By Michael Kaufman

Over the next few months voters in the 19^th Congressional District will be bombarded by campaign materials and robot phone calls boosting two well-funded candidates, Republican incumbent Nan Hayworth and her Democratic challenger Sean Patrick Maloney. Maloney recently moved into the district from New York City to make the run and was endorsed by Bill Clinton, for whom he used to work as an aide.

In slickly produced campaign mailings Maloney trumpeted words of praise from The New York Times, implying to voters in last month’s Democratic primary election that he had been endorsed by that newspaper. In reality there was more criticism than praise within the quoted editorial, which ended with an endorsement of one of his opponents, Richard Becker, who had the backing of many local progressives—but was hopelessly outspent in this era of elections a la Citizens United.

In conceding defeat in the primary Becker said he was disappointed but he endorsed Maloney and stressed the importance of defeating Hayworth, whom he cast as supporting the “Tea Party agenda.” For her part, Hayworth has been trying to distance herself from the Tea Party extremists in Congress, with whom she was swept into office in 2010. To hear her and her supporters, such as Warwick Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton tell it, she is a true friend of local farmers who suffered severe damage from recent storms—despite her initial reaction that government assistance should be withheld until the money could be found by cutting the budget from another federal program.

She recently proposed relief for area commuters (but only if the funds come from the Affordable Care Act budget, also known as “Obamacare,” which she has pledged to repeal if re-elected).  But perhaps even more egregious is her stance on Social Security, in which she depicts herself as a fighter for seniors, even as she is committed to denying benefits to the next generation of seniors. Hayworth has been an unapologetic supporter of the budget proposed by Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, which would slash funding for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other government “safety net” programs—at  a time when they are needed most by millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet.  Or, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders told his colleagues in a recent speech, “when the wealthy people in this country are becoming wealthier, the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing.” Now, he said, “when we talk about an oligarchic form of government, what we’re talking about is not just a handful of families owning entire nations. We’re also talking about the politics of the nation.”

Sanders could not have made it any clearer: “When you hear folks talking about Social Security reform, hold on to your wallets because they are talking about cuts in Social Security,” said the Vermont independent.  “Nothing more, nothing less.” The latest gambit, he said is a concept called chained consumer price index (CPI).

“The so-called chained CPI is the belief…that cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security are too high,” he explained. Seniors in his home state are incredulous when they hear this, he observed, which also may be said of seniors across the country, with the possible exception of Alan Simpson, millionaire Republican ex-Senator from Wyoming, who recently used terms like “greediest generation” and “geezers” to refer to Social Security recipients.

“Seniors back home start scratching their heads” when they hear about the chained CPI, said Sanders. “They say, ‘Wait, we just went through two years when my prescription drug costs went up, my health care costs went up and I got no COLA—and there are people in Washington, Republicans, some Democrats—they say my COLA was too high?’ What world are these people living in?”

In plain language Sanders told his colleagues that imposition of chained CPI “would mean that between the ages of 65 and 75, a senior would lose about $560 a year, and then when they turn 85 and they’re trying to get by off of $13,000 or $14,000 a year, they would lose about a thousand bucks a year. That’s what some of our colleagues want to do. Virtually all the Republicans want to do it. Some Democrats want to do it as well. As chairman of the defending Social Security caucus, I’m going to do everything that I can to prevent that.”

Seniors in the 19^th district should know where the two candidates for Congress stand on this issue. Will Maloney if elected be aligned with Bernie Sanders and other progressives in the Senate and House who oppose all attempts to end Social Security as we know it, or will he be among the “some Democrats” who support drastic “reforms” such as chained CPI? And how will Hayworth answer when asked if she supports the imposition of chained CPI on the current generation of seniors? Their responses could influence the outcome of the election. The likely winner, however, will be the one who spends the most.

As  Sanders put it, “What the Supreme Court has said to the wealthiest people in this country is, okay, you own almost all the wealth of this nation — that’s great — now we’re going to give you an opportunity to own the political life of this nation. And if you’re getting bored by just owning coal companies and casinos and manufacturing plants, you now have the opportunity to own the United States government. So we have people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson. The Koch Brothers are worth $50 billion…and  they have said they’re prepared to put $400 million into this campaign to defeat Obama, to defeat candidates who are representing working families.

“You have the six largest financial institutions in this country that have assets equivalent to two-thirds of the GDP of America–over $9 trillion. These six financial institutions write half the mortgages, two-thirds of the credit cards in America. They have a huge impact on the economy. That’s not enough for these guys. The top one percent owns half of the wealth:  Not enough for these guys. Now they have the opportunity to buy the United States government. So that’s where we are.”

Sanders concluded with a plea that fell on many deaf ears in the Senate chambers but which surely resonate among many Americans: “What we have got to do is start listening to the needs of working families, the vast majority of our people, and not just the people who make campaign contributions. And I know that’s a very radical idea. But, you know, it might be a good idea to try a little bit to reaffirm the faith of the American people in their democratic form of government. Let them know just a little bit that maybe we are hearing their pain, their unemployment, their debt….the fact that they don’t have any health care; the fact they can’t afford to send their kids to college. Maybe, just maybe, we might want to listen to them before we go running out to another fund-raising event with millionaires and billionaires.”

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Although the 2012 presidential election is still five months away, a day does not pass without the announcement of results of a new poll. One day we may learn that Romney has slipped a couple of points with Latino voters, or that support for Obama has gone down a notch or two with another group. Catholics, Jews, women, African-Americans, folks who live in “swing-states,” high-income people, college graduates, gays, people in the military, seniors, youth–all and and more are fair game for the burgeoning polling industry.

It was hard enough to keep track when there were just Harris and Gallup competing with each other to be numero uno in the poll game. But since they have been joined by Zogby, Pew, Rasmussen, Quinnipiac and others, it is getting ridiculous. Major media conglomerates are also getting into the act, often combining a TV network with a big-city newspaper and/or a big-name in the polling field to lend prestige:  “According to the latest NBC-New York Times-Gallup survey…”  All these polls, to paraphrase one of my old editors, “say everything and they say nothing.”

We don’t need polls that can’t possibly tell us anything about the outcome of an election held five months from now. Too many things can and will happen between now and then to influence the results. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need any polls. Polls can be helpful. To prove it I am hereby undertaking the first Kaufman-Zest of Orange poll to determine the opinions of our readers regarding a subject of admittedly minor importance, but which nonetheless should be of interest to all.

The background is this. My neighbor and I walk our dogs together a lot. One of us allows their dog to pee on mailbox posts along the way. The other considers this objectionable. Each thinks our opinion is shared by the majority of our neighbors. We’ve agreed that a poll will be a good way to settle the argument. You don’t have to be a dog owner or a property owner to participate. All responses posted below and via email will be tabulated and results announced some time next month.

So here goes….A simple yes or no is all that is required (although comments are welcome):

Question: Is it okay to let one’s dog pee on mailbox posts other than your own?

Feel free to identify yourself as belonging to any of the categories listed above. Perhaps we’ll uncover significant differences of opinion or trends among Catholics and Jews, men and women, gay and straight, etc.   Whichever side you’re on regarding dogs peeing on mailbox posts, remember to exercise your right to take part in this admittedly unimportant poll! (No proof of residency, absence of criminal record, or photo ID required.)

FROM THE VIRTUAL MAILBAG—My recent post re Scott Walker was “spot on,” wrote M.R. “The sad thing is that no matter who wins the election we can expect further erosion, if not total loss of our liberties. I hate to seem so pessimistic, but if something miraculous doesn’t happen soon, we are heading for a corporate dictatorship, where even this column will be banned!!” I agree there is plenty of cause for pessimism but there are also some encouraging signs of popular resistance….Paul Fischler, mentioned in a recent post as “another kid” who used to win paint jobs and other prizes from Alan Grant’s 1960s radio jazz program, wrote to correct my faulty memory of our meeting some 50 years ago: “Actually, I don’t think we met in the Garden City Hotel (since I don’t remember the performance you mention). I think we met when Alan Grant was organizing some sort of jazz club… and a few young people showed up for the meeting at some sort of club (or bar)… which had a juke box full of jazz!” Paul is right: We met at the Cork & Bib in Westbury. Prior to his email we hadn’t been in touch since…. Keep those cards and letters coming in.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

One of the reasons we’ve been told Scott Walker survived the recall election in Wisconsin is that his supporters were “more energized” and “enthusiastic” than his opponent’s. That may well be true but a far more plausible explanation is simply that “money talks.” Walker got so much money from uber-rich donors such as the Koch brothers that he was able to shell out more than 80 percent of the total spent in the campaign. So much for the notion frequently advanced by talking heads on television that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United-ruling has resulted in a state of offsetting “special interests,” e.g., corporate wealth versus “big labor unions” with regard to campaign donations. It isn’t so….and that alone might be enough to sap energy and enthusiasm from those who seek a more equitable society.

With money you can pay for cleverly twisted ads to convince working people that other working people’s pensions and benefits are why they are having trouble making ends meet. You can persuade them that Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start and food stamps are unaffordable “entitlements” in need of “reform.” Reform has now become a codeword meaning drastic cuts, privatization or even elimination of those programs.

Healthcare for all? Nah….that’s SOCIALISM! Protect the environment? Uh-uh. Drill baby drill. Frack baby frack. And while we’re drilling and fracking, let’s get rid of all those “illegal immigrants” who are draining our economy and committing crimes (the most galling of which seems to be not speaking English) and deport their children too (even if they speak English).

When I watched the debate on CNN between Walker and his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, I could not conceive of anyone in their right mind voting for Walker. The guy couldn’t give a straight answer to any of the questions. Barrett seemed effective until he decided to emphasize that he knows how to say no to “unrealistic demands” by his friends in the labor movement. That must have been a de-energizing enthusiasm sapper for Wisconsin voters who are union members and whose right to collective bargaining has been under attack ever since Walker took office.

President Obama does this sort of thing quite frequently on a national and global level. It doesn’t seem to win him any friends among those he panders to, and it sure doesn’t create enthusiasm or energy among many who will vote for him in the presidential election, simply because the alternative is so appalling. Why is the Guantanamo prison still open? Even Colin Powell is disappointed about that, for crying out loud. Why have so many of the most noxious practices of the Bush era been continued (and in some instances even expanded) such as the threats to civil liberties embodied in the Patriot Act? Why do we continue to use drone planes to drop bombs on people in Afghanistan when so many of those bombs have missed their intended targets (suspected terrorists) and instead killed innocent civilians (often referred to merely as “collateral damage”)?

Perhaps it was too much to expect that Obama would renounce the policies of his predecessor or, as some had hoped, launch an investigation or even bring charges against those government officials who authorized crimes against humanity (i.e.,  “Shock and Awe” in Iraq, extraordinary renditions, etc.) in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. There is a reason why George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other former U.S. government officials avoid international travel. Numerous complaints have been filed against them at the International Criminal Court,The Hague,Netherlands, and elsewhere.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam. At a recent ceremony, President Obama rightly decried the way veterans of that war were treated when they returned home. He also paid lip service to the “patriotic Americans” who had opposing views. But he drew no conclusions about the lessons of the war itself. As I watched a telecast of the speech I thought of a song by the late Phil Ochs, written during the war in Vietnam. The lyrics made sense then. They make sense now. A few excerpts:

 We’ve got to protect all our citizens fair

So we’ll send a battalion for everyone there

And maybe we’ll leave in a couple of years

‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys

We’re the Cops of the World

We’ll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck

And we’ll find you a leader that you can’t elect

Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck

‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys

We’re the Cops of the World

We’ll smash down your doors, we don’t bother to knock

We’ve done it before, so why all the shock

We’re the biggest and the toughest kids on the block

And we’re the Cops of the World, boys

We’re the Cops of the World

In fairness to the president, the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in December. The Obama Administration has also committed to a full withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan, but not until the end of 2014. That is too late to generate much energy and enthusiasm among anti-war voters for the 2012 election…. but more than enough to energize those who regard it as a sign of “weakness” to be exploited in cleverly twisted ads.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.    

By Michael Kaufman

The extent to which corporate polluters of the environment influence government policy in this country was dramatically illustrated last week at a Congressional hearing that received scant media attention. Republicans who control the House Small Business subcommittee, as well as the peculiarly named House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, took aim at the latest “Report on Carcinogens” issued by the National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences (NIEH), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“This is an out-front attack on the ROC and the NIEHS,” lamented environmental activist Lin Kaatz Chary, PhD, MPH, of Indiana Toxics Action. “It represents a continuation by Republicans of the Bush Administration’s efforts to undermine science.” Chary noted that the list of witnesses at the hearing was dominated by representatives of the chemical industry, who joined Republicans in an attempt to discredit NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum.

“Linda Birnbaum is probably the best NIEHS director that agency has ever had,” says Chary. “She is a brilliant scientist and has been an advocate for recognizing the health impacts of exposures to many hazardous chemicals.” Birnbaum, she noted, led the review of dioxin that began in the 1980s but was only recently released because of obstructive opposition from industry.

Paul Broun (R-Ga.), chairman of the “Oversight” committee, complained that the listings in the latest report could have a negative effect on commerce and small business “with no appreciable benefit” to the safety of the public. Charles Maresca, testifying on behalf of  the Small Business Administration, chimed in, saying “substances have been listed in the [report] based on inaccurate scientific information.”

Birnbaum defended the report, reminding her inquisitors that it was mandated by Congress to help people avoid potentially hazardous substances. “We have both a legal and a moral obligation to identify substances that are cancer hazards,” she said.

Brad Miller (D-N.C.) defended Birnbaum, beginning with an anecdote from his days as a student studying abroad in London. After a long search for a pickup basketball game, he finally found one. But most of the players were professionals playing in Europe.  “It became clear I was out of my depth,” Miller told Maresca. “That is probably how you should feel sitting next to Dr. Birnbaum talking about the subject before us.”

Miller pointed out that Maresca is not a scientist, and there are no scientists at the SBA charged with the responsibility of protecting public health. He and other Democrats charged that Republicans called the hearing at the behest of the styrene industry. That industry has spent $1 million on lobbying on the issue over the past two years and took credit for the hearing in a recent newsletter.

“We are really examining the objections of one industry to the listing of one chemical,” said Paul Tonko (D-NY) the “Science” subpanel’s ranking member. Tonko, who represents the 19^th district, including Albany, Schenectady, Montgomery and several other counties, termed the hearing “very disappointing.”

The chemical industry has aggressively challenged the cancer report’s conclusions. The Styrene Information and Research Center, an industry group, has a lawsuit pending against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), claiming the report “lacks transparency.” And the American Chemistry Council issued a statement accusing the report of falling “well short of meeting the benchmarks of objectivity, scientific accuracy and transparency…”

But environmental and public health advocates have a different view. “The attempt of the chemical industry and House Republicans to ‘ Swift Boat’ the Report on Carcinogens ran into a brick wall of facts and truth at today’s hearing,” said Daniel Rosenberg of the Natural Resources Defense Council.  Unfortunately, few people noticed because of the lack of coverage.

Meanwhile, as part of the $1 trillion omnibus spending package passed last year, Republicans succeeded in pushing through authorization of $1 million for the HHS to contract a National Academy of Sciences review of the styrene and formaldehyde listings. “I realize that $1 million out of a trillion is a very small amount relatively speaking,” says Chary. “But the fact that Congress would spend even a dime on this ‘review,’ while cutting back severely on so many programs that truly protect the health of  the American people is outrageous.” Nowadays, she says, “the chemical industry clearly considers itself part of the government.”

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Go to any local school board or local government meeting nowadays and someone is sure to proclaim, “This would never be tolerated in the business world,” or “We need to operate more like they do in the private sector,” or some variation of those sentiments. You hear it most within the context of cost containment, as if private businesses are the experts in this regard, and school board members and local government officials a bunch of dupes. Why else would they agree to give schoolteachers a raise or fund a nursing home to provide quality care for county residents? Where’s the profit in that?

Such statements are rooted in ignorance of both history and contemporary reality. Exactly which businesses in the private sector are to be emulated?  They can’t mean Enron, of course, or failed airlines such as Eastern, Pan Am, TWA and Braniff, to name a few. How about Goldman Sachs? No, they obviously mean a business successfully operating today. How about Whirlpool? They’re doing well….but, like many other successful companies, they shut down a refrigerator plant in southern Indiana and put 1,100 people out of work to move to Mexico, where they can pay workers less money. (They did this even after taking $19 million in “economic recovery” money from the federal government.)

Frankly, it is amazing what is tolerated in the business world: multimillion dollar exit packages for people who failed as CEOs, for example. Remember the Ford Pinto scandal of the 1970s? Company officials decided it would be cheaper to pay the families of people who died from the exploding gas tanks than to recall the cars and retool manufacturing. Last time I looked, Ford was still making and selling cars.

Pfizer remained one of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies even after pleading guilty to criminal fraud in the promotion of Neurontin, an anticonvulsant drug, and agreeing to pay $430 million in 2004. Apparently that amount wasn’t enough to teach the company a lesson. In 2009 Pfizer pleaded guilty to fraudulent marketing of Bextra, its now-withdrawn pain medication, and agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle. (Tongue-in-cheek question: Would such behavior be tolerated in the public sector?) Other big pharma companies have been cited for similar practices yet continue to flourish.

Daniel and Katy Moore, the parents of a two-year-old boy who died of liver failure a day after taking tainted Children’s Tylenol a couple of years ago, sued Johnson & Johnson and a long list of others allegedly involved in a “phantom recall” of the product. Company officials who knew of the tainted batch are accused of keeping it a secret. Rather than experience the negative publicity of a recall, they hired people to buy up the entire tainted supply from retail outlets. But they got to the store too late for River Moore.

Would a small local business like a restaurant be a better fit for those statements mentioned earlier?  The answer is no. The vast majority of new restaurants go out of business within two years. Turnover among underpaid wait staff is usually quite high. We wouldn’t want to see that kind of turnover with our public schoolteachers or among those caring for our elderly loved ones. And this is where history comes in.

County nursing homes are among the institutions that came into being, were necessitated as it were, by societal change. The days are long past when most people worked on either a family farm or in a family business. In those days older children helped care for young ones until they were ready to work. And when elders or ill family members required care, everyone helped out. Today, family members are scattered across the country (and the world) to make a living at their jobs.

The point is that our public schools and public nursing homes were never meant to be profit-making businesses. The miserable failure of EdisonLearning, Inc, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and other cities in recent years raises important questions about the broader social, political and cultural implications of this approach, which is always accompanied by an attempt to avoid dealing with a unionized work force. (For more on this subject, see Kenneth J. Saltman’s The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education [Routledge, 2005]). The same is true of our public nursing homes. But the Orange County legislature at the behest of County Executive Diana, have put Valley View up for sale. Shame on them.

Michael can be reached at micheael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Something has been gnawing at my brain ever since I read about Keith Olbermann being fired by the Current television network. I was struck by the smug tone of many of the articles, even from news sources generally regarded as progressive or left-leaning. Few voices have been raised on Olbermann’s behalf, perhaps because one of Current’s founders and co-owners is Al Gore, who has done a meritorious job of raising public awareness of the challenges posed by environmental pollution and climate change.

Coverage of the firing, Olbermann’s lawsuit and the countersuit filed by the network, tends to hone on Olbermann’s “stormy” relationships with previous employers, ESPN and MSNBC. One article contained an anecdote about Olbermann yelling impatiently at a limo driver who possessed limited English language skills. The same article said he yelled at staff members.

Some folks don’t like Olbermann because he has a big head, which is true of both his hat size and his ego. (His fight with Current is often described as a “clash of egos,” Olbermann versus Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt.) Yes, his style can sometimes be grating and abrasive. And as much as I agree with him, it isn’t necessary to conclude every report of Sara Palin’s latest antics with, “That woman is an idiot.”

But something else needs to be said here. When no other commentator on national television dared speak out against the U.S.invasion of Iraq, Olbermann did so, boldly and eloquently. That is how I first became aware of him as anything other than a clever sports commentator. Someone forwarded me a link to one of his commentaries on MSNBC….and then another…until I started watching “Countdown” every night for myself. I had stopped watching MSNBC in 2003 after they fired Phil Donahue, host of the highest rated show on the network at the time because he allowed some guests on his program to express antiwar sentiments.

A study commissioned by parent company NBC had described Donahue as “a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace” who would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” The report warned that the Donahue show could be “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

In an email leaked at the time, one executive suggested that MSNBC could take advantage of the “anticipated larger audience who will tune in during a time of war” to “reinvent itself” and “cross-pollinate our programming” by linking pundits to war coverage. “It’s unlikely that we can use Phil in this way, particularly given his public stance on the advisability of the war effort,” the email said.

This was a time of unprecedented censorship, of embedded reporters (no David Halberstams or Pete Hamills covering this war). Instead we were given deceitful propaganda about “weapons of mass destruction,” fed by unnamed government sources to Judith Miller and dutifully printed by The New York Times. Retired generals who questioned the policy were silenced and smeared. There would be no photos of body bags or coffins bringing home our dead. You couldn’t even hear the Dixie Chicks singing on the radio: One of them had spoken out against the war. And if you wanted to see the day-to-day devastation and ruin caused by “Shock and Awe” you had to watch the news fromFrance with English subtitles on WNYC.

It took guts for Olbermann to speak out then…..maybe not quite on the order of Ed Murrow taking on Joe McCarthy, but close enough in my book. And when “Countdown” became the highest-rated show on MSNBC the network bosses decided it was good business to identify the station with the “liberal antiwar agenda.”  Thanks to Keith we can now tune in to the likes of  Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Chris Hayes….at least until the next time the marketplace requires cheerleading for war.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman 

I haven’t won a a contest of any kind since I was in high school and my friends and I used to call in to radio station WLIR during Alan Grant’s “Jazz Nocturne” broadcasts. Grant would give away record albums, tickets to jazz concerts, and even a free paint job for your car provided by one of his sponsors. You just had to be the first person to call in with the correct answer to a question, such as, “Who is playing tenor saxophone on this next song?”

WLIR was then a small radio station on Long Island. My school friends and I were among the “beautiful Jazz Nocturne listeners,” as Grant called the small band of fans of his show. We would wait by the phone for the contest with our Downbeat magazines open to the page with the results of the annual readers’ poll. If we didn’t recognize the tenor sax player immediately we would simply try a name on the list. If it wasn’t the right answer we would hang up and call again with the next name.

“Is it Leo Wright?”

“Wrong.” [click]

“Is it Lockjaw Davis.”

“No.” [click]

“Is it Johnny Griffin?”

“We have a winner!”

I can still see my father shaking his head: “You won another paint job for the car?”

My friends Steve Press and Arnold Adlin won at least as often as I did. So did a kid named Paul Fischler, who we met after we all won tickets to the same jazz brunch concert at the Garden City Hotel featuring Booker Ervin on tenor sax, Johhny Coles on trumpet, and Horace Parlan on piano.

This all came to mind because the other day I received an email that said, “Mr. Kaufman, Congratulations on being our grand prize winner of the 2011-2012 Race of the Day contest! The prize includes a VIP trip to the Kentucky Derby, including a stipend to help defray travel costs. This prize is not transferable. Are you able to attend this year’s race?”

I had been playing in the Race of the Day contest for four months but after a good start, I was picking fewer and fewer winners lately. “Guess I’ll be watching the Derby on TV again this year,” I told Louie, one of my horseplayer friends, who was also competing.

The contest  is a national online handicapping competition sponsored by Bloodstock Research Information Services (Brisnet.com), which provides past performance information and other data pertaining to thoroughbred racing. Each day of the contest it posts past performances for a single race and contestants try to pick the winner. Thousands of entrants take part for a chance to win the grand prize, a three-day, two-night trip to Louisville, including a pair of choice tickets to the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday, May 5. The prize also includes tickets for Friday’s Kentucky Oaks, which features the best three-year-old fillies in the country, as well as hotel accommodations, meals, and $500 towards travel expenses.

I looked at the email and read it over and over again.  I laughed. I whooped and hollered, although no one was home except our dog Benji, who tilted his head and looked at me quizzically, and daughter Gahlia, who was asleep in the next room. I woke her up and tried to tell her the news but she just grunted and went back to sleep.

I read the email one last time. Am I able to attend this year’s race?  IS THE POPE CATHOLIC? This is a dream come true for a horseplayer, the equivalent of tickets on the 50-yard line for the Super Bowl or the seventh game of the World Series.  OF COURSE I AM ABLE!

Maybe I’ll even ask them to throw in a paint job for the car. I haven’t felt this lucky in a long time.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Every once in a while something happens to remind me of my most embarrassing moments at work. When it happens, chances are it is another embarrassing moment on a grand scale. I had one the other day at a meeting I was covering in Chicago… but before I tell you about it I’ll share the original.

It was my first day at a new job with a fancy title at a big agency in Manhattan. I went to use the bathroom and as I emerged from the stall when I was finished, my pants caught on a protruding piece of metal and ripped badly. To say that you could see my underpants was an understatement. Most of my right thigh was completely exposed. Without hesitation and without a word to anyone I walked briskly to the elevator with one hand holding my pants in place as much as possible. I kept it in the same position as I rushed to the nearest clothing store and bought a new pair of pants that almost matched the jacket I was wearing. I was back at the office within minutes and, as far as I know, no one at the job ever knew about it.

The next day I was extra careful not to rip my pants again when I went to the bathroom. But when I reached over to flush the toilet a large section of my tie went into the toilet bowl. (One might see this as a metaphor since that job lasted slightly less than a year.) It is impossible for me to think of one of these two events independently from the other. Together they represent my most embarrassing moments at work, not counting the time I mistakenly used the ladies’ room right before a job interview. (That doesn’t count because I wasn’t at work at the time….but it is right up there in the embarrassing department.) I was straightening my tie and gazing at myself in the mirror to make sure I looked okay for the interview when a woman walked in, stopped short, and fled just as I blurted, “This is the ladies’ room?” All I could do was hope she didn’t work where I was applying. But she did….and even after I was hired it took months before she would say hello.

Okay, so I was in Chicago the other day to cover the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.  If you have ever attended an event at McCormick Place, the big convention center in the Windy City, you know how disorienting it can be. The place makes the Orange County Government Center building look like a scene from Better Homes and Gardens. It’s a crazy quilt of ramps, stairways and escalators. Here were 17,000 cancer researchers from all over the world and every day you would see them wandering around, dazed, looking for rooms with names like 221 CC and 183 F West.

As part of my work I went to the exhibit area (once I figured out how to get there) where investigators explain the findings of research depicted on their posters. I had noted several posters in the program I thought especially worthy of coverage. I walked up to one of them and asked the presenter how soon he thought his findings would be widely implemented in clinical practice. But I was at the wrong poster. I thought I was at one describing how a certain experimental combination of drug therapy and surgery had dramatically improved outcomes in patients with brain cancer. But the person I asked (a renowned brain surgeon) was presenting far less encouraging information: When two drugs known to have some modest effects in shrinking brain tumors were combined in hope of achieving a synergistic (or at least additive) effect, it didn’t work. In fact, the combination was so toxic the patients died sooner than if they had just been treated with one of the drugs.

“Say,” said the famous brain surgeon. “Aren’t you the guy whose tie went in the toilet bowl?” (I just made that last part up.)

 Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman

Is it just me or are we being inundated by an unusually large amount of bad news lately? Trayvon Martin….the murderous attack on Jewish schoolchildren in France….the ongoing carnage in Syria….escalating oil and gas prices…the right-wing legislative assault on women’s healthcare….Need I go on?

And speaking of healthcare: Will the Supreme Court really strike down the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) so insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit healthcare institutions and providers can go back to doing “business as usual”? (Business as usual: denying coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and sons and daughters above age 21;  restoring the “donut hole” so prescription drug costs will soar for many people with chronic diseases; and millions of Americans having to go without care because they can’t afford it.)

Closer to home, we see Orange County political officials planning to sell Valley View (the county nursing home renowned for providing quality care) to a private, for-profit business. At the same time, Orange County Executive Ed Diana is still pushing for construction of a new, multimillion dollar government office building rather than repair the existing storm-damaged facility in Goshen. I happen to agree with those who think the building is a funny-looking eyesore rather than a historic landmark and/or work of art….but that is beside the point. As lawn signs around the county proclaim: Just fix it!

And the Valley View situation is a reflection of the ongoing underfunding of public health at all levels of government. An analysis released by Trust for America’s Health, a think tank supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that federal funding for public health has been “insufficient” for the past six years. At the same time, public health budgets at the state and local levels have been cut at drastic rates.  A recent study conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials found significant cuts to programs, workforce and budgets at local health departments around the country. Since 2008, those departments have lost a total of 34,400 jobs due to layoffs and attrition. Combined state and local public health job losses total 49,310 since 2008.

Also closer to home, Governor Cuomo has refused to order an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Michael Lembhard by police in Newburgh. Upon learning of the governor’s decision, Michael Sussman, attorney for the Lembhard family, said, “Today is a sad day and a day of a missed opportunity.  The governor has chosen not to appoint a special prosecutor…. The result is that our community must trust the results of an investigation conducted by an agency, the Orange County DA’s office, with very close ties to the City of Newburgh Police Department, which relies on that department for many of its cases and which has every institutional interest in exonerating that department and its members in this and every other case.”

Sussman, who represented the family of D.J. Henry, the Pace College quarterback shot and killed by police in Westchester in October 2010, said “Michael’s death brings to mind other great tragedies which have affected too many families.” Nevertheless, he urged family members and witnesses to cooperate with the local investigation and he called on Newburgh residents to use “peaceful and non-violent means to demonstrate their profound anger at Michael’s death. Only by the exercise of restraint and respect for human life can we honor the fallen.

“The City of Newburgh, said Sussman, should hire an independent law firm to investigate and determine whether the officers who killed Lembhard violated departmental rules and regulations “and, if so, should take disciplinary measures….in a manner consistent with the rule of law and the due process rights of the officers.” Lemnhard’s family, he noted, “is deeply angry and frustrated at the loss of Michael…. Our imperative as their brothers and sisters and our responsibility as residents of this county remains to see that justice is done….We will spare no resource toward that objective.”

Sussman heads up the Orange County Democratic Alliance (http://www.democraticalliance.com/), which is active on a number of fronts to make life in our county better for all of its residents. And for those interested, Occupy Orange will meet Thursday, March 29, at 6:30 p.m.at theInteractive Museum, 23 Center St., Middletown. Organizers request that you bring “a positive spirit, and your ideas about what we can accomplish together.” Maybe some good news will emerge as a result of their activities.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

By Michael Kaufman 

Every time I listen to a speech by one of the Republican candidates for president I think of H.L. Mencken’s comment, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Mencken died in 1956, well before the advent of cable TV, the internet, and the “information superhighway.” But somehow his words seem more applicable than ever. How else can one explain the strong support for Rick Santorum among women voters in Tuesday’s Republican primaries in Alabama and Mississippi?  

An article titled, “The Santorum Strategy: Why the Right Wins Even When It Loses,” posted earlier this week on the commondreams.org website by George Lakoff, provides a few clues. “The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum,” wrote Lakoff,  professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!, and other recent books. 

“It is about pounding the most…. conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign and guaranteeing a radical conservative future forAmerica.” Lakoff warns progressives against taking Santorum and the other GOP hopefuls lightly, as some do now. “I am old enough to remember how liberals (me included) made fun of Ronald Reagan as a not-too-bright mediocre actor who could not possibly be elected president. I remember liberals making fun of George W. Bush as so ignorant and ill-spoken that Americans couldn’t possibly take him seriously. Both turned out to be clever politicians who changed America much for the worse. And among the things they and their fellow conservatives managed to do was change public discourse, and with it, change how a great many Americans thought.” 

The Republican presidential campaign has to be seen in this light.

“Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation,” says Lakoff. Language activates complex brain circuitry rooted in moral systems. “Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry.” This he says is important when considering the role of so-called independents, whose brains can shift back and forth between conservative and liberal views. “The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.” 

Part of the Republican strategy, he says, is to get liberals to argue against them, while repeating conservative language. “There is a reason I wrote Don’t Think of an Elephant! When you negate conservative language, you activate conservative ideas and, hence, automatically and unconsciously strengthen the brain circuitry that characterizes conservative values.” 

This message is lost on those liberals and progressives who talk derisively about the Republican presidential race. Lakoff cites several examples, including Maureen Dowd who gleefully described the GOP candidates as “ridiculously weak and wacky.” 

“I hope that they are right,” says Lakoff. “But, frankly, I have my doubts. I think Democrats need much better positive messaging, expressing and repeating liberal moral values — not just policies….That is not happening.” He thinks this was a major factor in the thrashing the Dems received in the 2010 elections.

For example, says Lakoff, “Consider how conservatives got a majority of Americans to be against the Obama health care plan. The president had polled the provisions, and each had strong public support: No preconditions, no caps, no loss of coverage if you get sick, ability to keep your college-age child on your policy, and so on. These are policy details, and they matter.” The conservatives, however, never argued against any of those specific provisions. “Instead, they made a moral case against ‘Obamacare.’ Their moral principles were freedom and life, and they had language to go with them. Freedom: ‘government takeover.’ Life: ‘death panels.’ 

“Republicans at all levels repeated them over and over, and convinced millions of people who were for the policy provisions of the Obama plan to be against the plan as a whole. They changed the public discourse, changed the brains of the electorate — especially the ‘independents’ — and won in 2010.” 

Today, Democrats continue to miss the big picture. The extreme conservative discourse of the Republican presidential race has the same purpose, says Lakoff “and conservative Republicans are luring Democrats into making the same mistakes. Santorum….is the best example. From the perspective of conservative moral values, he is making sense and arguing logically, making his moral values clear and coming across as straightforward and authentic, as Reagan did.” 

The idealized conservative family, explains Lakoff, is built around a strict father, the natural leader, assumed to know right from wrong, whose authority is absolute and unchallengeable. He makes decisions about reproduction and he sets the rules. “Children must be taught right from wrong through strict, moral discipline. According to Lakoff, this concept extends onto the nation as a whole. “To be prosperous in a free market, one must be fiscally disciplined. If you are not prosperous, you must not be disciplined, and if you are not disciplined, you cannot be moral, and so you deserve your poverty. 

“For conservatives, democracy is about liberty, individual responsibility and self-reliance — the freedom to seek one’s own self-interest with minimal or no commitment to the interests of others.” According to Lakoff, the conservative populism personified by Santorum — in which poor conservatives vote against their own financial interests — depends on those voters having “strict father family values,” defining themselves in terms of those values, and voting on the basis of those values, thus choosing strict fathers as their political leaders.

 And as long as the Democrats have no positive moral messaging of their own, the strategy will go unchallenged and conservative populism will expand. “Moreover,” says Lakoff, “repeating the Santorum language by mocking it or arguing against it using that language will only help conservative propagate their views.” 

Democrats have been gleeful about the Santorum birth control strategy, taken up by conservatives in the House as a moral position that if you want to use birth control, you should pay for it yourself. Democrats see this as irrational Republican self-destruction, assuming that it will help all Democrats to frame it as a “war against women.” But according to Lakoff, the logic used by conservative populists, including many women, embodies some of the most powerful aspects of conservative moral logic: 

•Reproduction is the province of male authority.

•The strict father does not condone moral weakness and self-indulgence without moral consequences. Sex without reproductive consequences is thus seen as immoral.

•If the nation supports birth control for unmarried women, then the nation supports immoral behavior.

•No one else should have to pay for your birth control — not your employer, your HMO, or the taxpayers.

 Having to pay for your birth control also has a metaphorical religious value, says Lakoff: “paying for your sins.” And from this “slippery slope narrative,” the next step is that no one else should have to pay for any of your health care. And the step after that is that no one else should be forced to pay for anyone else….period. Everything should be privatized: education, safety nets, nursing homes, etc.  “It doesn’t take a village to raise a child,” Santorum is fond of repeating on the campaign trail. “It takes a family.”

 “That is what makes conservative moral logic into such a powerful instrument,” says Lakoff. Mock it at your own peril.  

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.