before members of the U.S. Senate by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) please do so now. Here is the link. (Note the lack of applause by the Republicans and Democrats he made so uncomfortable simply by speaking the truth):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5OtB298fHY&feature=player_embedded

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

There was the time I double parked in front of the OTB on Broadway in Riverdale so I could run in for a quick look to see if I’d won a bet I’d placed earlier at a parlor downtown near my job. Not only did my horse finish out of the money, but when I went back to the car a cop was writing out a ticket.

“I was just in there for a few seconds,” I pleaded. “Can’t you cut me some slack?”

He apologized and recited the standard explanation that once he starts writing a ticket he has to finish it. Then he told me he didn’t like his job. When I drove away I felt worse for him than I did for myself.

Once, when I was a single father raising two young daughters, my little one entered my name in a contest for “mother of the year.” This still warms my heart. She is all grown up now and recently I heard her laughingly tell her younger sisters about the time I took her into the seedy, smoke-filled OTB in the George Washington Bridge bus station so I could get a bet down.  “When we walked in, dad turned to me and said, ‘You’ll never get the father of the year award if you take your kid into this place!’” 

During a big protest march against the war in Vietnam that was eventually broken up by mounted police, I ducked into an OTB parlor to bet a race.

Al, the art director where I worked as editor of a medical newspaper, was also an avid horseplayer and we often would go partners on small exacta or quiniella wagers, which require picking the horses that finish first and second in a race. One of us would run out to the OTB to place the bet. During his lunch hour, Al would draw clever cartoons based on the names of the horses we were playing that day. These were so well drawn and funny that I sent some to Vic Ziegel, sports editor of the Daily News, suggesting they might use Al as a cartoonist. Vic replied that he loved Al’s work but the paper already had a daily cartoon with a horse racing theme. I still have a batch of Al’s old cartoons.

As a young sportswriter I had covered the opening of the first OTB parlor in Grand Central Station in 1971. Each time the powers that be have threatened to shut down the operation (Catskill OTB is unaffected) I have dug out the old article to use as grist for Zest. But at the last minute there was always a settlement that kept the parlors open and the old article went back into the file.  Not today. They shut it down Tuesday night, putting 1,000 more people out of work right before the holidays.

Few if any of those who lost their jobs were present for the opening at Grand Central, where a section in the middle of the upper level of the bustling railroad station became the first OTB site in the city. Mingling through the crowd that day were eager young men and women, employees of the new OTB Corporation, offering to explain things and asking if anyone needed help filling out their betting slips. A lot of people needed help. Nobody asked.

An old woman moaned when she saw the long lines. “I’ll miss my train!”

“No,” said her friend, “the train is over there. This is where they have the betting for the horses.”

A man waiting on line to bet said, “I like this, you know. You can’t change your mind. You make a bet, that’s it. I go to the track I always watch the odds and change my mind at the last minute. I get killed that way.” As he got closer to the window he had second thoughts. He said he likes it better at the track. You can’t feel the “action” at Grand Central Station. When it was finally almost his turn he looked nervously at his betting slips and then at the racing section of his Daily News. Then he said, “Save my place! I’ll be right back. I changed my mind.”

A young man with an old-fashioned bullhorn announced, “There are plenty of slips under the Big Ben clock. Winning tickets from last night’s races are being cashed at windows one and two. Bets on tonight’s races are being taken at windows three through 10.” The lines at windows three through 10 were about 40 and 50 deep. Hardly anyone stood on lines one and two. No one will stand on line today. 

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

One day last week my wife went to Akin’s Pharmacy in Warwick to have a prescription filled. Akin’s has been our family’s pharmacy since we moved to this area some 10 years ago. We appreciate the attentive personal service offered by the pharmacists, Robert Newhard and his sister Jean, and their associates and support staff.  In the last few years we have shunned the insistent urgings of our respective employers’ health insurance companies to use their mail-order services to have our prescriptions filled. Their hard-sell approach includes discount offers and other incentives designed to convince us of the advantages of abandoning our home-town pharmacy in favor of an impersonal, far away post-office box.

As she awaited her turn to be served, my wife overheard a conversation between an Akin’s customer and employee. The customer, an older woman with a physical disability, had just expressed her shock at the high cost of her prescribed medicine.  “Medicare always covered it before. Why aren’t they covering it now?” As the employee gently explained that she had arrived at the perfidious “donut-hole” stage of her coverage, my wife heard another patron grumble something about “Obamacare.”

The woman said she didn’t know what to do. She needed her medicine but she didn’t have the money to pay for it. After conferring with the pharmacist, the employee returned with the filled prescription. “We’ll put it on your tab,” she said, “and the pharmacist will call them and try to see what we can do to get it covered.”

Several lessons may be drawn from this episode. Obviously, no mail-order pharmacy would have provided this woman with her medicine without payment.  The same is true of big-chain drug stores like CVS and Rite-Aid, both of which have branches in Warwick.  But this incident also illustrates the widespread ignorance on the part of citizens who are unfamiliar with the implications of the healthcare-reform legislation passed last year. For all its faults, “Obamacare” aims to eliminate the donut hole—that is, if the Republicans about to assume control of Congress allow reform to go into effect.

The donut hole is a carryover from Medicare legislation  enacted in 2006 during the Bush administration, when elected officials who are in the pocket of the big pharmaceutical companies insisted on its inclusion. After a Medicare beneficiary surpasses the prescription drug coverage limit, they are financially responsible for the entire cost of prescription drugs until the expense reaches the “catastrophic coverage” threshold.

This paved the way for the big health insurance companies to start selling “gap insurance” to those seniors who could afford it.  According to a study done in 2007, premiums for plans offering gap coverage are roughly double those charged by the same insurers for their standard plans. 

With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (so-called  Obamacare), people who fall within the donut hole receive a $250 rebate within three months of reaching the coverage gap to help with payments. (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began mailing rebate checks earlier this year.) The donut hole is slated to be completely phased out by 2020, but that seems a long way off and we are currently witness to an all-out assault against “entitlements.”

As U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote recently, “The billionaires and their supporters in Congress are hell-bent on taking us back to the 1920s, eliminating all traces of social legislation designed to protect working families, the elderly, children and the disabled. No ‘social contract’ for them. They want it all. They want to privatize or dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and let the elderly, the sick and the poor fend for themselves.

“They want to expand our disastrous trade policies so corporations can continue throwing U.S. workers out on the street as they outsource jobs to China and other countries known for low wages. Some want to eliminate the minimum wage so American workers can have the ‘freedom’ to work for $3 an hour. They want to eliminate or slash the Department of Education, making it harder for working-class kids to get a decent education, child care or the help they need to go to college.

“They want to curtail the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy so ExxonMobil can remain the most profitable corporation in history and oil and coal companies can continue to pollute our air and water.

“They want to make sure billionaire hedge-fund managers have a lower federal tax rate than middle-class teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers by maintaining a loophole in the tax code known as ‘carried interest.’

“We know what billionaires and their Republican supporters want. They’ve been upfront about it. But what about Democrats? Will President Obama continue to reach out and compromise with people who have made it abundantly clear that the only agreement they want is unconditional surrender? Or will he use the powerful skills we saw in his 2008 presidential campaign and bring working families, young people, the elderly and the poor together to fight these attacks on their well-being?

“Will Senate Democrats continue to pass tepid legislation, or will they use their majority status to protect the interests of ordinary Americans and—and for a change—put Republicans on the defensive?”“

While it’s true billionaires and their supporters are ‘fired up and ready to go,’ there’s another, more important truth: There are a lot more of us than there are of them. Now is the time for us to stand together, educate and organize. Now is the time to roll back this orgy of greed.” 

This is a lot easier said than done. So far the billionaires have done a good job of misleading people by pointing the finger and blaming “big government,” “government spending,” and “Obamacare” for all our country’s woes. But Bernie is right. We see the victims of the orgy of greed each day of our lives, even in our own little drug store in Warwick.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

David Cay Johnston sent the following message in response to last week’s post: “Thanks for the kind word s in your blog post, but the income data was revised, the first time the Social Security Administration has ever done that. The very top incomes fell sharply, in fact by so much that the average fell.”

The agency had originally reported Oct. 15 that the 74 highest paid workers in the United States were paid an average of $518.8 million in 2009, compared to 131 making $91.2 million in 2008. Johnston reported it in a post at Tax.com and the stunning news was picked up by many media outlets and blog sites around the country, including Zest of Orange.

However, as Johnston explained in a follow-up post, “My column, and coverage of it by others, prompted internal questions about the reasons the average pay of the highest paid workers quintupled.” According to Mark Lassiter, a Social Security spokesman, the inquiry established that two individuals filed multiple W-2 forms reporting $32.3 billion of pay for work.

After further examination the agency determined those forms were phony. Lassiter said he doesn’t know if the filings were part of a scam or just a prank, and the matter has been referred to the agency Inspector General.

So as it turns out, removal of the bogus reports shows that the 72 remaining highest-wage earners averaged “only” $84.1 million each, down $7 million or 7.7 percent from the 2008 average. “As a result of the revisions, the data show that the average wage in 2009 dollars declined by $457 (not $243), a 1.2 percent decline from 2008,” explains Johnston. “The revision shows that since 2000 the average wage, in 2009 dollars, barely changed in real terms, increasing only $347 or 0.9 percent after nine years.” The median wage remained unchanged at $26,261, which is $37 lower than in 2000 and $253 lower than in 2008.

“The revised data strengthen my conclusion since the new numbers show that total compensation and average compensation was even lower than originally reported,” notes Johnston. “And the fact remains that every 34th worker in 2008 had no work in 2009.” Moreover, he adds, “That median pay in 2009 was below 2000 and average pay was up less than 1 percent from 2000 both show that our policies since 1980 have failed.”

In his original post, Johnston noted that in 1994, when the top category the government reported on was $20 million or more of compensation, only 25 people were in that rarefied atmosphere, and their average earnings came to just under $45 million in 2009 dollars.

“What does this all mean? It is the latest, and in this case quite dramatic, evidence that our economic policies in Washington are undermining the nation as a whole. We have created a tax system that changes continually as politicians manipulate it to extract campaign donations. We have enabled  ’free trade’ that is nothing of the sort, but rather tax-subsidized mechanisms that encourage American manufacturers to close their domestic factories, fire workers, and then use cheap labor in China for products they send right back to the United States. This has created enormous downward pressure on wages, and not just for factory workers.

“Combined with government policies that have reduced the share of private-sector workers in unions by more than two-thirds — while our competitors in Canada, Europe, and Japan continue to have highly unionized workforces — the net effect has been disastrous for the vast majority of American workers. And of course, less money earned from labor translates into less money to finance the United States of America.” We can add to the mix the infamous “Bush tax cuts” for the rich, which will soon be extended unless public pressure forces the politicians in Washington to act on behalf of the beleaguered majority of the citizenry rather than the privileged few. 

Johnston knows from what he speaks. He is a former tax reporter for The New York Times, where he received a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for exposing tax loopholes and inequities.  He currently teaches the tax, property and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management. And he is author of two bestsellers on taxes, Perfectly Legal and the recently published, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill.  His next book, The Fine Print, will be published in 2011.
I don’t know about you but I am going to be sure to read The Fine Print.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Where are all the liberal and left-wing media I keep hearing people complain about? I’ve even seen bumper stickers lately that say, “I don’t believe the liberal media.” One of my neighbors has one of those. Sometimes when I walk the dog I can hear Rush Limbaugh’s voice blaring from his radio when I go past his house.

I know they don’t like MSNBC but I have some news for them. MSNBC is owned by GE and there is only so much “liberalness” the corporate heads of GE will tolerate. They fired Phil Donohue a while back and they’d can Keith Olbermann in a heartbeat if he didn’t have the best rated program on their network. Both Donohue and Olbermann were among the very few employed by the entire US corporate media to raise their voices against the war in Iraq from the start. All the rest of the newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations fell into place, lockstep as it were.

There are still folks around here who think the Times Herald-Record falls into the “liberal media” category. Uh, has anybody seen Beth Quinn’s byline in the paper lately? Did you happen to read the lead editorial in today’s (Wednesday, November 10, 2010) paper? It is titled “End the free ride on health insurance” and it raises a familiar theme: Public employees, including those who work for local governments and school districts, have not been hit as hard by the rising cost of healthcare insurance as have people who work in the private sector. Citing data obtained by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the editorial suggests that if these people “contributed in the same way [as private-sector workers], state taxpayers would reap large benefits, now and in the future.”

These “savings,” estimated at $1 billion a year in New York State, would start as soon as the employees “began contributing.” In the future, “the savings would escalate as the cost of healthcare increases.” According to the editorial, the only people opposed to such a change would be “those employees who have enjoyed the benefits of free health coverage while they worked and when they retired. They can be counted on to use their considerable clout to fight this through their friends in Albany.”

What the editorial does not say and what an editorial in a truly liberal or left-wing media outlet might, is the following: “Free health coverage through the life span is now recognized as a right in civilized countries throughout the world. Despite restrictive labor laws that limit their rights, unions representing teachers and public employees have won better healthcare and retirement benefits for their members than those offered by employers in the overwhelmingly non-unionized private sector. Private-sector employees would do well to follow their example.”

Instead, over the last few years, including those before Rupert Murdoch bought the paper the Record has been running exposes of public workers who put in ridiculous overtime hours to pad their salaries and benefits packages at the expense of taxpayers. We might read of a toll taker whose modest salary balloons into six figures or of a teacher or cop who has figured out a way to retire at a young age with oodles of vacation pay and paid sick time coming to them in addition to the healthcare and pension benefits. 

But where were the Record and the rest of the so-called liberal media when this news was announced last month by the Social Security Administration?  Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined….but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.

“Not a single news organization reported this data when it was released October 15,” said David Cay Johnston, former tax reporter for The New York Times and author of the recently published, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With The Bill, about hidden subsidies, rigged markets, and “corporate socialism.”

“To give this some perspective,” says Johnston, “from 1992 to 2000 the number of people earning any wages grew by 21 million, but nine years later just 2.8 million more people had any work. These wage data….tell us only about the number of people who earned wages and how much. They tell us nothing about whether these individuals were underemployed, had to work more than one job, earned fringe benefits, or were employed at a level commensurate with their abilities.

“But they do give us a stunning picture of what’s happening at the very top of the compensation ladder in America.” According to Johnston, “The average wage in this top category increased from $91.2 million in 2008 to an astonishing $518.8 million in 2009. That’s nearly $10 million in weekly pay!” Further, “These 74 people made as much as the 19 million lowest-paid people in America, who constitute one in every eight workers.”

Johnston says the story the numbers tell is one of a strengthening economic base with income growing fastest at the bottom until, in 1981, “we made an abrupt change in tax and economic policy. Since then the base has fared poorly while huge economic gains piled up at the very top, along with much lower tax burdens.”

I would love to see an editorial in the Record about the savings and benefits that would be derived if these fat cats were made to pay their fair share in taxes.  I’m not holding my breath.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman 

So the Democrats have retained the majority in the United States Senate. For this they owe thanks to the Tea Party for offering tomato cans as opponents of Harry Reid in Nevada, Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut, and Chris Coons in Delaware. Each of those three would have been certain losers to any traditional run-of-the-mill Republican candidate. Too bad they didn’t have anyone similarly wacko running against Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. His defeat made it a particularly sad night for progressives around the country.

Locally there were few surprises.  I watched Andrew Cuomo’s optimistic victory speech with a healthy dose of skepticism.  He spoke proudly of the New Yorkers who elected him as being united as one, “rich and poor, black and brown and white, upstate and downstate, gay and straight,” blah, blah, blah.  I guess he couldn’t say, “Thanks for voting for me instead of that scary dude Paladino.” He sounded a lot like his father Mario, the former governor, who could stir the emotions with that sort of inspirational rhetoric appealing to “our better instincts” even if we knew it was just rhetoric. Coming from Andrew, about to inherit the titular leadership of the sewage in Albany amidst a tanking economy, it just sounded hollow.

I didn’t believe Andrew when he said that everywhere he went as he campaigned around the state people told him how much they missed his father. It was a nice thing for a son to say, especially with his mom and dad standing on the dais with him, but still kind of hard to swallow. The elder Cuomo served as governor from 1982 to 1994 and was not terribly popular by the time he left office. Besides, folks have a lot of other things on their mind today….missing Mario Cuomo isn’t likely to be one of them. But maybe they were being polite. I could see saying something like that to Andrew if he shook my hand and asked for my vote. Telling him I miss his father would be a lot kinder than telling him I think he is the lesser evil.

I hadn’t seen Mario in a while. He seems to have shrunk into a little old man but he stood beaming on the dais Tuesday night, as if watching his son accepting a trophy as most valuable player in Little League.  It struck me that if Mario had pursued his youthful dream of being a ballplayer instead of studying law and entering politics, Andrew might never have run for governor either. And Mario was a darn good ballplayer, as I learned while doing research for an article on Billy Loes. About 60 years ago he even had a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates…. although he preferred basketball to baseball.

“I loved baseball almost as much as I loved basketball, but basketball’s better because you’re always in a crowd in the center of the court,” he said in a 2005 interview with a Catholic magazine. “In baseball I was a center fielder, and it gets very lonely out in center field.

“I was a good ballplayer. The scout who scouted me saw me play against Whitey Ford (who went on to a Hall of Fame career as a left-handed pitcher for the Yankees) as a member of the Bridgeport Bees.  I was playing under the name of ‘Connie Cutts’ because I was still at the time in high school. The scout said: ‘Gee, you looked comfortable out there.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I played against him three years ago.’  I also played against Billy Loes. Billy Loes was with the Astoria Cubs and Whitey Ford was with the 34th Avenue Boys.”

“Anyway, I had some very good weeks, and the scout said: ‘Would you like to play major-league ball?’ He offered me $2,000 for signing a contract. I got $2,000 for signing, and around then, Mickey Mantle got $1,100 from another scout.

“I went home and told my father in the grocery store. My father said: ‘Why is this good?’ I said: ‘Two thousand dollars is why.’ My father said: ‘I’ll ask some of the customers.’ The people he asked said: ‘Better he should go to college.’ I told the scout that, and he had Branch Rickey (the Pirates executive who a couple of years earlier, at Brooklyn, with Jackie Robinson, had shattered baseball’s color line) write a letter to my father, who of course couldn’t read it. The letter congratulated my father for realizing that my going to college was the right thing to do.

“The contract said I wouldn’t have to show up until after graduation from college, but I went down for two weeks (tryout) in Georgia until the end of August. I got injured, hurt my wrist running up against a wall, and after that I got hit in the head. There were no MRI’s or CAT scans in those days, but the X-ray showed I had a hematoma, a blood clot on the brain. The Pittsburgh doctors said: ‘We want to open you up, take a look.’ I said: ‘I feel fine.’ Just the idea of it….well, that was the end of my baseball career.”

Cuomo’s interviewer was Jerry Tallmer, former entertainment editor at the New York Post. When Cuomo told him how he felt after losing his job as governor, Tallmer said he could relate.  “I know something about that kind of thing,” he told Cuomo.  “Rupert Murdoch fired all of us, 287 of us, including some who’d been there for a lot of years, when he broke the union – the Newspaper Guild local – at the Post.” Newspaper work hasn’t gotten any better since.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

In the last few days alone I’ve gotten phone calls from Ed Koch (twice), Carl Paladino, Nan Hayworth, Chris Christie, and a happy-sounding guy who sounded like he was from Texas. The guy who sounded like he was from Texas invited me to attend “the mother of all tea parties” Saturday in Putnam County.  Last week there was a call from someone who told me that “Rockland County needs Scott Vanderhoef.”

Because these messages are recorded, I was unable to respond.  I would have liked to have told Koch that his endorsements mean nothing to me. (I would have voted for David Carlucci anyway and I have no intention of voting for Nan Hayworth.) I would be more careful talking to Paladino: I wouldn’t want him threatening to “take me out” the way he did Fred Dicker, the venerable reporter who covers the dysfunctional political scene in Albany for the New York Post. That Paladino dude scares me.

I’d have politely told Hayworth that I prefer to have someone in Congress who will fight to preserve the Social Security system and who will work for better healthcare reform.  I would thank Governor Christie for taking time out of his busy schedule to call me—a  voter in a neighboring state—just to urge me to vote on Election Day. He didn’t even mention any candidate or political party by name. He just sounded like a swell guy with no ulterior motives such as national political aspirations.

And I would have read the tea party guy something someone emailed to me the other day. It goes like this:

To the Tea Party crowd….
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion… (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major U.S. city, New Orleans, drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks. You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.
You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 U.S. citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.
You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused U.S. citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.
No…..You finally got mad
When a black man was elected president and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick…Oh, Hell No!!

And finally, to the guy who told me that Rockland County needs Scott Vanderhoef, I would say, “I don’t know about Rockland but Orange County needs him like a hole in the head.” 

As for my choice in the State Assembly race in the 97th District, I’m going with Myrna Kemnitz over Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt. Not only do I agree with Kemnitz more on the issues, but I haven’t gotten any robot calls from her or her supporters.

FROM THE VIRTUAL MAILBAG—Thanks to Tom Karlson for his suggestion for a campaign slogan to set the record straight on healthcare reform: “They passed the bill, healthcare went up, without this law, we’d be (bleeped).” Now why didn’t the DNC think of that?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.