By Michael Kaufman

The other day I was talking to my neighbor in front of his house as Rush Limbaugh’s voice blared inside from the radio. I like my neighbor despite his terrible judgment.  Rush was doing a segment similar to one he titled, “Teachers Run an Easy Money Scam on Fellow Citizens” for his website. He said, “Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?

“That’s not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last. Can we just get that out in the open?” According to Rush, the teaching profession today has been taken over by “people who’ve found an easy way to make a living.”

This from a man who makes millions of dollars for sitting at a microphone and spouting whatever bit of stupidity and bigotry pops into his head. In this case he ignorantly maligns so many wonderful and dedicated teachers I know or have known that I cannot name them all….so I will name only two: India Kaufman, who teaches elementary school in Atlanta, and the late Alex Smith, who taught in the Warwick Valley Middle School.    

As for Rush, he would be an ideal candidate for an appearance on a new Survivor show being proposed in an email currently making the rounds on the internet. He would be one of six business people dropped into an elementary school for a full school year. 

Each contestant will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum and a class of 20-25 students. Each class will include some learning-disabled children, children with ADHD, children who speak limited English, and several labeled with severe behavior problems. Rush and the other contestants will have to complete lesson plans at least three days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives, and to modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly.

They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. Each month they will conduct fire drills, tornado drills, and [Code Red] drills for shooting attacks.

They will be required to attend workshops, faculty meetings, and curriculum development meetings. They will also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the standards of learning (SOL) tests.  If they are sick or are having a bad day they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If any students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible. 

The business people will only have access to the public golf course on the weekends, but with their new salary, they will not be able to afford it. Lunch will be limited to 30 minutes, which is not counted as part of their work day. They will be permitted to use a student restroom as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before or after school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies.

Finally, the contestants must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time. The winner of this Survivor season will be allowed to return to their job. 

Is there anyone reading this who thinks Rush could last a week?

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Which of the following statements best describes our new dog Benji?

A. He is the sweetest, cutest thing ever.
B. He is a demonic monster who takes special pleasure in torturing the people who love him.
C. Both of the above.

The correct answer is of course C. It just depends on how Benji is feeling at a given moment. When Benji is in his sweet, cute mode he will follow you around adoringly, obey your every command, and sit calmly in your lap as you stroke his hair or rub under his chin. He will look at you with the light of love in his big beautiful eyes and you will wonder why you didn’t adopt him sooner.

And just as you are getting used to these idyllic moments of joy, something will snap in his little brain and he will go completely bonkers. Those big eyes that a moment ago looked so beautiful suddenly take on a devilish glow. He may take a little nip at your arm before leaping from your lap to embark on one of his maniacal search-and-destroy missions.

In the last few days alone the little fellow has chewed and swallowed (or tried to swallow) an amazing array of household items, only some of which are food-related. These include a penny, a 3-inch nail, a whole thigh bone from a cooked chicken, a small flashlight, the plastic cap of a container of fluticasone propionate nasal spray, toilet paper, a pepper mill, shoes, socks, underwear, a used coffee filter and grounds, one of my wife’s fancy earrings, and the dough hook from the Kitchen Aid mixer.

Although he enjoys playing with his own toys he seems to take extra pleasure in running at full tilt around the house with something he knows he shouldn’t have in his mouth.  He delights in evading capture and then pausing to look at us from a safe distance, chomping merrily in defiance, laughing at us with his eyes.

The nail was especially worrisome.  We were afraid it would cut up his insides and he’d die if he swallowed it. He didn’t. However, he did swallow the chicken-thigh bone in its entirety. My wife Eva-Lynne wanted to call the vet immediately. I opted for “watchful waiting” as Benji seemed to be suffering no ill effects. The next morning he vomited it up, still in one piece.

The dough hook was too large for him to swallow and it remains fully serviceable despite the presence of numerous tiny teeth marks. We will have to take the earring to a jeweler to see if it can be repaired. If not maybe we can let Benji chew on the other one so they can be worn together to effect an artistic “funky” look.

On the brighter side, he has gotten the hang of relieving himself outside and sparing our carpets and floors from contact with his bodily fluids and solids. This has led me to an idea that I think may yield great financial reward. It occurred to me during one of my walks with Benji.

You know how there are all these books that give new parents instructions on how to toilet train their children? Try Googling the topic some time if you don’t know what I’m referring to. Or just take my word for it: There is a glut. But is there really a need? What happened during all those years there were no books on the subject? Do you think the world was full of adults walking around peeing in their pants?

Anyway, my idea is to adapt that successful model and to write a book entirely devoted to the subject of “toilet training” puppies and young dogs. Maybe I’ll even write several books on the subject, one for small dogs, another for larger breeds, perhaps one on training older dogs. For illustration we can take pictures of Benji and his friend Linus as they go through the various stages of doing their business….that is, if Benji doesn’t swallow the camera first.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Duke Snider won almost every game he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers with a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Those games, all against the Giants and Yankees, were played at an imaginary Ebbets Field in the driveway of my Aunt Sadye and Uncle Joe’s house on Reads Lane in Far Rockaway. Grandma Kaufman lived upstairs.

Duke Snider (1926-2011)

The brick wall on the side of the house was the perfect target for the pink rubber “spaldeen” that served as the baseball. The neighbor’s hedge on the other side of the driveway was the outfield wall. Those were all I needed to be pitcher, catcher, umpire, batter, fielder—and even the announcer–for those epic contests against the Dodgers’ arch rivals. “Runners on first and third, one out….The infield is at double-play death.” (I hadn’t learned the word “depth” yet.)

For a ground ball I would throw the spaldeen near the bottom of the wall, field it, and throw it back to the wall so I could catch it as the first baseman. “Top of the fourth, two outs, nobody on…. Alvin Dark the batter for the Giants…. Here’s the pitch from Erskine…. grounder to second… .Gilliam up with it, throws to first…. side retired.” Ground balls that got past me were hits. Fly balls that went over the hedge (“on to Bedford Avenue”) were home runs. The neighbor never complained.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox had nothing on me. My games were all unabashedly fixed, although I had an occasional slipup….like the time I tried to have Snider make a great catch to rob Mickey Mantle of a home run but I threw the spaldeen too hard and too high up on the wall so it sailed into the neighbor’s yard.  Or the time I tried to get Willie Mays to hit in to a double play with the bases loaded but the usually dependable Pee Wee Reese bobbled the ball and then made a bad throw to first.  Of course the good thing about having all the games at Ebbets Field was that no matter what happened I could still arrange it for the Dodgers to win….and for the Duke to be the hero.

Jackie Robinson was my father’s hero, for reasons I would understand better later on. But for me, no one came close to the Duke. My parents bought me a little Dodgers’ uniform with the number 4 sewn on the back, Duke’s number. I copied his batting stance, his stylish uppercut swing that looked good even when he struck out. Even now I can make the case that during the years that he, Mantle, and Mays played in New York (1951-1957), he was every bit as good with the bat and glove as those two all-time greats (although he was never the base runner they were). But someone looking only at their lifetime career statistics would have no clue. The Duke ended his career with a total of 404 home runs. Mantle had 536, Mays 660.

Duke’s home-run total would have been a lot closer to Mantle’s were it not for Walter O’Malley. When O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner,  broke Brooklyn’s heart and took the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, he also took the home runs out of Duke’s bat.  The Dodgers played their first four seasons in La La Land in the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, where the right-field fence measured 440 feet from home plate. Snider, who had hit 40 or more home runs every season from 1953 through 1957, hit only 15 in 1958 and would never hit more than 23 again.

Legend has it that Don Drysdale, the Hall of Fame Dodgers pitcher and Snider’s roommate, wept when the team sold Snider to the Mets in 1963. But for old Dodgers fans it was a chance to come out and cheer for our hero again. At first it was a thrill to see him standing in center field at the Polo Grounds in a Mets uniform, to shout at the top of our lungs when he came to bat, “Come on DOOK!” But soon it became clear that for Duke the thrill was gone. He scowled and shivered uncomfortably in the outfield during the cold-weather games in April. He didn’t run out ground balls, which angered some of his younger teammates who had illusions about the team’s chances of success that year. (Duke knew they were none to none.) He ended the season with 14 home runs, 45 runs batted in and a .243 batting average in 354 at-bats (his most at-bats since 1957).

That was his penultimate season and it was not without its good moments. There was the time the Dodgers were in town and Snider came up to bat against Drysdale. Drysdale grooved a fastball down the middle of the plate and Snider timed his signature swing perfectly to hit a home run. After the game Drysdale said with a wink, “I just wanted to see if he could still hit the fastball.”

For those who were there it was a glimpse of the Snider of old, the great hitter who had once explained in an interview with The Sporting News, “In the split second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand until it reaches the plate you have to think about your stride, your hip action, your wrist action, determine how much, if any, the ball is going to break, and then decide whether to swing at it.”

There was one last forgettable season in 1964 with the San Francisco Giants. He hit only .210 with four home runs and 17 RBI in 91 at-bats.  But no one will remember him as a player for the Giants or the Mets—and only the Californians will think of him as a player for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was and will forever be the Duke of Flatbush.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

You can’t blame the pet adoption people for not telling you everything in their ads. I doubt there are many people searching for a dog that will hump their daughter any chance he gets. But that is what he does whenever Gahlia is home from college. They can’t very well write, “Looking for a dog that likes to eat his own feces….and then lick your face?” How about, “Foot Fetishist’s Delight: This little fellow loves to lick your bare feet and toes….and bite them too!” Or, “Want a cute little dog that chews everything in sight?

Before we adopted Benji I had never heard of a “wee wee pad.” Now I just wish someone would invent a “doo doo pad” to go with it. Benji thinks any rug or carpet in the house is the perfect place to deposit his bon bons. As my wife Eva-Lynne pointed out the other day, “We didn’t know how good we had it with Petey.”

Petey, alev ha sholem, was our last dog. When we adopted him from the Warwick Valley Humane Society he was already trained to relieve himself outdoors. When he wanted to go out he would get our attention by shaking his collar to make noise.  You’d take him outside and he would go right away. No muss no fuss. He did have an odd predilection for defecating on a slope, but if none was available, he’d go on flat ground.  His one disgusting habit was eating cat turds out of the litter box, but even that doesn’t seem so disgusting now.

I used to be amused by the way our neighbor Andrea would plead with her dog: “Come on Linus, make poo poo.” We often walked our dogs together and I always felt a little smug when this happened. I never had to plead with Petey.  Now I don’t feel so smug.

I have walked Benji at length in the bitter cold, on our treacherous icy driveway and nearby roads. When I heard myself imploring, “Come on Benji, make poo poo,” I was humbled. And since it seemed somehow unmanly to be saying those words, I changed them to, “Come on Benji, get the feeling” and later still, in frustration, to, “Come on Benji, will you please make a crap already!”

Eva-Lynne decided we should keep a log of the times we take him out for a walk and record the results. This has proved helpful. A typical entry by Eva-Lynne will read, “7:45 a.m.—Peed, no b.m.” Or “peed and b.m.” My first entry was, “8:30 a.m—Nada!” It took several days before I could joyfully write, “Peed and crapped!” I drew a smiley face at the end.

In fairness to Benji, he was trained to do his business indoors by his previous owners. They live in an apartment complex in Suffolk County that does not allow pets. So they kept him inside at all times until his recent rescue by the Save-a-Pet people. They told us Benji is a poodle/shih-tzu mix. Others have suggested he is a Jack Russel/shih-tzu mix, which would explain why he sometimes takes one of his toys between his teeth, and shakes it violently and growls as if he were killing a small animal. (If you go on line and look at the pictures of the two mixes, you see that he could be either.)

My daughter Sadie thinks Benji is bipolar, because when he isn’t acting crazy he will sit peacefully on your lap or at your feet. He likes it when you pet his head or under his chin. At those times he is a sweet, gentle soul.  But in the blink of an eye he can turn manic. One of his favorite activities at these times is to gallop at full speed around the kitchen island, repeatedly, in an oval pattern. We can shout “Benji! Benji! Stop!” all we want but he is oblivious. He is in the zone—like Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes. 

What can I say? He eats his own feces. He humps my daughter. He chews everything in sight. And I can’t help but love the little guy.

Michael can be react at Michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

When it comes to the information super highway, I drive like a little old lady. And I am going to have to keep it that way if I ever expect to finish any work. Even without Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry, phone texting, or “apps” of any sort, I always seem to get stuck in traffic.

It begins as soon as the Yahoo home page welcomes me to my computer screen with the latest news headlines. Gino Cimoli died? Damn! Wait, what do they mean, “….first Dodger batter?” I click the link to the full story. Now I see….They meant he was the first-ever batter for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I remember when he played for Brooklyn. He wasn’t great but he made the National League All-Star team one year. I was 10 and away at Camp Greylock, a summer camp in Massachusetts. We watched the game on TV there. I went to Greylock because my friend Frank Brown went there and he loved it. Frank lived in Spring Valley but we knew each other because our parents were friends. When Gino Cimoli came up to bat in the All-Star game all the Brooklyn Dodgers fans cheered.

Greylock. The head counselor was named Murray Zung. Some of the kids thought he was mean. They would jokingly say, “We want Zung hung.” A couple of decades later when I was covering a dermatology meeting for a medical newspaper I noticed one of the doctors had the name “Murray Zung” on his badge. I asked him if he’d ever worked at Camp Greylock. He looked at the name on my press badge and shouted, “Mikey Kaufman!”

I think I’ll take a quick look at my email first before I get down to work.  Maybe there will be something important regarding school or a work assignment…. What’s this….something from my brother?  Did he find cousin Lakshimi?…. No, but he found a review of a dance performance she gave in Boston in 1949. He sent a link to the review in the Harvard Crimson.  (Click) The reviewer enjoyed Lakshimi’s interpretations of traditional dances of India. He was less kind to Uncle Wana (“Maestro Singh” as he called him). Apparently Uncle Wana provided a confusing narration as he introduced the various dances.

Wana was married to our Aunt Gertie, my mother’s older sister. He was a musician and musicologist who taught Indian music and dance in New York City for many years. Among his pupils was John Coltrane, the great jazz saxophonist. My brother studied with Wana for a while and did quite well. I took a few lessons too but I wasn’t very good. Gertie and Wana have been dead for a long time and my brother and I lost touch with Lakshimi. I wonder if we’ll ever find her…..or her two daughters.

Okay, time to get to work. Wait. I better check my Zest of Orange email. I haven’t looked at it in a couple of days….There is only one but the subject line is a bombshell:  “Ever been to Ecuador?” Yes! The sender’s address includes the name Larry and I know immediately who it is from. The message says only, “1963? Just wondering.” It is unsigned. He knew I would know, even though we haven’t seen each other for 40 years.

Larry was my roommate during a summer trip arranged for U.S. high-school students by a company called Scholastic Trips Abroad. A couple of weeks before our scheduled departure there was a military coup in that country. President Carlos Arosemena was ousted after serving only 20 months in office, during which he promoted reformist causes such as low-cost housing, progressive income taxes, and yearly bonuses for workers. Perhaps most importantly he was friendly towards Cuba, which caused an ongoing conflict with the Ecuadorean military….and unease in Washington. The organizers of our trip assured our parents that everything was under control and all would be well. They were wrong.

 I reply to Larry, explaining that I’d looked for him “a gazillion times” over the last 40 years but had never been able to track him down. And he replies immediately, saying he’d looked for me a gazillion times too and now, thanks to the internet, he’d found me. “I’m living in California near San Francisco, two kids, divorced, semi -retired if I can’t find work….

“I talked to Frank Brown lately. He is in Rockland County.” I had forgotten:  Larry was from Spring Valley and we had both known Frank before we ever met. 

Larry wants to know if I have Facebook so we can share pictures or a webcam so we can talk on Skype. I have to tell him I am not that high tech. If I had stuff like that I’d never get any work done. 

Damn! Gino Cimoli was 81.

Well, I see it is about lunch time now. I’m hungry. I’ll get started on that work right after I eat some lunch.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Many years have passed since the term “glittering generalities” popped into my head. My old teachers often used the term to describe certain bad writing traits among their students. Now it seems as if those students are enjoying the last laugh. They write State of the Union speeches for the president and rebuttals to the State of the Union speech for his opponents. Some may see this as an improvement over vitriol but I’m not so sure.  At least vitriol can be highly specific and accurate at times.

The online dictionary site WordIQ.com defines “glittering generalities” as “emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. They appeal to emotions such as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. They are a typically used by politicians and propagandists.” As Al Roller, my former managing editor used to say of the copy we churned out on behalf of pharmaceutical company-sponsored publications, “It’s beautiful. It says everything and it says nothing.”

But this is not a time to be speaking in platitudes that say nothing. President Obama’s State of the Union speech was a lot like Andrew Cuomo’s inaugural speech earlier this month. “At the end of the day, we’re all Americans,” said Obama, invoking the “American Dream” theme that has always been a crowd pleaser. Only now it wouldn’t play too well before a crowd of thousands of retired General Motors workers, who lost their pensions when the company was on the verge of collapse and did not get them back when the company was bailed out by taxpayers like themselves.

Nor would it play well to the thousands of Wyeth employees who lost their jobs after that pharmaceutical company was acquired by the giant Pfizer, which received millions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) prior to the acquisition.

Then there are the 1,100 Whirlpool workers who lost their jobs at the Evansville, Indiana, plant last year when the company shut it down and moved operations to Mexico–after receiving $19 million in “smart grid” stimulus money. The company, which markets appliances around the globe under various brand names, was in no danger of failing. It just wanted to improve the profit margin for the shareholders. As Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s Future wrote at the time, “Whirlpool knows that taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs. Whirlpool employees aren’t the only ones losing their jobs…. Closing a plant like this also means all the supplier, transportation and other third-party jobs go away. More than 100 blind or disabled individuals could also be left jobless. The Evansville Association for the Blind has issued a public plea, asking businesses to consider using their employees.

“There will be more home foreclosures,” Johnson continued. The plant closing will put a strain on local businesses, perhaps even forcing some to close down, he noted. “Whirlpool is profiting from making all this someone else’s problem.”

When workers at the plant planned a rally to save their jobs, they received an ominous warning from management. “We have reminded the Local 808 leadership that the decision to close is final and is not under further consideration,” wrote Paul Coburn, director of operations, in a memo published on the front page of the plant newsletter. “In the last six months we have delivered strong results in spite of having to see a good deal of our equipment taken out of the building and moved to its new location. I believe that it is a testament to your character that you have continued to work hard to preserve the positive reputation of the Evansville workforce during this period. With this in mind, we have shared our concern with Local 808 leaders that these negative activities will only hamper employees when they look for future jobs.

“The entire community is aware and sympathetic towards the situation we all face. We fear that potential employers will view the actions of a few and determine whether they would want to hire any of Evansville Division employees in the future. We hope that this is not the case, but think it is certainly a consideration. Since the announcement, we have operated extremely well working together. We are trying to make this difficult situation better by providing a wide range of support including applying for and securing the TAA grant; offering TAA meetings on site; offering computer and refresher courses on site; counseling retirement age employees of their options; communicating as much information as we have on what to expect, and many other things.

“We are disappointed that Local 808 is not also focusing energies on the transition, where it will make a difference.  None of us like this situation, but at this time we have to make the best of it and take positive actions towards our future outside of Whirlpool.”

Our future outside of Whirlpool? While many of the Evansville workers are still collecting unemployment checks and searching in vain for new jobs, Coburn remains at Whirlpool, where he was recently promoted to Division Vice President. Such has become the American Dream.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

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.